It was on this date in 1920 that one of Canada's greatest Prime Ministers, Sir Robert Borden, left office and Arthur Meighen was sworn-in as our ninth Prime Minister. Meighen has always been one of my favourite Prime Ministers to study, particularly as I believe he, along with Sir Wilfrid Laurier, was the greatest Parliamentary performer in our history. His speeches were legion and legendary.
After taking office in 1920, Meighen was to serve as PM until December 1921 when he was defeated by the new Liberal leader, Mackenzie King. In taking over from Borden, Meighen had inherited a tired party strained, in particular, by the fact it had imposed conscription during the recent Great War, a fact that had left the Conservative Party far from popular in Quebec.
Still, after his defeat in 1921 Meighen went on to serve as Leader of the Opposition, briefly Prime Minister again in 1926 as the infamous King-Byng crisis played out, leader of his party again in the 1940s, and as the Government House Leader in the Senate while R.B. Bennett was PM. Despite the ups and downs Meighen experienced – many of the downs being self-inflicted – his was a remarkable life of public service that we are right to celebrate today.
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.