It was on this date in 1938 that Canada’s federal Tories elected Dr. Robert “Fighting Bob” Manion their national leader. Born in Pembroke, Ontario, and raised in what is now Thunder Bay, Manion was a hero of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. He was soon drawn to politics and served with distinction in the cabinets of both Arthur Meighen and R.B. Bennett. Known as a parliamentary warrior who had no hesitation in even tangling with Sir Wilfrid Laurier in the Commons, Manion would only serve two years as Canada’s Leader of the Opposition.
In 1940, Prime Minister Mackenzie King called a surprise election and Manion and his party went down to defeat. Fighting Bob resigned as leader and passed away only three-years-later.
I have always found it of great interest that both Manion and Liberal legend Paul Martin Sr. lived on the same street for a period in their joint hometown of Pembroke, something I discovered when I was a youthful reporter at the Pembroke Observer in the early 1990s.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.