Brian Mulroney, who had been elected leader of the national Progressive Conservative party three months before, took to his feet in the House of Commons on this date in 1983. He would take office as the 18th Prime Minister one-year later, on September 17, 1984. Here’s the link to some of the good-natured comments from then PM Pierre Trudeau and NDP leader Ed Broadbent welcoming the Tory to Parliament Hill: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.5255913
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.