Sir Wilfrid Laurier

In 1914, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the seventh Canadian Prime Minister, declared: “It is our duty to let Great Britain know and to let the friends and foes of Great Britain know that there is in Canada but one mind and one heart and that all Canadians are behind the Mother Country.”

When Trudeau won election back in October, he made reference in his victory speech to Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the “sunny ways” approach Laurier tried to bring to bear on an ugly national mood of religious and linguistic intolerance that was threatening to pull Canada apart at the time.

If he is successful, Mr Harper would be the first prime minister since Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1908 to win four consecutive elections.

Canucks have long been touching up Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s features with black ink to make the country’s seventh prime minister resemble the famed Vulcan.

In 1877 he was counsel for Great Britain before the Anglo-American fisheries arbitration at Halifax; in 1897 he was a joint delegate to Washington with Sir Wilfrid Laurier on the Bering Sea seal question; and in 1898-1899 a member of the Anglo-American joint high commission at Quebec.