At the start of question period on the 150th anniversary of Parliament on Monday afternoon, Speaker Geoff Regan looked up to the Speaker’s Gallery and introduced four of Canada’s former prime ministers.

Joe Clark, John Turner, Brian Mulroney and Paul Martin were cheered to the echo with standing ovations from all sides of the House.

Three living former prime ministers weren’t there. Jean Chrétien refuses to appear with Martin except when he has no choice; the funeral of legendary Liberal Herb Gray was one such occasion. Chrétien has never forgiven Martin for triggering the leadership review that ended his decade as PM in 2003.

Stephen Harper undoubtedly declined the Speaker’s invitation for an awkward but understandable reason: he wouldn’t have wanted to look down on the Liberal prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who defeated him in the 2015 election. And the absence of Kim Campbell, prime minister for the summer of 1993, was not really noticed.

The four former PMs who attended have reached the stage in life where they get along quite well. Clark, though he lost the Conservative leadership to Mulroney in 1983, went on to become an outstanding foreign minister in the Mulroney government — one of the best in Canadian history. Turner, routed in the largest landslide in Canadian federal political history in 1984, ran a brave (though ultimately futile) campaign against free trade in 1988.

Mulroney was the only Conservative leader since Sir John A. Macdonald to win consecutive majority governments. And Martin, while doomed to lose the 2006 election because of Chrétien’s sponsorship scandal, was also the finance minister who balanced Canada’s books in the 1990s. “Come hell or high water,” as he said in the House at the time; it became the title of his memoir.

Regan had the four former PMs to lunch in the Speaker’s suite, along with two former speakers. “We had a lovely lunch,” Mulroney said. In fact, these four have been getting along for decades.

For one thing, they’ve all reached a certain age. Turner is 88, Martin 79, Clark and Mulroney are both 78. A clock is ticking.

Clark has interesting advice on Africa. Mulroney is advising the Trudeau government on the NAFTA talks. What PM wouldn’t want to receive the uniquely informed insights of his predecessors in office? Clark has interesting advice on Africa. Mulroney is advising the Trudeau government on the NAFTA talks. What PM wouldn’t want to receive the uniquely informed insights of his predecessors in office?

For another, they like and respect one another as fellow members of a very exclusive club. For example, Turner is active in Toronto’s Catholic community; a few years ago, as chair of the Cardinal’s Dinner, he invited Mulroney as the guest speaker. Clark and Maureen McTeer were prominent guests at the wedding of Mulroney’s daughter, Caroline, in 2000. Martin is someone Mulroney meets in the circles they both inhabit in Montreal.

And former prime ministers can be helpful to current ones. Clark has interesting advice on Africa. Martin is a voice of conscience on reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. Mulroney is advising the Trudeau government on the NAFTA talks. Campbell is advising Trudeau on Supreme Court appointments. What PM wouldn’t want to receive the uniquely informed insights of his predecessors in office?

All of those four former PMs were leading actors in QP, and all made important speeches in the House. Clark, as Conservative leader, courageously opposed the unilateral patriation of the Constitution by the government of Pierre Trudeau in 1981. Turner, as opposition leader, bravely supported the Meech Lake Accord in 1987, the same year Mulroney gave a powerful speech on the abolition of capital punishment. Martin, as finance minister, was a stalwart on budgetary balance, after decades of deficits.

The sound and fury of the House, particularly in QP, is one of the signatures of the place. So is the rhetoric of foreign leaders invited to speak there.

In the leaders’ statements Monday, both Trudeau and Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer referred to the historic Joint Address by Winston Churchill in December 1941. Fresh from a visit to Washington after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Churchill crafted a defining statement about the Second World War out of only four words.

He quoted a defeated French general who had said that England “would have her neck wrung like a chicken.”

Churchill chose to deliver his response to the House that afternoon: “Some chicken, some neck!”

Afterwards in the Speaker’s office, there was a photo portrait session with Yousef Karsh that Churchill hadn’t been informed of, and which evidently annoyed him.

He lit one of his trademark cigars. After a few minutes, Karsh pulled it out of his mouth. Churchill glared, Karsh captured it and turned it into what may be the most famous portrait photo in history. To this day, the Karsh photo of Churchill hangs in the Speaker’s office.

As a conservative, Scheer also referred to speeches to Parliament in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, among the few international leaders to address the House twice.

But the most eloquent speech by an American president — one which wasn’t mentioned by the leaders on Monday — was delivered by John F. Kennedy in May, 1961.

His words are now engraved in stone at the American embassy in Ottawa: “Geography has made us neighbors, history has made us friends, economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies.”

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.