Franklin D. Roosevelt, right, was elected U.S. president in 1932, while William Lyon Mackenzie King, left, was re-elected as Canada's prime minister in 1935.The Canadian Press

During the Second World War, U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt wrote to prime minister Mackenzie King: “Sometimes I indulge in the thoroughly sanctimonious and pharisaical thought, which I hope you are occasionally guilty of, that it is a grand and glorious thing for Canada and the United States to have the team of Mackenzie and Roosevelt at the helm in days like these.”

“Grand and glorious,” Roosevelt called it. He wasn’t exaggerating.

Today, with a White House occupant who has bullied and sought to harm Canada like no other, it’s worth pausing to remember a president who was the opposite, who did more for Canada than any other.

Roosevelt was elected in 1932, succeeding Herbert Hoover, whose administration had brought in the brutal Smoot-Hawley tariff that worsened the Great Depression in the U.S. and Canada.

King became prime minister again in October, 1935. Just one day later he asked for an audience with Roosevelt, whom he didn’t know. He wanted something that had eluded all prime ministers since Confederation: an agreement........

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