Politics!

Some Trivia

There has been a great deal of political chit-chat lately, both North and South of the border between Canada and the United States.  We are inundated with it on the daily news.  Some true and some fake.  What do we believe?

So, I thought it might be a good idea to get away for a while from all the worries of on-again off-again tariffs, trade wars, and what looks to be a bleak future for both countries. Instead, let’s escape for a moment into some interesting political trivia about our Canadian Prime Ministers.

Since Confederation in 1867 there have been 24 Canadian Prime Ministers (23 were men and only one was a woman.)

Canada’s first Prime Minister was Sir John A. Macdonald, one of only two Prime Ministers who died in office; the other being Sir John Sparrow Thompson who died in 1894 in London, while lunching with Queen Victoria. (I wonder what was being served.) 

 

(Original Caption) Sir John Alexander MacDonald (1815-1891), Canada's first Prime Minister (1867-73 and again, 1878-91). From an original photo from the Public Archives of Canada. Undated.

And did you know that Sir John A Macdonald and Prime Minister Jean Chretien who is now 91, share the same birthday – January 11th.

William Mackenzie King served the longest in office with three separate terms of 21 years and 154 days in all. Sir John A. Macdonald served for 18 years and 359 days, and Pierre Trudeau served for 15 years. All were non-consecutive terms, but Sir Wilfrid Laurier served the longest term consecutively.

There has been only one-woman Prime Minister, Kim Campbell, who served for a period of just over four months in 1993.  She was one of three of the shortest serving Prime Ministers, the others being Sir Charles Tupper for 68 days, John Turner 79 days and Kim Campbell 132 days. Sir Charles Tupper served the shortest term, from May to July of 1896.

The average age of Canadian Prime Ministers is 57 years and one month. The youngest was Joe Clark, who was only 39 when he came to the office; Justin Trudeau was 43 when he became Prime Minister. The oldest was Sir Charles Tupper who was 74. 

Sir Charles Tupper was also the only Prime Minister with a degree in medicine and one of only two Prime Ministers who served as a provincial premier beforehand.  The other was Sir John Thompson, and both those gentlemen came from Nova Scotia.

Sir Wilfred Laurier (Prime Minister from 1896-1911) was the first French-speaking leader in Canada.  Lester Pearson was the only one to have received a Nobel Prize. He received it for Peace in 1957 for his attempts to set up an international UN peacekeeping force to end the Suez Canal crisis.

On March 14th, 2025, Mark Carney, leader of the Liberal party, was sworn in as the twenty-fourth Prime Minister of Canada. On April 28th, 2025, there will be another Canadian election.  It will be interesting to see what the future holds in the political arena.