Canada’s unstoppable former Prime Minister, Sir Mackenzie Bowell, was in Brockville, Ontario on this date in 1900. He was there to support the Tory candidate as the 1900 federal election wound down. One headline said “Brockville Went Wild!” I’ll let the press accounts of the day continue the story as it describes perhaps the first and only time that Bowell, the pride of Belleville, Ontario, was greeted as a sex symbol.
“Sir Mackenzie Bowell was the first speaker. As he mounted the impromptu platform provided for the occasion, an old lady jumped up through the crowd and seizing both hands of the ex-Premier of the Dominion covered them with kisses. This was signal for rousing cheers and for fully ten minutes Sir Mackenzie had to bow acknowledgments to the enthusiastic crowd.”
Yes, you read that on Art’s History first. Bowell, of course, would go on to play an important role in Canadian politics until his death in 1917, a force of nature until the end.
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.