Canada’s leading lawyers were gathered at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa on this date in 1929 as the Canadian Bar Association held its annual meeting. The highlight of the gathering was the election of future Prime Minister R.B. Bennett – then Leader of the Opposition – and another future PM, Louis St.-Laurent, were both elected by their legal peers to senior posts at the CBA. Bennett became the group’s President, while St.-Laurent was elected Vice-President of the group.
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.