List of Speeches
Foreword by Kirsten Hillman, Ambassador of Canada to the United States
Preface by Maryscott Greenwood
Introduction by Arthur Milnes

FRIENDSHIP
Hopeful Renewal
President Barack Obama (2016)
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (2016)
A Friend in Need
President Jimmy Carter (1980)
President Jimmy Carter (2011)
Early Days
Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier (1899)
Vice President Charles Fairbanks (1908)
Prime Minister Robert Borden (1912)
William Lyon Mackenzie King (1913)
President Warren G. Harding (1923)
Bosom Buddies
Brian Mulroney (2004)
President George H.W. Bush (1999)
Joe Clark
President Bill Clinton (2002)
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (2016)
Brian Mulroney (2018)

FRICTIONS
The Times They Are A-Changing
Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson (1965)
President Richard Nixon (1972)
Economic Tensions
Prime Minister Paul Martin (2005)
President Barack Obama (2015)
Personal Touch
President Donald J. Trump (2018)

AT WAR
Allied Against the Axis Powers
President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1943)
The Cold War Era
President Harry S. Truman (1947)
President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953)
A New World Order
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien (2001)
President George W. Bush (2004)
Standing Together Against Tyranny
Prime Minister Stephen J. Harper (2007)
Prime Minister Stephen J. Harper (2011)

AT WORK
Building Bridges — and Highways and Seaways and …
Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (1927)
Vice President Charles Dawes (1927)
President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1959)
Free Trade: Taking the Leap of Faith
President Ronald Reagan (1987)
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (1988)
President George H.W. Bush (1991)
President George H.W. Bush (1992)
The Quebec Question
President Bill Clinton (1999)
“A Permanent Reality”
Senator John F. Kennedy (1957)
One Canada
Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1977)
New Challenges, New Approaches
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (2019)

AT PLAY — HOLIDAYING IN EACH OTHER’S NATION
President Theodore Roosevelt (1916)
President William Howard Taft (1926)
Sir Robert Borden (1934)
Sir Robert Borden (1936)
Home Away from Home
President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933)
President Richard Nixon (1972)
President George H.W. Bush (1997)

TOASTS AND TRIBUTES
Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier (1898)
Tributes at a Time of Loss
Ambassador Lester B. Pearson (1945)
Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson (1963)
NDP Leader Tommy Douglas (1963)
President Richard Nixon (1972)
President Gerald R. Ford (2001)
Memories and Reflections
Brian Mulroney (2007)
President Bill Clinton (1995)
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton (1999)
President George W. Bush (2008)
Prime Minister Stephen Harper (2009)
President Barack Obama (2009)
President Donald J. Trump (2017)
A New Old Friend
President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (2021)
President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (2021)
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (2021)
Entre Nous
Vice President Kamala Harris (2020)
Vice President Kamala Harris and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (2021)
Aligned and Allied: The Two Michaels

Timeline of Prime Ministers and Presidents, 1865–2022
Conclusion by Scott Reid
Afterword by The Hon. Kelly Craft
Acknowledgements from Arthur Milnes Acknowledgements from Maryscott Greenwood
About the Editors
Image Credits
Index

In the world of Canada-U.S. relations, a speech by a president to the Canadian Parliament, or one by a Canadian prime minister to the U.S. Congress is, to use sporting analogies, the World Series or Stanley Cup final of bilateral relations. It simply can’t be topped.

In 1995, shortly after President Bill Clinton spoke to Canada’s Parliament, quick-thinking and historically minded staff at the American embassy in Ottawa produced the book United States Presidential Addresses to the Canadian Parliament: 1943–1995. In his foreword, then American Ambassador to Canada James Blanchard noted the following about these special addresses:

Presidential speeches in the House of Commons have always been a special moment in U.S.-Canadian history. Each speech powerfully captures the mood of the times. Each represents an important portrait of this, the most unique bilateral relationship in history.

When President Bill Clinton spoke to Canada’s MPs and senators, it fell to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to introduce his counterpart. In introducing Clinton, the wily man from Shawinigan reminded Canada’s distinguished visitor that a speech to Canada’s Parliament could also bring good political luck to a president who, as with Chrétien himself, was still in his first term. As the man from Hope, Arkansas, listened intently, the prime minister observed that presidents such as Eisenhower, Reagan, and Nixon had all addressed Canada’s Parliament and were later returned to second terms at the White House. To laughter, Chrétien noted that other presidents like Ford, Carter, and George H.W. Bush had not addressed Parliament and had not received second terms.

It was a great line and very much appreciated by Clinton, who was down in the polls then. “I have never believed in the iron laws of history as much as I do now,” the president told Parliament.

The fact that later presidents like George W. Bush and Barack Obama were elected to second terms after not addressing Canada’s Parliament shows that this “law” of history can now be forgotten.

Ambassador Blanchard was right in what he said, though. A presidential visit to Parliament Hill that lacks an address to Parliament may still be important and exciting, but it remains a bit of a letdown. So when, in June 2016, President Barack Obama finally took his turn behind a podium in Canada’s House of Commons to proclaim “the world needs more Canada,” the now-veteran president was met with a wave of enthusiasm.

What many observers forget, however, is that a presidential speech to Parliament actually is a relatively recent custom. Franklin Roosevelt in August 1943 was the first to address Canadian MPs and senators. And it wasn’t until 1977 that a Canadian prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, was honoured by an invitation to speak to Congress in Washington. Fans of Canada’s connection to the British monarchy will note with pride that Governor General Vincent Massey, the Queen’s representative in Canada, beat Trudeau to Congress by many years. He spoke there in 1954.

No matter the occasion, however, the persistent and perhaps even defining characteristic of the relationship between the two countries is their friendship. This is not the whole of the partnership, certainly, but it is the foundation. Unsurprisingly, then, some presidents and prime ministers have discovered over the decades that the need to work together closely on bilateral, continental, and global matters can produce a bond that becomes personal. Professional responsibilities can produce — and often have produced — friends in truly high places.