The Fundamental Things Apply: A Memoir 9780773585775

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
1 The Memory of All That
2 Let’s Do It
3 Anything Goes
4 Nice Work if You Can Get It
5 There’s No Cure Like Travel
6 S’Wonderful
7 Just One of Those Things
8 More than You Know
9 It Was Great Fun
10 They All Laughed
11 Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails
12 A Room with a View
13 Past Forgetting
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Z

Citation preview

the fundamental t h i n g s a p p ly

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the fundamental t h i n g s a p p ly
A Memoir

R OY M a c L A R E N

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

I thank my son Ian for his patient and skilful help in the preparation of this book and Mark Abley of McGill-Queen’s University Press for his wise, perceptive, and good-humoured counsel and editing.

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2011

isbn 978-0-7735-3843-6 Legal deposit second quarter 2011 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Henry N.R. Jackman Foundation. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication MacLaren, Roy, 1934– The fundamental things apply : a memoir / Roy MacLaren. Includes index. isbn 978-0-7735-3843-6 1. MacLaren, Roy, 1934–. 2. Diplomats–Canada–Biography. 3. Politicians–Canada–Biography. 4. Ambassadors–Canada–Biography. 5. Businessmen–Canada–Biography. 6. Canada–Politics and government–1935–. I. Title. fc626.m33a3 2011

971.064'092

c2010-907681-8

This book was designed and typeset by studio oneonone in Sabon 10.2/14

For Lee, who shared.

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Contents

1 The Memory of All That | 3 2 Let’s Do It | 27 3 Anything Goes | 51 4 Nice Work if You Can Get It | 71 5 There’s No Cure Like Travel | 88 6 S’Wonderful | 104 7 Just One of Those Things | 129 8 More than You Know | 159 9 It Was Great Fun | 179 10 They All Laughed | 201 11 Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails | 213 12 A Room with a View | 251 13 Past Forgetting | 267

Index | 275

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the fundamental t h i n g s a p p ly

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The Memory of All That

This is an autobiography – or a political memoir innocuously clothed in an autobiography. I write mainly about my life in diplomacy, business, and politics and, to a lesser degree, in academia. About my wife I speak often, but about others, including my parents, my brother, and our three children, I say little, believing that one’s family life has no place in a book about the public sphere. Nor could I include all the many colleagues whom I admired; those of whom I was less enamoured, I mention only occasionally or not at all. All autobiographies are, to a greater or lesser degree, self-serving and of course necessarily selective. To be sure, someone else, looking at my life, might choose other things in an effort to impose a coherence where none exists. But this is what I have selected, what seemed to me the fundamental things. Let us, then, begin with no further ado. What are the first things that I remember? Two events, both in 1939. The first is the royal visit to Canada of King George vi and Queen Elizabeth in the early summer of that year. By then, when a second war with Germany had become widely feared, the royal visit was seen as helping to consolidate imperial sentiment and military collaboration. That not-too-subtle motive was of course beyond the understanding of a four-year-old – I had been born in the Vancouver General Hospital on 26 October 1934 – but the enthusiasm of the crowds lining the flag-bedecked royal route along West Tenth Avenue has remained with me. Years later my father recalled how he had hoisted me onto his shoulders to see over the dense throngs. As the royal escort and the large, black, open car passed, I inquired in the piping voice of a small child, “Who is that fat little man with the King and Queen?” “Hush! That is the Prime Minister, Mr Mackenzie King, and he is a Liberal!” The second experience that I dimly remember from the summer of 1939 is being amidst the great fir trees in Stanley Park in early September with

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my parents and brother – he two years older than I – listening uncomprehendingly to some sort of loudspeaker proclaiming that, following Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Britain had declared war on Germany. Even very small children sense the moods of their parents. There was no mistaking my mother’s. She was deeply worried that her husband, a badly wounded veteran of Passchendaele in the First World War, might somehow need to go to war a second time, despite his being forty years of age. There was no doubt in their minds that since Britain was at war, so was Canada, as an all-but-unanimous vote in the hastily summoned Parliament confirmed a few days later. That unsettling September evening in Stanley Park I recall, but as Prospero asks Miranda, “What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?” Very little of the following year, when with great trepidation I began my schooling at the suitably imperial-sounding General Gordon Primary School (he of China and Khartoum fame). Some details of my six subsequent years at General Gordon remain clear in my memory, including that it was a long walk to get there and back, but they are naturally entwined with my recollections of wartime Vancouver. I began school in September 1940 as the “phoney war” ended with the fall of France, bringing Churchill to office and rendering Canada for the next year the principal ally of the United Kingdom, as the Battle of Britain played out in the skies over Kent. Vancouver in wartime became an even more frequented port, despite the reduction and eventual elimination of all trans-Pacific trade. The largely resource-based economy of British Columbia began to boom, and war industries, chiefly shipbuilding, grew rapidly, dulling painful recollections of the economic depression of the previous decade. Women joined the labour force in significant numbers as government spending mounted, all contributing to the welcome sense of greater prosperity, tempered in time by the growing lists of casualties of air crew and infantry in particular, recorded daily in the pages of the Vancouver Sun and the Province. In those and a dozen other ways the distant war intruded upon our daily lives, even that of a small schoolboy, but in most cases hardly more than in symbolic form. The white, black, and cream colours of the cpr coastal steamers, the familiar Princess ships, were soon painted over a warship grey and the cream and maroon city buses a khaki colour, ready if needed for sudden requisition by the army. Bright yellow Harvards, a basic training aircraft of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, droned back

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and forth overhead. As children, we watched wonderingly as air-raid warning sirens were installed on the roofs of schools, fire halls, and police stations. As early as May 1941, well before the United States and Japan entered the war, volunteer air-raid wardens began to check, street by street, the enforcement of blackout requirements, including the effectiveness of opaque window coverings and automobile headlights reduced to small horizontal slits, all measures intended to ensure that the city would pass unnoticed by nocturnal enemy bombers. At General Gordon School, following the morning assembly with prayers and the singing of “God Save the King” alongside a great map with the British Empire coloured bright red, we were occasionally herded together into a makeshift basement airraid shelter. As part of our individual war efforts, we collected aluminum foil (mainly from discarded cigarette packages), reportedly to make its way by some manufacturing wizardry into the airframes of fighters and bombers. We saved quarters with which to purchase war savings stamps to paste into two- or five-dollar certificates, to be redeemed at some distant postwar date for a marginally larger, interest-paid amount. However unrealistic, fears abounded in Vancouver in 1942 that the Japanese might somehow raid the city: a navy capable of demolishing much of the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and promptly capturing Hong Kong, Singapore, Rangoon, the Philippines, and much else besides was widely deemed capable of anything. Japanese Canadian children disappeared from schools as the transfer inland, away from the Pacific coast, of all ethnic Japanese, aliens or citizens alike, was completed in October 1942. Airfields for the Royal Canadian Air Force were hastily constructed amidst the coastal forests, especially on Vancouver and the Queen Charlotte Islands. Heavy batteries, with guns dating from the First World War, were mounted on the westernmost points of Stanley Park and Point Grey to help repel the dreaded invaders. The occasional – very occasional, but always unannounced – presence of a large Royal Navy or a much smaller Royal Canadian Navy warship in the harbour added to the awareness that the only young men and, increasingly, women to be seen on the streets were in uniform. Later a somewhat more unexpected note was occasionally sounded by black US servicemen on leave (the only other blacks, whom we gazed at with astonishment, were sleeping-car porters from the cpr and cnr trains). Even more exotic were young airmen from Australia and New Zealand in their dark blue uniforms en route to the airfields of the highly successful

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British Commonwealth Air Training Plan nearby at Abbotsford or Boundary Bay or farther afield on the prairies or in central and eastern Canada. When in the summer the Great Northern trains delivering them from their transports in San Francisco would cross the border near White Rock, the cadets would sometimes toss to us, small children waving shyly from the rail platform, treasured antipodean coins, a highlight of our long, sunny summers at our beach cottage. Food and gas rationing began in April 1942 and was gradually increased during my six years at General Gordon School. Tea, coffee, sugar, and petroleum, all of which had to be transported long and hazardous distances in scarce wartime shipping, were the first to be restricted. Meat and butter and even woollen clothing eventually followed. Booklets of coupons or rationing cards indicated the amount available each week or month to a family. But at no time were the reductions irksome. Milk and bread continued to be delivered unabated to the door by horse-drawn wagons, which consumed no gasoline. In observing the rationing, we rejoiced in the gratifying thought that in some small way we were doing our part to win the war (the contents of food parcels mailed to friends in Britain more accurately reflected what real deprivation was). Following the Normandy invasion and more especially the victories of the Red Army, which broke the back of the Wehrmacht following Hitler’s insane decision to invade the Soviet Union, the war in Europe finally ended in May 1945 and in the Pacific in August that year, with the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. In the postwar summer of 1946, when I was between primary and secondary school, our parents took my brother and me by cpr train to our mother’s former home in rural Ontario and our father’s boyhood haunts in Prince Edward Island. Those two months were a revelation. I learned that a very different Canada existed east of the great Rocky Mountains, which I had never before crossed. As a result, I entered grade seven that September of 1946 with an enhanced, if still adolescent, understanding of the country. At age eleven I arrived at the nearby Kitsilano High School able to read, write, and do simple arithmetic and science, but not much else. Unfortunately, Latin was no longer compulsory, but something called “applied arts” was. Instead of contemplating the eternal verities of Cicero and Virgil in grades seven and eight, I had to spend some part of most days banging away at pieces of uncooperative metal or learning how to avoid

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electrocuting myself while replacing a light switch. French-language instruction began only in grade eight. It was taught as if it were Latin, a dead language to be comprehended only by the endless repetition of sterile rules of syntax and grammar. I can still remember the daily class chants of “Je suis, tu es, il (elle) est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils (elles) sont.” At the end of four years of such French instruction, I could readily write long paragraphs wholly in the convoluted subjunctive, but I knew that I could not order a cup of coffee; nor, I suspected, could my teacher. In fact, when much later I first heard French spoken, I could never, to my lifelong regret, recognize any similarity with my daily declension of verbs in a class of thirty or more. High school I found increasingly tedious. Few of my school fellows, male or female, came from families with university ambitions for their children. In fact, only one-half or so went on to university, and few shared my growing interest in things intellectual. The crowded classes at high school moved, as in a wartime convoy, at the speed of the slowest ship, and we always seemed to have with us several exceedingly slow ships. I became restless, applying in vain to move from grade ten to grade twelve, but the unimaginative school staff responded with their standard reply that ample time had to be allowed for “social adjustment.” Given such stultifying pedagogy, I did not escape the slow ships, but I somehow managed to add one course to the curriculum of each of grades ten, eleven, and twelve, which, when joined to two optional courses at the University of British Columbia, allowed me to receive my bachelor of arts degree in three years instead of the usual four. But that is to anticipate. What I did discover at Kitsilano High School was Shakespeare. The ever-congenial, if occasionally ambiguous, Twelfth Night was the set text for my grade eleven English class. The harrowing Macbeth followed in my final year. I was astounded at every page of both. Even the lumbering of the convoy could not begin to stifle my excitement upon discovering Shakespeare. With Twelfth Night devoured, I embarked immediately upon a self-imposed challenge of reading the whole Shakespeare corpus, sonnets and all. I did so at high school, well before entering the gates of university, in addition to devouring the novels of Dickens, Tolstoy, Stendhal, Dostoyevsky, and D.H. Lawrence that were among my secondary leisure reading. What a world of excitement Shakespeare suddenly opened for me, his words drawing upon every aspect of the human

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mind! I continue today, sixty years later, to visit and revisit my old friends constantly, staging every play in my mind’s eye with a panache never bettered in reality. Shakespeare aside – and that is a very large aside – I did not much enjoy high school nor what I precociously concluded were rather mediocre, if not simply bored, teachers. The one notable exception was A.V. McNeill, an Anglo-Irish subaltern in the Mesopotamian campaign of the First World War, who taught me what little Latin I ever learned. Perhaps my reaction to high school was no more than the familiar awkwardness of adolescence. I recall striving desperately to emerge from these lingering uncertainties and get on with the great adventures, intellectual and otherwise, that I had convinced myself must arrive with university admission. Contributing to my sense of unrest at high school was the fact that I was quite hopeless at team sports and, for that matter, individual sports, all of which were readily at hand throughout the mild, wet winter days on the large playing fields of Connaught Park adjoining the school. My one adolescent excursion into sports, however indirect, was in 1950 when, with my savings of $600 accumulated from daily rounds on my heavy ccm bicycle, sagging under the weight of sixty or more copies of the Vancouver Sun, I purchased an acre of fir forest and a small cedar-shake cabin on Hollyburn Mountain, above West Vancouver. My resourceful father soon put it in a state of good repair, so good in fact that it stands intact today, sixty years and more later, as a tribute to his skills, allowing me to continue to rejoice in its sylvan, non-electrical delights. But try as I might on weekends, I never became a competent skier amidst the wet and intermittent snow of Hollyburn Mountain. Although it is something of a cliché to say so, I think that I learned at least as much during the summer vacations as I did in the winter classrooms. In the summer of 1949 I crossed Canada by rail a second time, on this occasion to participate with boy scouts from across the country in a national jamboree at the Connaught Rifle Range near Ottawa. Once the governor general, Field Marshal Lord Alexander, had welcomed us, we spent the following week or so learning more about Canada (including the fact that many Canadians spoke French) than we ever did in our classrooms at home. Summer jobs that began the following summer were, if in a different way, at least as instructive. At the age of fifteen, with the grandiose and

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utterly misleading title of second cook, I spent from 20 June to 21 August 1950 on the wooden-hulled Canadian government survey vessel Parry. A large purse seiner before the war, then called Telapus, the ship had been taken into naval service with the Fisherman’s Reserve, which had been hastily cobbled together to help ward off a feared Japanese invasion. (The irony was that a number of the converted fishing vessels in the Reserve had been earlier seized from Japanese Canadians.) Shortly after the war, the Parry emerged in her third incarnation as an inshore hydrographic survey ship doing mainly local current and tidal surveys, complete with a large chartroom built over her once commodious salmon hold. My title of second cook, which initially seemed to me so exalted, was misleading for several reasons. I could not cook, and in any case the cook without my help could alone have provided three meals a day to the fourteen or so crew, including four hydrographers. I was, in fact, the scullion. This was all very well, scullion having a decidedly Shakespearean ring to it, except that the cook was an alcoholic. At dawn on our first morning out of Vancouver, I was surprised not to find the cook in the small galley at the early hour at which I had been told that we began the day. After I had knocked repeatedly on the Dutch door of his small cabin adjoining the galley, the bottom half finally opened to reveal the drunken cook on all fours mumbling something about how I must prepare lunch as well as breakfast in light of the fact that he was “unwell.” Knowing little more than how to make peanut butter sandwiches, I offered them as the luncheon fare to the always ravenous crew, only to receive in return a growl that dinner better be serious. Having gone down to the cold room for the largest piece of frozen beef that I could find and set the oil-fired oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for four hours, I cautiously placed before the now thoroughly riled crew their dinner of much overcooked beef. However, despite the additional growls, I had completed the first stage in my oneday apprenticeship from scullion to cook. I learned much else that summer in my spare time – as much as I could about navigation and chart-making from our four hydrographers. I gloried in the bright blue days along the incomparable British Columbia coast. Dreaming of other voyages to the end of the earth, I watched with fascination the coming and goings of great freighters and tankers, some cpr, some again Japanese and the omnipresent Greek. The following summer, aged sixteen, I attempted to ship out as a steward on a cpr trans-Pacific

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freighter sailing to Manila, Hong Kong, and Yokohama, but the Vancouver hiring hall of the Seafarers’ Union would not offer any such job to a student when a union member might conceivably want it. In all its many moods, the sea has always fascinated me. Having failed to achieve my ambition to cross the Pacific, I promptly arranged to spend the school vacation of 1951 more prosaically on the cpr coastal steamers, or ferries, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Joan, two sister ships of 550-foot length, built in Scotland in 1930. Eager as I was to be at sea again, I was ready to don even the starched white jacket and black tie of a steward, a role that the real seamen aboard the cpr ships dismissed as that of a “pisspot juggler,” an apt enough description, since most of the cabins were equipped only with chamber pots. The two months from 28 June to 28 August 1951 passed pleasurably, if not very romantically, on one or the other of the two sister ships as they made their way back and forth between Vancouver and Victoria and Nanaimo, day and night, night and day. The following summer of 1952 was better. On 3 July I signed on the Princess Norah (250-foot length, built in Scotland in 1929) on the weekly Vancouver–Prince Rupert run, with occasional side voyages to the embryonic Kitimat or even to Skagway, Alaska. Happily, the passengers in my allotted share of the sixty-five small staterooms were forthcoming with their tips, often in total exceeding my small monthly wage. When I had completed my final voyage on 17 September, I had saved enough to pay my first-year fees at the University of British Columbia. And I had seen much more of one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world. I had had a unique opportunity to observe the motley who habitually travelled the coast, peopled as it was by some decidedly rum customers as well as by some of the most open and easy-going Canadians. A ship at sea is a selfcontained community, however brief the passage. Accordingly, I learned much during both those cpr summers, some things good, some bad, to supplement my imminent lectures and textbook studies at ubc. One good lesson in deportment occurred on a bright summer morning at Prince Rupert, as I sat for a few leisure moments on the edge of the wooden dock that had been hastily erected in anticipation of a possible descent on British Columbia by Japanese forces from the Aleutian Islands and the Alaska panhandle. As I was taking a few minutes from my cabincleaning duties, to my surprise there came along the quiet and otherwise empty dock a well-dressed, silver-haired man of benign, if formal, bear-

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ing, accompanied by two or three dour assistants. A brief greeting and conversation, initiated by him, eventually revealed to me that I was talking with the Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honourable Louis St Laurent, who was on a western tour in anticipation of the national election widely foreseen for the following year. I was, in that summer of 1952, too young to vote, but I was gratified that the courteous, even courtly, Prime Minister had taken the time from his morning stroll to chat with me about my summer job, my school in Vancouver, and my plans for university. (In fact, I did vote in the election the next summer, by virtue of my then serving in the Royal Canadian Navy Reserve and hence being enfranchised as a serviceman, despite my age; I duly contributed to the Liberal victory in my home constituency of Vancouver Point Grey.) The University of British Columbia justifiably lays claim to one of the most beautiful campuses in the world; only what some of its architects have made is vile. My three years there, from 1952 to 1955, were passed partly in long rows of army huts that had been hastily reassembled in the immediate postwar years in an attempt to cope with the flood of veterans. But the splendours of the natural setting and the shortcomings of the manmade aside, the joy that I took in being at the university had almost no bounds. The freedom to proceed at whatever speed I chose was novel, stimulating, and enormously welcome after the laggard pace of high school. I looked forward to each day, to lectures and especially to the library, preceded by hitchhiking along West Tenth Avenue with a great bundle of books and notebooks and the sandwiches my mother had carefully prepared. University fees were low, readily met from my savings on the cpr Princesses. Since I lived at home, other expenses were minimal, consisting of little more than an occasional dance or play or a pint or two at that always reliable resort of all footloose ubc undergraduates, the pub in the basement of the centre-town Georgia Hotel. One such student session was presided over by the visiting and inevitably inebriated Dylan Thomas, whom I recall as adding to the customary boisterousness of the pub but not much to our intellectual illumination. I remember feeling in his presence a sense of greater poetic awareness, but that may have been no more than effect of more than the usual consumption of beer, as we vainly attempted to keep up with his remarkable loquacity and liquid capacity. My gratification at lectures in history and English, French, and German literature was total; less so in my only mathematics course, even though I began dimly to sense the creative, three-dimensional character of the

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discipline. For my compulsory first-year “science” course, I chose geography, a subject which, happily, was beginning to grope its way toward greater environmental awareness. (Rachel Carson’s seminal Silent Spring would not be published until 1962.) My delight was only heightened by the opportunity to pursue my love of the sea by joining the University Naval Training Division (untd) in September 1952. Weekly winter training at Coal Harbour in Stanley Park at hmcs Discovery, named after the frigate in which Captain James Cook had charted some of the same coast as the Parry, and three summers at hmcs Stadacona in Halifax and hmcs Niobe in Esquimalt resulted in a commission as a sub-lieutenant and, with some additional training and seagoing experience, eventually as a lieutenant, Royal Canadian Navy Reserve. I was aged seventeen when I volunteered. The end of the Second World War was only seven years past. All of us probationary cadets could recall the conflict, and I believe that some of us rather regretted having missed it. The untds had been established in 1943 to help meet the pressing wartime demand for junior officers. Following the German and Japanese surrender, the navy, along with the other two services, had been rapidly run down from its remarkable wartime peak. But when I volunteered, the Cold War divided Germany and Korea. China, now a mammoth communist state, had intervened in the shooting war in Korea, which, beginning in 1950, reversed the sharp postwar decline of our own very limited armed forces. The monster Stalin was shortly to die, but war with the Soviet Union, either intentionally or by misadventure, remained far from unthinkable, especially along the Iron Curtain dividing Germany. It was not, however, from some ill-defined conviction that I was contributing to the defence of the realm that I sought out the small untd office in the tri-service university armoury. Rather, I was propelled there more by a romantic conviction that during the three summers of naval training I would realize my ambition to see something of the world beyond the shores of North America, to see something of how other people ordered their lives. My first summer of naval training, from April to September 1953, exceeded that youthful ambition. I had done sufficiently well at the preceding winter’s weekly parades at Discovery to be assigned one of two places for naval cadets from British Columbia to participate – at least as privileged spectators – in the coronation of Queen Elizabeth ii. The first step was to cross Canada by train over five days as soon as the spring

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term at university ended. Upon arrival on 7 May at hmcs Stadacona, the shore base adjoining hmc dockyard, I drew a hammock and, on a crowded mess deck of the waiting frigate, hmcs Swansea, joined thirty other elated first-year cadets from across Canada, including Newfoundland, then four years into confederation. Swansea, unaltered from its wartime configuration, when it had contributed to the destruction of three U-boats, was to sail on 18 May in company with its fellow frigate La Hulloise to join in Britain the major part of the already-departed Canadian coronation squadron, which consisted of the cruisers Québec (ex-hms Uganda) and Ontario (ex-hms Minotaur), the light fleet aircraft carrier Magnificent (ex-hms Magnificent), and the destroyer Sioux (exhms Vixen). The quiet seven-day crossing of the Atlantic to our welcome landfall at Mount’s Bay, Cornwall, was spent on rotational watches (four hours on and eight off) on the open bridge, in the small wheelhouse, or in the engine room. For those off watch, there was, during the day, more formal instruction in navigation, ship-handling, and anti-submarine warfare, with either our term lieutenant or the ship’s officers or petty officers as our instructors. All this plus learning hurriedly to adapt to life on a crowded mess deck – there was barely room to sling our hammocks from hooks let into the deckhead – was absorbing, but my interest only increased at the prospect of early shore leave in Britain. From our first evening in the English Channel, with binoculars we scanned the town of Penzance in Mount’s Bay. It was jubilance pavoisé, as we soon realized every town and village across Britain was. The following day, 27 May, our two frigates made their way up the English Channel to Portsmouth. Masefield came to mind: “Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke-stack / Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,” except it was May. From a liberty boat in hm Dockyard I stepped ashore on English soil for the first time, glorying in the nearby hms Victory and the larger history of the Royal Navy everywhere reflected. On 29 May Sioux, Swansea, and La Hulloise made their way up the Channel to enter the busy, crowded Thames. We moored at the Isle of Dogs, near the splendours of Queen Anne’s Greenwich Palace, where Canadian midshipmen or sub-lieutenants still spent a year or more at the Royal Naval College. We had arrived. The coronation awaited us. I had been fortunate to be selected for the coronation training cruise; I was doubly fortunate to

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draw one of two tickets from among thirty cadets for a seat on the parade route.* At 0300 on 2 June 1953, amidst intermittent rain, a liberty boat from Sioux took the four fortunate cadet ticket-holders from the two frigates upriver to disembark at Westminster Bridge, where I pressed into a crowded tube that eventually deposited me at Hyde Park Underground station. From there I made my way through merry crowds – they might then have been described as gay – whose high spirits were in no way dampened by the occasional showers, to my assigned place on East Carriage Road, parallel to Park Lane, in Hyde Park. In my naval uniform with the “white twist” of the cadet on my lapels and “Canada” in gold on my shoulders, I awaited, in my assigned place in the crowded stands, the great coronation procession coming from Westminster Abbey. When it did finally begin to pass, it appeared to me to match in every detail the pictures that I had seen of the coronation and jubilee parades of Victoria, Edward vii, and Georges v and vi. In carriages, interspersed with sailors and Royal Marines, the Guards, the cavalry, the Royal Air Force, every regiment, Highland and otherwise, available in Britain and with Commonwealth contingents from as far afield as Fiji and Malaya, were variously Churchill, the queen of Tonga, St Laurent, and Nehru. It may have been the last gasp of empire, but a glorious gasp it was. On 4 June we sailed back down the Thames to show the flag in Brighton and Hove and to have forty-eight hours of leave. A day in Edinburgh seemed to my Canadian eyes readily achieved by travelling both ways on night trains. The result was the beginning of a love affair with the city that continues to this day. On 10 June we were back in the Solent near Portsmouth, preparing for the Spithead review, along with a vast assembly of warships from everywhere in the Commonwealth, joined by one ship from each major maritime nation (many eyes were on the grim Soviet cruiser). The Royal Navy kindly arranged a coach excursion through the New Forest for us cadets, as well as showing us something more of Portsmouth and hms Victory. The Spithead review was, although no one liked to acknowledge it, the final appearance of what was left of the big* Years later in Toronto, I asked an older friend how she and her husband had enjoyed watching the coronation ceremony on their newly acquired television set, still something of a rarity then. She replied brightly, “Very much, but we did get tired of standing.”

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ship Royal Navy. hms Vanguard, the last battleship, and a host of aircraft carriers and cruisers had moored in long, grey ranks, flanked by equally long, grey lines of smaller warships, down to motor gun and motor torpedo boats. On 15 June, when the newly crowned Queen passed down the lines in hms Surprise, we cadets cheered lustily with the ship’s company of Swansea, half-believing that the display of maritime supremacy could, against all contrary evidence, somehow go on indefinitely. Certainly, I hoped that our sojourn in Britain could go on for much more of that unique summer. It almost did. When the Canadian coronation squadron weighed anchor on 17 June to return to Halifax, a major storm in the North Atlantic awaited us. Magnificent and the Australian sister aircraft carrier hmas Sydney (ex-hms Terrible) and Sioux sought a more placid crossing farther south for their flying exercises, with Québec and the two frigates to follow the more direct northerly route into the face of the tempest (Ontario remained in the United Kingdom). Even the petty officers, veterans of the North Atlantic run of the Second World War, accounted it a major storm, reducing us to bounce, shake, pitch, and roll amidst waves decidedly bigger than we were. For four days we were “piped down” with upper decks awash and out of bounds. Everyone was seasick: it was the only time I have been. It may have been the unremitting storm that contributed to the breakdown of La Hulloise’s condenser, leaving it without the capacity to distil fresh water for boilers and all other needs. Vain hope sprang eternal, at least for a few hours, that La Hulloise would need to return to Plymouth or Portsmouth for several days of repair and of course Swansea would be required to accompany her. Visions of more leave in Britain, or at least of another day or two amidst the bucolic delights of Hampshire, danced briefly in our heads, replacing the otherwise bleak prospect of spending the remainder of the summer on the parade ground and in the classrooms of hmcs Stadacona in Halifax. Unfortunately, some skilful engine room artificer managed, despite the continuing storm, to patch up the faulty condenser of La Hulloise. Our fleeting hopes soon faded as we again set course westward. On 25 June, five weeks after we had embarked for the coronation, we were again alongside in the Halifax dockyard. The next morning we were in the classrooms of Stadacona. Years later, in The Corvette Navy, I read a passage that captures something of what we felt when we sailed back to Halifax from the Spithead

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review. James Lamb was writing about an anchorage in wartime Iceland, but what he said was somehow still applicable to Spithead in June 1953. His wartime anchorage, he commented, was gay with colour and sound; all about us lay the great capital ships of the Home Fleet, their quarterdecks bright with sauntering officers and pipeclayed Marine guards. Marine bands marched and countermarched across the vast teak decks … It was easy to lose sight of the purpose behind the charm, to regard … the Navy as effete, a Victorian anachronism in a harsh twentieth century world of air power and total war. But nobody who served with the Royal Navy had any such illusions; they knew from experience that the rn was not merely tough and competent and professional, but ruthless, too … The truth is, the Royal Navy is not a mere fighting service at all, in the ordinary sense of the word … [It is] an institution which simply defies comparison with its contemporaries. It is the mother and father of all the world’s navies; there is not, today, a single navy whose organization, uniform, terminology, tradition, and technique does not stem from that of the British Royal Navy.*

The training cruises of the following two summers – 1954 from Esquimault to San Francisco in the frigate Stettler and 1955 from Halifax to Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and New England in the destroyer Iroquois – were nothing like the coronation summer, but my third and final cadet cruise did have the unexpected diversion of my meeting briefly in Boston a former US naval officer, the young senator from Massachusetts Jack Kennedy.** I was cadet captain in the destroyer Iroquois, Gordon Wells of Jamaica in Huron. Wells later recorded for us our somewhat inebriated encounter with the future president: The three Cadet Captains were invited to a reception given for the officers by the U.S. Admiral in charge of that area of the eastern seaboard. As was to be expected, the three of us were largely ignored and stood in a corner * James B. Lamb, The Corvette Navy (Toronto, 1977), 99–100. ** The training cruises were not, however, the only delights of the two summers in Halifax and the one in Esquimault. Weekends in the coastal towns and villages of Nova Scotia or sailing weekends amidst the Gulf Islands of British Columbia were examples of how all three services contributed much to the knowledge of university students about their own bilingual and bicultural country.

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talking to each other. After a while a gentleman came over to us and introduced himself. He appeared genuinely interested in our youthful experiences in the navy. His name was Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts … He must have been impressed with out exuberance because he invited us to have dinner with him at his club. We told him that we would love to join him but hardly thought that … permission would be given. Besides, we had our duties to discharge on board ship after the reception. He laughed and went straight over to our Commanding Officer who to our surprise, graciously and readily agreed to the Senator’s request. In those days, we probably thought that our captain outranked a mere U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.

By the beginning of my third and final year at the University of British Columbia, my delight at being there, pursuing increasingly sophisticated courses, especially in imperial history, had not diminished, but neither had my insatiable wanderlust. With enthusiasm I contemplated Cambridge or Oxford for my next degree, an ambition that my brief sojourn in coronation England two years before had only increased. I decided that, if accepted at either, I would read – to employ the traditional usage of the two universities – English literature rather than history, believing that I needed to broaden rather than narrow my understanding by further acquainting myself, in Matthew Arnold’s succinct but challenging phrase, with the best that had been thought and said. With the belated encouragement of the dean of Arts, who was eager to field at least a few candidates, I applied for but failed to win the 1955 Rhodes Scholarship for British Columbia, partly, I think, because I could not offer the selection panel, chaired by a rather florid lieutenantgovernor, evidence of participation in any team sports, which I have always found rather boring; then, but apparently not now, it was something the selection panels much prized among the all-male applicants. The recipient, an able political science student, could point to his prowess on the track, only to die some few years later of cancer after he had returned to teach at the newly established University of Victoria. Without awaiting the decision of the selection panel about the opulent Rhodes Scholarship, I applied also to Cambridge, convinced that my modest savings from summer jobs in high school and the navy would just meet its fees, then heavily subsidized for students from the Commonwealth, as well as from the United Kingdom itself. Supported by a

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benevolent Cantabrigian instructor in French literature at ubc, I soon found myself accepted by his old college, St Catharine’s. An acceptance soon followed from the dean of Christ Church, Oxford (that is, the head of the college, who was from Prince Edward Island), to which I had also applied, on that occasion with the support of a Oxonian rcnr officer who taught physics at ubc. Having learned that I was not to have the Rhodes, I chose Cambridge over Oxford for no other reason, perhaps, than that my acceptance by St Catharine’s had arrived a few days before the one from Christ Church. I graduated from ubc in May 1955, aged twenty, having completed the four-year bachelor of arts degree in three years. Following a third and final summer in the navy, I hitchhiked in September from Halifax to Montreal to make my way along the docks, inquiring at each freighter whether I might work my passage to anywhere in Europe. The captain of a new German freighter, the Berte Hugo Stinnes, promptly said yes. In return for a little painting, I found myself, eight or nine days later, disembarking in the crowded port of Bremerhaven, immensely grateful to the kindly captain, whom I never saw again. There, in a fit of short-sighted but necessary economy, I purchased a large, heavy black bicycle; lighter machines were then becoming available only at much higher prices. The dealer gave me a road map of northern Europe, and I set off to cycle to Cambridge. In a week I arrived in Paris via Luxembourg in a mood of accumulating loneliness, having spent every day forcing my great machine against the winds of the north German plain and every night at dreary and now largely deserted youth hostels (ten years before, some had been Wehrmacht barracks). Paris, that treasured mecca for all North American students in the 1950s, revived my spirits. Versailles and the Louvre had enthusiastically emerged from their wartime seclusion. But Cambridge waited. I crossed from Calais to Newhaven, where my father had exercised his guns for a last time before crossing in the other direction to Flanders forty years before. With my army surplus backpack still securely lashed behind what the English imaginatively call the saddle, my beast of a bicycle and I made our way slowly around London, still peddling eight or more hours a day, to arrive at St Catharine’s College for the beginning of Michaelmas term in the first week of October 1955. I had made it! The uniquely beautiful Cambridge was an immediate delight. My adaptation to its traditions and practices, even its time-honoured tutorial system, was swift. Undergraduates, which for all intents I was, although

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thanks to my ubc degree, I had the privilege of wearing a slightly more elaborate gown, were assigned both a tutor and a supervisor by the college. The tutor was the more senior, ultimately responsible for the general well-being and progress, or the lack of it, of the undergraduate, who would typically pursue studies in the tutor’s own or a related academic field. Occasionally a tutor would double as supervisor, but more frequently it was one’s supervisor who was responsible for monitoring and assessing the weekly essay, which the student was expected to discuss with him (or, very occasionally, her) during the weekly supervision. As an “affiliated student,” I read for the bachelor of arts degree in English literature in two years instead of three, given that I already had a ba from a recognized university. At first, the weekly supervision did not seem enough to me, accustomed as I was to attending several lectures a day at ubc. Accordingly, I sought my tutor’s advice about which lectures in English literature he would recommend. “Lectures? Lectures? No need to attend lectures! Row every day and then read, read, and read. Lectures are a waste of time, unless of course you want to look in on one or two in a different field, say, archaeology or law or thermodynamics. All reading is done by the age of twenty-five, so I suggest that you get on with it.” In fact, I did attend lectures in the Department of English Literature, partly because of their entertainment value. One part of the hotly contested field of English criticism was dominated by F.R. Leavis, a fellow of Downing College (it was said that no other college would have him), who had honed his formidable invective in the often unreadable pages of a controversial literary journal of the interwar years, Scrutiny. I had arrived in Cambridge in the naive belief that English literature was something to be enjoyed. Not so for Leavis and his blindly devoted legions of youthful acolytes. Zealous and self-righteous as Old Testament theologians, they denounced as hopelessly frivolous, superficial, and plain silly anyone who did not agree with them and the extremely short list of authors of whom they approved. When I was up, Leavis’s principal bête noir – he had many personae non gratae – was C.S. Lewis, who had transferred from Magdalen College, Oxford, to Magdalene College, Cambridge, as professor of Renaissance English. As from a pulpit, the excited Leavis would denounce, in almost incoherent terms, Lewis and all his works and, for good measure, anyone suspected of thinking like him. Lewis would in his own good time quietly respond, courteously and thoughtfully but always incisively. It was all very entertaining.

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During my two years at St Catharine’s, my tutor was the unmistakable Tom Henn, a large, red-faced, lame, and sympathique Anglo-Irishman. Throughout his long life, since he had himself been an undergraduate at St Catharine’s, he had been repeatedly frustrated in his worldly ambitions. When he had gone down from Cambridge in the 1920s, he had passed up what he believed was a lucrative offer from Burmah Oil, deciding instead to take up a proffered fellowship at the college. Thirty or so years later his hope to be elected master by the fellowship was blocked by one vote, a debacle reminiscent of C.P. Snow’s novel The Master. The one ambition that Henn, a most unmilitary man, did achieve was to rise to the exalted rank of brigadier in the Second World War. Ever after, a colour photograph of him, resplendent in field uniform with the red tabs of a staff officer, stood outside his college sitting room. Most undergraduates when I was up had already done two or more years of compulsory military service – and were the better for it – and I detected an involuntary impulse on their part to salute smartly the photograph as they entered for their tutorials. Henn had over the decades become something of a Cambridge persona, deeply distrusted by Leavisites, at least to the extent that they deigned to take any notice of him. His fame, however, rested on an additional factor: the malapropisms of his imposing wife at the Sunday teas that they kindly offered to “Henn’s men.” One such tea became a sort of international talisman or identity check for all those claiming to have been up at St Catharine’s. As was their practice at all such teas, Mrs Henn had around her one group of undergraduates and her husband another. The talk was always animated, if at times a little forced, but Henn had a notable ability to listen to the conversation of his wife’s group while conducting his own. On the occasion of this most memorable of teas, Mrs Henn, for some reason, described her abiding fear of octopuses, especially their great testicles. Henn, never missing a beat, boomed from across the room, “Tentacles, my dear, tentacles!” and promptly resumed his conversation. The story remains to this day a byword of St Catharine’s. It was Henn’s decision that it would be congruent if I shared my tutorials and supervisions with another affiliated student, Philip MacFarlane, an American who had done his undergraduate work at Oberlin College and spent several years in the US Navy, partly in Morocco. A highly intelligent aspiring author and teacher, he was both an amusing companion and a perceptive mentor, who knew far more than I ever

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would about English and American literature, the “new criticism,” and the “angry young men” who were momentarily dominating the British literary and theatrical scene. MacFarlane attended even fewer English lectures than I – and he eventually got a well-deserved first – but when word reached me that there were two American blondes (female) at most lectures, my attendance immediately increased, given the deplorable dearth of women in the university. One of the two blondes was the seriousminded Sylvia Plath; the other, the more congenial Janean Walsh, both of Newnham College. For no particular reason, I first directed my boyish enthusiasms to Plath, who would later, despite early international acclaim as a poet, kill herself in London. An ambitious foray with her in the back row of the Arts Cinema swiftly confirmed my initial impression that she was thinking only high thoughts while I was thinking only low. Both in the cinema and in subsequent increasingly brief encounters, it seemed to me that life for Plath was an irredeemably serious business, an impression that was confirmed years later by my chance reading of a passage in a published letter to her mother, dated 3 March 1956, about the same time as my Arts Cinema acrobatics: “I am casually accepting friends and dates merely for the present companionship … I am also being much more generous and kind and tolerant, and taking life easier. There is no reason why I can’t enjoy plays and movies and a little talk with boys who are nice and personable, just because I think I am made for a ‘great love.’”* I clearly did not make the grade. “But that was in another country: and besides, the wench is dead.” Janean Walsh was far more understanding, despite Plath’s writing to her mother on 5 March that year that Walsh and she were “too much alike to be friends … We are both American girls … used to being ‘queens’ among our men.” I never found it so with Walsh and spent a happy two years, off and on with her. During the several lengthy vacations each of us went our own way to continue our explorations of Western Europe, but during term we happily romped about Cambridge together or cycled along the backs, sometimes as far as Grantchester or even to the more distant Ely, while I repeated to myself the rather obvious “Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, youth’s a stuff will not endure.” * Sylvia Plath, Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950–1963, ed. Aurelia Schober Plath (New York, 1975), 221 (for this and the following quotation).

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Walsh and I shared much, including astonishment at the articulateness of the average British undergraduate compared to the relatively tonguetied Canadian and American. Admittedly, English was their language and they drew upon an unparalleled corpus of literature, one of the glories of the British Isles, but it seemed at least to us that in the 1950s the better British schools were still emphasizing the written and spoken word to a degree that was simply no longer known in the United States and Canada. From time to time at King’s College, adjoining St Catharine’s, I sat at the feet of one of the more acclaimed literary practitioners, E.M. Forster, but his tea parties, invariably followed by copious sherry, were not to me especially amusing, so redolent were they with homosexuality, long a distinguishing pastime at King’s. Maynard Keynes had also indulged himself there, but a more ambidextrous pace was set by its provost, Sir John Shepherd, when I was up, about whom the quintessentially King’s story was often repeated: upon emerging from a church wedding, Shepherd was overheard to remark, “Wonderful couple. Slept with ’em both.” Britain in the mid-1950s was far from having recovered from its impoverishing wartime exertions, vast expenditures, and lingering class divisions. John Osborne’s iconoclastic Look Back in Anger and Colin Wilson’s The Outsider, launched in the same week in 1956, were everywhere discussed. St Catharine’s reflected it all. Food was stodgy, unimaginative, and basically meagre. Rationing had finally ended only in July 1954, and the happy injection of continental cuisine into Britain was just beginning. “Hall,” at which the begowned undergraduates were required to gather for dinner, was served by men servants or “gyps.” With no assigned seating on the benches that flanked the long oaken tables, it offered varied conversation of a generally fine-honed quality. The college grace in Latin was first hastily gabbled by a scholar no less eager than the rest of us to fall to, despite the forever dreary and repetitive food. Spotted dick (a suet pudding with currants) was a very occasional delight, but at the other end of the culinary spectrum was jugged hare. All that one could do with such a revolting concoction was to spread the accompanying red currant jelly on bread, eat it with the inevitable overcooked Brussels sprouts, and reject the rest. The hares had died in vain. College rooms were spacious enough, but during the damp winters, placed as Cambridge is amidst fenlands, the nearest approach to warmth was a small gas fire whose meter seemed to consume endless tanners (sixpenny coins) with only very limited results. During my first Christ-

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As a lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Navy Reserve, I spent the New Year’s vacation from the University of Cambridge in 1957 in the destroyer hms Termagant between Devonport to Londonderry, a quiet run that reflected the traditional easy assurance of the Royal Navy.

mas vacation, winter warmth of another sort was achieved by hitchhiking from London to Gibraltar with a Rhodesian friend from ubc and the untd. In hm dockyard at Gibraltar we successfully sought passage to Casablanca on a Royal Navy fleet auxiliary crewed by lascars and wandered about coastal Morocco, still reading, reading, reading, whenever we could, the book-laden contents of our rucksacks, until our terms at London and Cambridge resumed. Perhaps if I had done sports and spent not quite so much time reading, reading, reading, I would have worked off some of my more restless passages. I regret, in particular, that I did not row (at other team sports I remained quite hopeless). Equally, I took no part in the debates at the Cambridge Union or in the lively partisan politics of the university, although one day, upon hitchhiking to Ely Cathedral – first among the glories of East Anglia and especially beloved by Walsh and me – I was invited by the secretary of the Ely Conservative Association, who had kindly stopped for me, to speak to the organization about Canada and the Commonwealth. (In reality, she meant about Canada and the Suez crisis.) I was a disaster. I was no public speaker, although I was intimidated

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by neither the subject nor by the grey- and blue-haired audience of fifty or so. But I soon became tongue-tied by my perceived need to be careful about what I said to bedrock Tories who shared a conviction that Canada, especially its Secretary of State for External Affairs, Lester Pearson, had not supported Britain’s clumsy and ultimately unrealistic efforts to regain control of the Suez Canal, the lifeline, as they saw it, to what remained of their diminishing empire in Asia and the Pacific. To be sure, the United States, which ostentatiously presented itself to all former colonies as the democratic light of the world, had scuppered the Middle East ambitions of Britain and France and, more surprisingly, Israel at Suez. It was, accordingly, the arch villain to the blue-haired set, but Pearson, in his perceived duplicity, was not far behind. My single, silly foray into Conservative politics at Ely did at least result in the offer of a ticket to sit in the visitors’ gallery in the House of Commons when I was next in London. Soon I was watching what seemed to me a rather listless debate. Selwyn Lloyd, Harold Macmillan, and all other front-bench performers were fully familiar, through repetition, with both their lines and those of their opponents (the sickly Anthony Eden was absent from the House) I remained more interested in the convoluted manoeuvrings of William Pitt during the Napoleonic Wars and of Campbell-Bannerman during the South Africa War. But current international relations did take on a certain immediacy for me when, late at night, I would look out my windows from my rooms above the porter’s lodge at St Catharine’s at the long convoys of army lorries, all painted in desert camouflage, rumbling their way along the otherwise deserted King’s Parade on the first stage of their slow – as it transpired, fatally slow – journey to Egypt as part of Eden’s fumbling efforts to realize an unattainable future for Britain. Only with membership in the European Economic Community fifteen years later would Britain attain the more promising future that had eluded it at the time of Suez. One unforeseen result of Suez was that large numbers of Cantabrigians, disillusioned with Eden’s forlorn effort to regain the past, wanted to migrate to Canada. As secretary of the Canada Club at the university, I was joined by Don Macdonald and other Canadian students and the Royal Bank of Canada in facilitating the westward ho migration of several hundred. Despite continuing doubts about my skills in literary criticism, I decided, as graduation from Cambridge approached, to earn a doctorate in English literature. I was offered a junior fellowship at Trinity College in

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the University of Toronto, which would have provided rooms and high table as well as a small stipend in return for my supervision of male undergraduates. I gratefully accepted. However, shortly after I had done so, another Canadian at Cambridge asked me whether I would join him in London to sit the examination for the Department of External Affairs. In addition to taking it in cities across Canada, it was then possible to write the daylong examination in London, Paris, and the United States. I declined, but I had forgotten that my friend was one of the few undergraduates who had that rarest of Oxbridge paraphernalia, an automobile. Writing the External Affairs examination was a small price to pay for a free round trip from Cambridge to London. At Canada House, where some twenty or thirty candidates gathered from across the United Kingdom, the written examination was focused on a few words – “The Theory of the Golden Age in History: Discuss” – the assumption being that there was time enough to add a knowledge of international affairs once one was a foreign service officer. The subject also reflected the fact that External Affairs practitioners rather looked down upon theorists. University degrees in international affairs were regarded as irrelevant. What was wanted in the essay-type examination was evidence of whether one could both think and write. I was told that a total of several thousand applicants wrote the examination. Only one hundred or so gifted amateurs were subsequently invited to an “oral board.” From them no more than thirty were to be selected. For my appearance before the board in London in January 1957, I travelled by train because my all-too-eager Canadian friend with the car had not made it beyond the written examination. The panel, chaired by the then high commissioner, the kindly and astute Norman Robertson, consisted of Arnold Smith, the future secretary general of the Commonwealth; Vernon Turner, a junior officer from Canada House, who in time would become ambassador to the Soviet Union; a senior trade commissioner also from Canada House; and a member of the Civil Service Commission from Ottawa. The interview, in the great room of the high commissioner, was surprisingly brief. After a half-hour of rather desultory conversation about anything but international affairs, I was simply told that I would hear shortly from the Civil Service Commission. There matters remained when I went down from Cambridge in June, well satisfied with my time on the Cam, although later I decided that I should have worked less at my books and instead rowed and debated. Farewell, beloved Cambridge. Hello again to the Royal

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Canadian Navy. I crossed to Belfast, donned my sub-lieutenant’s uniform, and joined the newly commissioned light fleet aircraft carrier hmcs Bonaventure (ex-hms Powerful) for passage to Halifax, as arranged by the well-disposed Canadian naval headquarters on Ennismore Gardens in London. While I was back in Vancouver in the summer, this time not to work but primarily to see my parents, a letter from the Civil Service Commission finally reached me, offering me an appointment in the Department of External Affairs as a probationary foreign service officer grade one, with annual salary of $2,200. For a few days I remained undecided, still wanting to do the doctorate at the University of Toronto, but one afternoon, while staring at the ceiling of my cabin on Hollyburn Mountain, I finally decided that I would first sample the life of a diplomat. I confirmed to Provost Seeley of Trinity College that I was declining the fellowship, at least for the autumn of 1957, and would reapply if diplomacy did not appeal (he kindly replied with congratulations and the hope of welcoming me sometime to the college). It remained only to inform Ottawa of my date of arrival.

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September 1957 found me in the Personnel Division of the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa, housed in the new post office building on Confederation Square, to sign whatever papers needed to be completed. I quickly found a small garret flat on Echo Park Drive overlooking the Rideau Canal. I bought a black mg from a friend, a car I treasured even in the excesses of an Ottawa winter. Thus equipped, I was launched upon my twelve-year diplomatic career. The probationary period consisted of a three-month assignment to each of three or four divisions, assignments interspersed with occasional collective visits to Radio Canada International in Montreal, Atomic Energy of Canada at Chalk River, the Department of National Defence, the Bank of Canada, and the National Gallery in Ottawa. To me it appeared that joining the Department of External Affairs somewhat resembled what I imagined joining a religious order must be like. A certain sense of sanctimonious superiority, moral or otherwise, pervaded the foreign service. There was only one department: “the Department,” always spoken of in slightly hushed tones. Its members were uniformly conscious of the formidable hurdles that they had surmounted to achieve their exalted status – at least in their own eyes – of a foreign service officer. It was a brotherhood of sorts, but it was a highly competitive one. Frustrations were reflected, pari passu, in personal dislikes and envy, diplomacy by its very nature being a highly competitive profession. Homosexuals were more common than women officers, although beginning in 1955 they were gradually yet systematically being purged as security risks. English was the dominant language, leaving French-speaking appointees understandably feeling that they were amidst the alien corn. The newly elected Conservative government of the selfstyled prairie populist John Diefenbaker, who had defeated the Liberals

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under their new and surprisingly uncertain leader, Mike Pearson, was no more sensitive to the bilingual and bicultural nature of Canada in the 1950s – few yet spoke of multiculturalism – than the government of Mackenzie King had been during the 1930s and 1940s. Diefenbaker had taken the unusual step of including an Ukrainian Canadian in his first cabinet, following his victory over St Laurent in the June 1957 election, but otherwise he shared with most English and French Canadians a certain obliviousness to the simple fact that postwar emigration was transforming Canada from a bicultural to a multicultural society. Pride in one’s work and vaulting ambition were reflected in long hours and frequently weekends in the Department. Not surprisingly, even casual conversation was chiefly about international political and economic developments and what the new Tory government intended, although gossip about promotions and postings was always just below the surface. Eventually, as the shoptalk waned, it would be replaced with discussions of a symphony or an opera, a painting or a play, or even an English murder mystery, all liberally sprinkled with learned allusions, bons mots, and arcane references – the more arcane the better. All this chit-chat further improved if the exchanges moved readily from one official language to the other, many amongst us being the product of postgraduate years in Europe. I began my twelve years in the Department of External Affairs with an initial probationary period of two months in the pedestrian Consular Division. Some of the work was mildly interesting; it would have provided grist for a lesser novel if one were so inclined, given the propensity of Canadians living or travelling abroad to involve themselves in a quite astonishing range of difficulties. But the unruffled nature of the Consular Division’s responses to whatever absurdities happened along reflected the conviction that there was nothing new under the sun. Certainly, nothing would be achieved by getting excited. That tranquil nature was made more explicit to me when, upon arrival, I was asked to share an office with a non-rotational consular officer of Russo-Scottish descent who boasted the unlikely name of Boris Wallace. Languidly and amiably, he began to instruct me in some of the mysteries of consular affairs until the hour of luncheon approached. I thought that even in that culinary desert called Ottawa my instruction would continue over a leisurely luncheon. Not at all. Boris carefully folded his raincoat into a pillow, placed it on one edge of his large oaken desk, climbed up, and stretched himself out at full length. He had, for the next hour or so, a delicious zizz. Such was

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his daily practice, and such was my introduction to the dynamic hothouse of diplomacy. When I arrived in Ottawa in September 1957, I had found the Department in a state of some uncertainty. Diefenbaker had taken office not three months before, after surprising many Canadians by winning the national election on 21 June, the first Conservative to do so since 1930. Life in Ottawa, parochial as it so profoundly was, soon became even more so in the wake of the myriad indecisions and bumbling mishaps of his government. No one knew what to expect, least of all the Department of External Affairs, since his election platform had been largely a concatenation of bluster and clichés. Diefenbaker did offer the challenging idea of “opening the north,” but again no one, including the Prime Minister himself, was at all certain of what he meant. In international relations, what a later generation would call his agenda remained chaotic, riddled with contradictions. The measured but perplexed Undersecretary of State for External Affairs, Jules Léger, as well as the revered Norman Robertson, now the uneasy clerk of the Privy Council, whom he had succeeded, repeatedly conveyed to us, junior officers and senior alike, that we were to serve the new Conservative government with all the loyalty that we had shown the Liberal governments of King and St Laurent. And so we did, but it was at times difficult. Diefenbaker, intent upon pursuing his own personal destiny, was himself deeply suspicious of the public service generally and the Department in particular, speaking of us with his heavyhanded humour as “pearsonalities.” The highly intelligent and sensitive Basil Robinson was soon assigned by the Department as the External Affairs adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office. Against all odds, he did a superb job of managing to help keep everything more or less in equilibrium, but, as the pages of his engrossing and perceptive Diefenbaker’s World later reflected, it was never easy. Diefenbaker, from the first his own Secretary of State for External Affairs, promptly plunged into the world of international relations, attending during his first fortnight in office a post-Suez meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government (chogm) in London, where he repeatedly proclaimed his deep devotion to the Queen and the Commonwealth, thereby signalling to Macmillan et al. his opposition to Britain’s even thinking about joining the European Economic Community and to South Africa his repugnance at apartheid. An early meeting with Eisenhower in Washington contributed to his sudden decision to place Canada in the proposed North American Air Defence Agreement (norad) of 1

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August 1957, which was intended to ward off Soviet bombers, a decision fraught with a myriad of implications over which Mackenzie King, for his part, would have pondered long and hard. To our surprise, Diefenbaker took that one decision quickly, only later to regret his promptitude. Fundamentally, he, like Walter Gordon, the Liberal “Quiet Patriot” from Toronto, was deeply worried about the increasing integration of the Canadian economy, and hence of society, into that of the United States. This was part of the reason why Diefenbaker put such great value on the British connection and why Gordon, in his royal commission report on the Canadian economy, called upon the government to encourage Canadians to develop their own economy. However, Diefenbaker committed one gaffe after another. Three months into office he finally realized in September 1957 that, pace Mackenzie King, he could not be both Prime Minister and Secretary of State for External Affairs. He appointed as minister Sidney Smith, the benign recent president of the University of Toronto. There was little real improvement. Smith proved to be indecisive and curiously ineffective, if happily free of the vacuous bombast that was a Diefenbaker hallmark. Under Smith, as well as under Diefenbaker, we in External Affairs remained perpetually uncertain how to define to our various nato and Commonwealth interlocutors what Canada’s foreign policies were, or to explain the lack of them. Although I had few occasions to meet Diefenbaker, he always left me with the impression that he thought he was still in opposition and had not yet realized that he was now Prime Minister. If so, it was not for the lack of electoral support. To be sure, he had won the 1957 election by a not very convincing plurality, but in a contest the next year, in March 1958, he won by a landslide, even Quebec seeing it as in its interests to abandon the demoralized and disorganized Liberals and mount the bandwagon of an unilingual Conservative with an odd-sounding name. Unanswered questions in abundance awaited the Diefenbaker majority government of 1958, none in foreign affairs more pressing than whether Canadian air and ground forces stationed under nato in France and Germany should be equipped with at least tactical nuclear weapons and whether US bombers in Canada (there as part of norad) should have “jointly controlled” nuclear warheads. But from such vexing questions I soon became distant. After nine months of an on-the-job training of sorts in several divisions, I departed Ottawa on my first posting, only regretting that I could not take my mg with me. Having successfully shed my title of probationary foreign service officer, I was invited to join the Cana-

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dian delegation to the International Commission for Supervision and Control in what a mere four years before had still been French Indochina. The departmental practice was to send only bachelors and the very occasional spinster to Indochina, since they were free of the logistic complications inherent in posting a married officer with a family to a difficult climate, political and military uncertainties, and a notably insalubrious environment. Being one of a limited number of bachelors in my year, I had half expected to be invited to volunteer for Indochina; the only surprise was that the posting arrived after less than nine months in the Department (most young officers were sent abroad only after eighteen months or so of training in Ottawa). In May 1958 I departed happily for Saigon and Hanoi. Forty years later I recalled my experiences, impressions, and understandings for a small anthology of such reminiscences edited by a colleague, Arthur Blanchette, and entitled Canadian Peacekeepers in Indochina, 1954–1973: Recollections (2002). Since it was published in only a limited edition and since my own contribution remains as good a summary of my year in Vietnam as I could then recall, I reproduce it below. It was, to quote Dickens, the best of times and the worst of times. It was the best of times for someone who, not nine months before, had joined the Department of External Affairs as a probationary foreign service officer. It was not that Saigon was an unknown destination. The French Indochina war and Canada’s subsequent reluctant participation in the tripartite International Commission for Supervision and Control ensured that in time almost every schoolchild knew where the newly minted – and divided – Vietnam was. Rather, it was that, brimming with the peculiar Canadian idealism of peacekeeping, well-established at Suez and earlier still in Kashmir, the aspirant diplomat was going to where all good – and bachelor – young Canadian foreign service officers went. And what an initial posting it was! Somerset Maugham in The Gentleman in the Parlour and more especially Graham Greene in The Quiet American had foretold something of what awaited one in the divided Vietnam: a tropical former French colony, hot and full of colour in bright sunlight when not monsoon-drenched, and exoticism of a bewildering variety – animal, vegetable, and mineral. But it was also the worst of times. By 1958, a mere four years after the fragile Geneva Agreements which, following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, had ended the long agony of the Indochina war, it had become increasingly evident that few really wanted the agreements to succeed.

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Certainly, no one envisaged that free elections throughout Vietnam leading to reunification, as provided for in the agreements, would be held in the foreseeable future, as the deadline of 1956 had been studiously ignored by both sides. And no one believed that the United States was not going to do more and more to advance its fragile puppet, South Vietnam, while China and the Soviet Union were variously promoting the more disciplined and committed North Vietnam. A “demilitarized zone” (dmz) separated the two hostile parts of Vietnam, but just behind the dmz, South Vietnamese troops, trained and counselled by the US Military Assistance Advisory Group, were no great distance from the heavily armed units of North Vietnam, complete with their Communist bloc advisers. It was, in short, a vulnerable truce, rendered even more so by the widespread conviction that both sides were clandestinely introducing yet more modern weaponry, in contravention of the Geneva Agreements. And the dispiriting conviction had taken firm hold in the commission that it could do little or nothing about arms violations or, indeed, much else. One part of the difficulty was that the United States, while endorsing the Geneva Agreements, was not a signatory to them, that dubious distinction having been left to France and China and, less relevantly, Britain and the Soviet Union. A second part of the difficulty was the very nature of the tripartite International Control and Supervision Commission itself. It was, to paraphrase the witticism about the Holy Roman Empire, neither controlling nor supervising nor a commission. The root cause was that neither side in the Cold War wanted the commission in the three areas of Indochina – Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam – to succeed, other than a post-colonial, war-exhausted Britain. We on the ground could toil as we wanted, but the commission would clearly go nowhere and reunification would recede into never-never land unless the so-called great powers agreed upon what the future of Indochina should be. Even the three nations composing the commission – India, Canada, and Poland – consciously or unconsciously saw themselves or were at least seen by others in conflicting roles: the Indians piously neutral, the Poles representing the Communist east, and the Canadians surrogates of the west. One result was that the three delegations were frequently working at cross-purposes, effectively paralyzing whatever little work the commission might otherwise have done (although the Canadians and Poles did agree on at least one thing: a mutual dislike of sanctimonious Indians).

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The commission in Vietnam, both at its headquarters (recently moved to Saigon from Hanoi) and at the distant sites of its military observer teams, continued to go through the motions. Petitions alleging abuse of human rights (then still something of a novel term), dmz border violations, or the illegal importation of modern arms abounded. Although they were all solemnly recorded, the puppet governments of both North and South Vietnam ensured that in every case they were either stillborn or aborted. Yet it was also the best of times. Having made a seemingly endless and noisy flight from Vancouver on a Canadian Pacific Airlines propeller-driven dc-6 via the Aleutians, craning to see where the Japanese had invaded North America, and eventually to Tokyo and the tailors of Hong Kong, I was deposited in all my new tropical finery in what was still essentially a French military airfield, proximate to the novel stench and steam heat of Saigon. There I spent the first few months of my year in Vietnam (1958–59), living in the well-shuttered pre-war Hotel Continental, sometimes doing no more in the enervating heat than lying naked on my back within my mosquito net, watching the overhead fan slowly rotating and the geckos moving about the high white ceiling seeking an unwary insect. On weekdays I would be in no less heat, so to speak, although more fully clothed, at the headquarters of the Canadian delegation, housed with the Polish and Indian delegations in the small former French army camp (appropriately named the Camp des Mars) near the centre of everrestless Saigon. Whether attempting to carry out my ill-defined duties at the commission headquarters achieved anything more than I did by observing the industry of the geckos at the Hotel Continental is a moot point. I spent part of my time on non-commission work, trying without much success to determine what South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia might want or require from our proffered development assistance, then administered by the External Aid Office in Ottawa. The answer was not much. Replete as South Vietnam already was with consumer, if not productive, goods, the motor scooters clogging the streets of Saigon attested most visibly to the seemingly endless US largesse for the increasingly fragile Diem regime. The remainder of my time I spent attempting to make head or tail of various allegations reaching the commission headquarters of supposed abuses of the Geneva Agreements, abuses that always somehow achieved a remarkable balance between North and South. Although invariably

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frustrated and impatient at the charade, I was not in fact surprised at the futility of what I was doing. The scant formal briefing that I had received before leaving Ottawa in May 1958 had vainly attempted to mask that basic futility, but Indochina veterans were also both cynical and angry about the uselessness of it all, consoling themselves with the at best doubtful supposition that, without the icsc in place, North and South might be going at it full tilt (assuming that the United States or China – or the ussr – had authorized them to do so). Consolation was, however, in abundance in the presence of Lee Mitchell, a second secretary at the already sprawling US embassy, whom I met – and adored – before I departed for Hanoi. In the pressure cooker heat we accomplished at least one thing above all else: Lee and I soon agreed to marry in London upon completion of her pending tour in Washington and the remainder of mine in Vietnam. In any event, farewell for me to the well-stocked French restaurants and bars and the more distant beaches south of Saigon, the endless urban bustle, and the companionship of junior Western diplomats. Hello to the austerities of the decidedly more temperate Hanoi, once the French colonial capital par excellence and imaginatively compared by some to Montpelier or Grenoble. I soon found that, despite scrawny chicken, rice, and small bananas three times a day, I welcomed my transfer to the North as the temporary head of the small Canadian delegation office in the former Burmah-Shell building, with an army captain and a corporal’s guard supporting me in my new do-nothing job. The austerities of the sadly reduced Hanoi, underpinned by the bleak communist earnestness of the true believer, was at least orderly if wholly repressive. But as long as one was not on the receiving end, it was decidedly more tranquil than the non-stop artificiality of Diem’s raucous Saigon, sometimes likened to being in a nightclub twenty-four hours a day. Ho Chi Minh and the more ubiquitous General Giap were also austere enough, although an occasional glass of chilled champagne at the Swedish or British consulate or even more so at the ambiguously designated French commission seemed to go down well enough. From time to time I saw something of both Ho and Giap at receptions, but I had at first wondered if I would ever be invited back when I, upon my initial introduction to Ho, carelessly grasped his tiny claw-like hand in my vise-like grip. Certainly, I saw more of the communist colleagues of the North than I ever did of the obstinate and rigid Diem and his notorious brothers and

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sister-in-law in the South. But whatever the level of contact with the North Vietnamese officials, little or nothing was ever forthcoming of any relevance to a truce commission, nothing but bland assurances that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam consistently behaved in an exemplary fashion in the face of “endless provocations from lickspittle American lackeys in a belligerent South.” Accordingly, I set out in various perambulations, strolling along the sylvan but heavily guarded Chinese border with the local icsc team, idly contemplating, among other things, my recent sojourn at Cambridge, and revelling in my vivid recollections of the relentless slanging matches between F.R. Leavis and C.S. Lewis and their perfervid acolytes of a year before. From the canals of Haiphong, a dilapidated commission launch would carry me placidly northward among the cormorant-equipped fishing junks and the conical islands of the hauntingly beautiful Baie d’Along. Having completed several months as the commanding officer of my corporal’s guard in Hanoi, I returned to Saigon on one of Aigle Azur’s C-47 aircraft, the single air link between North and South Vietnam, for commission members only. Raffish veteran French pilots shuttled us weekly in our bucket seats among Saigon, Phnom Penh, Vientiane, and Hanoi. Awaiting my return to Saigon was an invitation from the Canadian commissioner of the day, the affable ex-gunner Tom Carter, to reside with him in the commissioner’s French Riviera–style villa near the Camp des Mars, his French wife being in France. For my repose, there awaited the bloodstained bed frame in which a colleague, Lucien Canon, had been murdered some little time before, together with a pack of the most surly domestic servants upon which eyes had unfortunately ever clapped. Following Lee’s departure for Washington, everything else had become anticlimactic. The frenetic Saigon was strangely lonely. The monstrous regiments of chirpy little ladies of the night along the rue Catinat, their ao dais slit to their armpits, might have provided some light diversion, but I left their several ministrations to our military, mostly well-weathered veterans of the Second World War, and instead concentrated my final months on the then largely intact Angkor Wat, Luang Prabang, the hill stations of Cochin, and the still-British Singapore, Hong Kong, and Kuala Lumpur beyond. Back in Ottawa in June 1959 for a “debriefing” (with a mandatory side trip to the Tropical Medicine Institute in Montreal to ensure I was not unduly infested with intestinal parasites, hepatitis, or other more social

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afflictions), I was greeted by several colleagues in the Department, who kindly inquired whether I had been away. Certainly, no one, other than the most able of the assistant undersecretaries, John Holmes, was interested in what I thought of the whole Indochina show. But who cared? Lee would soon meet me at the altar of Holy Trinity Church, Brompton Road, in London. My next posting, Prague, awaited, with another variety of communism, more sophisticated perhaps than Hanoi but no less baleful for that. The central element in the forgoing brief account of my year in Indochina was that there I met my wife-to-be, Alethea Mitchell of Alabama. Descended from long-established southern families of which she was notably and understandably proud – Sir John Yeamans of Charleston and Governor David Stone of North Carolina were among her New World ancestors – she had lost both her parents when she was nine years old. Thereafter she had moved among several relatives, necessarily learning at an early age to rely upon herself and to assert her own persona in the absence of a protective family layer. Despite her somewhat peripatetic life during the difficult years of adolescence, she had been well educated at schools in Memphis and Long Island and had entered Vassar, still a women’s college, at age seventeen. Following her subsequent recruitment in Paris as one of the few women officers in the US Foreign Service, Lee had served with lively interest and great pleasure at the American embassy in Cairo and briefly at the US Liaison Office in Khartoum (when the Sudan was still an Anglo-Egyptian condominium). The small diplomatic community in Saigon had certainly taken notice when she arrived there in 1957: slim, with jet-black hair and a quick and sophisticated wit, she was at every party worth attending, surrounded by a covey of admiring males. It was at one such party that a fellow Canadian introduced us. Thereafter we never looked back. In her white Thunderbird we navigated the perilous country roads to distant French rubber plantations or to the miles of glorious and deserted beaches. Life was full of sunlight and happiness, including whisky sours (why whisky sours and not simply whisky I do not now recall) on the sidewalk café of the Continental Hotel, known familiarly as the Continental Shelf, where Somerset Maugham had drunk three decades before and where the first Quiet American was then being filmed. Graham Greene knew of what he wrote about the popular and raffish café: “the tables on the street were most of them full” all day and most of the night.

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Lee and I outside her flat in Saigon in 1958. She may be putting the keys to her white Thunderbird in her bag. On this occasion, given our clothes, we had evidently returned not from the beaches of the South China Sea but, more prosaically, from the headquarters of the International Commission for Supervision and Control and the US embassy.

One day, however, it had all come to a temporary end. Lee had completed her two years in Saigon before I finished my one year in Indochina. Late one evening in September 1958, from Saigon’s small, rain-swept Tan Son Nhut airport, Lee departed for Washington (intrepidly via India and central Africa) to await for eight months in the State Department my own departure via India, Pakistan, and Egypt for London. We exchanged seemingly numberless letters, the one trans-Pacific telephone call that we attempted having proven quite hopeless. In November 1958, for example, I wrote to Lee from Hanoi, As Canadian Representative here, I have an army captain as my 2-i-c and “Military Advisor,” five army ncos, and an External Affairs clerk as my total Canadian staff. In addition, there are seven lazy servants here at “Villa Canada,” four surly drivers, and three incompetent – but willing – translators (all presumably plants) at my office. That makes twenty-one altogether. Then I have an indirect responsibility for the seven team officers across North Vietnam (three of whom are along the Chinese border).

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My 2-i-c, incidentally, is a pleasant chap: Captain “Monty” Grant, mbe, Croix de Guerre, Royal Canadian Dragoons, late of the King’s Own 4/7th Hussars – an engaging and energetic former major in the Royal Armoured Corps who dropped a rank when he transferred recently from the British to the Canadian army. Of the five ncos, two sergeants are clerk-typists, one corporal is in charge of all local and team transport, and two others are guards who sleep on top of our safes during non-working hours. As far as Hanoi in general is concerned, I suppose that all that one can really say is that it’s almost on the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world. Perhaps Pyongyang can beat it, but I doubt it. They surely don’t come more dilapidated than this. The saddest thing about Hanoi is that it could be – and obviously once was – a beautiful city. Much more beautiful than frantic and artificial Saigon. With a small, green lake set in its centre and wide, tree-lined boulevards stretching away in all directions, the city has excellent basic form and the numerous French imperial-colonial style buildings are well designed and more substantial and handsome than their provincial Saigon counterparts. But the Petit Lac, the trees, the small squares cannot hide the complete deterioration of the once handsome buildings. Block after block of elegant villas standing empty and shuttered are to be found throughout Hanoi; outside the closed hotels one or two women squat on sidewalk areas which once must have been covered with busy and bright cafés; the grass and rank weeds grow up around the buildings of the French and the paint has long since washed off the yellow walls. There is an omnipresent air of decay and poverty. The city doesn’t have a fin de siècle air about it; rather it has more the appearance of a morgue. The sun beats down on wide streets devoid of any vehicular traffic. In this city of perhaps a half million or more, there cannot be more than 150 automobiles and perhaps four dozen trucks. The ic accounts for fifteen vehicles, the British, Indonesian, and Indian Consuls have modern western cars and incredibly someone in the Government seems to have a battered “51 Chevy.” The remainder of the 150 cars are either small grey Russian cars which look like 1936 Morris Minors or heavy, thick-looking Russian “jeeps,” or the limousines (again Russian built) from the eight Iron Curtain embassies. During the four years since the final evacuation of the French, it has, apparently, become such an uncommon event for a car to appear that people wander unconcernedly out into the streets without looking to right or left. They jump back with great amazement whenever a car approaches within a block of them. Everywhere I go, I am greeted

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with stares not only because I am a European but because I am in a car. Since there are so very, very few vehicles, goods must be transported by other means. There are a few pony-drawn carts but man-drawn carts or barrows are the basis of the road transport business. Porters carry unbelievably large amounts on their bicycles (of which there are quite a few of East German and Czech manufacture) on their yokes. Much larger loads still are carried on wooden carts which are pulled by sweating and straining men and women with rue-raddies passed over their shoulders and foreheads. Poor bastards. Last week a Bulgarian delegation visited the drvn and two large receptions were held in their honour; one by the Prime Minister Pham Van Dong (incidentally, I chatted with Ho Chi Minh at that one) and the other by the Bulgarian ambassador. I suppose that there were three hundred people at each but the British Consul General, le Chef de la Delegation Française, and I were the only non-communist westerners. The enclosed page will give you an idea of the cock that was talked: n-number of speeches were made about the “Amerikanski Imperialiskis” and many toasts drunk to their confusion while Brit, Frog, and I stood in glum silence, ready to leave as soon as possible. I wouldn’t have bothered to go at all except for the hope of occasionally picking up something interesting. The only thing which I’ve picked up so far is an even stronger dislike for communist narks who blandly say the most outrageous things about the usa and its allies. How weary I have become of reading and hearing about the “aggressive-colonialist-capitalistic-war-mongering-imperialisticAmericans-and-their-lackeys.” You’ll hear me repeating this in my sleep next summer. But I wish that you could have seen that Bulgarian delegation because they were just too good to be true. It was as if someone had rounded up the first sixteen peasants he had met in a Bulgarian field and had herded them aboard an aeroplane to Hanoi. The men had obviously never seen a necktie before – they were in crumpled blue shirts while Brit, Frog, and I were in decadent white DJs – none of their clothes fitted them or came anywhere near to doing so and the women were dressed in shapeless mother hubbards over which they slopped food as they ate hungrily with their hands from a sort of buffet. Oh it was great! And I’ve got to go to another tonight for a group of visiting Albanian firemen – generals all. I don’t know whether I mentioned that as I am driven about in a rather small – sort of ¾ size – Russian car (it looks vaguely like a copy of a ’51 Mercury, which it probably is), called a “Molotova.” The icsc flag flies

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on a little post on the left fender and the Canadian flag on the right. I suppose that my driver keeps careful enough track of where I go in the city during the day (I must always request permission to drive out of Hanoi), but often at night an armed guard sits in the front seat with him. They generally carry machine guns, great black, man-eating Russian machine guns. That particular night, the silly little fellow who generally accompanies me (another stands guard awkwardly outside the villa) misplaced or left behind his machine gun so he brought instead his rifle with the seemingly permanently-fixed bayonet. He immediately punched the bayonet into the roof upholstery when attempting to bring it into the car. That rather annoyed me so I invited him to get out of my car because there simply wasn’t room enough for me, the driver, him, and his howitzer. Wonders of wonders, he actually did get out and stayed behind, not accompanying me to the Bulgarian buffet. For that he was, apparently, given a helluva rocket the next morning which pleased me because I’m rather weary of being tracked so remorselessly everywhere.

Among my few remaining papers from Hanoi is a programme for a concert by the visiting “Army Band and Song and Dance Troupe of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.” The pleasures of the concert were exceeded only by the titles of the various musical offerings, which, to an even greater degree than with most concerts, told one more about the country from whence they had come than any number of books. It is reproduced here, complete with spelling mistakes: 1. Army Ochestral Music: 1) Chairman Mao Has Travelled All Over the Motherland 2) New Foundland Rhapsody (Canadian) 3) Clarinet Trio: Tsangshan Songs Will Echo Forever 4) Lark (Canadian) [i.e., Alouette] 5) Sun Maids (Peru) 6) Québec Fantasia (Canadian) 2. Female Solo: 1) Talen (Vietnamese) 2) Ode to Peking 3) The Hearts of the Sahni People Turn to the Red Sun. 3. French Horn Solo: Here Before Us Our Own Army –

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An Aria from “Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy” 4. Suona Solo: Joy of Emancipation (North Shensi Folksong) 5. Duet: 1) Wishing Chairman Mao A Long Life 2) Singing in Praise of Our New Tibet 6. Clarinet Solo: A Happy Dilivery of Grain After a Bumper Harvest 7. Chinese Zylophone Solo: 1) I Love Tien An Men in Peking. 2) Go to the Rear of the Enemy 8. Singing with Action 1) We Have Seen Chairman Mao 2) Tachai Is Good 9. Instrument Music: 1) March of Unity and Friendship 2) The Republic (Tanzanian) 3) Red Lilies Crimson and Bright 4) Sammi (Pakistani) 5) Male Solo: Great Peking “The Long March” – A Poem by Chairman Mao 6) Countryfolk Show Their Wishes to the Red Army – Selected from “Red Detachment of Women” 7) Chairman Mao, You Are the Red Sun in Our Hearts.

Once back amidst the fleshpots of Saigon after the austerities of Hanoi, I several times drove, via Phnom Penh, to rejoice in the glories of Angkor Wat. Each time that I did so, my awe at the ruins increased, despite the deprivations to the temples by André Malraux and other vandals of earlier decades. There was only one small, dirty, concrete hotel – if it could be called that – in nearby Siem Reap, presided over in a fitful sort of way by two villainous-looking Corsican brothers whose real vocations were never entirely clear (smuggling artifacts, dealing in narcotics?). Vientianne and Luang Prabang in Laos were even more ephemeral than Phnom Penh, but at least in Vientiane I had the pleasure of staying with the bachelor British minister, whose principal diversion centred on his personal Rolls Royce, shipped at his own expense from England. Happily, usaid, evidently having not identified anything else better to waste its money on – why

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not build and furnish modestly a schoolhouse in every Laotian village? – had paved a road that ran a few kilometres from Vientiane to nowhere. Each afternoon, following tea at the colonial-era British residence, the minute, white-uniformed chauffeur would drive us up and down the usaid-paved road in the Rolls Royce, the loudest sound being that that of the electric clock, and the minister and I would thereafter assure each other of the excellence of our afternoon outing in the quietness and smoothness of his beloved Rolls Royce. After eight months Lee and I had completed our respective tours in Indochina. We met again in London, a longed-for reunion that was momentarily awkward since we had known each other in Saigon for only three months. In Washington Lee had, with wholly understandable reluctance, resigned as a foreign service officer, giving up her promising career. (She would later become a Canadian citizen as required by departmental regulation.) However, in no time we were happily planning the final details of our wedding at Holy Trinity, Brompton Road, and a small celebratory gathering of family and friends at the Dorchester, having first obtained the obligatory fast-track marriage licence, which to our delight resembled a university diploma, complete with the massive red seal of Geoffrey Francis (Fisher), archbishop of Canterbury. It greeted us as “our well-beloved Roy MacLaren, bachelor of the Ritz Hotel, Piccadilly, and Alethea Mitchell, spinster of Kensington.” We were married on 25 June 1959 by the kindly and learned prebendary of Holy Trinity, P.N. Gilliat. Almost all diplomats are avid to serve abroad rather than in their home ministry. Why else join the foreign service? I was no exception. I had sought a cross-posting from Vietnam. I was fortunate. I readily accepted a two-year appointment to the legation in Czechoslovakia, a cause for rejoicing for me in Hanoi and for Lee in Washington. We both somehow believed that we would find the splendours of la vie diplomatique of the Austro-Hungarian Empire still lingering on in Prague. Following our brief honeymoon in beloved Cambridge, in ancestral Perthshire, and much in between, we set out for Czechoslovakia in a new Jaguar. Canada’s small legation in Czechoslovakia was headed by a chargé d’affaires ad interim and not by the minister who normally heads a legation. Employing a recognized diplomatic signal, Canada was thereby conveying to the communist government of Czechoslovakia our abiding disapproval of their various excesses. In Poland, Canada made the same mute protest by

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having only a chargé d’affaires there as well. When Lee and I arrived in Prague in June 1959, the mission had only weeks earlier moved into a handsome turn-of-the century urban villa, set in a small formal garden. The chancery proved both commodious and comfortable, but the state security police ( more familiarly, the dreaded stb, or Statni Tajni Bezpecnost) remained persistent in attempting to plant their various electronic listening devices in our several buildings, as well as routinely eavesdropping on all our telephone conversations, however pedestrian. Equally persistent were the skilful and good-humoured teams of British technicians who flew in regularly to sweep our chancery and staff quarters as well as those of the British of the increasingly sophisticated “bugs.”

Remembrance Day in Prague, 11 November 1959. As Canadian chargé des affaires ad interim, I, standing ramrod straight, joined (from right to left) the US chargé, the Belgian, British (reading a prayer), and Indian ambassadors, and the Canadian military attaché. rcaf aircrew were buried in the cemetery, some having died, emaciated and ill, on forced marches from prisoner-of-war camps in Poland and Austria, in the face of the advancing Red Army.

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Our adaptation to the various abrasions of life in a communist country was more readily achieved thanks to the unfailing good sense and tireless amiability of our chargé, Arthur Andrew, who had joined the Department after surviving the gruelling campaign up the boot of Italy with the North Novas. He and Joyce Andrew were cherished for their lively sense of fun, dependable judgment, and patient understanding of human foibles, all of which stood them well in Andrew’s subsequent ambassadorial posts in Israel, Austria, and Sweden. I arrived as a newly minted second secretary. The other diplomatic officer in the mission was the third secretary, a short, wiry Franco-Ontarian, Ted Arcand, who in later years was a brave and resourceful ambassador in conflict-ridden Lebanon. The air and military attachés were of a high calibre, the air attaché, Alex Jardine, having somehow survived more than three years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. It was, however, the National Revenue attaché with whom Lee and I became especially close: Allen Kilpatrick was beginning an outstanding career in the public service. The Andrews’ tour in Czechoslovakia unfortunately concluded about a year after our arrival. Arthur’s successor as chargé was about as unlike him as anyone could be. A sad little man, he spread his own unhappiness wherever he went. With his arrival in Prague, the legation was transformed from a place of stimulation, good humour, and industry to one of sterility and unease, despite his notable ability to absorb languages. George Eliot must have had him in mind when she wrote about what a terrible thing it was to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small, hungry, shivering self. I felt sufficiently sorry for him that I regularly prayed for him at Sunday matins at either the Canadian or the British residence (there was no longer any Englishlanguage church in Prague). The only other thing to recall about him is that a year or two later, when in Ottawa, I attended a meeting chaired by the wise and laconic Norman Robertson, again undersecretary, to hear the then Deputy Minister of Trade and Commerce, Jim Roberts, describe his recent visit to central Europe. The unilingual ex-brigadier noted with a certain awe the linguistic versatility of the chargé, “He can speak six languages!” Robertson, who knew his man, drawled, “Yes, like any good head waiter.” Life in communist Czechoslovakia was difficult, since the local party remained more Stalinist than the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself. Khrushchev had delivered his revolutionary speech denouncing the

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excesses of Stalin to the Twentieth Congress of the Supreme Soviet in 1956. Three years later, when we arrived in Prague, it seemed that the news of Khrushchev’s denunciations had not yet reached Antonín Novotn´y, the president, and, more important, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, who continued to rule as if Khrushchev had never spoken and if Stalin still reassuringly resided somewhere deep in the Kremlin. For a Western diplomat, communist Prague was as barren professionally as it was depressing personally, although of course infinitely less so than it was to the cowed Czechoslovaks themselves. Prague itself, zlata Praha, golden Prague, a largely intact baroque city, had been spared the destruction that the Second World War had visited on so much else of central Europe. It was, however, by 1959 sadly dilapidated, no money having been spent by either the German invaders or by the postwar communist regime on the restoration of the glorious profusion of churches, museums, palaces, and squares that together had made Prague one of the most exquisite cities in pre-war Europe. We could, unlike Western diplomats in Moscow, travel freely through Bohemia, Moravia, and all of Slovakia, except the small area bordering on the Soviet Union, but only after giving advance notice to the Foreign Ministry so as to allow sufficient time for the ubiquitous stb to assemble two or more thuggish-looking agents to follow us, almost bumper-to-bumper, wherever our proposed route took us. Castles of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are sprinkled like salt and pepper across Bohemia and Moravia. Lee and I took much delight in our weekend excursions to them and to nearby rural towns and villages, which were often of great charm. Even with the stb in constant attendance, we were frequently the only visitors to the deserted castles and museums. Once a year Novotn´y and other comrades invited the heads of diplomatic missions to an echt re-enactment of an Austro-Hungarian shoot at one of the castles, about the only vestige of the imperial vie diplomatique. Happening to be the chargé myself on one such occasion, I attended, not to shoot (the killing of animals has always been revolting to me), but to observe at first hand the antics of the communist proletariat leadership awkwardly acting out whatever they could dimly recall of the elaborate practices of the Hapsburg Empire. Otherwise, Lee and I were thrown upon the small and necessarily introverted Western diplomatic corps for our amusements. Given the impossibility of having any relationship with the understandably intimidated Czechoslovaks, the corps entertained itself with a single-minded intensity.

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The one Czech who was permitted to move about in the Western diplomatic corps – to whatever degree the corps would let him – was the fluent English-, French-, and German-speaking son of the celebrated art nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha (he of, among many other things, the famous Sarah Bernhardt posters). His son Jirˇ i, after wartime service with, variously, the Czech Legion in France, the raf, and the bbc, had become entangled in the wake of the notorious Slansky trials and was sent as forced labour to a uranium mine in 1950. He was released four years later. Soon thereafter, with his English wife, Geraldine, he was permitted to invite Western diplomats to his father’s delightful house at Hradcˇ anské Námeˇ stí 6, which was full of the artist’s work and accumulated bric-abrac.* The very fact that Jirˇ i Mucha, unlike other Czechs, was free to do so was enough for Western security services to conclude that he had obtained his freedom and his exceedingly rare entrée into the Western diplomatic corps in return for becoming an informer. All Western diplomats were alerted. The sophisticated and appealing Mucha soon became isolated and was thereafter presumably of little or no further use to the stb. Fifty years later Geraldine Mucha told me that her husband had not discussed with her how he had won his freedom from the prison camp, but she did confirm that he, being of an inventive mind and an imaginative writer, had told the stb increasingly elaborate stories about what he had learned in his encounters with Western diplomats. Eventually the stories became so fantastic that even the stb stopped listening. Geraldine speculated that he was the model for Wormold in Graham Greene’s 1958 novel Our Man in Havana (Mucha had known Greene in London during the Second World War). For other Czechoslovaks, the stb made certain that if a citizen were so unthinking as to attempt to contact or converse with a Western diplomat, no direct punishment and certainly no violence would follow. But the next day something a little more subtle ensued, with assurances by the stb that if the offending citizen did not immediately recognize the error of his or her ways, promotion in his or her state enterprise would be forever closed or the hoped-for entry of a beloved child into university or technical college would be out of the question. It was notably effective intimidation, wholly congruent in Kafka’s capital. * Mucha described his prison camp experiences in a singularly detached yet always sensitive fashion in Living and Partly Living (London, 1967).

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Less successful were the manoeuvres of the stb to entice Western diplomats (male) into bed with a blonde bombshell (female) so as to photograph them covertly in flagrante delicto and the following day to threaten to send the photographs to the diplomat’s foreign minister if the diplomat did not cooperate by supplying the stb with classified information, which typically began with largely innocuous demands but soon became much more exigent. Uruguay had, for some unfathomable reason, a small legation in Prague. The plump, ebullient, and rosy-hued Uruguayan minister was secretly and variously photographed in a bedroom of the rather nasty Hotel Alcron with the particular blonde bombshell assigned to his attentions by the stb. The following day, when the Foreign Ministry showed him the photographs and threatened to send them to his foreign minister, he responded enthusiastically, “Oh, send him that one, he will admire me in that one! Oh look at that! Send that one too, how he’ll envy me in that one!” Exit stb. Occasional weekend excursions in Salzburg or Nuremburg allowed us to indulge in bourgeois excesses. A rather more ambitious trip, but without the excesses, in the spring of 1960 consisted of driving from Prague to Warsaw via Cracow to spend a day or two with my External Affairs contemporary, Peter Scott (the son of Frank Scott of McGill University), and his American wife, before boarding a dirty and overcrowded Russian train to Moscow. We exchanged Warsaw for Moscow with regret. The Poles, as I had found in Indochina, were not as downtrodden as the Czechoslovaks. They were more ready, even eager, to talk to a Western diplomat. To us, coming from Prague, they were astonishingly candid in relaying what little they thought of their own communist government. Having survived the rail trip from Warsaw to Moscow of almost twenty-four hours on our hamper of whisky and dark chocolate-covered digestive biscuits (one of man’s noblest inventions), the food in the filthy dining car being unspeakable, we arrived to find Moscow dilapidated and drear, especially the endlessly tiresome blocks of Stalinist flats, put together to receive the returning heroes of the Red Army, that had been hastily slapped up in the postwar years with carelessly prefabricated concrete panels. We saw how awful an even new Moscow flat could be when we stayed with another of my External Affairs contemporaries, the bachelor Jacques Montpetit. To be sure, the finishing of his flat had been given a little more attention than would have gone into one for a lucky Soviet citizen whose name had been drawn from the lifelong waiting lists.

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And it was in fact two flats knocked into one, but it barely functioned. Even dinner at the Canadian ambassador’s residence was bleak, despite the cordiality of David Johnson, a confirmed old bachelor from Montreal. Western diplomats in Moscow were restricted to a twenty-five-mile radius centred on Red Square, in retaliation, it was said, for a similar travel restriction on Soviet bloc diplomats in Washington – or was it the other way around? The sole exception was the monastery at Zagorsk, fifty or so kilometres north of Moscow, which gave us great, if necessarily only fleeting, delight. Otherwise, we were limited to viewing the waxen remains of Lenin in his glass tomb in Red Square, the Bolshoi Theatre, where a little of imperial Russia unexpectedly lingered on, the Pushkin Museum, rich in Post-Impressionists, and of course the onion-domed St Basil’s and the forbidding Kremlin. Food everywhere was inedible, the vodka perishing, and Moscow generally shabby and darkly forbidding. The great May Day parade, with which our visit intentionally coincided, was something of an exception, although in a wholly unexpected way. Following the seemingly endless cohorts of menacing missiles, tanks, heavy artillery, and mile-long infantry units came finally, and to Lee and me unexpectedly, the rites of spring. Women, men, and children, almost all northern people (there was only a sprinkling of brown faces from the southern so-called republics), joyfully waved the boughs and first flowers of spring, quickly replacing the louring impression of the tanks and missiles with a pre-Christian paean to the renewal of life following the long, harsh winter (all startlingly recognizable to the reader of James Frazer’s Golden Bough). Montpetit could not have been more welcoming, but after a few days in Moscow, Lee and I had had enough. We boarded yet another dilapidated Soviet train, this time for Leningrad, there to glory for the next two days in the Hermitage and the other cosmopolitan remains of the former imperial capital. Dismal and threatening though the Soviet Union was, we returned from Leningrad to Prague without much enthusiasm. To be sure, in Czechoslovakia nearly everything from the medieval to art deco remained consoling, the villages continued a delight if decidedly down at the heel, and the concerts and the opera persevered. The galleries were of varying interest, however, socialist realism being everywhere officially promoted; even the famed prewar intellectual life had been partly transformed into a supposed service to the proletariat. Whatever underground intellectual life there was, all closed to us, had been further debilitated by the hurried departure of many of the intelligentsia at the time of the communist coup in 1948.

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Our personal life was intense – damn the microphones throughout our house, full steam ahead – but the life of a diplomat in Czechoslovakia was almost devoid of professional meaning. Those who represented the major powers thought that they must be present, but we from small Western nations frequently asked ourselves what we were doing there. We had convinced ourselves, given our total isolation, that we could learn more about what the Czechoslovak government was thinking – to the degree that it did any thinking at all independent of Moscow – by reading the Times (then a serious newspaper), the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Economist, and the publications of the Economist intelligence unit, all of which came to us via the weekly unclassified diplomatic bag since they were wholly unavailable behind the Iron Curtain. Our political reports to Ottawa had little if any real content. Consular problems were mercifully few. Trade promotion in a command economy was largely meaningless. There was, further, a shared suspicion among many members of the Western diplomatic corps that in sending us to Czechoslovakia, our governments were primarily attempting to satisfy Washington’s desire to see the maximum number of Western representatives in Prague, each generating information or pseudo-information to be shared in nato and elsewhere, since the Czechoslovak government strictly limited the numbers at the US embassy (a limitation of course reciprocated in the case of the Czechoslovak embassy in Washington). The anticipated election of Jack Kennedy as president of the United States in November 1960 gave us all hope that somehow he, unlike his aging predecessor, Eisenhower, might bring about something of a thaw in the Cold War. In the event, he was unable to do so before his assassination, but in any case we did not remain in Prague long enough to see whether the young president, of whom so much was expected, could work miracles. In late October that year I was declared persona non grata, an honour reserved for few in the diplomatic life. A wayward Czechoslovak diplomat in Ottawa had attempted to suborn a Czech Canadian civilian employee of the Royal Canadian Air Force to provide classified information in return for an exit visa for his aged mother, still in Czechoslovakia. He promptly informed the rcmp – thereby sacrificing any possibility of seeing his mother again – and the rcmp in turn informed the Department. The Czechoslovak diplomat, still loudly protesting his innocence, was soon on his way back to Prague. Within two or three days I, being of the same rank, second secretary, as the Czech expellee, was suddenly in retaliation declared unacceptable as well. Our chargé protested at this obvious and

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meaningless retaliation, only to be told that there were any number of people in gaol in Prague ready to swear that I had attempted to recruit them as agents for a non-existent organization that the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry imaginatively dubbed the Canadian Intelligence Service. Within forty-eight hours Lee and I were on a British European Airways Viscount to London, full of champagne provided at the airport by Western colleagues who enviously saw us off. Our sojourn in London en route to an autumnal Ottawa was all too brief, but I was invited to call on the high commissioner. In that same great room at which I had gazed with wonder during my oral interview as a candidate for the Department, George Drew, the quintessential Cold War warrior, launched into a half-hour diatribe about the base treachery and myriad other inequities of communists everywhere. When he finally wound down, he rose to indicate that I should depart – without inviting me to respond to his tirade – but he did pause long enough to inquire what I had said my name was.

3


Anything Goes

Upon our arrival in Canada, Lee and I were given special leave in Vancouver. It was her first encounter with Canada and Canadians, other than with those in the Indochina commission, and where better to begin than Vancouver? But cold reality awaited us in Ottawa. Once I was back in the Department, the first thing we had to do was to find a house in Rockcliffe, that quasi-sylvan resort of the diplomatic corps and senior public servants. We eventually did so, buying the house at 2 Willingdon Road from James Coyne, the sometime governor of the Bank of Canada, who had, amidst much controversy, been forced out of office by the highly irate Diefenbaker (who, being himself inadequate, was frequently highly irate) for his anti-inflationary “tight money” policies. Coyne and others had valued such a policy partly as a bulwark against continentalism, against the economic absorption of Canada by the United States: “the modern word for absorption is ‘economic integration.’” I did not know Coyne, but I had heard something of his reputation for parsimony, both private and public, as well as of his high intelligence. He lived up to the former reputation by appearing at our door the day after we took possession of his house, a pair of pliers in hand, with the request that he might remove from the walls all the picture hooks that he had somehow forgotten to take with him. In cultivating our new garden on Willingdon Road, we had the enthusiastic and knowledgeable assistance of the Hahn nursery. Freiherr von Hahn, to give him his full Teutonic title, had created a commercial nursery a few years before when he had moved from Montreal to Ottawa, at the urging of Governor General Lord Alexander. Having emigrated to Canada after the Russians had overrun his Baltic homeland in the latter part of the Second World War, Hahn first worked as a packer in a Montreal department store. Earlier, in 1919, when an informal alliance against

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the Bolsheviks had been formed between British and German units in the new Baltic republics, Hahn had been an aide-de-camp to one Colonel Harold Alexander. When Lord Alexander learned of his former adc’s whereabouts twenty-five years later, he arrived at the Montreal store in the fully glory of an imperial governor general and asked to see Hahn. He warmly embraced his somewhat grimy erstwhile adc, to the great astonishment of the manager of the store, who had flattered themselves that the governor general had come to admire its various splendours. Once we were installed in our house in Rockcliffe, Lee was recruited as an economist in the public service, then virtually the only employer in Ottawa. To our surprise, not an economic department but the Department of Fisheries was proposed by the Civil Service Commission, despite Lee’s knowing little more about fish than one end from the other. In the sub-zero darkness of winter mornings she would hurry into her mink coat, her only warm coat, and drive to the distant department to ponder the mysteries of freshwater fisheries. It was a long way from being chargé d’affaires of the US Liaison Office in Khartoum. Ottawa, still a decidedly parochial town with little but grey public buildings and grey public servants, was only slowly becoming bilingual and had a mere smattering of women professionals. Diefenbaker’s Conservative government, being as parochial as Canada’s capital, had only made matters worse. Ottawa was a place that foreign service officers wanted to leave; I was no exception, but I knew that, having had two consecutive postings, however attenuated, I had to serve out my Ottawa sentence. In my leisure time I made a disciplined, if in the end fruitless, effort to learn to speak (as opposed to read or write) French. But, alas, it all came to almost nothing. In later years Jean Chrétien would gently chide me for my lack of spoken French, pointing to his own heavily accented and frequently ungrammatical English as an inspiration, but I could never achieve any comparable ebullience. (I recall one cabinet meeting where he compared a policy dilemma that he had encountered as akin to being in a rowboat with only one whore.) I attempted simultaneously to learn more German, building upon my school and university efforts, but my lessons with the amiable Graf Finck von Finckenstein, the husband of the German cultural attaché, were no more productive than my French lessons with Soeur Sainte Jeanne of a Sussex Drive convent. It seemed that, try as I might, I was condemned to unilinguality.

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Our evenings and weekends in Ottawa were much enlivened by our renewed friendship with the parliamentary bureau chief of the Financial Post, Clive Baxter (son of the Canadian Sir Beverley Baxter, a pre-war Beaverbrook newspaper editor), and his beautiful and always stimulating wife, Cynthia Molson. We had first met them when they made a brief journalistic visit to Prague. Also diverting were weekend excursions throughout Ontario, especially in the summer to the nascent Shakespearean Festival, only recently escaped from a tent at Stratford, and to the Shaw Festival at the old Court House in Niagara-on-the-Lake. On winter weekends Lee and I went regularly to the ski hills of the Gatineau, frequently with the Baxters or Arnold Möbius, the second secretary at the small Austrian embassy, whose innate courtesy never allowed him to compare the Gatineau unfavourably with his soaring Alps or our blundering skiing efforts with his own dexterous skills. Lee and I also travelled to my ancestral province of Prince Edward Island and more frequently to Toronto and Montreal, as well as occasionally to New York, Boston, and Detroit, in part to escape the claustrophobia of Ottawa. It was no secret that the Ottawa diplomatic corps was as bored with Canada’s small-town capital as any of us in the Department. (The National Arts Centre and the greatly enhanced museums would come only later.) Lee and I soon became familiars of many diplomatic missions. The British high commissioner was especially active in entertaining, drawing upon centuries-old traditions of how to amuse oneself in outposts of the Empire. Lord Amory, a former chancellor of the Exchequer and a confirmed bachelor, was diligent in offering dinners, receptions (one for the visiting Queen Mother and many for visiting former cabinet colleagues), and even a ball for his debutante niece. Our galère of friends and acquaintances broadened rapidly to include Peter Newman, shortly to become the controversial chronicler of the Diefenbaker years; Stanley Knowles of the ccf, the sanctimonious “dean” of the House of Commons; and such unlikely diverse visitors to Ottawa as W.H. Auden, Peregrine Worsthorne of the Daily Telegraph, the Deputy Prime Minister of the newly independent Malaysia, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, the promising but soon-to-be- assassinated Tom Mboya of Kenya, the diminutive Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, and André Malraux, to whom I reacted with no enthusiasm because of his interwar desecration of Angkor Wat. A diversion of rather greater moment surfaced in May 1961. President Kennedy,

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three months after his inauguration, came to Ottawa on a state visit, without, it was widely rumoured, much enthusiasm, it being understood that he and the best and the brightest around him regarded Diefenbaker as a pompous buffoon. To increasing numbers of Canadians, their erratic Prime Minister appeared to be just that – more and more out of step with the times, especially in contrast with the young and dynamic president, who was fresh air in comparison with the Cold War lethargy of Eisenhower. Even the debacle of the Bay of Pigs of a few weeks earlier, one of the cia’s seemingly endless flops, did not much reduce the enthusiasm of Ottawa crowds for the young president. Being temporarily assigned to the Protocol Office to assist with the arrangements for the state visit of the Kennedys, I mentioned to the chief of protocol that Lee had once shared a few days in Pamplona with a group of other young Americans that included Jacqueline Bouvier. There soon arrived an invitation from the governor general, the courtly Georges Vanier, to the white tie reception that would follow the more limited state dinner. At the reception, where we were the youngest by several decades, Lee chatted happily with Jackie while I flubbed the tempting opportunity to recall with the president our brief and, for my part, somewhat befuddled dinner at his club in Boston seven years before, concentrating instead upon some banalities about the rigidities of the endless Cold War. My few weeks in Protocol were enlivened by an inexhaustible stream of anecdotes that the chief of protocol appeared to have stored away for those longueurs whenever the misdemeanours of the local diplomatic corps became especially tiresome. Most pleasing was his recollection of the visit to Ottawa in 1960 of Patrice Lumumba, the short-lived Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo. Since they were on an official visit, he and his entourage were housed in the Chateau Laurier. On arrival at the hotel, Lumumba inquired of the protocol officer who had accompanied the delegation from the airport where the woman was whom he had expected to find awaiting him in his suite to service his needs. The protocol officer replied curtly that that particular service was not included in official Canadian hospitality, reducing Lumumba to a rage of frustration. In accordance with international practice, a minister greets the head of government at his or her hotel shortly after arrival. The role is rotated among ministers. To greet Lumumba, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration was by chance assigned the task. A spinster chartered accountant in her fifties, Ellen Fairclough was, to Diefenbaker’s credit, the

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first woman to be included in a Canadian cabinet. At the hotel, when Lumumba himself opened the door, he made a lunge at her and attempted to pull her into the room, exclaiming loudly in French, “It is about time they sent you!”* With the transfer of Howard Green from Public Works to External Affairs in June 1959, eighteen or so months before I had arrived back in Ottawa, following the sudden death in March of the avuncular but ineffective Sidney Smith, the Department of External Affairs had to a degree revived. Green had spent many years in opposition with Diefenbaker, having been elected in 1935, despite the defeat of the Conservative government of R.B. Bennett that year. He had even been one of Diefenbaker’s several competitors for the Conservative Party leadership in 1942. My parents, who knew Green in his Vancouver South constituency, had written to me in Prague that I could expect an austere man of integrity and purpose as our new Secretary of State for External Affairs. He was that, but he was also uneven in his enthusiasms. His honest zeal for development assistance and disarmament – he was a lean, gaunt infantry veteran of the First World War trenches – some dismissed as naive amidst the intractable excesses of the Cold War, but most of us admired him for his high principles, persistence, wry sense of humour, and a willingness to listen. Several of us, however, uneasily recalled his support in 1942 for the forcible removal of all Japanese Canadians, not just enemy aliens, from the Pacific coast. On a personal level, I was grateful to Green for inviting Lee and me to occasionally share his Department of Transport Viscount when he returned for weekends to his Vancouver constituency. During those long flights we talked of Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the Cold War, disarmament and non-proliferation negotiations, the United Nations, the United States, and Britain and the Commonwealth. Most pleasing of all, Green seemed to listen with interest to my somewhat hesitant comments – hesitant because I was, after all, a junior officer talking to a minister. My three years in Ottawa were not professionally very rewarding. Assignments in a succession of divisions were of course at such junior levels that I had but a modest hand in any policy-making. First in the * This anecdote soon took wings, assuming in time several distinct variations; see Charles Lynch, You Can’t Print That! (Toronto, 1983), 189–90, and George Ignatieff, The Making of a Peacemonger (Toronto, 1985), 191–2.

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European Division, then in the Defence Liaison (2), the intentionally obscurely named intelligence division, and finally in the Economic Division, I found much of the work intellectually undemanding and tediously routine, especially in DL(2), where I collated and analyzed electronic intercepts, but I knew that I had to serve my three years of Ottawa penal servitude. Yet those three years were certainly eventful internationally. The Soviet Union, having earlier produced a hydrogen bomb, proceeded to put the first satellite into space in 1957. Popular but ill-founded misgivings that the dreaded communists were advancing faster in space and related technology than the West led Kennedy to accelerate the US space programme. In Africa, ill-defined revolutions or tribal conflicts seemed endless. Strife and turmoil continued to ravage post-colonial Congo, left in no great shape by the departing Belgians. Sanguinary ethnic collisions threatened the newly independent Rwanda. Portugal, under its long-time dictator Salazar, was struggling to hold on to Angola and Mozambique, convinced that they were the indispensible props to whatever limited prosperity it enjoyed, rather than seeking full membership in an unwelcoming European Economic Community. Algeria, following its bloody conflict with France, faced the terrors of civil war, while France itself still suffered from post-colonial withdrawal. In Asia the new regimes in Laos and Vietnam were constantly being undermined by ardent nationalists who were frequently indistinguishable from communists, leading the inflexible and fervently anti-communist President Diem of South Vietnam to start down the slippery slope of seeking major military support from the United States, without Washington appearing to grasp what that involved for the future. Most fundamental of all was the evidence, beginning in the later 1950s, of the growing split between the two pre-eminent communist regimes, China and the Soviet Union. We speculated endlessly, but none of us fully understood the implications. Fortunately, the Cold War remained cold. Beyond Indochina and Czechoslovakia, I saw something more of it during my eighteen months as the desk officer for Germany and Austria. Not only did the job entail always stimulating exchanges with their two highly professional embassies, but the Cold War reached one of its climacterics with the construction of the obscene Berlin wall, begun in mid-August 1961. Two months later I had the opportunity to experience something of the yet greater tension

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along the wall that divided the postwar British, French, and American zones of the city from the Soviet zone during a visit that I made to Bonn and Berlin in October. Tensions in Europe had rapidly increased as a result of Moscow’s decision to sever the few residual links between East and West Berlin, after the Soviet effort of a decade before to starve West Berlin into unification with East Berlin had failed as a result of the hugely successful Berlin airlift, in which Mackenzie King had ignominiously rejected Canadian participation. Norman Robertson, again Undersecretary of State for External Affairs (he had first been undersecretary during much of the Second World War), had then vainly advocated a role for Canada. Now he wanted his German desk officer to see at first hand something of what was afoot in Berlin. He approved my travel on a rcaf Yukon aircraft from Trenton to a Canadian base in West Germany (the rcaf then flew two or three weekly scheduled flights to Britain and Germany). In the West German capital of Bonn I listened to the rather grand Escott Reid, who, as ambassador, understandably spent more time giving me his thoughts about the durability of the Adenauer government and the still mounting problems in Berlin before finally listening to what I had to tell him about thinking in Ottawa. The following is a memorandum that I wrote about my visit to Berlin upon my return to Canada. Part of the wall which now divides Berlin is a former church fence. The church itself is about twenty feet within East Berlin while its fence is directly on the sector border. Large, crude concrete blocks fill the spaces between the brick posts of the former fence. On one post there still hangs a now much mortar-bespattered sign which proclaims, in small print, that all men are brothers. Nearby, and all along the wall, West Berliners wait, day and night, in the hope of seeing a friend or a relative. Out of upper story windows, West Berliners wave towels and handkerchiefs at East Berliners, similarly placed. In those blocks of flats which form part of the east side of the wall itself bricks are to be seen behind the glass windows. All these buildings are, of course, now deserted. Some are being demolished. Often geraniums (as omnipresent in Berlin as elsewhere in central Europe) still grow, untended, in long narrow boxes in front of bricked-up windows. Below, on those sidewalks which are in West Berlin, crude wooden crosses, with

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wreaths of flowers around them, mark places where East Berliners have leapt from windows too high above the sidewalks or fallen from rooftops, vainly attempting to escape from the despised Vopos. Below the sidewalks and the blocks of flats, below the wall itself, are the sewers of Berlin. Through these sewers a few East Germans still escape, often assisted by a determined and courageous group of West Berlin students who have organized escape routes through the stinking tunnels. Even these, however, are now being blocked by iron fences and soon the division of the city will be all but complete. At Marienfeld Refugee Centre (a pleasant group of apartment-like buildings, trees and lawns) stories of courage and ingenuity were told by the refugees I met. Most of these young refugees (the aged can hardly run the gauntlet of obstacles with any hope of success) told of the shock felt in East Germany on August 13 and the resolution that they had then made to attempt to escape, even if it meant death (as it has to several). They also told of the variety of unsuccessful efforts that the East German regime has made to force the students to conform with its policies which have only forced yet more students to attempt to escape. Without emotion, the young refugees told us that the fact that many attempts now end in forced labour camps or even death has done little to dampen the ardour of the students trying to escape. I. Morale: Berlin and American The West Berliners obviously hate the wall. It is generally regarded as only temporary. Yet, at the same time, most seem to acknowledge that force alone cannot bring it down and could not have done so on August 13. However, the events of August 13 and the 23rd (when all but three of the remaining crossing points for West Berliners into East Berlin were closed* has had, apparently, the effect of rendering the normal phlegmatic Berlin

* This action struck me as a good illustration of “salami tactics.” On 13 August most but not all of the sector border points were closed to East Germans entering West Berlin. Two weeks later, on 23 August, all crossing points were closed to East Germans, and the number open to West Berliners entering East Berlin was reduced to three. One crossing point, Friedrichstrasse, was designated for Allied traffic entering East Berlin. Two months later, on 23 October, a decree was issued by the East German government that all Allied personnel in civilian clothes crossing at Friedrichstrasse would have to identify themselves.

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character more erratic. For many years, West Berliners have been noted for their stoicism and courage; now their morale tends to alter between moods of unusual depression and great elation. Among the younger members of the staff of the U.S. Mission in Berlin, elation is unknown. A feeling of frustration seems to be everywhere evident. I talked with four young American diplomats (one was with me in Prague, another I knew as First Secretary in Warsaw, the third is the son of the U.S. Ambassador in Athens, and the fourth had already spent three years in Berlin). Their outlook was remarkably similar; they all evinced a great desire to see the United States “do something.” This meant, to all of them, that American troops should have been sent with trucks and grappling irons to tear down the barbed wire on August 13. From there, our conversations went something like this: q: What would you have done if another fence was being erected a hundred yards back of the sector boundary when you were tearing down the first one? a: We would have torn that down too. q: What would you have done if the East Germans had formed a wall of men? a: Well, I suppose that we would have driven through them. q: Wouldn’t this sort of reaction lead to an uprising in East Berlin and, perhaps, in East Germany? a: Exactly. That is what we want. Then the Russians would be back in East Berlin and would have to acknowledge responsibility for their sector of the city. q: Would they? Wouldn’t they argue that they were there only at the invitation of the sovereign government of the gdr, their Warsaw Pact alley, and refuse to discuss the problems with you? At this point the conversation generally became rather vague. The exact terms of such conversations are insignificant except that they do accurately reflect the deep frustration “about 55%” (according to one of my interlocutors) of the staff of the United States Mission feels. This feeling of frustration also exhibits itself in a general condemnation of President Kennedy’s administration. “Sure, we voted for him, but his administration has never got off the ground. Our prestige is fast disappearing. Now we’re thinking about the John Birch Society.” This last was always said jokingly but, in any case, it is a remark which also reflects a desire to see radical changes in present American policy in Berlin.

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General Clay is popular among these young Americans and to him the credit is given for the “sensible” policy being followed over the question of whether Americans in civilian clothes should show identification of the Freidrichstrasse crossing point. The current incidents at the crossing point had begun while I was in West Berlin. My American friends all showed great satisfaction at the “tough line” being followed. I dined with these four US friends and Claiborne Pell, a junior Democratic Senator from Rhode Island. At one point during the meal, Senator Fell described himself as a “hard boiled egghead.” This brought forth sotto voce sneers from my other companions. And when the Senator expressed willingness to see de facto recognition of the gdr exchanged for guaranteed access to Berlin, “even if this means dividing Germany into six or seven parts,” my friends could barely restrain themselves. Senator Pell told us that he and Senator Mansfield were, it seemed, making some headway among their colleagues in convincing them of the necessity of peaceful settlement of the Berlin problem which would exchange some form of recognition of the East German regime for guarantees of access. All this my friends found most unacceptable: “He’s not even aware that recognition could lead to problems with West Germany or, what’s worse, if he is, he doesn’t care!” Senator Pell did nothing, apparently, to lessen the frustrations so evident among the majority of the United States Mission or reassure them about the nature of the Kennedy administration. II. West German Morale In Bonn, unlike Berlin, one naturally has the impression of a strong, independent nation. There is no feeling of complete dependence upon the Americans as there is in West Berlin. Officers in the German Foreign Ministry seemed rather vague about what a negotiated settlement in Berlin might involve, but they all believed that negotiations are necessary, if for no other reason than Western public opinion demands them. All were equally clear that too much had already been said in public about the Western negotiating position and that the ussr could only be encouraged thereby. And they all hoped that “too high” a price would not be paid by the West to assure a free and viable West Berlin. By this they seemed to mean that the West, in its anxiety to ensure the freedom of West Berlin, should not extend any great measure of recognition to the gdr (the difference between de facto and de jure recognition seems to many West Germans to be largely academic). Such recognition would only perpetuate the division of Germany with all the dangers this might involve and could

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also lead in time (especially if accompanied by economic difficulties) to some form of left or right-wing extremism which would feed upon the myth that Germany had been betrayed by her nato allies. A few people in West Germany and West Berlin with whom I talked believed that negotiations with the Soviet Union, however necessary they might be to satisfy western public opinion, could not really be expected to produce a satisfactory settlement for Berlin. What they appear to envisage in their most optimistic moods is a series of negotiations with the ussr, perhaps including a summit conference, which the West would be forced to take a number of unpleasant decisions to break off pointless negotiations. These decisions would probably be rendered more difficult by Soviet pressure of military moves and troop increases which would no doubt effect public opinion in the West. A series of unpopular and unattractive decisions would have to be made by the West – if the West had the courage to make them – until the last fateful one. This last decision would arise after the abortive negotiations had been concluded, a separate Soviet-gdr peace treaty had been signed, and control of access had been turned over to East Germans. If access were then hindered, the West would have no choice but to respond with force. The ussr would, at that point, have to back down to avoid a general war. And those who envisage this unhappy progression of events appear convinced that, in the end, the ussr would back down. III. German Foreign Ministry For some reason, I have generally thought of the West German Foreign Ministry as conservative and monolithic in character. However, after meeting eight of its members in Bonn, I soon realized my error. With two exceptions, they were all willing to consider ideas, however radical, on their own merits, and to demonstrate flexible and open minds. I was amused at a lunch to find, while sitting between the East European desk officer and the Berlin desk officer, a complete divergence between them on the necessity of West Germany establishing diplomatic relations with eastern European countries. The Berlin desk officer, who advocated such relations as enthusiastically as his colleague opposed them, had the last word by announcing that one of the concessions which the fdp had obtained from the cdu in the course of recent discussion of coalition policies was that “immediate steps” would be taken for the establishment of diplomatic relations with Poland, and, perhaps about a year thereafter, with Czechoslovakia. Dr. Adenauer is, apparently, well enough pleased

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with this “concession” to the fdp. He can present it as a demand of the fdp yet, at the same time, it is a policy which holds certain attractions for him. Deep misgivings which most German officials seem to share about plans for “European security” were quietly and ably explained to me by one Foreign Ministry officer. On the Berlin problem, the Foreign Ministry officials were one in hoping that the West would not give away its negotiating position more than it already has, They were also one in their fear that if the West gave “too great” a degree of recognition to the gdr and if certain other conditions were obtained, this might lead in time to some form of extremism. However, these officers, all of a junior and intermediate level, were vague about concessions the West might offer in return for Soviet concessions, other than to suggest greater West-East German contacts as a possible concession. It is evident from Mr. Reid’s telegrams that the real speculation on the subject of possible concessions is restricted to higher levels in the Foreign Ministry. IV. Soviet Intentions Most of the Americans, British and Germans whom I met agreed that the Soviet Union hoped to achieve consolidation of its puppet regime in East Germany and further consolidation of the governments of its other satellites through using Berlin as a lever to obtain the desired recognition from the West. However, they also argued that an equally important motive was Khrushchev’s desire to disrupt nato as much as possible, especially by attempting to force the West to make such concessions as might, over a long period, alienate the West Germans from their present allegiances. Those in the United States and British Missions in Berlin who are charged with the responsibility of studying events in East Germany predicted that, if some degree of recognition of the gdr can be obtained from the West, Khrushchev will replace Ulbricht with someone less despised by West and even East Germans. Having achieved external recognition of the gdr, Khrushchev will then attempt, by removing Ulbricht, to achieve some internal support for the regime. At the same time, a massive campaign will be launched by the gdr, calling for reunification on the basis of confederation and stressing the fact of recognition by the three major western powers. V. Contingency Planning No one, British or American, would tell me anything about contingency

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planning. I had the impression from a variety of allusions and references that considerable planning had been done, but that a decision had been taken not to convey the details of plan to any nato ally. VI. General Speidel General Speidel flew to Canada on the same rcaf aircraft on which I returned. During the talk I had with him, it became obvious that among the German army at least there was no doubt that nothing more than protests could have been made by the three western powers on August 13. The General shook his rather large head and said quietly, “If anything more had been done, it probably would have meant nuclear war in the end. And where would that leave Germany?”

It was not, to paraphrase Churchill, only that an iron curtain had come down across central Europe but that in Berlin it was taking on a yet more threatening meaning. Canada occasionally joined the three Western occupying powers in protests about Soviet harassment of West Berlin. At the disarmament talks in Geneva and at the United Nations, the ussr blandly waved aside all such remonstrances, sealing off West Berlin as an island surrounded by East Germany, ostensibly as a response to the plan of the three allies to transfer the administration of Berlin from themselves to the West German government in Bonn. I turned my back on the Berlin wall with a mixture of deep misgivings and even more disbelief. Walls never solve anything politically, so I did not doubt that the Berlin wall would eventually come down, although not in my lifetime, given the deeply entrenched hostilities of the Cold War. As noted above, on the return rcaf flight to Trenton, I recalled another Germany in talking with my fellow passenger, General Hans Speidel of the Bundeswehr, then a senior nato commander, who reflected, among other things, on his days as a senior Wehrmacht officer, in particular as chief of staff to Rommel in France in 1944 and his role in the planning of the July abortive coup d’état against Hitler. Berlin remained the potential flash point of the Cold War, but of even longer-term political significance for the North Atlantic alliance was the eventual decision by Britain, with strong US encouragement, to apply for membership in the European Economic Community, now firmly cemented in place by Franco-German rapprochement. Diefenbaker was free with his public criticisms of the controversial British application, although he would have been highly indignant – and he was frequently

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highly indignant – if the United Kingdom had publicly attacked any of his own policies (assuming that they could identify any). Pearson, as leader of the Opposition, correctly took the simple, straightforward view that it was for the British alone to decide what they had to do. Nothing would be gained for either the United Kingdom or Canada by making their difficult decision even more difficult. In way of contrast, Diefenbaker, a true believer in the Commonwealth, continued to see mounting economic and eventually political integration with the United States as the indirect result of British membership in the eec and its concomitant declining interest in the Commonwealth. On walks from Rockcliffe to the East Block of the Parliament Buildings, I would frequently fall in, despite my decidedly junior status, with Coyne’s successor as governor of the Bank of Canada, Lou Rasminsky, and three former foreign service officers: Arnold Heeney, the clerk of the Privy Council; Gerry Stoner, the Deputy Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce; and Hamilton Southam, later the progenitor of the National Arts Centre. Whenever I walked with Clive Baxter, we continued to discuss all possible adverse effects that British entry into the European Economic Community might have on the Canadian economy. Echoing Beverley Baxter, his imperial-crusading father – or so it seemed to me – Clive, like Diefenbaker, was convinced that they would be serious and far-reaching, including driving Canada ever more closely into the eager embrace of the United States. I was not so certain, but in any case I regarded it as simply unseemly for Canada to attempt to put obstacles in the way of Britain’s application, if it had convinced itself that membership in the eec was the only route to its postwar economic salvation. Just about everything else had been tried and been found wanting. At my junior level, I had no occasion to offer such gratuitous advice myself, except to my colleagues. The memoranda that I drafted from time to time for the Prime Minister and the minister were limited to Berlin and other matters German and, indirectly, to nato and the seemingly nonstop disarmament conference in Geneva. In the spring of 1962, from my East Block office window, I watched a weary-looking Harold Macmillan emerge from his futile talks with Diefenbaker. I understood at the time that the visit represented his final effort to get the Canadian Prime Minster on board: they had last met in December 1961 in Nassau, following Macmillan’s meeting with Kennedy, who had agreed that Britain should have the submarine-borne Polaris missile. The Commonwealth Heads of

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Government meeting in London in September changed nothing. Diefenbaker had alienated Macmillan with his banal comments and paucity of ideas about feasible alternatives to British membership in the eec. Commonwealth free trade was not an alternative for a variety of reasons, not least because he had from his first days in office rejected bilateral free trade with Britain at the prompting of the easily intimidated Canadian Manufacturers’ Association, a major financial prop of the Conservative Party. Following his Ottawa visit, Macmillan, it appeared from reports, had given up altogether on Diefenbaker and intended to go full ahead with Britain’s application, despite the ill temper of de Gaulle, which would culminate in January 1963 with his veto of British entry. Some of this I discussed regularly with the measured and temperate European division head, Jean Fournier, and less often with the more excitable George Ignatieff, with whom I found it more difficult to exchange ideas, but who beyond the bounds of the East Block had a peculiarly Slavic appeal. Pearson was learning something of partisan politics by managing to make Diefenbaker look like a spoiler of British as well as nato interests, but I doubted at the time whether the Liberals wanted to push the issue very far, certainly not to an early election, given their financial and other organizational difficulties. In any case, Pearson still had more to learn about the vagaries of partisan politics, even with the pugnacious Jack Pickersgill and Paul Martin at his elbow. At a cocktail party in Rockcliffe in October 1962 Lee and I met John Turner for the first time, then a remarkably handsome, new Liberal mp from Montreal, who charmed everyone, not least by carefully noting their names. He was obviously the coming young man in the Liberal Party. He speculated that a current Liberal amendment to the motion on the Speech from the Throne was intentionally worded so strongly that the Social Credit members could not possibly vote for it, the Liberals thereby appearing to be suitably fierce but at the same time avoiding an early, unwanted election. At the House of Commons, sometimes with Lee and sometimes alone, I sat in question period or in an evening session, noting a gradual improvement in Pearson’s uneven performance as leader of the Opposition. Equally occasionally, I read Hansard, but that gave me growing misgivings about ever being a backbencher. In Britain being a member of Parliament is enough for many; in Canada I had joined the legions of those who see a cabinet post as the only reason for being in Parliament. I soon lunched with Turner and met him frequently thereafter on the Rockcliffe drinks

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circuit. To be sure, he looked one in the eye and spoke quickly, his comments generously sprinkled with oaths, expletives, and slogans, but what he said seemed to me disconcertingly superficial. Notwithstanding my growing, if erratic, interest in partisan politics, during the New Year of 1963 I stepped up my importunities to be posted abroad. I had completed two years before the mast. My contemporaries, who had places in the queue before me, had by now largely realized their own dreams of a diplomatic posting; that was, after all, why we had joined the foreign service. No doubt I became something of a bore to the Personnel Division, pressing for a posting, preferably in the world of multilateral diplomacy (i.e., the United Nations, nato, or the oecd; Canada was not yet a member of the Organization of American States, and the Commonwealth still did not have a secretariat). Somewhat to my surprise, I was instead offered an immediate posting to Havana, the decision having been made to increase the size of the mission there by one political officer in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis of a few months before. The reckless attempt by Khrushchev in July 1962 to place offensive missiles in the Cuba of an acquiescent Castro contributed indirectly to the downfall of the hesitant Diefenbaker, and ultimately to the departure of Khrushchev himself when his colleagues roundly condemned his act of folly. Following the striking photographic revelations of shiploads of Soviet missiles approaching Cuba, Washington had in vain requested Ottawa to join it in a full alert. Soon thereafter Washington reminded Ottawa of its earlier commitment to accept nuclear weapons for its forces in nato and norad. It was a period of great turmoil in East-West relations. How it all affected us in our microcosm was simply that, after much discussion with Lee (now a Canadian citizen and free to go to countries with which the United States did not have relations), I declined the offer of a posting to Havana. Junior officers were regularly reminded that to decline a posting was decidedly mal vu, but I nevertheless did so. A third consecutive posting to a communist country was not to our liking. Further, no linguist, I did not speak Spanish, and there would be no time to learn even the rudiments. In Ottawa I had joined the Rideau Club, then still housed in its splendid old stone and brick quarters on Wellington Street, suitably confronting the Parliament Buildings as the real centre of power. Most members, decades older that I was, had much to tell me, but one to whom I listened especially attentively was Norman Lambert, then a senator aged seventy-

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eight, who had begun his lifelong and intimate association with the Liberal Party by working with Sir Wilfrid Laurier in his attempt to restore the shattered party’s fortunes in the aftermath of the highly divisive conscription crisis of 1917. Lambert’s frequent wry and occasionally mildly derogatory comments about life with Mackenzie King in the 1920s and 1930s, when Lambert was secretary of the Liberal Party, gave me pleasure, since I was already having doubts about the Grit straight-line historiography that simplistically portrayed King as an unalloyed nationalist, ever intent upon being seen by Quebec as the province’s guardian freeing Canada from the supposed colonial shackles of perfidious Albion. Lambert inquired whether I would offer myself as a candidate for Parliament. Although gratified, I replied in the negative, silently continuing to hold members of Parliament in unwarranted disdain for what I regarded as their vulgar partisan antics. Thereafter, however, I did from time to time think idly of the invitation. Whether Lambert planted the parliamentary seed or whether it was already there and needed only a little watering, I do not know. What deterred me was the uncertainty of what I should do if, having resigned from the Department of External Affairs to stand for Parliament, I was defeated. In those days, there was no going back. The election of 18 June 1962 evoked some greater interest in me, although not much. Diefenbaker had continued to dither about many things, but principally about equipping Canadian forces, whether in Europe or Canada, with nuclear warheads supplied by the United States. He was all but defeated for his indecision and even more fundamentally for his unattractive practice of personalizing policy differences. Domestically, the faltering or at least uneven state of the economy during his first six years in office had become as endless a source of controversy as the weather. The erratic Prime Minister and his prissy Finance Minister, Donald Fleming, never appeared to be quite certain about what to do, but then, pace Keynes, few governments do know what to do with a faltering economy. Early on in the largely fruitless Diefenbaker years, the affair of the ejected governor of the Bank of Canada, James Coyne, was happily seized upon by Liberal senators, who dominated the upper house, as a stick with which to beat the Conservative government. Whatever public confidence there remained in the ability of Diefenbaker to manage the economy thereupon all but evaporated. The low point was reached in mid-1962, when unemployment, already high, increased further. The uncertainties besetting the government were such that it had to seek credits from Britain – to which not many years before Canada had extended massive credits – as well as

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from the United States and the imf. The “Diefenbuck” was pegged at 92.5 cents to the US dollar, a subject of much wry derision. Not surprisingly, the election of June 1962, which the now even more harassed but unfailingly bombastic Diefenbaker could postpone no longer, centred on the uncertain health of the economy and the failure of his government to do anything about it. The Tories lost almost 100 seats from their massive 1958 majority, leaving the new minority government fractious and divided between the dwindling number of Diefenbaker loyalists and the growing number of the disgruntled, who had convinced themselves that Dief the Chief had to go. His government clung to power for only nine months. Diefenbaker had lost it all: the support of his cabinet, of his party, and of a majority of Canadians. In February 1963 his muddled government collapsed, many of his ministers following the honourable lead of Douglas Harkness, the Defence Minister, in his rejection of the Prime Minister’s hopeless handling of the basic policy question of whether Canada should end its several obfuscations and begin to fulfill its undertaking to the United States concerning nuclear warheads for Canadian tactical weapons in Europe and the Bomarc missiles it had ordered as part of the defence of North America itself. Howard Green argued against any such move, but the United States let it be known that it was not amused by the continuing Canadian procrastination. Pearson, against the wishes of a large number of Liberals, had announced in January that any government he formed would honour the commitment that Ottawa had made to accept nuclear warheads. The choice was not so clear for the voter. To be nuclear armed or not to be nuclear armed was the question. But it was not the only question in the election. Perhaps the judgment of the Department was distorted, but there was no question in our minds that a reason at least as important was the economy. No Canadian government has ever fallen on an exclusively foreign affairs question, except Laurier’s over tariff reciprocity with the United States in 1911. The judgment of the electorate was condign. On 8 April 1963 the Liberals were elected to form a minority government. The Conservatives retained only 95 seats (Howard Green being one of the vanquished), while the Liberals won 129, the balance being held by the ndp and Social Credit. About this time Lee and I began to fill the several empty bedrooms at Willingdon Road. Ian James Henry MacLaren entered this world in Ottawa on 28 March 1963. Through the good offices of an Ottawa lawyer (whom I knew chiefly for his habitual midday bridge at the Rideau

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Club), we rejoiced in the delights of instant parenthood. With our new son, we would be three on our next posting. Happily, it was not long in coming. One day in August our hopes were fulfilled in spades by a brief interview with Jack Maybee (a most suitable surname for the head of Personnel Division). Fearing the worst after having had the temerity to decline Havana but nevertheless hoping for the best, I was much gratified to be offered a plum posting: second secretary at the Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, a much coveted entrée into multilateral diplomacy, where the fundamental challenge is to reconcile the national interest with the global good. Within minutes I was on the telephone to an equally jubilant Lee. Although our appointment did not begin until January 1964, four months or so hence, I would spend that time in training in the UN Division so that I could hit the deck running upon my arrival in New York. There also remained the not very difficult challenge of renting our house in Rockcliffe (it was soon done, leased to the Uruguayan ambassador) and beginning the search for an apartment in midtown Manhattan. There too we fell on our feet. On a preliminary reconnaissance, I found a charming 1920s flat on Beekman Place at East 51st Street, overlooking the East River and within a few streets of the United Nations headquarters and the Canadian mission. In the new Liberal minority government in Ottawa, Paul Martin (senior) achieved his immediate goal when Pearson appointed him Secretary of State for External Affairs. Lee and I arrived at the United Nations confident that the Nobel laureate’s widely recognized commitment to collective security in the world organization, as well as in nato, would open new opportunities for Canada to play a greater role on the world stage than the bumbling Diefenbaker government had ever achieved or even sought. Pearson, however, as the Prime Minister in a minority government, had inherited a range of challenges that were more domestic than overseas in origin. Throughout his years in office, his time was increasingly taken up by the place of Quebec and French-speaking Canadians in confederation, although the economy and the problems of sharing a continent with the United States remained a close second. Pearson’s domestic political touch was sometimes uncertain, and widespread popular support remained elusive, but his goals were never in doubt: a prosperous, united Canada in which French-speaking Canadians would finally be able to play their full role. Relations with the United States would be defined by mutual

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respect – whatever that meant in practice – and collaboration in the UN, nato, and the oecd. The 1965 auto pact, a forerunner of continental free trade, and the Kennedy Round of the gatt (begun in 1964 and concluded in 1967) would open additional international markets to Canadian manufacturers in particular, although the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Economic Community was proving to be, as feared, profoundly protectionist. Regrettably, however, under the economic nationalist Walter Gordon and the more laissez-faire Mitchell Sharp, large budget deficits continued as they uncertainly pursued their anti-inflation policies. All this and much else of the Canadian political scene remained of first importance, if a little second-hand, to us at the United Nations. Of more immediate meaning for us was Pearson’s widely recognized and longstanding commitment to help ensure that the world organization could play its full part in the settlement of international disputes and the promotion of economic and social development. For Lee and me it meant that we went to the United Nations with a song in our hearts. Our four-and-a-half-year tour there proved to be an unfailing delight, at a time when the UN was still almost universally regarded as a good thing, a place where the rough edges of the Cold War could be blunted occasionally or where the developing countries could be assisted at least marginally along their hazardous route to what would eventually be self-sustaining economic growth. Certainly, the United Nations had obvious flaws, especially given the raw hostilities of the Cold War, but it was a decided improvement over the late League of Nations, if for no other reason than its near-universal membership, with the obvious and absurd absence of China. Undoubtedly, it was a place to talk. Too much talk, some critics alleged, but we at the United Nations never lost sight of the fact that, as Churchill once observed, it was better to jaw-jaw than to war-war. And talk we certainly did. I talked endlessly about my assigned subject of economic development, formally in a galaxy of UN agencies and committees and, perhaps more importantly, informally with other junior diplomats, especially from Sweden, Norway, Algeria, Austria, Malaysia, and Brazil. It was all part of a cat’s cradle of information exchange and all somehow contributed, we hoped, to the beneficial impact of the United Nations on development and world affairs generally, “giving all nations unity, peace and concord, that they may serve Thee without fear.”

4


Nice Work if You Can Get It

Upon my arrival at Canada’s mission to the UN in New York in January 1964, I was, to my surprise, assigned the economic work. The kindly and astute permanent representative, Paul Tremblay, fresh from the embassy in Chile, convinced me that my lack of formal economic training would be no barrier in my role. He reassured me by sharing with me his own conviction that the subject of economics, like many other subjects, was largely a matter of vocabulary. If one knew what the words meant, one knew the subject. He was of course right. As I learned the vocabulary, I learned the meaning behind the symbols. As the economic officer, I had been promptly assigned to the delegation to the third and final session of the preparatory committee of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (unctad), of which most other members were on temporary assignment from various economic departments in Ottawa. Lee and Ian remained in Ottawa for a few weeks, readying our collective move to New York before we in turn converged on Geneva in mid-March for the three months or more of the conference itself. Knowing that, following unctad, we would remain at the Palais des Nations, the former headquarters of the League of Nations, for a monthlong session of the Economic and Social Council (ecosoc) and then a month or so of the Governing Council of the UN Development Programme (undp), we leased a mellow hôtel particulier in the old town for six months, installing Ian and his nanny in two of its many bedrooms, away from the fragile eighteenth-century furnishings and boiserie. Only in the autumn would we pass it on to the ailing Norman Robertson and return to New York for the annual session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, I to sit in the Second (or economic) Committee. At the final session of the unctad preparatory committee in New York in January 1964, I had soon learned that one central challenge had

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been posed endlessly by Raúl Prebisch, the dynamic, if unorthodox, Argentine economist who was not only the garrulous secretary-general of the conference but its progenitor. That challenge was to chip away at the cherished most-favoured-nation cornerstone of the gatt until tariff preferences were accorded to developing countries. The United Nations itself was dominated by the “great powers,” the four permanent members of the Security Council (China did not then count, as its place had been arrogated by the rump regime in Taiwan). Prebisch and, behind him, most of the developing world were determined not to see any new trade and development organization that might emerge from the conference become similarly dominated by the great powers, especially when the Kennedy Round of the gatt was being launched. If Prebisch’s teachings were followed, the developing world would not only gain tariff preferences; it would have a major, if not the dominant, voice in an unctad transformed into a new and permanent organization, a decidedly unwelcome prospect to most developed countries. The head of our delegation was Dana Wilgress, called out of retirement at age seventy-one to deploy his decades of experience in international trade negotiations in an attempt to reconcile the opposition of the United States and Europe to any departure from fundamental gatt rules with the contrary vocal advocacy of the developing countries – cynically supported by the Soviet bloc – for what they saw as a more equitable regime. Wilgress opted to sit in the organizational committee of the conference with me as his junior – very junior – associate. There I remained for the next three months with one hundred or so other delegates, all half-listening to three distinct sets of speeches: Western nations opposing any derogation from the hard-fought most-favoured-nation rule of the gatt, developing countries persistently seeking tariff preferences, and irrelevant Cold War posturing by the Soviet Union and its docile entourage, calling upon the West to repay the developing countries for its shocking pillage of former colonies and near-colonies. For me, the three months of unctad committee meetings were made fascinating not by the endless speeches but by Wilgress’s sotto voce descriptions of life as a Canadian trade commissioner in both imperial and Bolshevik Russia, as a negotiator of bilateral trade agreements with Britain and the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, as Canadian minister to the wartime Soviet Union, as Canada’s delegate to the postwar inaugural meeting of the gatt in Havana, as Deputy Minister of

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I am seated at the left, behind U Thant, the secretary general of the United Nations, at the pledging conference of the World Food Programme in 1965. Making Canada’s pledge is Joe Green, the Minister of Agriculture in Pearson’s government. I attended dozens of such gatherings while I was second secretary to Canada’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations.

Trade and Commerce, and as high commissioner to the United Kingdom. All that and much else provided escape from the daily repetitive rhetoric. As at most international conferences, nothing much happened until the final days. Then the inevitable all-night sessions commenced, the private meetings of the key players with Prebisch going forward in parallel with the final plenary sessions. Only at the last minute, as everyone had always anticipated, was agreement in principle reached to grant tariff preferences to developing countries. Understandings on a range of secondary issues were then hurriedly cobbled together, partly at the insistence of the taciturn but persistent Ted Heath, the minister who had arrived to lead the British delegation during the final throes of the conference. In the end, unctad emerged as a sort of trade advocacy organization for developing countries, fuelled by the slogan “Trade, not aid.” Following almost six months of meetings of unctad, ecosoc, and the undp in Geneva (and many a weekend in nearby Burgundy), Lee, Ian, nanny, and I returned to New York during the first weeks of the General

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Assembly in the autumn of 1964. There not only our flat on Beekman Place overlooking the East River awaited us but so did a weekend house in Litchfield, Connecticut, which a Vassar friend of Lee’s made available to us while she wintered in Florida. But it was Marietta Tree who preeminently paved the way for us into Manhattan. The six months of that first summer in Geneva had been a joy for Lee, Ian, and me, including the mixed pleasure of sailing on the lake under the baleful gaze of the kindly “Smiler” Burns (Major General E.L.M. Burns, Canada’s chief disarmament negotiator). It had been a golden summer, made yet more golden by meeting Marietta Tree, the United States representative in 1964 to the UN Human Rights Commission and later to the UN Trusteeship Council, who attended sessions of ecosoc. From long weekends together walking in alpine meadows, we became the closest of friends and remained so until Marietta’s death in 1991. When we first met, I felt something of the sensation that Arthur Schlesinger later attempted to describe in an especially purple passage in his memoirs. “The Bruces gave stylish dinner parties. At one of them … I was staggered when a stunning tall blonde girl in a smashing red dress swept into the room, walking in beauty and radiating gaiety and delight … With her beauty, intelligence and charm, Marietta could have coasted through life. But her Massachusetts ancestors had been ministers, educators, reformers, and the blood had not run thin … Far from being immobilized by the conflict between worldliness and public service, she serenely transcended it. She once told me that her ideal was to be a combination of Carole Lombard and Eleanor Roosevelt.”* Marietta’s husband, Ronald Tree, soon became as close a friend as Marietta. Although an American by ancestry (he had inherited in trust Marshall Field money from Chicago), Ronnie was nevertheless raised in England, where his mother, in a grand scandal, had run off with the dashing David Beatty, later Lord Beatty of Jutland fame. For some reason, Ronnie’s twelve pre-war and wartime years in Parliament as a backbench Conservative and a staunch supporter of Winston Churchill in his opposition to appeasement never had their reward. Inexplicably to Lee and me, the official biography of Duff Cooper, quoting Lord Davidson, describes Ronnie en passant in 1940 as “possibly the most unpopular Private

* Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, A Life in the Twentieth Century (Boston, 2000), 473.

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Member and certainly the most unpopular pps [he was parliamentary private secretary to Duff Cooper, Minister of Information].” In any event, in 1946, faced with spectacularly high levels of British taxation on his substantial income from the United States, Ronnie removed himself and Marietta from his beloved Ditchley in Oxfordshire to a splendid townhouse on 79th Street in Manhattan and to the Palladian Heron Bay in Barbados. The wife of the British ambassador in Paris in the 1950s had, however, noted an encounter with the visiting “Ronnie Tree, hot and red and as inarticulate as ever; whatever he tries to say bursts out from him with unwarranted vigour. Some say that he is much neglected by Marietta, who is altogether absorbed in the Democratic Party.”* Lady Jebb was not entirely wrong, as the would-be-president Adlai Stevenson had become a special âme damné of Marietta. Of all the great and good – and a few not so good – to whom the Trees introduced us in New York and Washington, David Ogilvy and his American wife, Anne (sadly plagued by alcoholism), became frequent companions, sharing with us weekends at their country house amidst the Amish near Intercourse, Pennsylvania, or dinners at their commodious townhouse on East 84th Street. In Washington Susan Mary Alsop also became a dear friend, always discrete about her famous affair in postwar Paris with Duff Cooper, then the British ambassador, but otherwise full of lively political stories about Washington, London, and Paris. She in turn introduced us to such friends as Alice Longworth, Teddy Roosevelt’s acerbic but invariably witty daughter, and the less articulate Henry Kissinger, for whom her homosexual second husband, the journalist Joe Alsop, had an erratic admiration. Lee and I were equally taken up, thanks again to Marietta, by David and Vangie Bruce (they of the dinner party at which Schlesinger was first bouleversé by Marietta). Recollections by Bruce of Andrew Mellon, his first father-in-law, in the interwar years and of the oss in wartime London were matched by their more contemporary insights into attempts to find peace in Vietnam and the convoluted circumstances surrounding the opening of the newly established US

* John Charmley, Duff Gordon: The Authorized Biography (London, 1986), 148, and Cynthia Jebb, The Diaries, ed. Miles Jebb (London, 1995), 178. Ronnie’s partial autobiography, When the Moon Was High (London, 1975) is disappointingly thin but understandably so since he completed it when he was severely ill.

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embassy in Beijing, both of which Bruce headed, along with his earlier tours as ambassador in London and Paris.* Offstage, Lee and I also soon became instant friends of one mp on the Canadian delegation to the UN General Assembly, the compellingly iconoclastic member for Mont Royal. During the autumn of 1966, we saw much of Pierre Trudeau, who frequently lunched or dined with us, sometimes with Marietta as a fourth, and eventually spent a winter week together at Heron Bay in Barbados. We sensed immediately that what Lord Blake had once said of Lloyd George was equally applicable to Trudeau: “He was an iconoclastic enemy of conventional procedure, set routines, stuffy traditions. Where others accepted he questioned. Where they bowed to orthodoxy he challenged. He had the gift of seeing through the jargon … He took nothing for granted and queried everything.” We were delighted. The United Nations was shot through with issues arising from the Cold War and increasingly from the still deepening war in Indochina. In November 1965 Pearson, now popularly seen as fumbling economic and other domestic issues, took the Liberals into the third general election in three years, only to form another minority government. Internationally, Pearson and Martin attempted to do whatever they could – and it was precious little – to induce China and the Soviet Union to encourage North Vietnam to the negotiating table. A major obstacle in this forlorn process was the lack of diplomatic recognition of China by most Western nations, including Canada, a signal failure of Realpolitik. The US bombing of North Vietnam, which had begun in early 1965, Lee and I found increasingly disturbing, especially given our knowledge of the country. The intensity of the debates in the Security Council and the First (political) Committee of the General Assembly over Indochina and a host of other lesser conflicts fuelled, in something of a paradoxical way, the higher levels of UN development assistance recommended by the Second (economic) Committee. As a Canadian participant in a range of United Nations

* Both Marietta Tree and Susan Mary Alsop (1918–2004) had treasured Charles Ritchie when he was ambassador in Paris (nato) and Washington and high commissioner in London. Decades later, at our request , they welcomed Allan and Sondra Gotlieb to Washington when Trudeau appointed him ambassador to the United States. Susan Mary published her letters To Marietta from Paris, 1945–1960 (New York, 1975), and Caroline Seebohm wrote a biography of Marietta: No Regrets (New York, 1997).

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entities charged with development assistance and, increasingly, with trade policy, I was gratified to be able to help advance Canada’s deep, if not always fully defined, commitment to assistance to poorer countries. I spent five enjoyable years in New York and Geneva doing so. In the UN corridors, where most of the real work is done, debate about the recognition of China was a constant. The US puppet regime in Taiwan still held China’s Security Council seat. As part of the large delegation to the General Assembly in the autumn of 1966 came both Pierre Trudeau, parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Mike Pearson, and Donald Macdonald. My old friend from Cambridge was then parliamentary secretary to Paul Martin, the Secretary of State for External Affairs, who chaired the morning meetings of the whole delegation. Trudeau and Macdonald sat on either side of Martin (who, in contrast to them, looked more than ever like Oom Paul). Greatly enjoying every minute of it, the two would continually press Martin on why Canada did not immediately recognize the Communist government of China, now a nuclear weapons state. The fact that the communist government in Beijing was clearly in effective control should be, they contended vigorously, the sole touchstone for diplomatic recognition, not some spurious moral judgment. Unwilling to give the direct answer that the United States, locked in its own moral judgments, simply did not want us to do so, the discomfited Martin would dodge and weave, as Trudeau and Macdonald twisted their stilettos, the whole time punctuated by his loud ahems and various irrelevant flutters. How we of the career, all staunchly pro-recognition, enjoyed it! What a delight to see our minister, for whom we had little intellectual admiration, though certainly personal affection, attempting to wiggle out of the relentless bombardment! During our five years in New York, Lee and I were never without a weekend house – successively two in Connecticut and two in Bucks County, Pennsylvania – happy to be away from the hurly-burly of Manhattan for two days and three nights of rural bliss. In Manhattan there were endless invitations to drinks or dinner, but we especially valued those from Ronnie and Marietta at East 79th Street. There or at the Villa Capponi overlooking Florence or at Heron Bay in Barbados, we nattered away with the presidential aspirant Adlai Stevenson, the prime ministerial aspirant R.A.B. Butler, Mike Pearson, David Bruce, Stalin’s daughter Svetlana (Lana) Peters, Lord Salisbury, David Ogilvy, Claudette Colbert, Bobby Kennedy, and, later but more frequently, Marietta’s well-chosen companion Roy

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t h e f u n da m e n ta l t h i n g s a p p ly Marietta Tree, our dear friend from 1964, at Heron Bay in Barbados, where the guest lists read like elaborate name drops. Lee and I learned much, not least from Marietta herself, about how to combine grace with an understanding of the ways of the world.

Jenkins. From each of them and many others we learned much about how the world wags. For that Lee and I were then and ever thereafter grateful to the Trees. Perhaps the most valuable lesson that we learned from Marietta was never to inflict upon friends the “three Ds”: diseases, descendents, and domestics, all subjects supremely boring to others. We soon cried amen to that sensitive and perceptive advice, and added our own fourth forbidden D bore: diets. The congenial Mike Pearson, whom we saw from time to time, I much liked; Maryon Pearson decidedly less so. Habitually censorious and notoriously cantankerous, she dispensed wiggings with a free hand. One was enough for me. At dinner one night at Heron Bay, Marietta had kindly placed me at the coral table on the terrace next to the wife of my Prime Minister and Lee beside him (the other twelve guests, whatever their seniority, were American or British). Halfway through dinner, Maryon Pearson finally turned to me and inquired in a loud voice who I was, overlooking the fact that we had already been introduced over drinks. I replied that I was second secretary in the Canadian Permanent Mission to the United

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Nations. “You say that you’re in External Affairs, but I don’t know you!” Then a skill-testing question: “Who is your head of mission?” “George Ignatieff.” (By this time the whole table had fallen silent.) “George? George? You refer to your head of mission by his first name? My husband would certainly never have called Mr Massey anything but Mr Massey when they were at Canada House together early in the war!” Many a twitter from along the table, other than from a mildly discomfited Pearson, to whom such bizarre outbursts were apparently all too familiar. What I especially disliked about this silly encounter was that it deprived me of the opportunity to speak at greater length with Pearson about the ascendancy of Mitchell Sharp and the decline of Walter Gordon in Liberal thinking, confirmed by the party convention of 1966. Support for free enterprise economics – for the lack of a better term – was waxing and government regulation, ownership, and intervention waning. We did have time, however, to touch on a special disappointment in Pearson’s professional life: the Canadian failure in 1949 to induce the other prospective members of nato to make it an economic as well as a military alliance. We were to revert to this subject in a conversation in 1970, shortly before his death; it clearly remained a regret genuinely held. During the final two of our five years at the United Nations, George Ignatieff was the head of mission, having succeeded the equitable and sage Paul Tremblay. He was not so equitable but given to occasional fits of depression and excitement, said by his wife, the redoubtable Alison Grant, to be natural to a Slav. He later described his UN years in his autobiography, Memoirs of a Peacemonger, a title justified by his efforts, alongside Howard Green and “Smiler” Burns, to promote disarmament in particular. His health, however, occasionally disrupted his uphill efforts, including even at staff meetings, which were sometimes enlivened by an audible telephonic admonition from his wife to take his daily dosage of Kaopectate, a large flask of which he kept at the ready in his desk drawer. “Yes, mother, yes.” I noted at the time, when Canada was filling one of its periodic terms on the Security Council, that “George Ignatieff looks more haggard by the day. Having the Middle East and Cyprus in the Security Council at the same time has been demanding, but as Alison says, George is still enough of a Russian to love the drama of the Security Council. He sought it and now he has it. But he looks awful.” Upon our return from our fourth extended sojourn in Geneva late in the summer of 1967, Lee and I toured Expo ’67 with Marietta and her

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companion at the time, Lord Llewellyn Davies (upon whom Barrie had reportedly modelled Peter Pan), under the careful eye of the vip visitors’ service. With the new Canadian flag everywhere, the expectations and excitement of the crowds at Canada’s centennial were palpable, marred only by de Gaulle’s silly exclamation of “Vive le Québec libre!” For Lee and me it was also a time of personal excitement as we awaited word from Ottawa that Vanessa Catharine, the second of our three children, had entered this world. With dear Vanessa’s arrival, our cherished flat on Beekman Place overlooking the East River seemed somehow to have shrunk, but the spacious Bucks County house was always at hand during lazy weekends away from the General Assembly, where I rejoiced in the plastic quality of oil paint as I attempted in vain to describe the rural beauty that surrounded us along the Delaware River. In January 1968, while still stationed in New York, I returned to New Delhi, this time for the second session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. India, in a burst of enthusiasm for what was still naively expected by some to be an effective trade organization dominated by the developing countries, had offered to act as host for the conference, which, among other things, was charged with a review of the progress, if any, that had been made in implementing the resolutions of the first conference. A generalized preference for developing countries had been cautiously implemented, an act heretical for gatt aficionados, but in the event, it brought little real assistance since few of the least developed countries engaged in much export trade. To be sure, little enough had been done by the developed world to put in place what those countries regarded as the unrealistic resolutions of the first unctad, especially with regard to trade in commodities. Following its opening by Indira Gandhi, unctad ii soon degenerated into the endless set speeches all too familiar from unctad i, the boredom only accentuated by the unfailing, although never convincing, efforts of the Soviet bloc to portray itself as the one true, selfless advocate of the interests of former colonies, the unflinching friend of their downtrodden and exploited proletarian masses. Fortunately, on weekends the Indian government and several state industries and trade associations invited delegates to visit various sites across India. Few delegates accepted, most complaining of endless attacks of Delhi belly or simply ennui, but Klaus Goldschlag, a highly skilled career diplomat and fellow veteran of unctad i and now our head of delegation, and I readily visited Heavy Electricals

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Klaus Goldschlag (second from left), our head of delegation to unctad ii in New Delhi in 1968, and I walk from an Indian Airlines Dakota across the field at Bhopal. Goldschlag, who later suffered a paralyzing surgical error while ambassador to Germany, was one of the brightest officers in the Department of External Affairs and the author during the Trudeau years of the seminal Third Option paper, which argued for more diversified economic ties for Canada.

at Bhopal, in reality to see that most Buddhist of Indian towns. Klaus and I were also pleased to meet there a number of engineers from Atomic Energy of Canada struggling manfully and sweatily to help Heavy Electricals produce components for the Candu research reactor which Canada had afforded India (not, of course, to produce weapons-grade plutonium but rather electricity). Around the filthy work pit in which the visitors toiled, several rather effete-looking Indian engineers gazed with amazement at the willingness of Canadian graduate engineers to dirty their hands, something that they themselves had no intention of doing. Another weekend Klaus and I escaped from the furnace of the plains to spend two nights amidst the splendidly Raj remains of the cool and pine-clad Himalayan hill station at Simla. I recalled governors general of Canada who had been there as viceroys of India – Dufferin, Lansdowne, Minto, Willingdon – but also the Indian army, all represented by sepia photographs in the window of a tatty studio, displaying the work of fifty or more years before of Captain

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X of the Royal Garwhal Rifles or Lieutenant Y of the Fourth or the Prince of Wales Own Gurkha Rifles. Equally ambitious was a weekend excursion to Dehra Dun to visit a forestry project funded by the United Nations Development Programme. Another weekend took me to Calcutta and Benares. Lee had remained in New York with Ian and Vanessa, awaiting the arrival of our third child, to be born three months hence. About my travels in India I wrote to her: 10 march 1968. Between Benares and Delhi, Indian Airlines. On our return trip to the Grand Hotel from the Jute Institute in Calcutta yesterday, I asked the coach driver to let me off on the maidan so that I might visit the cathedral church of St. Paul’s, that curious neo-Gothic structure near Chowringee Road, in the short while that remained before a welcoming cocktail party by the Institute. Built largely through the efforts of the fifth Bishop of Calcutta – and a good part with his own money – the Cathedral was consecrated in 1847. The nave is chock-a-block with memorials, so I spent a happy hour wandering in the land of the Raj, from colonel to general to magistrate to prelate. The cathedral as a whole is, I think, balanced and well-proportioned. We were entertained at Calcutta’s two principal clubs: we drank at the Bengal Club Friday evening before dinner and lunched yesterday at the Calcutta Club. At the Bengal, I finally began to understand the fundamental transition which is taking place in the management of the jute industry. Indians have, apparently, considerable ownership of it, but it is only now that the last British staff are being retired. Evidently, the actual management of the mills was traditionally a Dundee preserve and a few elderly Scots who had spent thirty or forty years in the industry were at the cocktail party, talking of “going home” soon, to the cold rain and granite greyness of Dundee. There was also one rather pathetic young “Englishman” who had been born and raised in Calcutta and who had married an English girl similarly placed. They spoke with a curious accent, used dated slang, and, understandably, did not seem to know where they belonged. God knows what in time will become of their son, given the ambiguities of a yet another generation born in India. All in all, I was more impressed by the Indians whom I met in the struggling jute industry than by the few remaining expatriates. Dinner was late at the Grand, a mediocre buffet, like the “English” couple, it was neither Indian nor European. Near dinner’s end, I was so

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tired I went to bed as quickly as I could, but some of my companions, especially the Africans, went on to a restaurant in the hotel garden where a Scandinavian told me the following day, prostitutes from Vietnam, Thailand and Burma, as well as India itself, abounded. The jute mill which we visited yesterday morning was one of the better ones along the Hooghly. We had been divided into groups of five or six. Our five was a rather strange mixture: the Vice-President of Peru; his “secretary” whom he asked to be included in the visit on the grounds that he does not speak English; a rather dowdy and overly-eager middle-aged British woman who is a stenographer to the Italian delegation (don’t ask me why); and a Dutch Member of Parliament. The Dutch mp was so taciturn that I was left to ask all the standard visitor’s questions of our hosts at the mill, but I was, in any case, genuinely interested. The working conditions in the sprawling mill – which looks like a cotton spinning mill – were almost as bad as I had anticipated. The older and smaller looms were packed in together, but the newer sections were not quite so congested. Many of the workers were dressed in little better than rags, but since they earn, on the average, no more than Rs. 120 (or less than $20) a month, that is understandable. They deserve a better lot in life for they work extremely hard; they’re conscientious and diligent. They should receive more reward, but everywhere the excessive population eats up the fruits of their efforts (how much the mill owners themselves put away, I have no idea). We were courteously received by all, military-like salutes being the common greeting, and we were everywhere objects of interest. One unusual group were women squatting on the floor of a dark room finishing by hand the hems of machine-sewn burlap sacks. In their noses and ears, on their fingers and wrists, they wore elaborate silver and gold jewellery, colourful if soiled saris, and arms and faces heavily tattooed. Who exactly that exotic group was no one seemed able to tell me. I came away from the dusty, noisy mill – or, to be more precise, sank gratefully into an armchair at its “officers’ club” on the banks of the Hooghly – with an abiding impression of the workers’ efficiency and determination. I hope that western tariff and quota policies do not hinder such virtues from finding their due rewards. Jute is having enough problems competing with synthetic fabrics. After passing again through the seemingly endless crowded slums of Calcutta, I was finally able to spend an hour at Curzon’s extravagant memorial to the Queen Empress. In appearance rather like an elaborate

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version of the legislative building in Victoria, it is full of early prints of the maidan and the Hooghly – as Thackeray must have known them as a child – and of capable and occasionally striking portraits of governors general, members of the royal family, army officers, Indian nobility and, of course, in profusion of Victoria herself. It is undeniably vulgar and undeniably enchanting. We returned to the centre of the city for lunch at the Calcutta Club. In recent years, its presidency has begun to alternate between Europeans and Indians. Perhaps in part for that reason, the Club has remained very much as it was during the Raj (that imperial-military word seems a little out of place in commercial Calcutta; let us say simply that the club remained much as it was during the days of British commercial domination). The signed photographs of the Willingdons and the Hardings remain; the oil portrait of Minto hangs undisturbed and elderly copies of The Illustrated London News moulder on the reading room’s heavy green baize tables. In the garden are both grass and hard tennis courts, covered badminton courts and a swimming pool. It is obviously an oasis in the midst of the oppressive poverty. Only Durand from the French Ministry of Industry and I had the foresight before we left Delhi to change our return tickets so that we might visit Benares on Sunday. There was a great scramble by the others to change tickets in Calcutta but it was in vain; all flights to Benares were by then full and the train took too long. You have not visited Benares and, on the whole, I don’t think that you need to be in a rush to do so. In New Delhi, when people said it was something one should do once, I thought that they were simply being trite, but they are right. It is a curious place certainly but, by our standards, in some ways revolting. Once is indeed enough. Durand and I had to share a room at Clark’s Hotel for, while he had arranged his flight, he had somehow neglected to obtain a hotel reservation. The hotel, an old one of two stories, is reasonably comfortable. A rather coy photograph of your old acquaintance, Jackie Kennedy, is prominently displayed. On it she has written her thanks for her stay at “one of the best hotels” she has ever visited: a most extraordinary assertion! Durand and I got up at 0545 this morning. By taking a taxi and accompanied by a young guide, a more or less English-speaking student from the Benares Hindu University, we were on the holy River Ganges before sunrise. There, on the ghats or huge flights of stone steps leading down

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into the grey brown river itself, were congregated the pilgrims and the worshippers, tens of thousands it seemed, crowding into the incredibly filthy water, some of whom, apparently, join in the washing and the drinking simply because it is the thing to do and not because they share the conviction that the river is holy. Durand and I pushed off in a ramshackle rowboat, staying close to the shore so as to be able to see the pilgrims (who paid no attention to our inquisitive stares, but went on with their ablutions and prayers). Ahead of our boat (I was sitting in the stern looking forward) I noticed a corpse of a man floating swollen and decomposed. I pointed this out to our student guide (our boat trembled slightly as we passed over it), but he explained that since small-pox is regarded as a goddess by some Hindus (I remembered once reading this somewhere), it is considered unfitting to burn the body of anyone who has died from it. In short, one must not burn a goddess. And so we passed over the bloated corpse which, somehow, did not seem out of place in the open sewer which is called the Ganges. Durand, incidentally, had with him the French edition of Fodor’s Guide to India (a largely useless book) which has in it the following anecdote: “Le célèbre Mark Twain quand il vit opérer les milliers de baigneurs des escaliers de Bénarès, demande s’il n’arrivait jamais que l’eau fut un peu sale. Son guide lui répondit: ‘Ne croirez-vous pas vos propres savants? Ils ont analyse cette eau et lui one découvert des propriétés qui font qu’aucun microbe ne peut y vivre.’ ‘Je crois volontiers,’ répliqua l’écrivain, ‘qu’aucun microbe qui se respecte ne pourrait vivre dans une eau pareille.’” So much for ugliness and, indeed, the horror. There was also the beauty of people rapt in prayer, lost in their meditations in the early morning light, standing waist-deep in the muddy river, their hands folded. For a moment, before sunrise, there was a silence. And then suddenly the sun rose above the mud flats opposite. The bathers became animated, submerging themselves and their children, pouring water over themselves or drinking from small copper jars. The rising sun gave a pink and golden light to the old buildings and the steps which form the river bank. The sunrise transformed, for a moment at least, the whole scene into something quite beautiful and moving. A scene which has been repeated countless times, time immemorial indeed. After almost two hours on the river and after a late breakfast at Clark’s, Durand and I took a car out to Sanchi where stand the remains of three stuppa and the foundation stones of an early Buddhist monastery. In a

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museum which the British Archaeological Survey established a century ago are several splendid Buddhist figures and other stone carvings, but otherwise Sanchi was rather disappointing. There is an ugly Jain temple of the last century and a yet uglier modern Buddhist temple built about forty years ago with, in part, contributions from an American woman living in Honolulu. Later today we took a car and visited with our student guide his Benares Hindu University, an extraordinary agglomeration of pink and white buildings in what is, I suppose, a pseudo-Moghul style. Rather like what one would expect an Indian wedding cake to be. And now, in an Indian Airline Viscount, soon to land in Delhi; I look forward to bath and bed. All in all, a good weekend. 11 march 1968. This afternoon Klaus sent to Ottawa a long telegram noting that the meetings of the five committees and of the three working groups of the Conference have all continued to cover ad nauseum familiar ground from unctad i. In an effort to focus on real issues and to reach some conclusions – the Conference is, after all, scheduled to end in a fortnight – a plethora of informal contact groups has now been established. But they too, alas, have proven too large and, in any case, there seems generally to be less room for manoeuvre than one had thought.

The conference eventually trailed off, all expectations of anything much coming from it having been abandoned by the “Group of SeventySeven” developing countries. The developed countries had arrived with no new ideas and left with none. At the end of almost three months of footling meetings, nothing of substance had been achieved, because of what developed countries regarded as the impossible demands of developing countries and the developing countries’ despair over the developed countries doing anything to recognize what they regarded as their legitimate demands (no one paid any attention to the dark mutterings of the Soviet bloc). Although unctad was to continue a sort of half-life among the penumbra of more obscure UN organizations, it was evident by the end of its second conference that it was going nowhere. I had begun my five-year posting at the United Nations with unctad i in Geneva; there was something vaguely symmetrical in completing it with unctad ii in New Delhi. In between, I had learned, as Paul Tremblay had assured me I would, the vocabulary of economics and even some understanding of

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the meaning behind the words, especially those relating to international trade and investment. While I was in New Delhi, Lee was completing her master’s degree in political science at Columbia University. We had long since sensed that our New York years would be the most enjoyable that we would have in the foreign service for the foreseeable future, London not then being an early prospect after New York. Shortly before our return to Ottawa in the summer of 1968, Trudeau succeeded Pearson as leader of the Liberal Party, the victor over Joe Green, Paul Martin, John Turner, Bob Winters, et al. He became Prime Minister on 25 June, after winning twice as many seats as the Conservatives under the eminently sensible but hapless Bob Stanfield. Canada, still immensely pleased with the success of its Centennial celebrations of 1967 – aside from the truculent de Gaulle’s visit – had equipped itself with a young, dynamic, and iconoclastic leader capable, it was believed, at least in English Canada, of leading us all into a bright and united future, having decisively confronted the tiresome rants of separatists in Quebec. Meanwhile, Lee, Ian, and Vanessa, awaiting the imminent arrival of our third child, had departed New York for many quiet weeks in Tobago. From there in early April 1968 they and I converged on Caracas, where our ambassador (and recent consul general in New York), Bruce Rankin, and his dear wife, Mona, had kindly invited us to spend a week or so with them before we returned to the United Nations for the final months of our posting. Shortly after our return to Ottawa in early July, Malcolm Lawrence was born.

5


There’s No Cure Like Travel

The Ottawa to which we returned was a different place from the one from which we had departed at the end of 1963. For several months the country had been swept up in Trudeaumania, an enthusiasm for a Prime Minister which I had not seen before nor would see again. In the election of 25 June the reinvigorated Liberals had won an absolute majority, the goal that had eluded Pearson. It confirmed a mandate for Trudeau to settle, amongst other things, the Quebec conundrum for at least his generation. Once back in the narrow confines of the Ottawa bureaucracy, Lee and I became increasingly restless as the country embarked upon its great adventure of the Trudeau years. We began to talk about a life beyond the Department in what we assumed was the more dynamic and lucrative Toronto, which would in time be a better springboard than Ottawa into federal politics. For some months I worked uneventfully as deputy head of the Aid and Development Division. It was in fact less preoccupied with aid and development than with inducing, by the judicious distribution of development assistance, the French-speaking African countries to reject Quebec’s efforts to win from them some form of ill-defined international recognition as a sovereign entity. For my part, I attempted to advance cooperation between Canada’s development assistance programme (to the degree that it was free of domestic political pressures) and various United Nations and Colombo Plan agencies, but I am afraid that I did so without the enthusiasm that I had displayed in my earlier work in Ottawa and certainly at the United Nations. Somehow, especially in contrast with the local political ferment, much of the fun had gone out of such efforts. Lee and I followed with mounting dismay the escalating wars in what had been French Indochina. The long, white beaches and the cool hill stations that we had known so well a decade before had become the names of battles. Saigon was deep in political turmoil as the Vietcong closed upon

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it, amidst mounting American and far more numerous Vietnamese dead. As in most civil wars, the innocent casualties readily exceeded the combatants killed. How we hated the daily reports of one fresh disaster following upon another in that particular sale guerre. The only good news was that to Canada had come legions of young Americans of draft age, one of the most productive waves of immigrants that the country has ever received, perhaps matched only by the Cantabrigians of 1956 and the Ismailis who arrived in the early 1970s from East Africa. Early upon our return to Ottawa, we lunched with the new Prime Minister at 24 Sussex Drive. Ever the polemicist, he asked why I continued in such a circumscribed life when, in some still inchoate way, the whole world awaited me. Perhaps it was Trudeau’s subtle probing that led me to think more precisely about eventually running for Parliament, after what would prove to be a profitable stint in business. Following much debate, Lee and I decided that I would first take the plunge into the private sector, thereby doing the unspeakable by resigning from the foreign service. My last day of work in the Department was 6 February 1969, after eleven years and five months, all in all, of great fascination and stimulation, interlarded with longueurs. Indirectly, through David Ogilvy, I learned that Massey-Ferguson, the iconic global farm machinery company with headquarters in Toronto, had quietly begun a search for a replacement for its retiring vice-president for public affairs, a pleasant old stick who had once, incongruously, been an arts master at Upper Canada College. I applied and, satisfied with what appeared to be a substantial salary increase along with a company car, I accepted, with the unspoken thought that it could in time lead on to other things in the world of business as well as politics. After I had disengaged myself from the Department of External Affairs (something few did except the homosexuals hounded out as security risks), Lee, Ian, Vanessa, and Malcolm soon followed me to our new house in Forest Hill in Toronto. Naturally, after Manhattan, Toronto seemed quiet and restrained, but in business, politics, and academia things were undoubtedly astir. We knew virtually no one but quickly began to broaden our circle of acquaintances, partly through John Holmes, then teaching at the University of Toronto; Marvin Gelber, who as a backbench Liberal mp we had known at ecosoc meetings; and Tony and Kitty Griffin, our neighbours on Dunvegan Road, who soon became lifelong friends (Kitty was the sister of Walter Gordon). In addition to my work at Massey-Ferguson, I began

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teaching a class in economic development part-time at the University of Toronto. Concurrently, I volunteered to become the national secretary of unicef Canada and soon after a director of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, of which Harry Jackman was chairman and his lively and iconoclastic son, Hal, later to become a close friend, was another young director. With Mayor David Crombie’s support, I was elected by the Toronto Council to the City Planning Board, where my fellow Cantabrigian, Ian Binnie, eventually a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, brought his formidable intellectual skills, and David Smith, a mover in the Liberal Party, deployed the rare political talents that were eventually to take him to the Senate. In time, Lee became head of development at the University of Toronto, energetically setting it on its course to notable and innovative fundraising success. I remained at the venerable Massey-Ferguson for five years. They were not, professionally, happy ones. Despite my lack of corporate experience, I soon came to wonder how a company could hope to finance its whole range of new international manufacturing ventures when it had clearly already overextended its credit. Massey-Ferguson’s “strategy” – if indeed it could be called that – was to build such a formidable global presence that it could then aggressively enter the largest and most challenging of all farm machinery markets, the corn belt of the American Midwest. The financing of such an ambitious strategy to overtake the formidable John Deere on its own turf turned partly on the seemingly inexhaustible willingness of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce to ante up. In good times or in an industry not so beset by cycles, all that might have been well enough. But when the good times soured and revenues declined sharply, Massey-Ferguson could not finance its inventories and service its massive debt from its sharply reduced earnings. During my five years at the firm, its fortunes steadily deteriorated as the direct result of complacency and incompetence among senior management. In time, the once great Canadian corporation effectively became bankrupt. When it later defaulted on part of its massive debt, despite major bailouts from the Canadian taxpayer, the end had come. Massey-Ferguson was broken up and sold off piecemeal, including one of its brightest jewels, Perkins Diesel Engines in Britain and Brazil. No great knowledge of business was required to understand the difficulties in which increasingly bewildered management and a supine board had placed the corporation and its hapless shareholders. What seemed to

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me increasing profligacy was apparently never so evident to the president, Albert Thornbrough, a solemn, rather self-important, but basically intimidated American who lived for a good part of each week in Florida, commuting to Toronto at no real expense to himself on the Argus corporate jet. The management galère at Massey-Ferguson fell grievously short of the levels of integrity and competence that its thousands of employees around the world, as well as its shareholders, deserved. Massey-Ferguson, and certainly its president, was effectively controlled by one “Bud” McDougald, the choleric and pedestrian chairman of Argus Corporation, the major shareholder in the firm. McDougald, a director of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, always seemed able to induce it to do as he bade, whatever might variously be the distinct interests of Massey-Ferguson and its shareholders and of the bank itself. McDougald, in his early days a bond salesman for Dominion Securities, had also been a bagman for the unpredictable Ontario Liberal leader, Mitch Hepburn. Long before I joined Massey-Ferguson, he had completed his befogged progression to the far right, frequently complaining of Trudeau as a “commie fruit” and offering other drivel advanced by a deservedly obscure fascist publication in Flesherton, Ontario, which he funded largely by directing to it contributions from Massey-Ferguson and other companies in which Argus had a controlling interest. Not surprisingly, McDougald regarded me with some distaste and mistrust as clearly a Trudeau acolyte. From Toronto, Lee and I continued to travel privately, often to Britain. One English friend from diplomatic days, John Guinness, wrote in the summer of 1969 to the Bloomsbury painter Duncan Grant at Charleston in Sussex to introduce us. A luncheon invitation soon followed, the first of several to which we in turn took the octogenarian Grant. They invariably began with him castigating the vicious and futile policies of “your government” in Vietnam. Well into his eighties, he was beginning to lose it, but once we had established yet again that we were in fact Canadians and not Americans, we got off the Vietnam War and revelled in his anecdotes and recollections of Bloomsbury, of Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, et al., and, since he was bisexual, of his loves concurrently for Vanessa Bell and Maynard Keynes. Nijinsky stood high in his recollections, but D.H. Lawrence, Clive Bell, and Uncle Tom Cobbley also frequently crossed his memory. The house in Charleston where Grant and several other Bloomsbury conscientious objectors had spent the First World War

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as labourers on the farm of Lord Gage was a near-wreck. Grant cautioned us not to fall through great gaping holes in the heavily soiled wooden floors. Only when he took us into the overgrown garden and pointed to the River Ouse, where Virginia Woolf had drowned herself thirty years before, did he briefly suspend his endlessly diverting anecdotes about Bloomsbury and its liaisons. The immediacy of it all was only reinforced by Grant selecting for our purchase a painting of the Ouse at nearby Firle by Vanessa Bell and several of his own, including a vorticist still life of a plate we had found still sitting on the same shelf fifty years later. Within my limited role in Massey-Ferguson, I attempted to advance its interests with, concurrently, the general public, investors, the media, federal and provincial governments, the Food and Agricultural Organization, and even the United Nations itself, in the latter case by arranging for our easily flummoxed president to appear before an ad hoc UN committee that was attempting to assess the impact of transnational corporations on developing countries. The pedestrian nature of my tasks was relieved by occasional business trips to Latin America (especially Brazil), Europe, and, rather unlikely at the time, China. Thanks largely to Trudeau’s high standing in Beijing (Peking), Canada was the first Western country to be invited to organize a solo trade fair there (the treaty port of Canton held an annual international trade fair that was open to all). Since Canada had at long last joined the few Western countries with full diplomatic ties with China and had terminated its formal relations with Taiwan, the opportunity was too good to miss. Ottawa pulled out all the stops, as did the Chinese themselves, and the large Beijing fair was a decided success, even if my own minor contribution was not impressive. A range of heavy machines, including an appropriately bright red Massey-Ferguson combine harvester, was displayed outdoors at the fairground. Before the opening, Zhou Enlai paid a visit to the fair. He asked me smilingly – through his very able interpreter, whom I was not certain that he really needed – whether I knew how the great machine worked. “Not in any detail,” I replied lamely. With an even broader smile, “Neither do I, but we can agree between us that it looks very well.” On 4 September 1972, while flying from Irkutsk, Siberia, to Moscow on my return to Toronto, I wrote to Lee, eager to share with her my impressions of Beijing, where few Westerners were then allowed to venture. After speculating on the outcome of the election campaign underway in Canada, I wrote in my diary:

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september 1972. Soviet aircraft are generally cold. This one certainly is. It is also ugly and uncomfortable, over-crowded and noisy. The ussr is capable of putting satellites into space yet incapable it appears of finishing an aircraft in any way calculated to make it attractive and comfortable (as far as I can tell, it functions well enough mechanically). We sit in grey drabness, our knees up about our chins, and our legs pressing into the back of the passenger in the next seat forward … food is inedible, but that is hardly surprising since the food which you and I had in the ussr twelve years ago was also filthy – and I see no improvement. I want to write a little about Peking, but its complexity and interest is so great – as it is of China as a whole – that I hardly knew where to begin. Perhaps with something specific such as the courtesy and friendliness of the people. With a population now estimated to be on the way to one billion, there are naturally people everywhere, people in profusion in numbers to which we are quite unaccustomed in the West. But equally the people everywhere appear friendly. They of course stared at us, strange creatures as we must have seemed, but they are not hostile or suspicious. In shops, dozens would cluster around us to observe what strange antics we might perform, but when we smiled, they quickly returned the smile. If we played with their children, they were delighted. All the Canadians took so many photographs that they must regard our cameras as somehow extensions of ourselves, but even when they did not want to be in our photographs, they were always courteous in making way for us – or for our pictures. They look healthy, well-fed, adequately clothed. I imagine for anyone who knew China 50 or even 25 years ago, these achievements must appear near miracles. Certainly the people seem in every way to be more prosperous, relatively speaking, than Indians. The base squalor of the sub-continent is entirely absent. Beggars are unknown. No loathsome sores or crippling diseases are to be seen in the streets. Peking bears no resemblance whatsoever to Calcutta, that unparalleled sink of suffering and deprivation. Under Mao this material progress seems to have been accomplished, but at what terrible price is anyone’s guess. He is currently the single unifying force in a vast country with a huge population. Everywhere his picture and quotations from his unifying – generally in white or gold on bright red – are to be seen. A massive cult of personality, it seems, but how else, some ask, could one impose on the always centrifugal China

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any unity? To such as they, Mao seems clearly necessary and would have to be invented if he didn’t exist. After his death, whether he will be accounted a saint or more likely a devil remains to be seen, but for the time being close observers of the China scene certainly follows Mao’s every heartbeat with interest because of his apparent success in impressing himself on many of his fellow countrymen as an infallible or terrifying oracle. His “thoughts” – a copy of which I bought in Canton – are often to my mind banal and trite, if not utterly obscure. But Arendt of the Swiss Embassy cautioned me that each “thought” can be interpreted as the ideal toward which all must strive – and the opposite of what exists. If Mao writes that meetings should be kept short – a commonsensical if pedestrian observation – then we can assume that meetings in China are notoriously long. If Mao cautions against variety among “cadres,” then it is likely that such waywardness exists. In this sense, his thoughts are intended as a guide to new forms of organization in China. I only wish that Mao had thoughts about the everlasting clearing of throats and spitting and about the endless sounding of automobile horns! After visiting the Canadian exposition on our first morning in Peking – a large and uneven display of all kinds of Canadian products, set out in a wedding cake building presumably built by Russians – we were taken in several buses to the Imperial Palace (the “Forbidden City”) which had been closed during the apparently horrendous Cultural Revolution and has only recently been re-opened. To attempt to describe Tiananmen Square and the environs is a daunting challenge. One doesn’t know whether to emphasize the microcosmic or macrocosmic splendours. First, the area itself is vast. Over two hundred acres, surrounded by a high, terra cotta wall and moat. Within, among the numerous buildings, the rooms total, I believe, some 7000. Each of the many buildings we saw had a marvellous symmetry, a beauty of shape which everywhere was worthy of the decoration. What the current state of all the rooms is I do not of course know, but those we saw were superb, although some of the furnishings and objets were so unfamiliar to me that I was indifferent or rather invulnerable to their beauty. The colours throughout were generally bright and well-preserved or restored. Everywhere they joined in extraordinary patterns of light and rhythm. The large numbers of Chinese visitors, as well as the considerable size of our own group from the Canadian exposition, made it difficult to savour fully the serenity that must have been a dominant characteristic of the imperial palace. Even in the circumstances in

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which we saw them, the country and small open areas conveyed a sense of order and symmetry which contributed directly to the wonderfully pervasive sense of tranquillity.

Less challenging than that early trip to communist China was a brief visit to Bermuda, ostensibly to attend a Massey-Ferguson international marketing meeting but in fact to attempt to promote a degree of reconciliation between McDougald, Thornbrough, et al. and James Duncan, the long-serving and intellectually alive former president, now retired there, whom McDougald had driven out of the company into the welcoming arms of Ontario Hydro for being too independent-minded. Thornbrough had long been cautioned by McDougald not to consort with Duncan, so I was despatched as, I supposed, a sort of emissary of reconciliation, bearing silver gifts. Although I failed to help heal the long-standing breach, I welcomed such a diversion from my other trivial Massey-Ferguson tasks, both at home and abroad. I found Duncan stimulating in his broad international interests, especially China, and certainly well-informed about the travails of Massey-Ferguson, perhaps via his son-in-law, Hal Jackman, who was one of its few directors of substance. (McDougald was much enamoured of decorative peers as directors.) One final diversion in my five years of corporate life was to be sent by Massey-Ferguson to the Advanced Management Program of the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration, to give it its full name, possibly because I was seen as needing an injection of business orthodoxy to counter what must have seemed iconoclastic skepticism to some. The three months at Harvard in the spring of 1973 were amusing, especially on those weekends when Lee joined me in Boston. I must also have learned something more about business, since I returned to Toronto with the revelation that not all corporate life was so stultifying as I had found it at the faltering Massey-Ferguson. In my leisure time during the months at Harvard, I completed my first book. Several years earlier, while Lee was awaiting Malcolm’s birth, I had begun the necessary research, chiefly at the National Archives in Ottawa, for Canadians in Russia, 1918–1919 (1976). It was the result of a chance recollection by my father, who, while briefly recounting incidents from his service in Flanders (something that he unfortunately rarely did), referred in passing to the subsequent death in Murmansk of one of his fellow gunners in the ill-fated Allied intervention originally intended to assist the

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White Russians in their vain efforts to defeat the Bolsheviks and reopen the Eastern Front against the Germans. Intrigued, I eventually made time not only to pursue documents and diaries in the archives but also to meet two dozen or more surviving veterans. The Royal Naval Air Service “ace” Ray Collishaw of Vancouver and the gunner Colonel C.H.L. Sharman of Ottawa, in particular, shared with me their memories of the Black Sea steppes and North Russia respectively, as Dana Wilgress had once done regarding Canada’s commercial and financial ambitions in Siberia. Without their assistance and that of other survivors, Canadians in Russia would never have been described as the definitive account of the participation of almost five thousand Canadians in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. It was, however, something more than that. Canada’s voluntary participation reflected the divisions between how Liberals and Conservatives – Laurier and King, on the one hand, and Borden, on the other – saw the evolving nature of the self-governing dominion of Canada within the British Empire. For Laurier and King, autonomy and voluntary participation were the natural outcome of the political thinking that they had inherited from Britain. For Borden, voluntary participation emerged from a role in imperial decision-making, which, in his view, carried with it an obligation to contribute to the implementation of the agreed policy. Hence his willingness to offer Canadian troops to join Allied forces when he had been consulted on the pressing need, in the spring of 1918, to reopen the Eastern Front and, equally, to withdraw them after the end of the war, when the Allied intervention, pace Churchill, had become solely an intervention in the domestic affairs of Russia. The advent of my first book gave me something of the pleasure of a first-born, but my unease at corporate life at Massey-Ferguson continued. I thought briefly of either applying to return to the Department of External Affairs or, more likely, immediately accepting a Liberal nomination in the election foreseen for the summer of 1974, following my chairmanship that spring of the Prime Minister’s annual fundraising dinner in Toronto. Instead, David Ogilvy again came to my rescue. When I described to him my unhappiness at an increasingly rudderless MasseyFerguson, he arranged for me to be appointed president of Ogilvy and Mather (Canada), the bracketed “Canada” indicating that it was a foreign-owned company. The proliferation of foreign-owned companies was causing mounting concern among Canadian economic nationalists and

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I chaired the annual Liberal fundraising dinner in Toronto in 1974, the last of such dinners in black tie. In thanking me afterward, Trudeau wrote, “I was touched by the references that you made in your introduction to the days when I … worked with you in New York.” I then began to think seriously of how we might work together again.

beyond, fuelled in part by Nixon’s highly controversial unilateral protectionist trade measures of 1971. Walter Gordon, Pearson’s Minister of Finance, was in their vanguard, thereby earning muttered denunciations from McDougald for being yet another pinko in Ottawa. Ogilvy and Mather (Canada) was replete with skilled and creative people who both warmly and surprisingly welcomed me, a complete advertising neophyte, to their midst. I greatly enjoyed being the ceo of a company of one hundred or so employees, but although the headquarters of Ogilvy and Mather was in London, both the Toronto and Montreal offices remained essentially outposts of New York City. The two offices were set up to service the Canadian subsidiaries of major international clients of Ogilvy and Mather, among them Shell, Rowntree, Mercedes Benz, and General Foods. The world of advertising, at once creative and bizarre, was immediately interesting, but in time I found the job unsatisfying, given the inability of the two Canadian offices to be free of daily, detailed

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control from New York, then a common enough practice that had in turn contributed to the efforts of Walter Gordon and others to promote Canadian investment in Canada. Amidst my on-the-job learning at Ogilvy and Mather (Canada), there arrived an invitation from the Aspen Institute for Lee and me to participate in an international seminar on democracy in Iran, to be held in September 1975 in the great encampment near Persepolis where the year before the Shah had celebrated, with wonted lavishness, what was described as the 2,500th anniversary of the Pahlevi dynasty. (It was a claim that puzzled me since I had learned, while writing Canadians in Russia, that the Shah’s father had been a sergeant in the Persian army, attached to a Cossack unit.) With our new friends Paul and Sheila Martin (he was then with Power Corporation in Montreal) and our old friends and neighbours from Toronto Tony and Kitty Griffin, we joined other real or supposed savants from around the world for a fortnight in Persepolis, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Teheran. Asa and Susan Briggs and Shirley Williams, later to become close friends, were among the British guests, and Arthur Schlesinger and Lisa Halaby, the future Queen Noor of Jordan, among the Americans. The repeated efforts, led by the Shahbanou, to display the civil rights merits of her husband’s much criticized regime convinced few, but we were nevertheless indulged in a thousand and one delights, including iced champagne and endless caviar as we reclined in our tents upon Persian carpets amidst aromatic roses. Four years later the Shah was deposed, and an antithesis, in the tradition of dialectic, followed in the form of radical Islam. The synthesis remains, sooner or later to be worked out by the Persians themselves without outside intervention. Shortly after our return to Toronto, my second book was published as Canadians on the Nile, 1882–1898 (1978). Any account of the Canadian boatmen, or voyageurs, who volunteered to help transport General Wolseley’s large and cumbersome expeditionary force up the Nile River in 1884–85 is necessarily anecdotal, and splendidly so. Few Victorian sagas match the colour and drama of that ultimately futile effort to rescue the wonderfully eccentric General Charles “Chinese” Gordon in besieged Khartoum (the namesake of my Vancouver primary school). Added to that motley crew that set out to rescue him were almost five hundred Canadian boatmen, mostly French Canadians and Iroquois. Almost fifteen years later, to avenge the death of Gordon and secure what

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were thought to be the headwaters of the Nile, General Kitchener, himself a veteran of Wolseley’s earlier expedition, presided over a final advance on Khartoum, which culminated in the slaughter of an estimated ten thousand dervishes one morning at Omdurman. The riverine railway that helped to carry Kitchener’s soldiers and supplies deep into the Sudan was the result of the engineering skill of Lieutenant Percy Girouard re of Montreal. As in the earlier Sudan expedition, a number of Canadian militiamen and naval officers also happily went along. It was about the unlikely adventures of both expeditions that I wrote Canadians on the Nile. It was also about Canada’s evolving place in the British Empire during the closing decades of the nineteenth century. As I noted in the book, “the fact that Canadians were involved in such undertakings halfway around the world was an indication that their country was coming of age in the imperial era of Victoria, a roadmark on the meandering way to a new status. Somewhat paradoxically, participation in an imperial expedition contributed to the impetus to full nationhood.” At the same time I undertook for the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce a review of business-government relations, which had reached one of their periodic low points. The highly competent David Mackinnon of the Ontario government and several volunteers from the private sector joined me in preparing the report, which we presented in September 1976 to the newly appointed Minister of Industry, Jean Chrétien. It had a straightforward title, How to Improve Business-Government Relations in Canada, and its principal thesis was equally straightforward. Systematic management of the relations between the public and private sectors was needed. Without a forum in which relations could be improved, little would be achieved. We proposed, in brief, the creation of a Canadian Business Relations Council. Many in the corporate world, notably Bill Twaits of Imperial Oil and David Culver of Alcan, had become uneasy at what they saw as a dialogue de sourds between business and the two levels of government. They appeared to take some inspiration from our report and in time launched the Business Council on National Issues as the interlocuteur valable for major corporations (many of which were in fact subsidiaries of large US firms). Smaller enterprises were left to the tender care of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Some in the Privy Council Office were unenthusiastic about our various recommendations, smelling in them the ill-odour of a corporate state, but on balance the

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bcni (now renamed the Canadian Council of Chief Executive Officers) has played a constructive, if sometimes controversial, part in public life under the irrepressible Tom d’Aquino. After two or so gratifying years at Ogilvy and Mather, I decamped to head my own company, telling my old friend and mentor, David Ogilvy (by then happily ensconced in his apricot-coloured Château Touffou high above the River Vienne in Poitou), of my gratitude for the opportunity that he had given me to learn so much of how the business world wags. I received in return a warm accolade for my time at Ogilvy and Mather and for my entrepreneurship in acquiring my own company, as well as the following advice taken from the occasional writings of the clerical wit, Sydney Smith: 1st. Live as well as you dare. 2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75 or 80 degrees. 3rd. Amusing books. 4th. Short views of human life – not further than dinner or tea. 5th. Be as busy as you can. 6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you. 7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you. 8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends – but talk of them freely – they are always worse for dignified concealment. 9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you. 10th. Compare your lot with that of other people. 11th. Don’t expect too much from human life – a sorry business at the best. 12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion not ending in active benevolence. 13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree. 14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue. 15th. Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant. 16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness. 17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself but do yourself justice. 18th. Keep good blazing fires. 19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.

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101 David Ogilvy and Lee at the swimming pool at the Château Touffou on the banks of the Vienne, where he had retired following two decades as the British king of Madison Avenue. La vie en château was invariably amusing and instructive as we swapped stories ranging from Bloomsbury (Ogilvy had briefly been something of a protégé of Ottoline Morrell) to occupied France and the deplorable role of the milice.

Sandy Ross, by 1976 one of Canada’s most talented journalists and magazine editors, and I had been fellow undergraduates at the University of British Columbia. He was working with Michael de Pencier, the always inventive major shareholder of Key Publishers, on several magazines at once, notably the successful monthly Toronto Life. One day over lunch Sandy, looking as always slightly dishevelled, responded to my stated wish to be in the publishing business, however risky and ill-recompensed it was, with the chance information that he understood the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, then based in Montreal, was reluctantly putting up for sale its long-established and profitable in-house journal, Canadian Business. Since its founding in 1927, Canadian Business had advanced well beyond recording bowling and golf scores or listing the births, marriages, and deaths of the chamber’s members. It had sold advertising with moderate success to both member and non-member companies alike. In so doing, it had eventually attracted the unwelcome attention of the Department of National Revenue. The chamber, while a non-profit, tax-exempt organization, was making a profit, however modest, on one of its activities:

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Canadian Business. National Revenue duly called upon the chamber either to begin paying tax (thereby losing its tax-exempt status) or to sell its profit-making entity. Sam Hughes, the chamber’s president, received the reluctant approval of his board to sell Canadian Business to the highest bidder, but preferably to a Canadian company that would continue to publish the magazine and not merely fold it into another. In the subsequent bidding, Michael, Sandy, and I won. We in turn incorporated a company, C.B. Media Ltd., owned jointly by Key Publishers, Sandy, and myself. We moved the magazine from Montreal to Toronto, hired several new staffers, borrowed others part-time from Key, and cleared away the editorial underbrush to permit Sandy to shine as editor of the instantly unrecognizable Canadian Business. With him and the able writers whom he assembled – including Margaret Wente on her first job – the radically revamped magazine soon took off. The all-important advertising revenues mounted, along with increased circulation and newsstand sales. We had our occasional downs: for example, when the, to us, massive Globe and Mail launched its monthly Report on Business Magazine, guaranteeing major circulation simply by placing it as a free supplement in the newspaper. Nevertheless, under Sandy’s brilliant editorship, CB Media soon flourished. As advertising contracts multiplied satisfactorily, Lee and I took time off to travel to North Borneo (now Sabah in eastern Malaysia) to confront the 4,000-metre-high Mount Kinabalu. The mountain is in a national park, and the guide-porters are all employees. The drill is to climb for seven or eight hours on the first day to an overnight lodge – deplorably dirty – about four-fifths of the way up the peak. That day was sufficiently challenging that we collapsed into our narrow wooden cots at an early hour. The remainder of the drill was to arise at 0400 in the cold night and climb the last 500 metres or so of bare rock to watch the dawn come up like thunder across the Celebes Sea. That final stage Lee wisely decided was a bridge too far. I made it, but only just, gasping for oxygen on that last pre-dawn ascent. When in the afternoon we descended to the base, the customary gifts of two white T-shirts awaited us. In bold red letters mine said, “I climbed Mount Kinabalu.” Lee’s proclaimed, rather insensitively, “I attempted to climb Mount Kinabalu.” I was publisher and president of Canadian Business from our purchase in 1977 through 1982 and again from 1985 to 1993, time enough to add a few lesser publications to the stable. For several years, however, I had

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Michael de Pencier and Sandy Ross, both of Key Publishers, and I acquired Canadian Business magazine from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in 1977. We frequently discussed new ideas for the then monthly and how we might venture into new products.

been warily circling the idea of standing for Parliament in a Toronto constituency, having never lost my early zeal for public policy. Once I had left Massey-Ferguson, I had learned that business could be interesting and enjoyable, especially if one were the chief executive officer or owner or preferably both, but in the end it was still public policy that offered me the most challenge and the most satisfaction. The problem had always been whether I would be putting our young family’s livelihood at any risk if I lost an election. Massey-Ferguson had made no return provisions for would-be candidates to public office. The much smaller Ogilvy and Mather could hardly afford to furlough its chief executive officer, but paradoxically the yet smaller CB Media could. De Pencier would cover for me if I proved successful on the hustings. I am no less grateful today than I was those thirty years or so ago for the endless forbearance of my dear friend and business partner.

6


S’Wonderful

By 1978 the second term of Pierre Trudeau’s government was nearing its limit. It had not been an entirely happy time. Trudeau had shown uncharacteristic uncertainty in his handling of a succession of major domestic challenges: tax reform, capital punishment, environmental degradation, gay rights, relations between the private and public sectors, supply management in agriculture, military readiness. The greatest challenge arose from the fact that in 1974 Canada had moved into deficit financing and debt accumulation, partly as a result of Finance Minister Turner’s indexation of social programmes as a form of inflation protection, when Canada was importing inflation, chiefly in international oil prices, with its adverse impact on growth in productivity. During those five years of his second term, Trudeau had failed to convince the public that he still had clear goals in mind and the determination to reach them, as he had so clearly demonstrated in his first term. Famed earlier for his decisiveness, by 1978 he no longer carried much conviction, seemingly distracted by marital difficulties – cabinet colleagues sadly described to me the instabilities of his wife, Margaret – to the point where his cabinet appeared to be disintegrating around him. Turner’s resignation in 1975 had certainly not helped. No one was quite clear why he had left, since he had certainly not been a frustrated financial thinker constrained by an uncooperative or intrusive Prime Minister. But he had made little effort to hide his dislike – or was it simply envy? – of Trudeau. Marc Lalonde and André Ouellet, among others, had been caught up in allegations of impropriety. These and dozens of other gaffes, together with Trudeau’s uneven record and the perennial love-hate relationship of voters with their controversial Prime Minister, encouraged the new, young Conservative leader, Joe Clark, to be optimistic. In 1976 the Tories had elected Clark – immediately dubbed “Joe Who?” by a skep-

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tical media and delighted Liberals – to succeed the seemingly unelectable Robert Stanfield. Liberals everywhere deluded themselves into believing that, at the end of the day, voters would reject Clark as incapable of confronting the militant separatists of Quebec, who, led by René Lévesque, had defeated the Liberal Robert Bourassa in the provincial election of November 1976. Trudeau would be recognized as the only possible answer, Liberals everywhere confidently assured themselves. The polls, however, continued to suggest otherwise. English-speaking voters were seemingly no longer convinced by Trudeau. They appeared to have had enough of him, whatever the threat of Quebec separatists. Our old and influential friend, Jim Coutts, whom Trudeau had appointed his principal secretary in 1975, remained incorrigibly optimistic that the polls could be reversed during the election campaign, especially given Clark’s lacklustre performance as leader of the Opposition. Coutts was never able to take quite seriously the prospect that Clark might actually win the election. He would regale us with anecdotes of his political confrontations with his fellow student at the University of Alberta. Not surprisingly, in all such tales and in media accounts Clark came across as a hopeless wimp. Coutts and Keith Davey, the tireless national campaign manager, had earlier in 1978 urged an election on Trudeau when the polls were still favourable, but the Prime Minister’s young wife was, it was widely rumoured, continuing to cause such difficulties that he had rejected their advice and taken the gamble of awaiting another day. In the meantime, as a massive and highly risky testing of the Liberal electoral prospects, fifteen by-elections in a total of seven provinces were announced for the same day in October. John Evans, the distinguished president of the University of Toronto, was somehow induced by the ever-inventive Coutts to stand as the Liberals’ star candidate in the by-election in Toronto-Rosedale. It had apparently been conveyed to him that, once elected, he would be a leading contender to succeed Trudeau as head of the party (despite his having limited French). The constituency name, Rosedale, suggests affluence to most Torontonians; in fact, less than half of it was. In the southern section resided some who were below the poverty line; many others were only marginally, if at all, above it. In short order, Evans went down to unexpected defeat. The victor was the appealing Red Tory David Crombie, the tiny, perfect former mayor of Toronto, who in time was to become an unhappy minister in Mulroney’s first government. In the other two Toronto by-elections,

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the Liberal candidates, Chatelaine editor Doris Anderson and Crombie’s former budget chief, Art Eggleton, were defeated by Conservatives. (Eggleton was to reappear some years later as a successful candidate, minister, and senator, after an eleven-year term as mayor of Toronto.) Across Canada we Liberals lost thirteen of the fifteen by-elections; only in Quebec did we hold seats. The mini-election was a disaster, leaving many potential Liberal candidates elsewhere suddenly finding that they had other more pressing things to do than to stand for Parliament in the decidedly unpromising general election that could not be more than a year away. Others began to think of Turner as the only possible saviour of Liberal fortunes and even as the leader most likely to put Canada’s fiscal house in order. Four years earlier, in 1974, I had been invited by the Liberals in Toronto High Park to be their candidate, eager as they were to have that rara avis, a businessman who was also a Liberal (few in Toronto were). Liberal politics in Toronto were at that time still dominated by the almost decade-old debate between those who still followed the teachings of Walter Gordon in attempting to promote Canadian investment in Canada – an advocacy received with misgivings by most Toronto businessmen – and those who ascribed to the contrary view of Mitchell Sharp that a continuing high level of US investment would bring both the prosperity and the revenue which would in time make possible a higher degree of Canadian ownership in industry. By 1974 it was evident that the latter view had finally prevailed among a thin majority of Toronto Liberals. I was not myself persuaded that the two Liberal approaches to our further industrial development were irreconcilable, but in any event, I had decided that I would not then stand for Parliament. I was tempted, but prudence had suggested that I would do well first to anchor myself more firmly in the business world. By mid-1977, however, I concluded that with Canadian Business well-established, I could postpone the decision no longer. I was then aged forty-four; it was now or probably never. Although remaining uneasy about leaving CB and thereby imposing heavily upon the endless forbearance of de Pencier and Ross, I finally decided late that year to take the plunge in the next election. As a guide through the electoral labyrinth, first of a nomination campaign and then of the contest itself, Jim Cooper, an unabashed veteran of innumerable Liberal campaigns, both federal and provincial, and one of the most astute and good-humoured operatives in the coun-

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try, had been recommended to me by friends in the party as the person who could best secure a nomination for me. And so he was. A prior question, however, remained: in which constituency? The polls suggested that there was little purpose in contesting the seat of a sitting Conservative member. There were, moreover, few seats where the Liberal incumbent might possibly not stand, even in what was clearly an unpromising election. More favourable, it appeared, were three additional seats to be created in greater Toronto to match redistribution following the recent decennial census. In the municipality of Etobicoke, which I knew only by name, the two new constituencies of Etobicoke North and Etobicoke Centre were to be called into being by lifting sections from the neighbouring riding of York West, held by Liberal Jim Fleming, and the existing Etobicoke seat of my old friend from earlier campaigns, Alastair Gillespie, then Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources and seen as the only businessman in the Trudeau government until the arrival of Ed Lumley. The new constituency of Etobicoke North would embrace a total of two hundred or so polls taken from the two predecessor constituencies. In a rented room in the basement of the Holiday Inn on Airport Road, Cooper carefully transposed onto to the electoral map of the new constituency the results of the previous election in each poll and rightly concluded that Etobicoke North should be winnable by a Liberal, even in the face of a Tory sweep. Having thereafter identified local Liberal supporters – many of them Italo-Canadians, God bless them – Cooper promptly joined with an already well-disposed constituency executive in placing more MacLaren supporters in the new local Liberal association. He knew full well that my challenge would be less to win the seat itself than to win the nomination in the first place. Off I went, day after day, week after week, calling upon as many people as possible who might be persuaded to join the association and support me. However, Cooper was not the only person who could do arithmetic. Not surprisingly for such a promising new seat, the nomination meeting in February 1978 attracted the unusually high number of seven would-be candidates and a thousand or so new members. Gillespie and Fleming remained rightly scrupulous in their neutrality, but they did help to rebut the criticism, eagerly put about by several of my nomination opponents, that I did not live in the constituency (nor did Gillespie or, for that matter, the rumoured tyro Conservative candidate

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who would oppose him in Etobicoke Centre, Michael Wilson). Following three successive ballots at the seemingly endless Saturday nomination meeting in the North Albion Collegiate Institute, the challenge became that of retaining one’s supporters in the crowded and hot hall, festooned with red and white banners and posters. I had myself signed up a gratifying number of new members in the association, all pledged to support me, but as the afternoon wore on, parents became understandably pressed to collect children from Saturday programmes or do the weekly shopping or prepare dinner. By the early evening, however, at the end of five hours and four ballots, there was only one contender left standing; I was duly declared the candidate. As such, I soon followed an unchanging diurnal routine. Between the nomination meeting in February 1978 and the election more than a year later, on 22 May 1979, I spent weekday mornings at CB and afternoons and evenings six days a week on the streets of Etobicoke North. I came to know intimately what I had not known before: the most direct route from Front Street East to Rexdale, as well as every street, house, and apartment building in the constituency. Having made a major endeavour to win the nomination, I put out every exertion for more than a year to win the election. The auguries for the Liberals were forbidding everywhere except in Quebec, foretelling at least a Conservative minority government. Cooper had been rightly relentless in his insistence that, following calls upon every identifiable Liberal within the boundaries of the new constituency before the campaign began, I must employ the remaining pre-election time in cold calls on other constituents. By the time that the election writ was issued in April 1979, I had already visited every household, carefully noting all those voters who were either overt or likely Liberals. With the election, I started out a second time, frequently with Lee on leave from the university, to knock again on every door in the constituency, this time from a large campaign office on Dixon Road over which Cooper presided as effectively as he had over the fraught nomination process. He made it clear to me from day one that there was no chair for me in the campaign headquarters: my place was out ringing doorbells, hour after hour, six days a week, with Lee doing much the same thing elsewhere in the constituency. By election day I had for a third time knocked on the door – doorbells were frequently defunct – of every house and apartment in the constituency. To the last, we Liberals continued to believe that Clark’s patent inadequacies would somehow save us, but down we went on 22 May. Sud-

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denly Clark was Prime Minister, presiding over a minority government, and Trudeau was, however unlikely it seemed, leader of the Opposition. Our friends Gillespie and Danson were gone (Turner and MacDonald had resigned earlier), but I had won Etobicoke North, despite the Conservative victory of 136 seats to the Liberals 114 nationwide. I polled 20,500 votes to the Conservative candidate’s 19,000. Of this time I wrote in a journal that was published several years later as Honourable Mentions: The Uncommon Diary of an M.P. (1986). There follow several entries from my first election in May 1979 to my temporary leave of absence from Parliament upon my sole defeat in the election of September 1984. When I arrived in Ottawa as a neophyte mp, I found that I had been allotted two or three small rooms, but at least they were in the Centre Block. There, upon the recommendation of John Holmes, Hilary Pearson, Mike Pearson’s granddaughter, joined me fresh from Trinity College in the University of Toronto. Not unduly partisan and having absorbed during her degree work and by osmosis in her family a notable understanding of international affairs, she demonstrated a judgment that was invariably sound. But during my first months in the Centre Block, national politics came first. Few of us on the much depleted Liberal benches believed that Trudeau would long find a satisfactory outlet for his abundant creative energies in the unwelcome role of leader of the Opposition. And so it was. Six months of mounting boredom – and few things are more boring than Opposition – was enough for him. My diary entries relate something of what happened next. 21 november 1979: Toronto. Somehow one sensed that it was coming. If not today then next week or the following. That Trudeau was going few doubted. No one believed that he would be happy as Leader of the Opposition. It was only a question of when he would go. And, as it happened, it was today. When Trudeau entered the weekly caucus, belatedly and with a small entourage – both unusual in themselves – one somehow sensed immediately that the jig was up. He announced to a packed and expectant caucus that he would in a few minutes cross Wellington Street to confirm to the already assembled media that he was on his way, and that he had this morning asked the Party president to convene a leadership convention. Standing before his own photograph – all Liberal leaders are pictured on the walls of the caucus room, Blake looking especially tormented – he made a brief but felicitous statement of regret at leaving, of his gratitude

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for all the support that he had received, etc., stared out the window for a moment or two at the statue of Cartier, turned back toward us with a tear in his eye and then was gone – to cheers and a standing ovation. (Was it really a tear in the eye of this most self-disciplined of men? I never doubted that Pierre enjoyed being Prime Minister, but upon taking his leave of the caucus was he really shedding a tear?) Other than for Zhou Enlai, Trudeau seems to me the only national leader of recent years to comport himself with style, wit and charm. Macmillan might possibly if Boothby had not been pleasuring his wife, might indeed have been another Salisbury, if he had had a better hand to play; Kennedy in the end remained flawed, de Gaulle too insensitive and the remainder pygmies. Trudeau’s ability to combine attention to the most minute detail with a sweeping breadth of vision and an intuitive logic has done much to brighten the obscure, sometimes internecine, even miserable spectacle of politics (no wonder that Joe still repeatedly calls him “Prime Minister” in the House). Other phrases, brilliance of mind, resilience of spirit, sharpness of intelligence, disciplined authority, all flitted through my mind as I listen in dismay to his brief farewell. We shall not see the likes of him again. Anyway, he is gone. He has acted. It now remains for us to react. And that we have done in a variety of ways, each according to his or her views of our eventual electoral chances with a new leader or, more sentimentally, to the degree of affection harboured for Trudeau … French-speaking Members and Senators despondent and almost everyone a little stunned that it had, in fact, happened. Perhaps I misinterpret reactions, but the event, however often rehearsed in the minds of some, nevertheless came as a collective shock. Whatever our individual thoughts, it was, all in all, a sobering moment. At doors during the election campaign, some voters had assured me that if only we would dump that awful Trudeau, all would be well (generally the line was, “I have always voted Liberal, but I can’t as long as Trudeau is there”: this almost invariably from people who patently had never voted Liberal in their lives). Now, for the first time, we must consider seriously who can replace him. For the French-speaking members, the answer is clearly no one. For the rest of us, the choice is really only Turner or Macdonald. Later in the day, after listening to the excited but footling speculation of my colleagues about the leadership convention, I fly to Toronto and go

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straight from the airport to Macdonald‘s house to assure him that I’m with him … Clearly Don decided some time ago to contest the leadership if Trudeau resigned … I like both Turner and Macdonald. Either will make a good leader – and it’s the turn of an English-speaking Canadian. Don, a friend since Cambridge days, seems to me to embrace a wider spectrum of party thinking and has, since his resignation, continued to be active in every aspect of the party. And certainly he has been active on my behalf in the shopping malls of Etobicoke North. I’m much indebted to him. 13 december 1979: Ottawa. Luncheon today in the Parliamentary Restaurant with Keith Davey. When Sinc Stevens, somehow managing to look both pixyish and dyspeptic at the same time, passed our table, the ever-ebullient Keith hailed him, somewhat incredulously, with “The government will be defeated tonight!” Sinc all bland reassurances that no such thing could possibly happen, that the last thing we Liberals wanted was another election in which we would be thoroughly trounced, that accordingly we would ensure that some of our Members became marplots by absenting themselves from the vote, etc., etc. I was not so sure. Certainly there was electricity in the air, with most of the press gallery and indeed the paparazzi generally assuming that a Tory debacle had become irreversible. They were right … When the vote was taken a few minutes after 2000, the roof fell in on Clark and his floundering government, twenty-seven weeks after it had been elected. All our members save one managed to be there – even somehow one from his hospital bed – all the ndp and, more surprisingly, the six Créditistes. The latter now seem to me to have consigned themselves headlong into extinction, but then I do not understand much, if anything, of Quebec politics. Why the Tories didn’t square those six shuffling, forlorn figures, I do not know; it surely would not have been difficult (an obvious precaution when they must have known that some of their own Members would be absent; they had ample warning; a month or so ago they survived by only two votes). MacEachen, omnific as always, had certainly done his work with an amendment that both the ndp and the Créditistes could not escape supporting in the absence of any Tory effort at conciliating them. When the result of the vote defeating the government was read by our incorrigibly laconic Clerk of the House – 139 to 133 – pandemonium followed: banging of desks, cheering and jeering, paper airplanes launched

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on brief trajectories, etc. The Tories put a brave face on it all, shouting that an election will certainly give them the clear majority that had eluded them in May. Joe himself was – understandably – all bluster and mock confidence. I doubt, however, his longevity as Conservative leader, unless he wins decisively the forthcoming election. Justified or not, the so-called “wimp factor” will sooner or later do him in with his colleagues as well as with the public. Since Trudeau burst on the national scene almost fifteen years ago, everyone in politics, like it or not, has been measured against him. He has become the criterion, the standard. And certainly by that measurement, Joe has been found consistently wanting. A wholly decent, honest man so far as I can judge, but Trudeau and television have combined to finish him. If it were the year 1880 instead of 1980, his curiously wimpish characteristics would not be so painfully evident to voters – and he not seen so hopelessly wanting by comparison with Trudeau … I’m certain that Canada has decided not to have Joe as Prime Minister and that consequently we’ll win the election, although not perhaps by much. The Tories, true to their self-destructive traditions, will then wheel on Joe and gobble him up. Back to the hustings tomorrow, in the dead time of winter, barren winter with his wrathful nipping cold … With a plurality of 1,600, there’s no doubt where I’ll spend the next sixty days of dead winter … Out into the snow and then to bed before an early caucus tomorrow to contemplate the interesting question of how a party enters an election campaign without a leader. 14 december 1979. The caucus decides. A day-long, rambling caucus, but it does finally decide. And its decision, once taken, seems in retrospect inevitable. MacEachen, in an extraordinarily candid and forceful speech, a most remarkable speech following several hours of caucus dithering, spoke to us as if we were so many rows of naive and recalcitrant schoolboys – schoolpersons. What the hell were you doing voting out the Tories if you had not already made up your mind to invite Trudeau to resume immediately the leadership of the Party? Do you seriously think that it is possible to launch a leadership contest in the midst of a national election campaign? Put that way, the decision is clear enough. We must immediately invite Trudeau to resume the mantle … the caucus generally seems bewildered, but MacEachen is certain what must be done. He is right. To

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mount a leadership contest during an election campaign smacks of cloud cuckooland. It is, in fact, simply unthinkable. In any case, who better than Trudeau, especially with Quebec’s referendum now imminent?

In the frigid election of February 1980 we Liberals won hands down, 147 seats to the Conservative’s 103, including an astonishing 74 of 75 seats in Quebec. I was re-elected in Etobicoke North by 23,000 votes to the Conservative candidate’s 16,000. With the swearing-in of Trudeau’s new government on 4 March 1980, I became parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, the Oxonian Marc Lalonde. In elaborating a little upon the Prime Minister’s invitation, Marc added that he would do the easier part, petroleum, if I would do the difficult, nuclear. As we gathered in caucus, none of us needed any convincing that the first challenge of the resurrected Trudeau was to vanquish the Quebec separatists, led by René Lévesque. That Laocoon-like struggle would clearly take almost all of his time, with the eventual outcome far from certain. What was sure was our parallel commitment to fashion a new energy policy that would provide an answer to the disruptive economic impact of the sudden and what then seemed to be massive opec increases in international petroleum prices. Another major strain on confederation had emerged, basically fiscal. With Alberta claiming its constitutional right to regulate and tax the exploitation of natural resources within its provincial boundaries, its revenues soared as Canadians elsewhere paid ever-increasing petroleum prices. Clark, from Alberta himself, had attempted in a half-hearted way to come to grips with the widening fiscal imbalances straining confederation, but he soon dropped the subject, except for a stillborn excise tax. It had been left to Lalonde, our energy critic, during the election campaign to present the outlines of an ambitious plan – promptly condemned in Alberta – to restore some balance in the benefits that our domestic petroleum resources could generate for all Canadians, not merely those living in the western province. As we emerged victorious from the election, the more vociferous Albertans (many of whom had, of course, been born elsewhere) mounted the barricades, proclaiming their undying hostility to any excursion by the national government into what they saw as exclusively provincial rights, while at the same time joining in the opposition to any incursions by Quebec into what Albertans saw as national prerogatives. “Let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark” was the contribution of less sophisticated Albertans to the public policy debate.

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The more immediate challenge facing Trudeau was the referendum in Quebec in May 1980, intended to obtain a mandate to negotiate with Ottawa something separatists vaguely called “sovereignty association.” Earlier, in the campaign of 1979, Trudeau had promised that, if re-elected, he would hold a national referendum on his proposed patriation of the constitution (the British North America Act of 1867). Instead, the Quebec referendum intervened. On the first day of the new House, Trudeau announced what he had already discussed with us in caucus: support for the “No” side in the Quebec referendum and, nationally, for constitutional reform. Following his direct intervention, we were not surprised that in the Quebec referendum 59 per cent of voters rejected negotiation of “sovereignty association.” That in a sense was the easy part. Now Trudeau had to deliver to the people of Quebec and to Canadians more generally on his promise of constitutional reform. Throughout the next twelve months, the going was rough as he attempted to persuade the provinces to support the patriation of the British North America Act and to add to it a charter of rights that would also, in effect, accord the Supreme Court, rather than Parliament itself, the right to interpret what Parliament had meant when it had adopted any particular legislation. Many of us were not much enamoured of a written constitution and charter, having been nourished on the British parliamentary tradition of precedence. In the ensuing complex and confusing debates, strange bedfellows emerged. For example, Quebec and Alberta for a while engaged in a sort of unnatural provincial rights symbiosis. Trudeau’s initial move, vigorously supported by Chrétien, his Minister of Justice, to win acceptance by the provinces of his constitutional thinking went nowhere, with the exception of the highly valuable support of Bill Davis of Ontario. Needless to say, the hapless Clark and the Conservative opposition in Ottawa simply continued to oppose. The debate, however, had its moments. 23 april 1981: Ottawa. “And every eve I say / Noting my step in bliss, / That I have known no day / In all my life like this.” It was brewing for some time. God, it was suddenly noted, had somehow been omitted from the preamble to the draft Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Growls in caucus, but today we had it out on the floor. Much blowing and puffing about the absence of the deity. All Trudeau’s fault. “They roil and rumble / They turn and tumble / As piggies do in a poke.” And by the end of the

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day, God was safely back in the heaven of the preamble. She must have been amused.

All in all, it was a lively time, although not directly for the Liberal caucus. The constitution was Trudeau’s thing. The pmo and Michael Pitfield, the clerk of the Privy Council, certainly had their hands in, but not the caucus itself. The only occasion on which I became involved directly in the constitutional strategy was, oddly enough, in Korea, where I had gone as parliamentary secretary for energy. In April 1981 Trudeau, in the face of continuing hostility from most provinces had reluctantly agreed to refer the question of patriation of the constitution to the Supreme Court, following varying and contradictory opinions of several provincial appeal courts.

Trudeau and I share a quiet moment in Pusan, far from the otherwise hectic schedule of an official visit to Korea and the concurrent cares of the constitutional debate at home. On the plaques in the Commonwealth cemetery are the names and regiments of the Canadian dead.

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29 september 1981. In the blackest of nights, made blacker by the dazzling glare of arc lights surrounding the Canadian Forces aircraft (Korean security is taking no chances), I say goodbye to Trudeau, wishing him well at the Commonwealth conference in Melbourne which will, in part, help pave the way for the North-South gathering in Cancun next month. Korea has been a revelation. This is not the desolation of the late 1950s when I was en route to Saigon. This is not the grinding poverty that once made Korea seem a hopeless entrant in the development race. Au contraire, if I were Japanese, I would now be looking over my shoulder at the accelerating Koreans. Here is material progress at an astonishing rate. In a few decades, Korea has heaved mightily at its own bootstraps and done it. Health, education, employment and consumer goods have proliferated to the point where Korea seems to me easily to exceed the Japan that I knew in the 1960s. Civil liberties and the full play of democratic institutions are of less hardy growth – and Trudeau was questioned repeatedly by Canadian journalists why he would visit such a “dictatorship” – but the hostility of the North Koreans with their various infernal machines leaves me, the outsider, wondering whether what is possible in, say, Toronto is so readily achievable in Seoul. I don’t, in short, know whether it is for us to lecture these tough, highly disciplined people on all the fine points of democracy. I return to Ottawa tomorrow via Tokyo, my work here as Parliamentary Secretary for Energy completed after one or two more appointments. Trade between Canada and Korea has achieved a remarkable volume – beyond imagination not many years ago – and, fortunately, it’s not quite all bc coal or other raw materials from Canada to Korea. However, when one subtracts from the total the Candu reactor at Wolsung (and related sales) our exports are still disconcertingly low in the high-tech or even finished product categories. The talks about Candu with everyone from President Chun at the Blue House to officials in the trade and energy ministries were gratifying … As Trudeau flies southward tonight, he will have much to think about. We learned early today that the Supreme Court had delivered itself of the opinion that, although it was technically legal for the national government alone to seek enactment of the constitutional bill by Westminster, it was against constitutional convention (a stance sufficiently enigmatic to be worthy of Mackenzie King). The Manitoba and Quebec courts of appeal had already recognized the federal right to move unilaterally, but New-

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foundland was a half-hour behind and had gone the other way. Trudeau’s reaction this morning to the Supreme Court’s venture into politics was a brief, non-committal statement broadcast to Canada from a Seoul television station (via satellite his broadcast will reach Canada yesterday evening) to the effect that we are fundamentally in the same position that we were before the Supreme Court was stuck with the question of legality versus conventionality. Last night when the news of the court’s Delphic opinion arrived, I met with Trudeau, Pitfield, et al. The meeting was interspersed with long telephone conversations with Kirby and others in Ottawa, but the meeting itself was not long. Trudeau knew what he wanted to say this morning and it really only required Pitfield to draft the final wording; essentially that the court’s opinion has changed nothing. There will, however, need to be much thinking during the weeks ahead about the next and final stage of discussions with the provincial premiers – which cannot now be far off.

The government was contending with the provinces on two fronts. A year before, in October 1980, Allan MacEachen, in his guise as Minister of Finance, had tabled the complex National Energy Programme as a budget. I understood little more about the finer points of the nep than I did about Candu reactors. In both cases, I hit the deck running. I had much to learn. The nep was complex, but on one point I was clear. I was soon convinced that we were being overly ambitious. We were trying to do too much at the same time. In my journal entry for 29 October 1980, I puzzled over what the nep was all about. 29 october 1980: Ottawa. Some of the details and implications of the nep, introduced by MacEachen yesterday in the budget (indeed the budget was the nep and vice versa) are of such complexity that I still don’t fully understand them all. Perhaps I should take comfort in the ruling of an Ontario judge that “a solicitor is deemed to know the basic principles of law, but not all the law.” The stated purposes of the nep are threefold: “1 … establish the basis for Canadians to seize control of their own energy future through security of supply and ultimate independence from the world oil market; 2 … offer Canadians, all Canadians, the real opportunity to participate in the energy industry … and to share in the benefits of industry expansion; 3 … establish a petroleum pricing and revenue-sharing regime that rec-

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ognizes the requirements of fairness to all Canadians no matter where they live.” So far so good. No one could argue much with those three broad goals. The difficulties begin at the next level. I have joined the cast during the second act (indeed, at the end of the second act) so my judgement may be distorted, but it does appear to me that we’re attempting to do too much all at once. I don’t simply mean that we’re concurrently promoting additional sources of energy-wind, solar, biomass – as well as conservation, pipeline extensions, conversion from oil to natural gas, etc, etc – but at the heart of the nep we’re attempting to do three things: hold Canadian oil prices below soaring world prices; increase the federal share of tax revenues; and promote Canadian ownership in an industry hitherto dominated by foreigners. And when megaprojects are added, the result is virtually an industrial strategy, with broad implications for our balance of payments, our ability to reduce the amount of inflation which we now import, and to free ourselves from US monetary policy. It could be argued that all three major goals in the nep are inextricably related, but I question whether in politics one can ever do three things simultaneously. One is possible. Two is difficult. But to do three things at the same time is virtually impossible. Even the ring master of that superb circus in Moscow had, I recall, difficulty in keeping his eye on all three rings concurrently. Our situation now is that if we keep the lid on oil prices, it will be less easy to implement certain aspects of the other two policies. And we’re a little like the Dutch boy and the dike. We no sooner plug one leak – thereby increasing the complexity of already complex legislation – than another leak suddenly appears. And so on. Marc is a brilliant ring master, but the complexity of it challenges all intelligence. There’s something even more fundamentally difficult about the nep. It is predicated on the assumption of constantly increasing international, oil prices ($68.65 per barrel by 1 July 1986). Higher prices are, to excuse the metaphor, the lubricant which will make the whole thing work. Higher prices will help pay for the Canadianization of the industry (the most popular element in the total programme), fund alternative fuel projects, provide more revenue for governments as well as for producers, etc., etc. But what if world prices were to level off or even to decline? What a paradox we would then have: consumer countries welcoming lower prices so as to reduce inflation – a consummation to be as devoutly wished by Canadians as by anyone – but at the same time an energy policy based upon higher world oil prices.

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Probably all this is futile conjecture. There’s certainly no sign that international oil prices are going anywhere but up and up. but 1 nevertheless have misgivings about such assumptions of continuity. Politics is not about continuity.

Life in government was, however, not all work and no play. Levity of one sort was provided by Jack Pickersgill when I lunched with him on April Fool’s Day 1981, shortly after he had produced his book The Road Back, an account of the recovery of the Liberal Party as he saw it following its defeats by Diefenbaker. 1 april 1981: Ottawa. After a melancholy review of brother Frank’s life – terminated at Buchenwald by garrotting – Jack proclaimed that no one in the party appears to care a rap anymore about what he thinks, yet he has a quick mind, vigorous, analytical, good humoured and decisive. Jack is convinced that we should have spurned the temptation to defeat the Tories, that we should have taken a year or two in opposition to regenerate ourselves and to equip ourselves with a new leader and new policies, to careen and refit while the Tories founder in a sea of economic troubles. The Great Cathartic. But that surely is asking more in the way of self-denial than any political flesh can possibly bear. What politician – including Jack himself – could resist the opportunity to turn out the pettifogging rascals and return the governance of the country to those more able hands in which it so patently belongs. But Jack would have none of this, contending that once every generation a sort of collective madness overcomes Canadians. Lemming-like, they vote in a Conservative government only to realize almost immediately the enormity of their error. At our peril, we Liberals have impetuously violated this inexorable historical law. We have ignored the opportunity to remove ourselves gracefully from our excessive preoccupation with Trudeau, while leaving the current and pending economic difficulties to confirm in the electorate’s mind that Tory times are, tout court, bad times. All this said with a twinkle – but also half-serious.

Concurrently we ground away at the constitution and energy policies, I travelling with Lalonde to not very jolly meetings in a generally hostile west, as well as participating in the negotiations in Ottawa, all intended to narrow the still gaping differences between the federal and western provincial governments.

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15 april 1981: Ottawa. Lalonde and Leitch have met in Winnipeg (inevitably dubbed “the Marc and Merv show”) against the background of Lougheed’s now longstanding threat to reduce Alberta’s oil production by 15 per cent by 1 September. What a curious country this is. The national government, duly elected and employing its undoubted right, decides that oil should be priced in Canada at so many dollars per barrel, a price less than soaring world prices. But that national price is not enough in the view of the Alberta government (although more than ample in the view of the Ontario government). Alberta believes that the price should be higher (and its tax revenue accordingly higher), so it tells the rest of Canada, since you won’t pay what we want you to pay, we shall reduce the amount of oil that we produce. Too bad for you that you will have to pay more for the imported oil to make up the difference. That’s your problem. This is nutty. What a country to govern! Yet this sort of silliness is somehow accepted as being “Canadian.” In Winnipeg Lalonde gives Leitch a modified offer, although it does not depart substantially from the original pricing schedule of the nep. Various adjustments were made elsewhere, a concession here, an interpretation there, yet more subtle approaches everywhere, but the price schedule will be held largely unchanged. Some of our own members are uneasy about the dust we’re stirring up, about the longer term electoral impact – about appearing as a government that cannot get along with provincial governments – and even some mps from the Atlantic provinces have begun to talk in terms of conceding to Alberta markedly higher prices, despite the fact that this would mean continuing or even greater imbalances among provinces. And the oil patch now talks of any agreement being better than the continuing absence of agreement. I don’t suppose that such an attitude would last longer in the face of any agreement that they really don’t like. Then they’ll forget their present sense of urgency, their deepening dislike of uncertainty that prompts their current statements. “We piped to you, and you did not dance.”

Finally, after almost a year of non-stop haggling, cajoling, confrontation, contention, and uncertainties, agreement on just about every aspect of a national energy policy was reached.

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9 september 1981: Toronto. Never was there doubt during the year of the nep that, in the end, Trudeau and Lougheed would join together in endorsing any agreement reached by Lalonde and Leitch. They have now so joined – but only after the markets had closed. Following the hostile and extravagant rhetoric of these many months, this sudden chumminess over champagne seems a little contrived, no doubt contributing to the cynical “that’s-politics-for-you” attitude – and leaving some of the more extravagant and innocent Alberta Members gaping. Throughout the nep debate, their continuing denial of the pragmatic messiness of the real world has increasingly isolated them in their unsustainable flights of facile, self-righteous abstraction. Now even the Alberta Government has left them out to dry … From the beginning, the whole exercise has been conducted in great confidentiality, neither side spilling the beans, leaving the media to engage in some notable flights of fantasy. What finally led to agreement was Lalonde’s sense of timing, of when to play his trump card: a willingness to increase oil prices in Canada faster and higher than had before been offered. A blended price will combine the world price for “new oil” (including oil that is henceforth discovered) and “old oil” to be held at three-quarters of forecast world prices through the duration of the agreement (which expires in 1986). This is seen as a hedge against conflict in the Middle East driving up world prices even more. In this sense. Alberta gave up its demand for “world prices.” We in turn reduced to zero the proposed natural gas export tax (but left it on the books as our affirmation of its constitutionality). The agreement provides much of what Marc sought. A higher proportion of the total revenue is assured for the national government (from about 10 per cent to 25 per cent). A lower price is set for natural gas. Major incentives are offered for companies to become more Canadian (the more Canadian they are, the greater will be the exploration grants they receive, even in Alberta where the grants will be paid exclusively by the Alberta government – but only in accordance with federal rules). “Canadianization” was proceeding, albeit at a leisurely pace; now it should accelerate. So should exploration in the “frontiers”: the Arctic and the Atlantic. Self-sufficiency in oil (we are already self-sufficient in every other major source of energy) is probably closer than we think, partly as a result of conservation and replacement, but also as a result of reduced economic activity during the current recession.

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The agreement is certainly complex, if it’s anything. It will take time for the industry to understand fully what the Edmonton-Ottawa accord means. And agreements with Saskatchewan and bc still need to be negotiated. One thing, however, is now quite clear; we Canadians will control our own petroleum industry to a greater degree than seemed likely even a few years ago.

With the Trudeau-Lougheed agreement of October 1981, the nep promptly faded from the front pages. As Trudeau said, it was “in keeping with the long tradition of Canadian federalism. We’ve bargained hard and reached a compromise – a good Canadian term.” 26 june 1982: Ottawa. The final bill in the series of eight separate energy bills that complete the nep has now sailed through the House. No one has paid much attention. Yet these are the same eight bills which were derived from the one omnibus energy bill which the Tories attempted to exploit in their vain attempt to bring down the government in March. How ludicrous it now all seems!

Meanwhile I spent every Saturday morning in my constituency office, seeing all those who wanted to see me. 8 november 1981: Toronto … I have been able to encourage some cmhc mortgage money into their [Ukrainian Canadians’] old peoples’ home, a model of its kind. And at the other end of the spectrum, I have been gratified to provide some federal funding for a home for battered wives. What an innocent I must be! One day in 1980 when Teresa and I were canvassing together … a woman at a door was so busy hiding her face from us that I was barely able to speak with her. Noting my puzzlement, Teresa explained, as we descended the steps, that the woman was clearly ashamed of having been beaten by her husband. As a result of that revelation and several subsequent confirmations from the police about the incidence of wife-battering, I took the first occasion to channel some federal financing toward a transient home for battered wives and frequently for their children as well – at least for those wives who have the formidable courage to run away from their loutish husbands. If I do nothing more as an mp, I shall always be pleased that I did that.

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11 january 1982: Toronto. One of my periodic public meetings in Etobicoke North yesterday evening. Not many present and not exactly a Socratic dialogue, the few dozen there being angry about uffi, airport noise and most of all, economic recession – inflation and unemployment. Two men, one a long streak of misery and the other a nasty runt, were particularly agitated, shouting and swearing about MacEachen’s budget, Emperor Trudeau’s arrogance and what they imaginatively described as my personal affluence and hence indifference to the plight of others. During what was ostensibly a question-and-answer period, I managed to determine that they were not from my constituency (they were from Malton) and clearly from their accents they were originally from the north of England. They took up much of the meeting abusing the government and me. Before stomping out, the runt concluded his diatribe with a shouted threat: since I was in Ottawa much of the time, they would be unable to “get me,” but they knew where I lived and that I had three children; they would murder one or more of them, since we Liberals were killing the future of all young Canadians. Then they stormed out with many a furious oath. Taking no chances, I immediately terminated the now stunned meeting, went out myself into the frigid night and ’phoned the police. There’s little that the police can do since I don’t know who the would-be infanticides are, but our children will at least have some surveillance. When I turned in my driveway, a policeman suddenly emerges from the shadows to ask me who I am. At least that system, it seems, works.

In parallel with my constituency duties, I plugged away at the report on that perennial Ottawa topic, the future of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. The domestic market for nuclear reactors having been met, export orders were the hope for the future. My sales trips to Korea proved promising, but a visit to Yugoslavia – then still Yugoslavia – was not. Undeniably, the prospects for the Candu rector, however superior its heavywater, natural uranium technology, were not promising in a world that had increasingly come to be dominated by US light-water technology. And so it was to prove, aecl continuing to survive largely on federal largesse while it struggled, along with other reactor companies, to devise foolproof methods for the permanent disposal of spent radioactive fuel. Not very imaginatively, I recommended the continuation of federal funding,

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hoping, like Mr Macawber, that sooner or later something would turn up so that we could avoid the sale of aecl. While all this and much else was playing out on the energy front, the focus of the Prime Minister remained firmly fixed on the constitution. Home from Korea and Australia, he let it be known that, in light of the musings of the Supreme Court, he would in November 1981 convene a final make-or-break federal-provincial conference. If the opposing premiers were not then persuaded, he would go it alone, seeking patriation of the bna by an act of the British parliament and, failing that, via a national referendum. 2 november 1981: Ottawa. The final constitutional conference opened this morning. It is the dénouement. In anticipation, the old Union Station has for several days been increasingly festooned with television equipment. Chrétien tells me that he’s not optimistic about a compromise, but I’m damned sure that he’ll be in there attempting to bring one about until the last possible moment. Trudeau has made it abundantly clear that this is his last shot. No agreement now means either a national referendum or, more likely, the final vote in Parliament on the resolution. 5 november 1981: Ottawa. Although I live primarily the nep and nuclear energy, all of us have, more or less, been living the constitution. And contrary to expectations, after sixteen long months of skirmishing, agreement was finally reached today with nine provinces, Quebec under Lévesque remaining self-isolated and irreconcilable.

At the last moment, Chrétien had reported to Trudeau an agreement of sorts with nine provinces. Like most compromises, it pleased neither the federal nor the provincial governments, but it was again a distinctly Canadian compromise, in keeping with the whole history of Canada as one long compromise. It was also something of a ragtag settlement: a charter of rights and freedoms, a provincial amending formula, opting out for provinces without compensation, and, most controversial of all, a notwithstanding clause. It remained only for Parliament to rubber stamp the agreement. 2 december 1981: Ottawa. This afternoon the “Constitution Act 1981” finally went through the Senate and hence to Westminster. In a real sense, the House was never the cockpit of the constitutional debate, that being

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basically a federal-provincial confrontation, the centre was always elsewhere. The House remained throughout something of a sideshow. Nevertheless, we indicated our esteem for the provincial-federal agreement by rising to sing, in a cacophony of French and English, “O Canada” (not the first time that the House has broken into anthem; the much debated decision to offer Canadian volunteers for the South African War was greeted with a vigorous “God Save the Queen,” but I am sure that only English voices were then heard). The votes first on the amendments and then on the resolution itself were not unanimous, far from it. Despite the enthusiasm of our side, five of our Members joined a number of Tories and the ndp in voting against it for a variety of reasons – two anti-abortionists were, for example, among them – resulting in a final vote of 246 in favour to 24 against … After the vote, Jeanne Sauvé felt the anti-climax as much as any of us. She rather tentatively directed the House to other business when there was no consent to adjourn. And that was that. No more speeches, no more rhetoric about the constitution.

The British parliament moved swiftly and appropriately. And the rest was history. 17 april 1982: Ottawa. The captains and the kings have departed, the platforms dismantled, the chairs folded, the flags struck. And we have a new Constitution and a Charter of Rights, both home made. One day in caucus – it now seems long ago – someone urged, in response to a question from Trudeau, that we should go whole hog: “Allons-y en Cadillac.” It was then becoming evident that we would have a major fight on our hands with at least most, if not all, of the provincial governments as well as the federal Tories (who seemed determined to oppose – if in some cases for no better reason that opposing for the sake of opposing). So if we were to have a fight, we might just as well have a big dust-up. And that we certainly did. But now it’s done. Lee and I changed at the apartment – I into morning coat – and drove to the Hill through the streets lined with crowds eager to see the Queen arrive from Rideau Hall … despite louring clouds and threatening rain, there was palpable excitement amidst the stands erected temporarily on the Hill … The new constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are the ultimate answer – at least for this generation – to those who believe that the future

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of French-speaking Canadians would be better assured by an independent republic of Quebec than by a Canada that consciously and consistently seeks to provide both our founding peoples with the maximal opportunity to realize themselves in this still rather tentative nation. Thanks to Trudeau, it will be less tentative from today.

My particular role as parliamentary secretary for Energy was also coming to a conclusion in early August. 4 august 1982: Ottawa. Following question period, Marc tables the report of the year-long nuclear energy review over which I presided (at least nominally). As in the case of Mark Twain’s demise, the reports of aecl’s imminent end are premature. Yet despite universal expectations that high oil prices are, like love, here to stay; that electricity should be substituted wherever possible and that the Candu reactor is a remarkably efficient and safe machine, there abides a persistent public distrust of nuclear energy. Admittedly disposal of spent fuel remains unresolved, but in the minds of some there is the unshakeable conviction that the whole thing is black magic. The recent intense public interest in the question has, however, now faded a little and, in any event, I doubt whether our carefully balanced report will resolve any fundamental questions or even receive much notice … aecl will continue as one of our few indigenous high-tech industries, heavily subsidized by the taxpayer while awaiting better export prospects than are evident anywhere today. And domestically the prospects for the early construction of additional plants are non-existent, except possibly for a second in New Brunswick largely supplying New England (they get the electricity, we get their dollars – and their radioactive waste). Tonight we finally adjourned (until 27 October). A long time asittin’, most of the summer having now passed. Children will soon be back in school. But we did … manage to get through a remarkable amount of legislation, notably in these last weeks of this hot summer. Now to Scotland. 20 august 1982: The Braes of Balquhidder. Walking, walking, walking with Malcolm around Loch Voil, blessedly silent far from the nearest automobile, upon the braes from where the MacLarens departed for Prince

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Edward Island almost two centuries ago after going up with Prince Charles. Immensely grateful … for a few days … amidst the wholesome Highlands, the cycle of the seasons, to watch the waxing of the moon and the rising of the sun, to see hares and pheasants scurry away into the heather or coppice. I hope that I never become wholly isolated from the cycle of the seasons, senseless to the nip of frost or the burning of the sun, distant from green pine woods or the excitement of a dog on a long walk.

Amidst the detritus from the debates over the constitution and energy policies, I completed another book, Canadians behind Enemy Lines, 1939–1945 (1981), again convinced that I would know more about Canada if I knew more not only about how Canadians in the past have ordered their lives but how they have made their way in the greater world beyond their frontiers. To paraphrase Kipling, who knows Canada who only Canada knows? All my books have something to do with that basic question. I had great fun in writing CBEL s (as it became know to the cognoscenti), having met the fifty or so survivors of the approximately one hundred extraordinary Canadians who volunteered during the Second World War to serve with one of two British clandestine organizations: the Special Operations Executive (soe) and mi9, the escape and evasion organization. In addition to talking with the survivors (a similar opportunity to interview survivors had been more limited but not yet impossible when earlier I wrote Canadians in Russia), I had access in London to soe archivists and historians, especially M.R.D. Foot, and to the service records of the Canadians, thanks to the contacts that I had made when, years before, I served in the intelligence section of the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa. CBEL s was launched on Armistice Day in 1981 at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto. A week later it was launched at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. 17 november 1981: Ottawa … Good parties with several soe and mi 9 survivors at both. In Toronto, the tall and angular Hal Jackman and a stocky, ardent Yugoslav-Canadian communist made a cute couple, happily nattering away at each other from under their equally bushy eyebrows. In Ottawa, it was decidedly a French-Canadian evening, in some small way a reflection of the courage that individual French-Canadians consistently demonstrated in a variety of clandestine wartime roles. Lalonde and

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Lamontagne (himself a rcaf prisoner of war) had a great time with the survivors, especially such voluble and raffish types as Chartrand and Meunier. With my atrocious French, I found myself scrambling to keep up. I attempted to describe at both parties (and in media interviews across Canada) that common quality of courage which all volunteers shared, no matter how diverse they were – and they were very diverse – in other respects. And I said that such diversity was primarily why Canada was seen by British clandestine agencies as a sort of multinational storehouse for volunteers for secret service during World War ii: Italians, French, Chinese, Japanese, Hungarian, Romanians, Yugoslavs, even a Bulgar. The one characteristic that they had shared was an ability to sustain perpetual uncertainty, constant apprehension, a sort of mute terror while living in enemy-occupied Europe or Asia: a high order of courage indeed. I don’t know why I write so much about war. Is it the old business that combat throws everything into stark relief, stripping away the superfluities? Or is it simply that I was of an impressionable age during the war and rather regret missing the adventure which I viewed from such a great – and safe – distance in Vancouver?

I could not answer my own question, but the book told something of the service of Canadians in yet other overseas ventures which, as in the case of Sudan and Russia, have aided us in defining ourselves. To be sure, it helps to understand how others see us. CBEL s, published in both English and French, continues to sell well.

7


Just One of Those Things

Having completed my two-year term as parliamentary secretary, I reverted to the more quiescent role of a backbencher. In a cabinet shuffle of September 1982, Lalonde became Minister of Finance. I travelled to Europe with Trudeau. 9 november 1982: Lille. Direct from Ottawa, we land at Lille where, in the heavy rain, Mauroy – still mayor of Lille, I believe, as well as Prime Minister of France – and an honour guard awaiting Trudeau. The rain entirely congruent in this bleak, austere and ultimately ugly northeast department. Never my favourite part of glorious France, but I am grateful to be here – or at least in Flanders near where my father, a teenager from a pei farm, was severely wounded, struggling through the fire, mud and shell holes of Passchendaele. At Vimy Ridge, where there had gathered two military bands, honour guards from both the Canadian and French armies, several hundred now aging veterans of two world wars and a thousand or more spectators, Bennett Campbell and I stand near Trudeau and Mauroy, rain running off our bare heads as we honour the dead, almost on the eve of Armistice Day. A veteran of Dieppe reads in a firm voice one verse of remembrance, but when the sole Canadian veteran of Vimy present begins, “At the going down of the sun …,” his voice falters, breaks and he cannot continue. I weep. So do Trudeau and Mauroy. The wind blows and the final notes of “The Last Post” fade away. It is done. As we walk later about the terraces of the Vimy Memorial – surely the greatest of all such memorials – I tell Trudeau and Mauroy of the prebattle tunnelling by Canadian miners under the German lines. (I speak in English because I can’t recall what the French is for “blow up.” Trudeau

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While Trudeau is given driving instructions by an armoured corps nco, Justin and I peer from our turret in mute disbelief as we charge about the training fields at the Canadian base at Lahr, Germany, before travelling on to the Napoleonic battlefields of Bavaria.

steps in with faire sauter for Mauroy’s benefit.) I continue about the fact that soon after this first occasion when all four Canadian divisions had come together under the command of a Canadian general, that same general, Currie, was threatened with legal action in Victoria by hostile pro-Hughes Conservatives for his unpaid debts arising from pre-war real estate transactions. Just the thing to tell an impecunious and hard-pressed general following a great Canadian victory! Trudeau fascinated and Mauroy simply incredulous. 13 november 1982: Munich. With Trudeau being instructed in how to drive the Leopard, Justin and I are almost shot out of its turret like two white overall-clad projectiles seeking a target. Trudeau jams on the brakes because, he explained to us afterward, he couldn’t believe that such a massive conglomeration of steel could stop so readily. In fact, those many tons are remarkably mobile in the hands of a trained driver, turning, stopping and reversing with, apparently, the slightest touch. A worthy successor to the Panzers.

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The display which the military put on was first class, the troops highly professional. None more attentive than Trudeau (unless it was Justin). The paucity of certain sophisticated equipment was, however, evident. It seems to be getting better, but there’s clearly some distance yet to go. This morning we were less mechanically minded. Accompanied by a knowledgeable retired Wehrmacht general as guide, Trudeau, Justin, the inevitable security guards and I – everyone else had flown direct from Bonn to Munich – stomped about the rain-drenched battlefield of Ulm, tracing the route of Napoleon’s sudden descent upon the hapless Mack. In my hand a hardcover Thompson, in my raincoat pocket a paperback Markham and in my mind a suddenly revived if passing fascination for everything relating to the emperor. Napoleon’s victory at Ulm was total. It soon led eastward to his even greater victory at Austerlitz, but both victories in fact masked a yet greater defeat. The day before Ulm, Nelson had finally been able to close with the Franco-Spanish fleet off Cap Trafalgar. Hargood in the Belleisle to a younger officer eager to begin firing: “No, Sir, we are ordered to go through the line and go through we shall, by God!”: the Nelson Touch. On the other hand, Collingwood in the Royal Sovereign: “I wish Nelson would stop signalling. We know well enough what to do.” Britannia would rule the waves for another century. Trudeau, recalling suddenly that I had once served in the legation in Prague, asks whether I had ever visited one of the few Napoleonic battlefields that he has not: Austerlitz. “Yes,” I reply, only to be confronted immediately with the question, “Is the marsh still there that helped Napoleon pierce the extended allied line?” I search about in my capricious memory, trying vainly to recall. We drive southward towards the Alps, rejoicing en route in the pale yellow of a splendid baroque church standing alone in hay fields near Biberach. Our destination is a few kilometres from the Austrian frontier: the mad Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein and, by candlelight only, Linderhof. The first gloriously ugly and the second out of focus. Good talk, as we drive along (Trudeau with the driver in the front, Justin and I in the back) about Louis xiv, Henri Bourassa, Boulanger, the Reichstag fire, Gide, Machu Picchu, interspersed by Trudeau’s occasional paternal admonitions to Justin to listen or to observe a finer point of courtesy. An attentive father, affectionate yet exigent. By the time that we are bowed into the Quatre Saisons in Munich, all

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arrangements have been completed for Trudeau to fly to Moscow at noon tomorrow to attend Brezhnev’s funeral and I to Ottawa for likely votes in the House (but not before a quick visit in the morning to the Asamkirche and to my London tailor in the afternoon). A farewell dinner tonight at the Aubergine, surely one of Europe’s great restaurants. Trudeau easy and amusing, full of sly humour, but both of us feeling, I think, that the evening was a little too en garçon.

In Ottawa, with the controversies over the constitution and the nep finally resolved, I had a little more time, as a backbencher, for the writing of books – and time to rejoice in the diversions of my colleagues. 26 january 1983: Ottawa. One is grateful to one’s colleagues for the comic relief that they invariably provide amidst the longueurs of parliamentary debate (what Bagehot once described as “the representative tedium of the nation”). That farceur from Peterborough, Cnut-like, calls repeatedly for the reversal of the metric tide to the vast amusement of the House, but today our gratitude must go to that nameless colleague who, during the course of a little romp in his office, was locked out by his suddenly disgruntled – or playful – amoretta. Finding himself in the corridor with nothing on but a towel –presumably not one of the House of Commons’ towels which are only handkerchief-sized and of a particularly vile pistachio hue – he summoned a guard to re-open his office. Now the story is enthusiastically given full wind by all, but the hero of the piece remains modestly if truculently anonymous. How grateful one is for these little diversions. “And next to him rode lustfull Lechery / Upon a bearded Goat, whose rugged haire / and whally eyes (the sign of gelosy), / was like the person selfe, whom he did beare: / Who rough, and blacke, and filthy did appeare, / Unseemly man to please faire Ladies eye; / Yet he of Ladies oft was loved deare, / When fairer faces were bid standen by: / O who does know the bent of womens fantasy?” Somehow, even on the backbenches, the navy continued to be with me. 30 january 1983: Ottawa. Located a copy of Corvette K-225 for the dinner at the ago which I have arranged to help launch the Sackville restoration appeal (and a contemporary review which is lukewarm about the acting of Randolph Scott – Cary Grant’s lover – but even less compli-

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mentary about Ronald Reagan’s). Not up to In Which We Serve (but then few films are), although K-225 does at least have some actual wartime footage of rcn corvettes amidst the abundant Hollywood cardboard. 9 june 1983: Off Bermuda. I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. A spacious Bermuda-bound Aurora carried me from Halifax and a decidedly less spacious helicopter from Bermuda the 120 kilometres to the small flight deck of hmcs Huron, ambling along in a slow, south Atlantic roll. A blue day at sea. Oh brave new world! The skipper was not on the bridge, it having become something of an appendage instead of the epicentre of the ship’s life. Deep in the Huron’s bowels, in the operations room, computers surrounding several plotting tables whirred away. In the gloom I could make out the welcoming captain (who, God bless us, is younger than I). Everyone else – and indeed even he – appeared to be technicians of high calibre, not sea dogs, not Jack Tar, but the darlings of ibm. As I realized this, my fantasy was that the Navy I had known (in an amateurish sort of way) between 1952 and 1957 had more in common with Nelson than it has with the navy of 1983. Standing on an open bridge, ducking as the spray came over the dodger, was something that we shared with sailors since time immemorial. Somehow feeding the velocity of winds and current and of the ship itself, along with God knows what else, into computers far below the water line is not quite the same thing. Thirty years ago a three-badge ab patiently attempted to teach me how to freshen the nip of a hawser. Today a computer technician patiently attempted to teach me the rudiments of how his computers are related to the plotting tables. In both cases I found myself equally hopeless. Hastened to the bridge (even that is glassed-in) to spend, in self-defence, most of the next twenty-four hours, aside from an hour-long visit to hmcs Provider via jackstay transfer. Yet for all its bewildering machinery and its hideous green uniform, the navy somehow remains the navy. The bright blue sea sparkles, the men work closely and confidently together – the thought of women among the ship’s company appears an anathema to most, although they will soon become accustomed to it – and the easy conviviality of the mess dinner under the presidency of a marvellously competent No. 1 was memorable. But what a wretched state our small fleet is in, reduced to a few ships, most of which are obsolescent, if not obsolete. We should have been

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building at least one frigate annually for the past decade. Instead, we have built none. In our haste to equip ourselves with a full panoply of social services and at the same time to hold down taxes, we have, among other things, let our navy decline to the point where it will be even more invisible than those far distant, storm-beaten ships which Mahan once eulogized. The senior officers gave me a gentle nudge to support in Ottawa the oft-delayed frigate programme. I shall certainly do so to Lamontagne. And if I have seen changes in three decades, what of General Sir Neil Ritchie with whom I lunched at the Toronto Club the other day? Born in British Guiana before the Boer War, he talked with equal immediacy of Sandhurst before the First World War, of the squalor and terror of trench warfare, of the staff in India between the wars, and of commanding the Eighth Army against Rommel in the Western Desert during the Second. How immediate it all sounded; yet on another level, how distant when one contemplates the electronic and nuclear gadgets of today.

The leisurely life of a backbencher was soon reduced by my being appointed the co-chairman of a bicameral committee to ponder the recurrent question of how the upper house could be rendered more effective and afforded a greater legitimacy in the world of universal suffrage (e.g., should it be elected by some form of proportional representation?). 19 july 1983: Toronto. I mention a Senate elected on the basis of proportional representation as a possible parliamentary reform during a dinner this evening which John Turner gave for the visiting Malcolm Fraser. Australia, with its elected Senate, is occasionally offered as a model for Canada … “An elected Senate,” the former Prime Minister snorts, “removes any reason for having a Senate. A second chamber is basically a useless institution. Its only value is as a place where a prime minister can relegate worthy, and sometimes not so worthy but in any case dispensable, supporters. You don’t have knighthoods and peerages to hand out in Canada, so don’t deny yourself the one thing that an appointed Senate can offer. If the only reform that you can think of is making it elected, you should instead abolish it.” All this with great emphasis and a sweep of a very large sheep farmer’s hand. Last December, I took on the co-chairmanship of the joint special committee on Senate reform. I did so for two reasons, one good, one not so good. The good one is that the subject interests me, since I hope that as part of our total constitutional reform we can now move toward an upper

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house elected on the basis of proportional representation. (By contrast, I have the impression that my easy-going co-chairman from the Senate … sees basically nothing much wrong with the status quo.) The not so good reason for taking on the co-chairmanship is that as a backbencher I haven’t had that much to do since the end of my term as a parliamentary secretary (although I do spend nights profitably at the public archives, reading diaries from the Boer War, the first war in which the other ranks were literate). At an initial “retreat” at Mont Ste. Marie and during our subsequent committee hearings, we’ve heard repeatedly just about everything that can be said about the advantages and disadvantages of an elected versus an appointed Senate. Indeed, I was astonished to realize that so many academics seem to give quite so much thought to the Senate (is this a comment on academics or the Senate?) … The basic question facing our committee is whether the Senate can be so changed as to offer the regions a more evident voice in the total national government, and to discourage the ultimately futile introversion of looking to provincial or regional entities for national policy expression. In the end, I wonder whether it doesn’t come to this. If we seek a second elected house (appointed houses being seen as anachronistic and antidemocratic) as a means of providing a greater degree of regional representation in Ottawa, then it seems to me inescapable that the election to the Senate must be based on some form of proportional representation. Otherwise, an elected second house would largely become the pale image of the first (e.g., Alberta electing only Conservative Members and only Conservative Senators). In that event, it would be better to scrap the Senate altogether and be done with it. In fact, I’m not sure that isn’t the better thing to do in any event. Curious that it was Sir John A. Macdonald, of all people, who optimistically characterized the Senate as a chamber of “sober second thought.”

Harbouring, as I did, the private conviction that the Senate should be abolished (something, however, that several provinces would reject out of hand), perhaps it was as well that I was soon summoned from the committee to the cabinet table. Here is how it happened. 11 august 1983: Toronto. Rumours once again rife of an imminent cabinet shuffle, presumably to form the last of the Trudeau governments. Phone query upon phone query from the media. I shall be happy to escape

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to Britain this evening. If the clarion call does come … the pmo can reach me in Sussex. Bud Estey, upon being transplanted from the Supreme Court in Toronto to the Supreme Court in Ottawa, observed that he had suddenly realized what capital punishment was. It is time for a few weeks in Britain and France. 12 august 1983: Lewes. Under a hot sun, we drove somewhat wearily from Heathrow toward Brighton on a busy and singularly undistinguished motorway, the unique charm of the South Downs only beginning to emerge when we turned off for Lewes. Lewes brings recollections of long, hazy summer days visiting Asa and Susan at the vice chancellor’s residence at Sussex University. Now, although living in Oxford, they have purchased a delightful eighteenth century house against a steep hill off the Lewes high street, with a cliffhanger of a garden which would make a mountain goat frolic … telephone call from Ottawa soon after we had eagerly devoured a luncheon of crab, cockles, prawns, cod roe, and a glorious assortment of the internationally ignored British cheeses (another failure of British marketing or simply a devilishly clever way of keeping them for themselves?) …Word from Ottawa is that recent rumours of a major cabinet shuffle were about to be confirmed, but I went promptly to bed – and equally promptly fell asleep. An hour or so later, Susan woke me with the news that the Prime Minister was calling from Ottawa. That woke me up – but only about half-way; the ravages of the overnight trans-Atlantic flight were not to be so quickly banished. With a hastily draped bath towel around me, not being the possessor of pyjamas, I heard on the kitchen phone the familiar voice of Trudeau, but it remained for me a curiously detached conversation. Being still halfasleep, it was as if I were observing myself having the conversation. We chatted for a moment about holidays – the fact that Lee, Vanessa, Malcolm and I are in England – and about his plans to spend the last week of the month in the Med with all three sons, including a yet-to-beannounced official visit to Greece. I suggested that they join us for a few days at Touffou. The idea immediately appealed, but their plans are too far advanced to be changed now. We shall, however, return to Ottawa on the same dnd flight from Lahr on September 2 (well in time for the caucus meeting on the 6th). After that sort of bonhomie chatter – including passing recollections of New York in 1966 and Barbados in 1974 – the pm finally turned to the reason for his call: would I join his cabinet as Minister of State for Finance?

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Yes, I said. Still in something of a trance, I gabbled on about it being an honour to serve in his government (his last?), to work more closely with him, etc. He replied that he was delighted, said some kind things about my three years or so as a mp, and that was that – aside from a word about logistics. I shall miss the general swearing-in of new ministers at 1800 today at Government House and will need to return next week for my own little swearing-in. And Pierre thought that it would be useful if Marc and I were to have a word. This afternoon he expects to hear from Marc (who is on a fishing holiday in Quebec) and will ask him to phone me. In quick succession, a half dozen telephonic congratulations from Canada. Each time that an ever-patient Susan summoned me from my sleep to the telephone, I wrapped myself in the bath towel. Each time, as I became progressively more groggy, the towel became a little more askew – much to Susan’s mounting amusement, until finally, during a supreme act of exsuscitation, I forgot it completely. Dinner was a celebration in the tent-ceilinged dining room on a table that could have come from the Omega workshops (Susan visited Duncan Grant with us a decade ago). One wall is a sort of honeycomb of niches in which repose some of the Briggs’ glorious collection of Staffordshire pottery. I rejoiced in a Charley Gordon and a perfectly ridiculous BadenPowell. Many Garibaldi. And much Mersault. Asa at his best – which is very good indeed – describing his recent travels to Cuba, China, and throughout eastern Europe making a centenary film series for bbc television about Karl Marx. Both Briggs in great form. I awoke before 0500 thinking that I am now a minister. It being before midnight in Ottawa, I crept downstairs to the kitchen telephone to have a half-hour chat with my office … Acting on the belt-and-braces principle, we reviewed again the plans for my mid-week swearing-in which the pm has proposed. All seems to be on track. Stamp and go … I’m gratified to be in. After all, the cabinet is the one place where one can hope to get something done. Now that my ambitions for office are met, we’ll see how much one can really do to help shape public policy. Can’t get back to sleep, so read Asa’s handsome The Power of Steam, pausing occasionally to roll my tongue over the thought that I’m now a minister. 13 august 1983: Lewes. Up by 0700 on an already hot morning to walk with Vanessa to the deserted Lewes station. She goes to visit overnight two Toronto school friends who are staying near Hatfield. Vanessa – and

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I? – in a state of repressed excitement, it being her first journey alone on British Rail and the London Underground. Yesterday she found in a Lewes bookshop – for ten pence – a copy of Vincent Massey’s wartime speeches (The Sword of Lionheart) which he had inscribed to Bickerstaff, the former warden of Hart House. She bought it for me to mark my cabinet appointment … Much champagne at lunch in further celebration. Farewell to the Briggs until Lee meets Susan in nyc or Washington in early October. We drive through an incredibly tawdry Brighton for Malcolm to see at least the beleaguered Pavilion. I loathe English seaside resorts, but I had half-forgotten just how awful they can be. We soon escape over the blessed Sussex downs and through Hampshire to Winchester.

Upon my return to Ottawa, I learned that, unlike what I had anticipated, weekly cabinet meetings with Trudeau were curious affairs. Contrary to his entrenched public reputation for arrogance and impatience, he would allow even the most garrulous of ministers – chiefly Bryce Mackasey and Eugene Whelan – to natter on endlessly. From my first cabinet meeting in September 1983, I had the impression that Trudeau, although physically present, was spiritually somewhere else, not hearing a word, especially of those two consummate bores. Eventually he would stir himself and abruptly call the decision. That his decision did not relate one jot to all that they had said did not bother him at all, if he even noticed. He appeared to regard the weekly cabinet meetings as politically necessary, but essentially irrelevant to governing the country. As in all recent governments of either political stripe, decisions were chiefly taken in advance in the pmo or, less often, in what was then the Priorities and Planning Committee of cabinet. I do not recall any so-called cabinet decision – that is to say, the decision that Trudeau called – differing from the recommendation emanating from the relevant department, which had of course been first vetted closely, if not initiated, by Pitfield in the pco and Coutts in the pmo. That well-entrenched process had been especially evident in the national debate about the patriation of the British North America Act and a written constitution to incorporate it and, indeed, range beyond it with a charter of rights and freedoms. During discussions in caucus in 1981– 82 (before I joined the cabinet), I was not alone in questioning whether a written constitution was not an alien innovation in a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy which, broadly speaking, had for centuries

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looked to precedent as its guiding light and to the House of Commons as the highest court of the land. Now the Supreme Court could become the place where what Parliament had said would be interpreted, not in Parliament itself. Trudeau, however, made it unmistakably clear to all of us in caucus (ministers included) that he had decided. Anyone who continued to differ fundamentally could go sit somewhere else. We all remained in our places, although not without some covert growling and grumbling. During my year or so as Minister of State (Finance), Lalonde asked me to take on as one of my day jobs the task of resolving the then controversial question of the shape, structure, supervision, and regulation of the financial sector, especially whether the public interest would be best served by continuation of the strict delineation among the so-called four pillars of the financial community: banks, brokerage houses, life insurance companies, and trust companies. The five major Canadian banks had long

Lake Harrington goes with the job of Prime Minister, and Trudeau shared it unstintingly with friends from the Liberal caucus. I am about to receive a broadside from Sacha.

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been clear in their conviction that they could themselves efficiently supply all the financial services that anyone could possibly want at one-stop centres. The other three pillars were equally certain that the banks could not – and in any case should not – be subject to the possible conflicts of interest that might arise as a result. Whatever the theories about the four pillars and the necessity for Chinese walls to separate them, local political considerations conferred a sort of immunity on life insurance agencies across Canada, and hence backwards on the life insurance companies themselves. The corollary of any dismantling of walls was, however, additional regulation and a rejection of any bank mergers. Bank enthusiasts, convinced that our financial institutions were over-regulated, argued for less control along American lines, but we were having none of that. Hal Jackman, the highly articulate Toronto financier, was unrelenting in his opposition to any enlargement of the powers of banks. He represented many across Canada who believed that they were already quite large and sophisticated enough, with a resulting negative effect on small business and the consumer. He recorded in his diary on 13 January 1984: My lunch for Roy MacLaren at the Toronto Club went very well. The heads of all the banks, large insurers and investment dealers came out, perhaps simply out of curiosity, and perhaps out of concern that their positions might be weakened if they did not attend and express their views. MacLaren did quite well. He spoke about a comprehensive approach before any legislation is prepared. This was interpreted [rightly] that a consensus position should be arrived at, and then relieving legislation should be introduced simultaneously for all sectors. However, the comments from the crowd did not indicate any progress towards a consensus, and, finally, at the end of the lunch, Roy, perhaps in desperation, asked whether there was one thing on which the participants could agree. Austin Taylor made an impassioned plea to preserve the four pillars – a statement that begs more questions than it answers.

Chrétien, then Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources but in two years or so to be a director of the Toronto Dominion Bank, telephoned Jackman to congratulate him on his opposition to yet bigger banks, but as the minister responsible, I wanted more independent advice, so I appointed a non-partisan private-sector committee, chaired by Bill Dimma,

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with an unrestricted mandate to identify what lessons could be drawn from international as well as national needs and trends in order to render the total Canadian financial industry yet more effective. Dimma was an ideal independent chairman, a leading business thinker yet free of any ties with the four pillars. The committee set to work with a will, but the election of 1984 intervened well before it had completed its report. Accordingly, it was the Mulroney government that opened the way to the banks acquiring trust companies and major brokerage houses but decidedly not the insurance companies. On the yet broader and even more fundamental question of the state of health of our public finances, I had little influence. Lalonde, like Pickersgill, subscribed to the widespread conviction that Liberal times were seen as good times and Tory times were not. Contend as I might that this short-term electoral view ignored Canada’s longer-term interests as the baby-boomer generation aged, Trudeau’s last government did little to restore equilibrium to Canada’s public finances. Of a highly complex character himself, the Prime Minister pursued his aims with a single-minded conviction, but on economic questions, which he left largely to the Minister of Finance and his advisers in the pmo and the pco, he was notably careless, that is to say, literally without care. The current account deficit climbed to threatening levels under his administration, and he and his government, especially MacEachen, did little or nothing to curtail it. For its part, most of the Liberal caucus appeared to care not a whit. I had, to be sure, no supporters in cabinet when, as a junior minister, I had the temerity to express misgivings about the deficit and interest payments on the mushrooming debt. Trudeau bequeathed to Mulroney a fiscal problem approaching crisis proportions, which Mulroney in turn did little to counter, taking the easier and eventually sterile route of seeking more tax revenue (especially from the goods and services tax), rather than also adopting the more difficult chore of cutting government expenditure. 26 april 1983: Ottawa. However, despite all this and much else, Marc has responded with a one-two budget of surprising equilibrium. First, increased federal funding should create early employment, not massive certainly, but enough to bring a little relief. The second emphasis is yet more important: a variety of additional tax and other incentives are offered for investment. These are partly the result of Marc’s tireless efforts

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at consultation with business and labour leaders, the former now welcoming the budget and the latter at least more muted in their criticisms, having, in effect, been told by their membership to cool their overblown rhetoric.

As the alter ego of the Minister of Finance, I received foreign visitors, made political speeches in a host of constituencies across Canada, and, when the House was not sitting, travelled to promote Canadian trade and investment. The Aga Khan, Robert Mugabe, and Margaret Thatcher were among the visitors whom I welcomed to Toronto. 27 september 1983: Toronto. Chaired a one-hour meeting between businessmen (mainly from Montréal and Toronto) and Mrs. Thatcher in the wood panelled “library” of the Royal York Hotel before she met British businessmen active in Canada in an adjoining room. She clearly enunciates a few firmly held ideas. Reminds me a little of one of those formidable mothers of English debs who once so terrified me (or was it the debs who so terrified me?). Denis, on the other hand, seemed to be a genial old buffer, a little bewildered by it all and considerably more interested in golf than in the affairs of state. He appeared in white socks, presumably in case anyone suddenly offered him a game. Conrad in Nostromo says something to the effect that to survive at all one should have a few simple ideas and hold on to them for dear life in the face of whatever comes. Thatcher does and is widely successful. So for that matter does Reagan. Perhaps one of Trudeau’s problems is that he has too many ideas, can see too many facets of any question but, by God, he’s bright! Thatcher’s visit to Canada a great success. Even the most unrepentant Liberals appear delighted by her. She, riding high on her Falklands excursion, laughed at my little jokes and nodded appreciatively when I repeated Fred Burbidge’s information that the cpr provided the first merchantman for the Falklands fleet (O Strathcona, art thou there below?). But she really laid it out that the free lunch in Britain was over. No more living off the body politic; cutbacks in social services; need for greater productivity, etc. And lots of Cold War rhetoric for good measure. Our businessmen loved the emphatic Iron Lady, giving her that peculiarly Torontonian accolade, the standing ovation. Tony Acland (now Sir Anthony, the permanent head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) with her, looking about one week older than when we last played tennis in Geneva fifteen years ago.

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Mrs Thatcher beamed at my little jokes but did not detect anything amusing about Trudeau, whom she regarded as “wet,” her ultimate condemnation of all those who did not share her particular approach to public policy. Lord Moran, the British high commissioner, is to her right and David Smith, Minister of State (Small Business), is at my left.

The visit of the Iron Lady was followed by a hurried partisan visit to my ancestral province, Prince Edward Island, and the fulfillment of various non-Ottawa activities. 28 october 1983: Vernon River. I speak – badly again – at Bennett Campbell’s annual fund-raising dinner, a rural meeting which, in the homogeneity of the 200 or so guests attending, seems about as far from the multifarious Etobicoke North as one could get. After attempting in vain to be stridently partisan, I invite questions which go better. However, best of all was a question asked when the meeting was almost over. A woman, peering at me intently, enquired … “When did you buy that suit?” After hastily checking the date tag which my tailor sews into an inside breast pocket, I replied, “Sixteen years ago in July.” Long pause, then: “Oh well, I guess that you could keep it in case it comes into fashion again.” Vernon River?

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5 november 1983: Hamilton. I speak about CBEL at a dinner of JapaneseCanadian war veterans. During the First World War, the Army accepted Japanese-Canadian volunteers in Vancouver only when the dearth of other volunteers became increasingly worrisome (I recall from my childhood the pillar monument in Stanley Park to their subsequent valour on the Western Front). During the Second World War, the army was even less eager to have them (the rcn wouldn’t have them at all, requiring “white men” only). One of the very few Japanese-Canadians who made it into the army during the early years of the war did so only after riding box cars from Vancouver to Calgary to Winnipeg to Toronto to Montreal, vainly volunteering at recruiting centres all along the way, until finally he was accepted by the rces in Quebec City! 12 november 1983: Toronto. All Saturday mornings – which begin at nine – bring their varied supplicants, frequently constituents who, having exhausted all the usual channels for redress, regard their mp as the panacea for their woes. Today was fertile: an inventor with a sort of water wheel – which, like an incontinent puppy, much dampened my office carpet – to provide perpetual energy; an illegal immigrant who has been here for four years but cannot get a better job without a sin, and cannot get a sin without an immigrant visa, hence is condemned to being exploited by her present employer; an Italo-Canadian who wants a telephone pole removed from the front of his house; a lugubrious Sikh who, for the third time, has applied to bring his ineligible older brother from India; and a sort of folle de Chaillot who asked me to arrange to have her cremated – free – upon her supposedly imminent demise. None today, however, quite so bizarre as the elderly man who, a few weeks ago, showed me his home-made lead vest to ward off the electric rays his neighbour was shooting at him through their common apartment wall. All in all not a bad day. One or two drolleries for the collection. My constituency office staff are convinced that the moon works its baleful influence by turning out the loonies in full force. A pleasing pantheistic fantasy. I regret that I can do so little to help most supplicants. Many … persist in seeking the impossible and, as I repeatedly tell them, I have no magic wand. Occasionally, very occasionally, one has the gratifying experience of seeing a family united or a student find a job as a result of one’s efforts, but those instances, alas, remain rare.

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Next week in Egypt with a trade delegation will mean that I shall miss my usual Saturday morning appointments – but not very much. Lee is delighted to return to the scene of her first appointment with the State Department. 17 november 1983: Aswan. From the balcony of our Soviet-designed concrete box of a hotel (identical to our hotel at Luxor), I stare at the mock-Moorish Old Cataract Hotel opposite, pomegranate red, an Agatha Christie resort for Europeans who earlier in the century managed to escape the northern winter for this near ideal climate: hot, dry and brilliantly clear, almost hallucinatory. I stare down at the blue cataract, its volume now much reduced by the high dam, and think of the voyageurs from Quebec, Manitoba and Ontario, some illiterate and barely comprehending where they were, on their way to attempt the rescue of Chinese Gordon. Beyond lies Kitchener Island. So I think also of Girouard of Montreal pushing his desert railway ever southward, making possible the slaughter at Omdurman – which Kitchener complacently regarded as “a good dusting.” Here too, a century ago, came such intrepid travellers as Amelia Edwards whose A Thousand Miles up the Nile has given Lee and me much pleasure as we ourselves travelled southward. Perhaps not so intrepid, even for a Victorian gentlewoman: I would gladly trade our narrow seats in the Boeing 767 that brought us here for her commodious dahabeyah, complete with piano … And every prospect pleases. Luxor – I prefer to say Thebes – and Karnak, especially the Hypostyle, leave me, as they left Edwards, silent and bewildered: Karnak “is a place that strikes you into silence; that empties you, as it were, not only of words but of ideas. … I could only look and be silent.” Lee knew Egypt especially well from her youthful tour as Third Secretary at the US Embassy. Elaborate Egyptian security surrounded us throughout our visit. At Luxor, as we were crossing the Nile with our twenty or so member delegation in a large launch, a small rubber boat with two frogmen accompanied us across the great river. I asked the chief Egyptian security officer who the two frogmen were. “Security, in case this launch should sink.” “But there are only two of them and at least twenty of us.” “Ah yes, but there is only one minister.” 21 november 1983: Cairo. The conversation with Mubarak was desultory, insofar as it related to Canadian-Egyptian trade or economic

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questions. The president seemed to regard such matters as subjects worthy for his ministers, but not for the head of state. Finally it dawned on me that the only way to get him going was to raise the one issue that I suspected profoundly interests him: the endless muddle of the Middle East and Egypt’s role therein. At my first question, Mubarak suddenly took off like a three-stage rocket, shedding en route insights and asides with vigour and animation. Basically he believes that Israel under Begin has been too aggressive, too intransigent, especially in Lebanon and the Sinai, missing opportunities that would have contributed to its own longer-term interests. While acknowledging the substantial economic and military support that Egypt has received from the usa since the Camp David agreement, he rather wearily rehearses the hold that the Zionists have always had on Washington (his voice took on the tones that one might use to describe a tiresome child). He bitterly resents Egypt’s isolation in the Arab world following Camp David. In this he presumably reflects the conviction of many Egyptians that their country should be the leader – or at least among the few leaders – of the Islamic world instead of being sent to the woodshed. Theirs is a country of 4,000 years of recorded history. And if that in itself were not enough, today Egyptian engineers, physicians and businessmen provide the motor for much of the economic development of the Middle East and Cairo remains a centre for Islamic studies. Visiting Third World leaders consult with Mubarak here (or occasionally abroad), but I don’t have the impression that he intends to accept passively Egypt’s current isolation. Khaddafi being mad, the Ayatollah senile, and the Sudan already a sort of turbulent dépendence (only the Anglo, it seems, has disappeared from the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium).

The following February I was revisiting old haunts. 29 february 1984: London. When in London with the Navy for the coronation, I stood in the gods at the Old Vic for only a tanner. Although tonight was fun, I enjoyed the Old Vic even more then. It was there one June night in 1953 (three decades ago, God bless us) that I first saw a Shakespearean play, the commencement of a life-long addiction. Ed Mirvish hasn’t spared the horses. The pale blues and grays and the restored murals are both authentic and wholly pleasing. I wish him well with a major gamble – which he readily acknowledges it to be. Fleet Street was not enamoured of “Honest Ed” of Toronto taking over the Old Vic,

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but they at least recognized him as the last, best hope. No one else was forthcoming with the amounts necessary to rescue that rapidly deteriorating recluse of the theatre world, remote, inaccessible and curiously proud. But now that Ed has done the job, those same papers are rightly enthusiastic about the results … Don and Barbara Jamieson, Bill and Kathy Davis, Serge Joyal, a mixed bag of provincial agents-general, Lee and I and the Mirvishes crowd with Princess Anne and her lady-in-waiting into the miniscule Green Room during the Mikado‘s one intermission. The princess just back from drought-stricken Niger on behalf of the Save-the-Children Fund. Tonight resplendent in kenspeckle lime sherbet, but in recent newspaper photographs from west Africa in workaday khaki. She is clearly committed. I say, “Keep it up and you’ll be another Mother Teresa.” Princess replies, “I’ll try.” Farewell the horses? Lady-in-waiting one delightful Pole-Carew. Husband a grandson of Pole-Carew of the Boer War? Right. Is she a Grey? Then she must be a great granddaughter of the ninth governor general of Canada. Right. Then

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she must also be related to Lord Minto, the eighth governor general. Right again. Then we’re off about that other border country governor general, John Buchan, and the unique character of the border country, leaving me at least a little resentful that the bell suddenly tolled to summon us back to our seats. Mikado lively, amusing and visually stunning. Survived the transAtlantic crossing well. I prefer their Gondoliers production, but Macdonald and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival have done us proud. And I hope something to aid Ed on his perilous course. Accompanied hrh backstage after the performance to introduce her to the cast (before going on to an overcrowded dinner party at the Savoy, where I was unexpectedly greeted by a former schoolmate from Kitsilano High School, now head of the cnr in Europe). All this, however, with part of my mind constantly occupied with thoughts of what Trudeau’s resignation means. When I arrived back here at Upper Brook Street from trade talks with British ministers and officials in time to bathe and bend on a black tie for The Mikado, the butler said quietly while handing me a whisky, “The Prime Minister has announced his resignation, sir.”

That news prompted a long diary farewell to the Prime Minister, a rare second farewell saluting him for having done what he had long said he would do to bring home our constitution. 1 march 1984: London. Trudeau apparently resigned yesterday with the quip that he had come to his decision after a solitary walk in an Ottawa blizzard. Solitary, with the rcmp omnipresent? But a fantasy fully a part of it all, of his sixteen years of prime ministerial life. It is difficult to know now how to sum up Trudeau. His achievements are obvious enough, indeed conspicuous by their size, importance and number. The history books inevitably will tell us that it was Trudeau who defused Quebec separatism, made Canada officially bilingual, delivered the Constitution and the Charter. All that is so, but history will mislead us if it fails to add, as everyone now fails to pinpoint, just how profoundly Trudeau has changed us. He seemed to will change as much through the force of his singular personality as through his actions … What Dafoe said … of Laurier has a certain applicability. “The final appraisement of Sir Wilfrid, to be written perhaps fifty years hence by some tolerant and

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impartial historian … will perhaps put Sir Wilfrid higher … and yet not quite so high; an abler man but one not quite too preternaturally good; a man who had affinities with Machiavelli as well as with Sir Galahad.” I have known Trudeau for some years now. I have worked with him in cabinet, in caucus and otherwise behind closed doors. But I know him not at all compared with Lalonde, Pelletier or Marchand – who, come to think of it, do not perhaps know him all that well either. It is not in Trudeau’s nature to be known, but only to be experienced. Closeness has robbed all of us now living of the necessary perspective. Perhaps historians will have better answers to our questions about him. But somehow I doubt it … That strangeness which Trudeau often exudes became, at length, addictive giving us withdrawal pangs when it stopped. Trudeau was the opposite of Meighen or Diefenbaker in that he was a politician wholly suited to governing and wholly unsuited to Opposition. Yet within a few months of our defeat in 1979, we had a 20-point lead in the polls. This was not totally the result of the public recoiling at the infantile Clark government. Trudeau sometimes infuriates us, but he has kept challenging us to be better than many of us had believed it possible to be. In a strange sort of way, Canada has grown up under his tutelage; mocking and intense though that tutelage frequently was. Sometimes consciously but more often not, Trudeau thrives on paradox. He is both a bitter cynic and a true believer. He is the Jesuit-trained rationalist, yet a player of hunches and instincts. We have become accustomed to leaders with more carefully controlled public images. We are used to having the politician and the news media locked in a symbiotic – or mutually parasitic – relationship. Trudeau and the media have never taken well to each other. He seems to work around the media people as well as through them. What the press and television saw was a figure frequently too complex, in this paradoxical way, to be reported on in the usual manner. Yet however strange he seemed to the public in his background and style, Trudeau came to an understanding with them almost intuitively, bypassing those who would seek to explain the one to the other. Voters knew that what they had was what there was to be had. No other politician has been quite so direct, though almost all have been more predictable, more “normal.” In comparison with Mackenzie King, for instance, Trudeau laid his personality out for all to see. It is simply that what there was to see in his case was more diverse – more human, if certainly not more typical – than what the public had come to expect of a leader.

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Trudeau believes that solely through organization and reorganization of its own procedures can modern government sort out the complex problems it faces. This belief is, in turn, bound up with his conviction in the necessity of a strong federal state, one that underlay not only his courage in the October Crisis but his relations with all the provinces, his persistent drive for a new Constitution, his eclectic foreign policy. Many people, mostly conservatives or Americans, have denounced him as a nationalist, reserving for that epithet their more potent venom. And of course he is a nationalist, but only because he is first a state-ist – hence one who, when looking abroad, sees how interdependent modern states have become. That is one of the ways he fits into the long crescendo of liberal theory and history. This and other connections have sometimes been obscured by the fact that he is not a party man in the way that the term has been understood: the backroom boy, the team player, the person who submerges his own personality in the interests of the party. Trying to submerge Trudeau’s personality is a sure means of drowning oneself. Most other recent politicians seem one-dimensional in comparison. They presumably made themselves that way to appear as uncomplicated as only people in the press or on television seem. Trudeau is as complex as people in real life. Yet at times he is more theatrical than the most calculating manipulator would dare to be. He cares so much about what he is doing that sometimes he does not give a damn about how it looks. Characteristically, he generally gets on more effectively with individuals than with groups, though Trudeau under full sail is virtually unrivalled as a speaker, with his unique combination of inspiration and charm, and is all but made for television – the route to the largest audience of all. It was to some extent his talent for more personal communication, his feeling that he could, when necessary, cut through all the red tape that he himself had helped to create, that led to some dramatic responses … In 1982 his approach to keeping down inflation took the form of a television address which – if one listened between the lines – seemed to tell Canadians to overcome their problem through something like the collective triumph of Nietzschean will. A yet more striking example, perhaps, is his current peace initiative which testifies to the esteem in which he is held overseas, an esteem that he does not always attract at home. Pollsters, analysts, pundits and columnists have never completely fathomed the reasons why Canadians of all backgrounds have gone to the polls again and again to vote for Trudeau. Perhaps in some way it is be-

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cause Trudeau – the man for all seasons – has done so much in so many different areas that he has changed us forever. It is difficult to say to what extent he caused the times to happen and to what extent he was their willing instrument. When he came to power in 1968, for example, the idea of women in cabinet was still fresh and the notion of women in the Supreme Court, a woman Speaker of the Commons or a lieutenant-governor or governor general – all Trudeau accomplishments to come – were practically unthinkable. But much more unthinkable was a Quebec forever separated from the rest of Canada. National unity was his major task to an extent unknown by previous prime ministers, even previous Liberal prime ministers. The October Crisis revealed a level of violence seldom encountered in our official life, but it also revealed yet another paradox in Trudeau, a decidedly peace-loving man. A small but vocal percentage of Canadians found his response too heavy handed, though the overwhelming majority admired the way that he stood up to the terrorists and faced them down, making grudging admirers of many who previously had been antagonists – and probably would be again. Trudeau has always been able to provoke such remarkable shifts in people. His candour and freshness rankled many of the same citizens who have ended up admiring him, respecting him for the natural dignity with which he conducted himself during his own personal upheavals. Well, he’s now, in effect, gone. As soon as the news was made public, the Toronto Stock Exchange Composite Index apparently jumped sixteen points. Yet I imagine that Canadians everywhere suddenly felt a little sad, as if they had lost something, whether they will admit it or not.

For the next three and a half months the attention of Liberals everywhere focused on the leadership convention, set for 16 June 1984 in Ottawa. There were a number of self-appointed also-rans, but it was clear from the beginning that the race was between Turner and Chrétien. The executive of the Liberal Association in Etobicoke North was unanimous in its conviction that Turner was more likely to defeat the aspiring Mulroney than Chrétien. It duly put together a slate of delegates who were so minded. I was content. On a personal level I necessarily took into account that, as the Turners lived a door or two along from us in Forest Hill, their son David passed through our kitchen every morning to collect Malcolm on the way to Upper Canada College. I noted in my journal at the time:

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4 may 1984: Toronto. We worked our butts off to ensure the election of a full slate of Turner delegates at the selection meeting in Etobicoke North tonight. Having determined to support Turner at the Ottawa convention as the candidate most likely to defeat Mulroney, the executive began systematically to encourage our association members – those who elect our seven delegates (two of whom must be female and two youth) – to support the leader by sending pro-Turner delegates to the convention … A fortnight or more ago it had become evident that a race was on to pack our delegate-selection meeting. We had imprudently left the meeting to near the deadline, thereby allowing others more time to sell memberships to support their candidates. At $10 per head, the Etobicoke North Liberal Association has become unaccustomedly affluent, but tonight was near chaos. Our executive saw control of the association moving out of its hands unless fire was used to fight fire. Enter more Sikhs, this time our Sikhs. As a result, the school auditorium tonight looked like a recruiting camp in the Punjab at the height of the Raj, proud fathers presenting their sons for the Queen-Empress’ rupee. We did finally elect a full Turner slate, although not before two o’clock in the morning … In binding up every corporal agent to send a complete Turner slate to the Ottawa convention, we have, willy-nilly, put a considerable strain on our local Liberals. And here and there a fissure has appeared in the Sikh community and, less frequently, among Italo-Canadians. These self-inflicted wounds will have to be healed promptly when all this is over – or the party will enter the election in an even more ragged state than it’s in already … The whole wretched process of delegate selection is decidedly disagreeable, the principal flaw being the rule of the Ontario Liberals that one can join a constituency association (and hence have a vote in the selection of delegates) as little as seventy-two hours before the meeting. The qualification should be membership of at least three or even six months, or some other limitation (as is, I believe, the case in several other provinces). Remarkable that Turner could be out of politics – his few return forays were minor and fleeting – for nine years and yet retain such a powerful hold on the imagination of the party and the public (at least those over age thirty or so). Remarkable, yet perhaps masking a potential problem. Is it not possible that during the past decade the party and, more generally, public issues have so changed that Turner will find it difficult to get up to speed if he does win the leadership and thereby becomes prime minister?

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With so many contending ministers pushing each other up and down the greasy pole, I spent most of the next three months or so in the House, doing other ministers’ house duty, answering questions, and speaking in support of bills. But there was also time for excursions abroad. 13 april 1984: Ottawa. I leave shortly on an official visit to Venezuela and Belize, so I return to the Health and Welfare clinic on Elgin Street where I was vaccinated against something or other before going to Egypt. I greet the same agreeable nurse with a cheery, “How are you?” only to receive a rather cool response. Her reception suddenly improves, however, after I drop my knickers and present my ample posterior for injection. “Oh, hello,” says nurse, “Nice to see you again.” Very cheeky of her. 29 april 1984: Belize. We are purged by the hyssop of Belize after Caracas and Miami. No affectation, no contrivance, no tiresome pseudosophistication here. In Belsize what you sees is what you gets. Vernon Courtenay, the amiable and reflective foreign minister, kindly met Lee and me at the hot little airport (where several potent-looking raf Harriers shelter as a mute – and occasionally anything but mute – warning to irredentist Guatemalans). David and Nina Reece met us in Miami airport this morning, their unyielding cheerfulness in stark contrast with the multitude of dour odd balls who seem to frequent that particular carrefour. David and Nina are pros: many years in diplomacy coupled with intelligence and taste enable them to know instinctively what to do. Relaxed and easy, they are especially good in developing countries (and would be ideal for Delhi). With the departure of our taca jet for Tegucigalpa, its next destination, a sudden stillness settles over the airport, a blessed quietness after the cacophony of Caracas. Our official visit begins, the first visit by a Canadian minister to Belize. Courtenay and I linger in the small vip lounge, he eager to hear about my conversations with the Venezuelan foreign minister who is directly involved in the Contadora initiative. Not much reassured by my sober account. Our two-storey hotel (eight rooms?) is almost on the front of what was once the dreaded fever coast. Today the Caribbean, grey green, rolls leisurely against the breakwater, but the fact that the nearby white, wooden-frame, governor’s residence was built on stilts indicates its potential gale force. Next to our hotel is the chartreuse residence of the French

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ambassador (why on earth should French taxpayers pay for an embassy in Belize?) who in a confidential but excited way always greets the visiting David with, “Alors, Excellence, la situation ici est très précaire, je vous assure.” The local branch of the Royal Bank of Canada disgorged from its vaults the Mayan jade head (the size of a cantaloupe, it has become a sort of national treasure) for us to see. A long drive with Courtenay and police guards across the savannah took us to a river where a small, fast boat, looking dangerously top heavy with radar and a massive machine gun, carried us for several score of kilometres along a mangrove-lined river and across a large lagoon to the rom camp and surrounding hovels of presumably reformed narcotics cultivators and traders. The delineation of the borders between countries being somewhat obscure in these parts, the cultivation and movement of narcotics had been largely unregulated until Belize cracked down, more or less. The result was no more of the much admired “ghetto blasters” and outboard motors, but rather again a small squalid village of rag tag Indians living on the edge of poverty in clearings around the rom camp. Now, however, the lid seems to have been lifted somewhat and that nefarious trade is again flourishing. Under the feet of the narcotics traders are the achievements of their ancestors who lived in a community that apparently flourished here for the remarkably long period of approximately 1500 bc to 1700 ad. David Pendergast and wife, Elizabeth (who makes the third of three Cantabrigians in the jungle, Reece being the other) are clearing away the bush and the metres of topsoil that have accumulated over the abundant ruins. They welcomed us at their cluster of Mayan-style thatched huts with a feast set out on a long table in a large hut tent, complete with the excellent Belizean beer, all of which we fell upon with loud cries of glee. Quite why we were so famished, I do not know, but soon we were sufficiently recharged to spend the afternoon walking through the forests (including security guards, we must have numbered fifteen), seeing via Pendergast’s expert eye what otherwise would have been hidden to us: the outlines of a buried pyramid, the thick lips and heavily-hooded, protruding eyes of a Mayan carved head five metres high, small artefacts no bigger than your thumbnail, etc. A glorious day. A fascinating day. A day joyfully lost in time and space. We return to Belize City – accompanied on the river by that obscenity of a machine gun – via the ruins at Altun Ha, then to a “press conference”

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attended by three or four local journalists. One was simply a lush looking for a free drink but another, much younger, was darkly suspicious that if Canada “controlled” the drinking water of Belize City, it would control the country, a neo-colonial fantasy which he based on an obscure conviction that the usa had once controlled Cuba via the Havana waterworks. Then to a dinner which I offer in honour of Prime Minister Price and most of his cabinet. Price, a gentle, soft-spoken, slim, experienced old fox whose ancestry, he says, includes every race represented in the Belize potpourri, has been a major figure in the political life of British Honduras since 1946. If today he headed a large instead of a minute nation (the total population of Belize being not much greater than Etobicoke North), he would be hailed as the senior statesman of the Commonwealth. Both a Roman Catholic and a socialist, he seems to be a man of integrity, even appearing slightly uncomfortable with the fact of political power. Good local seafood, good wine (which David carried in his luggage from Jamaica to Miami to Belize, bless him) and good general conversation. Many kind words about Canada and the assistance provided. Price has worked with some success to isolate Guatemala, and the British have been steadfast in providing sufficient military support and training to help deter – along with US pressure – the hawks in Guatemala City. Economically, Belize makes progress only slowly, dependent as it currently is on its precarious sugar exports for much of its meagre foreign exchange earnings (the vast mahogany forests of the past – at least the more accessible – having been largely exploited). Diversification and greater prosperity will presumably evolve, but I, as an outsider, am so charmed by the pristine and guileless state of this ultimate outpost of the Empire, yet un-homogenized by tourism, that I am sufficiently selfish to wish that it wouldn’t alter. cida is helping to change things in several ways, notably by providing Belize City with pure drinking water and an effective sewage system. The Canadian engineers on the project (which was apparently supported by Trudeau after meeting Price at a Commonwealth prime ministers’ conference) tell me that it’s about three-quarters complete and that one can now drink the tap water. The problem now is that of finding a way to help the poor connect their small frame houses to the spanking new water and sewage mains in the dirt streets. When I return to Ottawa, I shall see whether something can be done to speed a positive decision on helping to finance the house connections, possibly via guaranteed, low-interest loans available from the local branches of the banks (largely Canadian). Price

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much concerned about the stringency of imf discipline on debtor countries struggling concurrently with economic recession and high interest rates. He blames the imf – as did several of the Venezuelan ministers whom I called upon last week – for the recent deaths in the “bread riots” in Santo Domingo, and pensively surveys the limits of tolerance of the Belizeans in similar circumstances (and, he might have added, of Jamaicans). As in Caracas, I hear much complaint about the imf: too tough a task master. A Dickensian character on a global scale when US interest rates are so high. What the hell; there must be better ways than this. After all, a finance man’s “structural adjustment” is a poor man’s bread. And the interests of both debtor nations and major Western banks have now become so interlocked that we should together be able to devise some way in which interest could be paid on those gargantuan loans while they are being written down over a period of years.

On 16 June 1984 Turner won the leadership convention on the second ballot. The first challenge facing him was to form a cabinet; the second was to decide whether to go into an early election campaign. 27 june 1984: Ottawa. Turner telephones my office when I am on “House duty.” It can only be to tell me which ministerial post he would like me to fill. From the government lobby, I return his call and he offers me National Revenue. Several days ago John asked me to see him at the Chateau, his headquarters during the leadership campaign and his office until the House adjourns and he is sworn in as pm. A security guard sat outside his suite and within several young people, whom I did not recognize, busily answered telephones. In his sitting room, John asked me, his extraordinary blue eyes drilling into me, what portfolios I would prefer. 1 answered, “Any economic or defence or external affairs.” And that was that. But this afternoon it’s National Revenue. Will have my own department. Promotion from minister of state. Valuable to have a businessman there. Something about my work in Finance. More specifically, how he hopes that I shall give priority to considering the adaptation to Canadian circumstances of the autonomous Board of Inland Revenue approach of Britain and Australia (rather than having taxation directly administered by a government department), etc., etc.

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I must have paused for a rather long time before accepting, for John suddenly laughed and said “… get in there and do what you can and when we’re back in again in the autumn, we’ll see what else there might be.” I am, in fact, not unhappy with Revenue, despite its current problems. There’s clearly a major job to be done there in the wake of the popular discontents of the past year or so. And the idea of a board is an interesting one (did not the Carter Commission recommend such a change two decades ago?). Why not have tax policy and tax administration reporting to Parliament through the same Finance Minister? It might be amusing to do myself out of a job. 11 july 1984: Ottawa. Much discussion of whether we should go into an election sooner or later. Everyone except Chrétien urges an early date (24 August or 4 September?). Request the Queen to postpone her visit and go before the Pope’s visit, when the opinion polls are so decidedly in our favour following the leadership convention. As Coutts says, we would be crazy not to go now. Only Chrétien disagrees. He argues vigorously for a late autumn election so as to allow us to put our campaign organization and finances into better shape (one is uneasily conscious of the superior preparations that the Tories have made, largely as a result of Clark, not Mulroney). By waiting, he believes that we’ll gain some new faces, field better candidates. Chrétien also contends that we can only benefit from Turner being seen for a while as pm – accompanying the Queen and the Pope during their visits to Canada, at the UN General Assembly, etc., so that Canadians can get to know him, become accustomed to him as pm, be reassured that he is indeed the embodiment of the major change which they presumably seek. Chrétien’s various arguments are not well received. Some muttering about sour grapes. We’ll go soon. That’s become the conventional wisdom. I must now accelerate the completion of that potted history of the Liberal Party which, in a mad moment, I undertook to write for possible use in an election campaign. Keith and Jim asked me to do it, but if it’s going to be out during the campaign, there’s now not a moment to lose, as the bishop said to the chorus girl.

The fourth of September was selected as the date of the election. Although I had only two months to do so, I attempted to clean up some of

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John Turner and I in the ill-fated election campaign of August 1984. Despite our grins, both of us knew full well that the Liberal Party was in a near free fall, following his peak in popularity at the Ottawa leadership convention two months earlier. From the first weeks of the campaign it was downhill all the way, culminating in Mulroney’s massive victory on 4 September.

the mess that marked the income tax side of the Department of National Revenue, contending that, as in Australia and Britain, an autonomous agency rather than a government ministry would better manage tax collection. But before we could achieve very much, I had to knock once again on every door in my constituency, and Lee too on a great many, but this time, despite a legion of enthusiastic volunteers who did their own doorknocking, it simply did not work. Many of my erstwhile supporters, the ever-agreeable Italo-Canadians especially, did not vote against me – they simply did not vote. They stayed at home, convinced that Turner was not their beloved Trudeau and that, in any case, he offered no clear ideas of what he wanted to do as Prime Minister. We were soundly defeated in September 1984, the Tories winning 211 seats and we being reduced from 147 seats to 40. I was among those to go, losing Etobicoke North by a few hundred votes. What I had in mind as I clamoured up on a table to speak to our subdued volunteers was Beatty’s comment to Chatfield at Jutland – “There’s something wrong with our bloody ships today” – but with a few of our workers weeping, I thought it better to tap my toes and instead to say a few lines from My Fair Lady of myself: “There’ll be spring every year without you … Even Keats will survive without you.”

8


More than You Know

I left off my diary (and Honourable Mentions) in September 1984, when the short-lived Liberal government of John Turner was defeated by Brian Mulroney’s resurgent Conservatives. I had known Turner for more than twenty years, as a fellow alumnus of ubc, in Liberal politics, and latterly as a near neighbour in Toronto, and I never stopped feeling sorry for him. Pity, when all is said, is the last insult, but pity him I did. Despite his undeniably good intentions, he could not meet the high, if not impossible, expectations that voters – and certainly fellow Liberals – held of him. Turner decided to stay on and accordingly became leader of the Opposition. Sixteen months later Chrétien resigned from Parliament to pursue his ambitions from outside the tent. The four years between our defeat in 1984 and the election of 1988 I spent largely at CB Media, again as president and publisher. I continued, however, to nurse Etobicoke North, conscious as I was that I had not yet had enough of national politics. And in any case, I had not enjoyed being defeated. To win is better. Upon my arrival back at CB, I invited the interim president to take on other responsibilities with CB or with Key Publishers, but not surprisingly he soon departed. The ill-fated Your Money magazine, which Sandy and he had launched, was nearing its demise. Canadian Business, on the other hand, continued to flourish. Soon we further developed our magazine for small business, before long a publishing success under the straightforward title of Profit. The value of CB Media Ltd grew substantially. Offers to purchase were several, but the possibilities of adding greater value to the company remained more attractive to de Pencier and me. Our editorial, sales, and production people were first-class, almost without exception. All in all, it was fun to be back. That was rather more than I could say about the weekly nocturnal visits to Etobicoke North, intended to keep the bed warm until the next election in 1988. Diversion, however, was at

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Lee and I with George Bush senior in northern Labrador at the invitation of Craig Dobbin, the chairman of the global Canadian Helicopters Corporation. The US Secret Service guards outnumbered the fishermen, but the worldly conversation nevertheless flowed readily.

hand with, among other things, winter weeks with the Trees in Barbados, summer weeks with Ogilvy in France at his treasured Château Touffou, and bare-boat charters with the Griffins amidst the islands of the Caribbean and the Aegean. But no trip had quite the particular dimensions of the walk that Malcolm and I made in 1986 of the length of Britain, from Land’s End at the westernmost tip of Cornwall to John o’Groats at the northernmost point of the Scottish mainland. I had long wanted to do a cross-country walk in Britain, the best walking country in the world: temperate climate, gentle terrain, country lanes in abundance, woods penetrable, rights-of-way clearly delineated on those superb maps of the Ordnance Survey, and readily available bed and breakfasts. Malcolm, having just completed Upper Canada College and with the prospect of the University of Toronto immediately before him, was eager to join in, although neither of us had ever done any long-distance walking. From what little we had read, a pair of sturdy boots seemed essential. Again naively, we put into our rucksacks several books each (in addition to Ordnance maps). We added blazers and a tie, I at least believing, in some obscure quasi-colonial way,that it was good for discipline to dine each evening in jacket and tie after soaking for some time in a hot tub with a restorative single malt whisky at hand. Thus overburdened,

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Malcolm and I set out from Land’s End for John o’Groats encumbered with far too much paraphernalia. But once we had dispensed with all the surplus kit, we hit our stride, doing as much as forty kilometres a day and reaching John o’Groats fifty-one days later.

we started out. We travelled from Heathrow to Reading by coach and to St Ives by a train with the long-cherished and resplendent name of the Cornish Riviera Express. The following morning a local taxi deposited us at Land’s End itself, the last vehicle we were to ride in for the next fifty-one days. For fifteen hundred or so kilometres we walked, averaging thirty-five or even forty kilometres a day, much of it in the rain (the summer of 1986 was, especially in the north, notably wet). We realized during the first day that what we had thought would be an easy initiation was anything but. Our monstrous boots hindered rather than helped us. Several days later, at Minehead in Somerset, we finally discarded them in favour of light walking shoes. Soon, too, went the books; we were always too exhausted by nightfall to read. And during our few

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short periods of rest during the day we either lay, boots and socks off, against our packs staring at the sky or, more likely, sheltered under wet trees with our rain capes gathered about us. Malcolm and I learned to know each other in those fifty-one days to a degree that no other adventure could have afforded. I at age fifty-two and he at eighteen shared thoughts, reactions, and understandings to the point where we could walk for two or three hours in virtual silence but sense instinctively what the other was thinking. I would not have missed the experience for the world. On our way northward I attempted to keep no sustained narrative, but I did make a few notes on which the following account is based. Far more venerable than the national footpaths are the rights-of-way, which reach back to prehistoric Britain and offer the walker sights and sounds that have not changed for centuries. Some rights-of-way have been incorporated in the long-distance paths, but others remain what they have always been – the shortest distance between two hamlets, the path from a village to the ford of a nearby stream, the way through a wood to a church or market. Some may be overgrown, others clearly designated, but wherever they are or whatever their condition, their legal status is incontestable. They are, in law, exactly that: rights of way, giving the walker undisputed access. The purpose of the national long-distance paths is to afford pleasure, or in a few cases challenge. The first that Malcolm and I followed, the South-West Peninsula Coast Path, hugs the coastline for a total of 825 kilometres around the western end of England (the longest of the longdistance paths). It connects Bournemouth and Poole on the English Channel with Minehead on the Bristol Channel, embracing Land’s End along the way. Since we began our walk, rather prosaically, at Land’s End, we covered only the northern section to Minehead, following the frequent markers displaying a bright yellow directional arrow as well as the familiar white acorn symbol of the Countryside Commission. The fact that the paths are clearly marked and the track itself well tended is not to be taken as a guarantee that a national path represents the shortest distance between two points. Far from it. The South-West Peninsula Coast Path, for example, necessarily goes up and down cliffs and in and out of inlets. For the walker whose legs or feet protest or who is more interested in direct routes (as we frequently were), country lanes always provide a variety of choices. On some roads a vehicle may be encountered no more than once an hour or even two.

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Inland in the West Country the marginal farms and the small, austere villages not only afford an alternative for the walker eager to forego the coastal cliffs and crags but also point the way to the great Exmoor and Dartmoor. Maps and guidebooks (several inevitably by Victorian rural rectors) will help to ensure that the visitor remains on track, but both moors are valued for their wild prospects and solitude in a small, otherwise intensely populated country (and, incidentally, they prepare the long-distance walker for what awaits in Yorkshire and Scotland). Here, amidst the gorse, bracken, and heather, are to be found scattered Bronze Age barrows and remnants of dwellings. The moors themselves, as any member of the Sherlock Holmes Society knows, suddenly begin at the edge of a field or copse and stretch away for treeless mile upon treeless mile, seemingly an infinite distance from any noise, unless it is that of the constant wind, or a distant jet. Britain is a walker’s country, much of it happily distant from the kingdom of London. All the twelve national footpaths can be seen as selfcontained, each with its own distinctive character, for those on a walk of a day, a long weekend, or a week or more. For those intent upon crossing the whole country, however, there are, unfortunately, major gaps between paths. Here the highly reliable Ordnance Survey maps again prove indispensable. They are criss-crossed with tertiary roads, colour-coded in yellow or white, roads which, especially in the south, can offer a variety of routes around major towns and cities. With hedgerows occasionally taller than the walker, they help point the way amidst foxglove, valerian, ragwort, primrose, and even wild iris, happily contributing to a feeling of bucolic immunity. “Here’s flowers for you; / Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram; / The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun, / And with him rises, weeping: these are flowers / Of middle summer.” By using circuitous routes, the imaginative and skilful map reader will, for example, be able to bypass even Bristol while crossing the gap between the South-West Peninsula Coast Path and the southern end of Offa’s Dyke, the long-distant path that largely coincides with the Welsh border. Although Offa, a Mercian king of the eighth century, is at best a shadowy figure, his frontier “dyke” or rudimentary earth wall remains real enough. It is thought to have been built to discourage Welsh marauders and as an early means of regulating trade, and little of it has been reduced to arable land, even with the passage of more than a millennium. Accordingly, the dike was seen as a prime candidate for a long-distance path.

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Various traditional rights-of-way are linked together by more recent designations, resulting in a path, never more than mildly challenging, that follows Offa’s earthwork. The Welsh hills, sparsely populated relative to much of Britain, are gentle and undemanding, affording the walker pleasing variation but never any real difficulty. And along Offa’s Dyke, more than amidst the tourist world of Cornwall, is to be found not so much a deindustrialized as a pre-industrial Britain (the Scottish Highlands offer something of the same feel; even what little incursion the industrial revolution once made inland has now diminished or disappeared). Automobiles and occasional pylons cannot be totally avoided, although Victorian rail lines, long since closed, occasionally provide a direct route, except where the rail bridges have unfortunately been removed. For the whole three hundred kilometres of Offa’s Dyke, the shepherd and the farmer are more usual than the industrial worker or even the tradesman, the cycle of crops and the placid movement of sheep and cattle more common than the traffic of motorways. The gentle Wye valley, covered in beech and oak, parallels Offa’s Dyke for much of its course. The ruined Tintern Abbey was, long before Wordsworth, a peaceful relic in what had once been a strife-ridden frontier, as both Roman remains and medieval castles attest. However, the walker, making his or her way northward, must sooner or later leave the great earthwork of the Mercian king and face reality by crossing over the M6 motorway, a desecration that runs almost the whole length of England. Malcolm and I came upon the M6 suddenly, emerging from a quiet secondary road onto a motorway overpass. Below us was no bucolic England. In the place of hedgerows and lapwing, hedgehog and rabbit, there was an endless stream of huge lorries and cars, all unfettered, it seemed, by any speed limit. The incessant hum and the noxious blue pollution brought us back with a start to industrial Britain – or what is left of it. We had walked out of the Welsh hills, leaving Offa’s Dyke near Oswestry, and into the great fertile plain of Shropshire. Our immediate destination was the third of the national paths, the Pennine Way, which would take us northward through the Midlands and Yorkshire to the Scottish border. Certainly, the M6 motorway had proclaimed clearly enough that we had arrived in Britain’s industrial heartland. We knew that, like any walker, we had to pick our way carefully through those satanic mills. The Pennine Way is one solution, the oldest and the primus inter pares of the long-distant paths. It runs for about four hundred kilometres up the spine of England, beginning south of Manchester and ending just

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above the Scottish border, and crosses some of the most remote and hostile terrain in Britain. With a little imagination, the path can be reached by walking through the green, rolling Derbyshire Dales, where Izaak Walton fished – and wrote – three centuries ago. For walkers eager to escape the remnants of industry – the factories, the slag heaps, and the dour row houses still scattered across the Midlands – the Pennine Way is the obvious answer. But equally obvious is the fact that it is developed and waymarked only to a degree. At its southern end, the Pennine Way has quite intentionally been left as a sort of test of purpose and endurance. For the walker enamoured of the country lane and the quiet path, the two days at the southern end are to be avoided. Carefully study the Ordnance maps and plot an alternative course, however complex that may be, between Manchester and Sheffield. Otherwise, the unwary walker will find him or herself embarked upon an exhausting two-day obstacle course. The guidebooks are candid enough. One simply states that, of all the paths, the “Pennine Way is the hardest and dirtiest. It is the only walk which is worth doing once and once only … There is a strong sensation at the start … of leaving the safe and comfortable for the unsafe and uncomfortable.” Across Kinder Scout, the 600-metre-high plateau at the southern end of the Pennine Way in Derbyshire, there are few markers or cairns to assist the walker – or, more correctly here, the hiker. On a clear, sunny day (there are few enough of those) both the steep climb up a small, rockstrewn valley and the struggle across the desolate plateau itself would be difficult enough. On a cloudy or rainy day, when the plateau may suddenly be covered in fog, the challenge is formidable. “Trust the British to make it more difficult than it need be,” an obviously exhausted Dutch walker said to us. And he was right in the sense that a certain type of English walker seems to relish the challenge of making his or her way across terrain reminiscent of Flanders in 1917. Some, who seek this unconventional challenge, are kitted out as if embarking upon a trans-Antarctic expedition, but certainly all who venture out into that desolation must have a compass – and know how to use it – and a more detailed map than the standard Ordnance Survey sheet of 1:50,000 if they are not to spend the day trudging about in increasingly distressing circles and wandering repeatedly into dead-end bogs. The terrain is heavily gouged with natural trenches, some five or more metres deep, in the wet, black peat bogs known locally as “groughs,” which run for hundreds of metres at all angles, drawing the unwary

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walker along their haphazard courses. The whole thing is a sort of eerie obstacle course, self-consciously maintained as such, even though a few additional markers would help to ensure that walkers do not lose themselves, as we did for two or three maddening hours, in the labyrinth. But that seems to be how at least some want it. The second day on the Pennine Way is little better. Even Arthur Wainwright, the enthusiastic author of the standard guidebook to the path and one of its founders, is himself scathing about the prospect facing the unwary walker: “Now for Black Hill … a brute in any weather. Walkers must be prepared for a tough and gruelling trek through glutinous slime. Girding up the loins is of no avail. Iron determination is needed. And a companion with strong arms … Black Hill is well named. The broad top really is black. It is not the only one with a summit of peat but no other shows such a desolate and hopeless quagmire to the sky. Nature fashioned it but had no plans for clothing it. Nothing can grow in this acid wasteland. There is no root-hold in the sea of ooze … It is a dreadful place.” All this is, fortunately, avoidable, as we learned once we had somehow made our way through it. There are just enough tertiary roads in the region to ensure that the non-masochist will be able to find a way around Black Hill, while at the same time avoiding the nearby conurbations of the Midlands. It is not easy, for as broad southern England narrows into the Midlands, one is seldom more than ten miles or so from a city, be it Manchester, Sheffield, or Huddersfield, a fact difficult to believe when one is wandering about in the fog on the nearby blasted heath of Kinder Scout or Black Hill. From there northward, however, the Pennine Way is comparatively plain sailing. Over this hill or that may lie a large city. After one turn Manchester, vast, sprawling, seemingly without a centre, suddenly emerges. But it appears blessedly distant, and the path continues to be a haven of quiet, with only heather, cotton grass, curlew, or sheep encountered, and the occasional shepherd or fellow walker, generally respectful of one’s privacy as well as the good state of the path. “Up hill and down dale” must be a phrase coined by a Yorkshireman. As the Pennine Way makes its increasingly benign way northward, the gentle undulation of hill and valley becomes more regular, more rhythmic. Gradually, in north Yorkshire, minor roads again appear in greater numbers to offer themselves as alternatives to the path. In certain Yorkshire towns the social effects of deindustrialization are inescapable: the many unemployed, the lethargy,

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the long, lifeless rows of identical drab houses. The contrast between the depressing mill towns and the green and purple heather-clad dales of this, the Bronte, country is harrowing as the towns die and the oblivious hills continue in their perpetual beauty. What has changed on the hills themselves in the past thousand years or so is that they are no longer wooded. So bare are they today, covered as they are with only rough grass and heather, that it is difficult to think of them as ever having been great forests. For the walker, of course, this deforestation means unobscured vistas and frequently a clear view of the path or road for many kilometres ahead. Here again is bucolic Britain in abundance. Most North Americans underestimate the distance that separates, say, Manchester and Edinburgh. It is, in fact, a long walk through increasingly sparsely populated farmland (or the Lake District) into the Lowlands of Scotland. No need to escape conurbations here; the difficulty would be to find, save on the coast, towns of any size at all. The result is some of the best walking in Britain, far from both traffic and towns but beautiful in hill and dale. If one could walk for only a few days or a few score kilometres, that is where Malcolm and I would recommend: either along the north end of the Pennine Way or by the back lanes and old drove roads of the Scottish Lowlands. The route northward, as one proceeds up the uneven spine of Britain, is less prolific in inns and pubs than is the south, less fecund in places to stay overnight for those walkers not carrying their accommodation on their backs. One of the corollaries of the growing care for the countryside and the opening of great houses and gardens has been the increase in the accommodation business, not so much at the upper end of the scale as at the more modest level of the “bed and breakfast.” The motive is presumably to make some money, to supplement otherwise limited income, but in any event the result is that in much of England and Wales, if not in Scotland, every village or hamlet today offers a variety of choice. Even a remote farm will have its “B and B” sign clearly placed on the roadside to attract the chance traveller. For the walker, the B and B is really a godsend, readily available, inexpensive, and often of a surprisingly high standard – far better in many cases than the grotty little inns that are frequently the only alternative. Most people who offer bed and breakfast are self-effacing, occasionally providing evening meals and even doing laundry upon request, but otherwise respecting the privacy of their guests. Some, however, are informative

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and even amusing interlocutors, supplying comment, sometimes condign, on the local scene. Almost invariably the B and Bs are run by women of formidable character, definite in their actions and certain of their practices, while their more hesitant husbands, relegated to a subservient role, uneasily dance attendance upon the overnight guests. The B and Bs, joined with Ordnance maps and tertiary roads, make England nearly ideal for walking, either leisurely or briskly. Not so Scotland. A relatively sparse population and a limited number of lesser roads make it more difficult. With a little ingenuity, the walker can avoid the worst of the Highland motorways and make her or his way through remote glens and along lonely lochs to Inverness, the capital of the Highlands. Even during the first two days beyond Inverness, tertiary roads can be found. But thereafter the jig is up. That worst kind of walking – on the verge of a busy highway – becomes inescapable. Worse still is walking along such roads when it is raining, making automobile spray an endurance test in the wet northern Highlands. What is perhaps less expected is the flatness of the coast in the two northernmost counties, Sutherland and especially Caithness. They are not the wild, mountainous Highlands of popular or Landseer’s imagination. Instead, Caithness is almost as flat as Norfolk, with vast peat bogs or, where free of the wind, wooded, fertile vales in which sheep and cattle browse. Here there is no sense of a romantic terrain inhabited by people whose ancestors long ago painted themselves blue. The reality is moors and pastures ideal for walking, if only there were more lanes and footpaths amongst them. John o’Groats itself, self-consciously the northernmost point of the British mainland, offers what little it can in confirmation that one has indeed reached the end of the line: caravan parks, several mediocre B and Bs, and a pathetic little hotel. For the long-distance walker, it is a low note on which to finish, despite the beauty of the Pentland Firth and the Orkneys just beyond. We eyed them for a moment as a possible extension of our walk, which by then we were loathe to give up. Malcolm and I had learned the truth of that adage that it is not the arrival but the journey that matters, a journey of self-knowledge at least as much of a land that cherishes its countryside. When we returned to Toronto from Scotland shortly after Labour Day in 1986, I went directly from Pearson Airport to a board meeting of the Canadian Opera Company, which, under the chairmanship of Hal Jackman, was making a determined, if ultimately vain, effort to raise the funds for

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a costly new opera house at Bay and Wellesley Streets. Far more vexing was the news of Mulroney’s confusing shenanigans, as he entered his third year in office. He had begun without any clear idea of what he wanted to do, other than to be Prime Minister. He had been at once faced with the sorry spectacle of a number of his ministers and associates engaging in real or alleged wrongdoings. The crassness of these petits scandales had immediately reflected adversely on him and supplied an odious little coterie of Liberal mps, nicknamed the “rat pack,” with ample ammunition for their daily broadsides in the House of Commons. They ranted at Mulroney during question period, hoping desperately to get a thirty-second clip on national television, but in fact reducing the level of the televised question period to new depths of silliness and incivility. Not having much else in mind and not apparently much enamoured of the cautious musings of his Finance Minister, Michael Wilson, about the need to reduce the deficit by reining in government spending, Mulroney in September 1985 seized upon a controversial recommendation of Don Macdonald’s Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, appointed several years earlier by Trudeau. Mulroney forgot his earlier and repeated protestations of his determination to stand on guard for Canada’s sovereignty by valiantly opposing free trade with the United States. Instead, he was soon oozing blarney from every pore, singing maudlin Irish ditties with Ronald Reagan as a manifestation of his newly discovered understanding that CanadaUS free trade would be the best thing since night baseball. The challenge of a negotiation became all-absorbing for the government, leaving little time for it to contemplate the implications of the profound collaborative developments in Europe. Gorbachev had recently arrived in the Kremlin, an event that would in 1989 lead to the dismantling of the Berlin wall, which, as I watched it being fortified in 1961, I had been certain would never come down in my lifetime. That fateful and symbolic act opened the way for a new Europe, providing an additional dynamic to the burgeoning European Union, as well as raising puzzling questions about the future of nato in a post–Cold War world. In 1988, as election day approached, the prospects for us Liberals had improved from the situation four years earlier, but not greatly so. In June I had to face the unusual prospect of a contested nomination in Etobicoke North. Contrary to the traditions of both the Liberal and Conservative Parties, I as the former member was not simply renominated by

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acclamation. Rather, I had to spend several months with my new and wonderfully organized and perceptive campaign manager, Tom Allison, recruiting additional Liberal association members in such numbers that the sheer volume of MacLaren delegates would overwhelm even those Sikhs who supported a candidate from their own community, some of whom found it surprisingly difficult to recall their home addresses in the constituency and whose principal public policy objective was to win support for the separation of a Sikh homeland, Khalistan, from India. I was eventually renominated after another four- or five-hour meeting, but elsewhere across Canada the Liberal electoral prospects were not promising. Turner and the Liberal rump had not done well in opposition. Mulroney himself was confident of his electoral prospects. He called the election for November 1988, before his cherished US-Canada free trade deal was concluded, flawed though it was. The campaign was widely and rightly seen as a referendum on the draft agreement, although a few of us in the Liberal Party attempted in vain to add to the contest the question of the accelerating degradation of the environment and the formulation of a more comprehensive Arctic policy. I can recall arguing, along with others, that if the Conservative government had an estimated $8 to 12 billion to purchase nuclear submarines, it must have some money to help fund environmental corrective programmes. Turner, who had hitherto attempted the difficult task of convincing the electorate that, while he was not necessarily against free trade with the United States, he was certainly opposed to any deal negotiated by that poseur Mulroney. In the televised debates of that autumn election campaign, he did well but not well enough to convince a sufficient number of undecided voters that he had something more promising to offer to confront the pressing problems of the economy. More fundamentally, he did not come across as an effective leader. In attempting to present himself as such, Turner suffered from the defection of several of his more prominent colleagues. Jean Chrétien, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, had soon resigned from his short-lived government in apparent disenchantment with his leader’s incompetence, but largely to free his hand to launch his widely anticipated manoeuvres to supersede him. In response, several other Liberal members began to contemplate a replacement for Turner. Brian Tobin, David Dingwall, Sergio Marchi, Alfonso Gagliano, and David Collenette had, to a greater or lesser degree, convinced themselves that the sooner Chrétien succeeded Turner the better for the Liberal Party and

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for Canada. Others in the party were uneasy at what had become their leader’s outright opposition to Mulroney’s pending free trade deal, while yet others urged him to become even more outspoken against it, after the ndp adopted the policy of flat opposition, a stance that at least had the merit of clarity. Caught in the middle, Turner failed in June 1988 to carry a majority of seats. The Conservatives were re-elected with a sharply reduced plurality. I was among those who contributed to that reduction by readily defeating my Tory opponent in Etobicoke North. Mulroney nevertheless regarded the election results as a mandate to complete his free trade negotiations. His principal purpose in launching the effort, he had often proclaimed, was to get an accord whose rules would once and for all prevent the all-too-familiar and meretricious application of US “trade remedies” (principally anti-dumping and countervail) that Canada had so frequently encountered to its economic detriment. He failed to get any such thing. He was warned repeatedly by his negotiators that the US Congress interpreted commercial power as its exclusive constitutional prerogative, not to be reduced or curtailed by anyone. Congress would continue to apply fully its trade remedies as it alone saw fit. It would not be limited by any international accord. There were other flaws and omissions, as I took every occasion to point out: restrictive rules of origin, onerous content requirements, monopolistic intellectual property provisions, and the lack of a meaningful accession clause. The agreement risked locking Canada into a narrow continental strategy when the focus of the country needed increasingly to be global, especially given the rapid ascent of Asia. In short, I was not anti-US-Canada free trade, but I did have serious reservations about the agreement that was negotiated. However, the US ultimatum arrived: take it or leave it. Mulroney hastily took it. Canada in effect signed a compact that was well short of a true free trade agreement. Later, a US ambassador to Canada described it as something decidedly less: a trade-enhancement agreement. Nevertheless, on its conclusion the business community was largely ecstatic, the more naive believing that Canada would somehow benefit massively. Quebec nationalists, led by Mulroney’s friend, Lucien Bouchard, were, for their part, equally gratified. They hoped that the agreement would achieve what its opponents across Canada had predicted: the powers of Ottawa would be eroded and the bonds binding the Canadian federation loosened further.

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Eventually, in his second term, Mulroney concluded the deal which he naively believed – and Mulroney was nothing if not naive – would secure him an honoured place in Canadian political history. Not so. By the end of that term he had lost popular support to an almost unprecedented degree. He became deeply mistrusted, regarded as endlessly evasive, smug, duplicitous, and fundamentally untrustworthy. In the Liberal lobby chatter was frequent about alleged misdemeanours of his government, including stories about the purchase of Airbus jets for Air Canada. His own Deputy Prime Minister applied to him the popular assonant tag “lyin’ Brian.” While the free trade debate worked itself out, Mulroney, evidently convinced that he could wean Quebec away from its traditional embrace of the federal Liberal Party, simultaneously embarked upon the madness of reopening the constitutional settlement of 1981. His starting point was to assure the people of Quebec ad nauseum that they had been humiliated by it. Some even began to believe him. In June 1987 he convened a First Ministers’ conference at Meech Lake, which proclaimed agreement on several constitutional amendments. It was one amendment, however, that really stuck in the craw of all those, myself included, who believed it was folly compounded to initiate a debate about what a “distinct society” clause for Quebec would mean. Of course, Quebec was a “distinct society” within the Canadian state, but as Trudeau soon argued, the very phrase involved legal, political, and practical implications that would offer new openings to separatists to make mischief. Passions, however ill-defined, soon stalked the land. Advocates of the Meech Lake Accord turned up the volume to the point of extravagantly declaring that it was Canada’s last chance, while its opponents described it as a blatant sellout to Quebec separatists for supposed Conservative gain. Divisions in the Liberal Party were immediate, following Turner’s prompt embrace of Meech Lake (supported by Paul Martin in Montreal). He had apparently convinced himself that Liberal opposition would only consolidate the Tories’ position in Quebec, but he may also have regarded his support as clear evidence of his final refutation of Trudeau and all his works. The Liberal caucus was deeply split, barely able to keep a public appearance of unity. We were in the worst of political predicaments: a party and a caucus rendered asunder by the decision of a chief who was unable to impose his leadership. Many of us were made almost as uneasy by Turner’s mishandling of the challenge as we were by Mulroney’s original ineptitude in reopening old constitutional wounds. I did the not very heroic

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thing of running for cover. That was just fine with my constituents, deeply distrustful as they were of anything proposed by Mulroney and profoundly respectful of Trudeau’s opposing judgment. If Trudeau said that Meech Lake was no good for Canada, that was enough for them. A rudimentary, if not very courageous, sense of loyalty to the party leader kept me silent, but there was no mistaking my sense of relief when in 1990, following three years of futile and destructive debate while the accord awaited provincial approval, the Manitoba legislature did the right thing and rejected Meech Lake. The premier of Newfoundland simply declined to waste his legislature’s time by putting the agreement to its members. Two years later I was not much happier when Chrétien, having in the meantime become Liberal leader, embraced Mulroney’s “compromise,” the all-singing and all-dancing Charlottetown accord. This time it was Trudeau and Chrétien who parted ways, Turner having disappeared from the scene. I was delighted when the wholly unnecessary constitutional tinkering implicit in the Charlottetown agreement was decisively rejected in a national referendum in October 1992. Earlier, I had been, for an uneasy six months or so, the opposition finance critic, after Turner had in February 1989 designated what the British call shadow ministers. He knew that as finance critic, I would take as my focus the failure of the government to curtail the ever-increasing current account deficit and the growing debt, which were proving to be the major brakes on our economic growth, driving stultifyingly high interest rates. I was convinced that the challenge was not only to reduce and eventually to eliminate the deficit but also to create a sufficient current account surplus to meet the rising interest payments on our debt. It was, in fact, the accumulating debt, provincial as well as federal, that was the real problem. Each year Canada was borrowing more and more just to meet compounding interest payments, with an increasing share of the debt owned abroad, driving us ever deeper into the red. I was alone in the Liberal caucus in pointing to Canada’s fiscal deterioration as our overarching policy challenge at a time when my colleagues saw cost-cutting as the problem, not the solution. I called for radical measures to restore our country’s financial health. My major argument was that the cherished goals of the Liberal Party, such as improved social programmes, better education, increased innovation and productivity, and environmental sustainability, were unachievable as long as Canada was effectively bankrupt. Further, it would be impossible to benefit from trade

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liberalization, including the pending and highly controversial US-Canada agreement, and globalization in general as long as our economy was hobbled by fiscal weakness and the high taxes and interest rates that accompanied it. I suspect that I soon became a crashing bore as I nattered away endlessly to the caucus about the deficit, including in several papers (primarily The Canadian Nation in an Interdependent World). Tactfully, I reminded Turner, not of his own contribution as Trudeau’s Finance Minister to deficit financing, but of his later vigorous attacks on such financing when he was in the private sector, a complete turnaround from his days as Finance Minister. He could do so then, he responded, but now the Liberal Party might lose votes if its leader were seen to be advocating reductions in spending, especially on social programmes. Despite what I understood was Wilson’s advice as Finance Minister, Mulroney had done little in his first term and showed no signs of doing more in his second to rein in spending in order to help clean up the fiscal mess, although it was self-evident that if Canada were to compete successfully in a USCanada free trade area and beyond in an increasingly global economy, we needed to curtail our deficit. Unfortunately, during Wilson’s years as Finance Minister, Canada’s national debt doubled, entailing ever-greater compound interest payments. Members of the public saw governments as not unlike their own households: they could not indefinitely spend more than they took in.* The first and only Conservative budget for which I was the Liberal finance critic was one that was summarily dismissed in advance by my colleagues when a draft was discovered in a printer’s garbage somewhere in Ottawa a day or two before the budget speech. They eagerly proclaimed that budget confidentiality had been fatally compromised and accordingly decided to boycott the budget speech en masse. On the otherwise empty Opposition benches I alone sat through it, since Wilson seemed to me simply the unwitting victim of egregious carelessness on the part of a commercial printer. No harm had been done to the public interest. Following

* In their admirable Double Vision: The Inside Story of the Liberals in Power (Toronto, 1996), 96, Messrs Greenspon and Wilson-Smith speak of me as unable to bring myself “to join the Liberal chorus criticizing the Tories over the deficit, trade or the gst.” Perhaps I mistake their meaning, but I do not recall a Liberal chorus criticizing the Tories over the fiscal mismanagement; rather, I sung almost solo in my attacks on their continuing high deficits.

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the minister’s speech, I had the rather bizarre experience of attempting to analyze and criticize his budget on my own. I was the sole Liberal in the House. My speech in response was decidedly mediocre, partly because I was speaking under Turner’s ukase not to discuss or even mention the current account deficit and burgeoning debt, to me by far and away the major fiscal issue facing Canadians. That single response to a budget speech was enough for me. A few weeks later I resigned as finance critic for, in the words of a terse press release from Turner’s office, “personal reasons.” Opposition when Clark was briefly Prime Minister, I, as a neophyte member, had found of mild interest. With Mulroney and Turner, life on the Opposition backbenches was unutterably tedious. In Barchester Towers Trollope has an Anglican priest observe sardonically, “I know no life that must be so delicious as that of … of a leading Member of the Opposition – to thunder forth accusations against men in power; to show up the worst side of everything that is produced; to pick holes in every coat; to be indignant, sarcastic, jocose, moral or supercilious; to damn with faint praise or crush with open calumny. What can be so easy as this when the critic has to be responsible for nothing? You condemn what I do, but put yourself in my position and do the reverse, and then see if I cannot condemn you?” A few Liberals appeared to enjoy Opposition, among them the rat packers, who had still not disappeared into the obscurity they so richly deserved. But the majority of Liberal members had determined, as Opposition members sooner or later do, to wait more or less quietly until the government defeated itself, as all governments sooner or later must. Before each daily question period, those of us who were the principal critics – I had soon happily moved on to trade – rehearsed together, with morning newspapers ready at hand, our intended broadsides, but in the afternoon they never seemed quite so devastating as they had when we were enthusiastically formulating them in the morning. The newly elected Paul Martin, a friend from Persian days, was, by his own choice, the environment critic, cautious in his questions in the House but in caucus sharply critical of those on our own front bench, pre-eminently Lloyd Axworthy, who did not agree with his rather vague but strongly delivered free-market approach. It soon became evident that Martin’s long-recognized ambition to be leader was gradually becoming obsessive, and even the more obtuse members of our caucus were beginning to recognize that his patience and that of the motley with which he had surrounded himself was already growing short. For my part, I was

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surprised to hear him embrace the idea that Canada could somehow grow its way out of its deficits and debt, my position being the exact opposite: Canada needed to eliminate its gross deficit financing in order to grow. Misgivings about Martin’s all-too-obvious ambitions aside, most Liberal members, in the time-honoured tradition of Oppositions, played poker or, the season permitting, golf. In my own leisure time I completed the requirements for a master of divinity degree at the University of Toronto, begun when I had been out of Parliament for four years and back at CB Media. It was then still possible to choose from a wide selection of courses (more recently concentration has rightly been on pastoral matters). I selected courses mainly in church history and traditional, not liberation, theology, eager to understand a little more of what the best minds in Europe had been thinking during seventeen hundred or so of the past nineteen hundred years as they had contemplated the nature of man and the eternal verities of revealed religion. I enjoyed it all greatly and finally received my degree in 1991, thereby incidentally opening the way for the gratifying award by Trinity College at the University of Toronto of an honorary doctorate of sacred letters three years later, its resounding title much exceeding those of the other honorary degrees that I was to receive. Meanwhile, the final parliamentary debate about free trade with the United States approached, with the monochromatic Sheila Copps and the romantic Axworthy, to whom every policy difference appeared to be personal, leading the attack. They committed a future Liberal government to attempt to renegotiate the agreement or, failing to win any significant change, to abrogate it. I was not convinced. Although remaining skeptical of the more extravagant claims made for the agreement, I had gradually persuaded myself that, in the end, a Liberal government would do better to accept the deal, flawed though it undoubtedly was, and recognize that, having once concluded it, the United States would be in no mind to renegotiate the accord. It would be the best course amongst a bad lot to seek instead to exploit whatever dispute settlement provisions it contained as a means of countering the continuing and capricious application of US trade remedies. Mulroney et al. had sought the agreement as a means of escaping random applications of US protectionist measures. Let us see, I thought, whether we could gain at least some immunity, even via a flawed agreement. And as for the allegation that Canada would lose sovereignty, most international agreements entail a degree of such loss. The essential questions were how much and to what end?

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Informal soundings in Washington had made clear that renegotiation was excluded. Even minor adjustments were highly unlikely. As second best, most Liberals accepted that, if we formed the next government, we would, in addition to exploiting where possible the dispute settlement provisions, seek simultaneously to blunt the sharper edges of the USCanada agreement by working for the inclusion of Mexico and actively pursuing trade agreements with other countries and communities, especially the European Union, the European Free Trade Area, and Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Korea, and Chile, all capable of the disciplines of rules-based liberalized trade. To be sure, Liberal and ndp members voted against the draft Canada-US free trade agreement at a special session of Parliament in December 1988, but the outcome was never in doubt. The Tories, although reduced in numbers in the election earlier that year, still had sufficient members to ensure the passage of the enabling legislation, leaving Canadians to adapt as best they could to an agreement from which they had historically shied away – and which first Stanfield and then Mulroney had so strongly opposed. Not long after the passage of the free trade bill, Turner announced his decision, long anticipated, to stand down as leader of the Liberal Party, having twice led it to defeat. Herb Gray took on the unenviable task of interim leader, while others joined enthusiastically in the leadership campaign, which everyone agreed would focus on Chrétien and Martin. As for myself, I was convinced that the party had all but run out of steam. Intellectually, it had little to offer besides a return to a past that was rapidly fading away. Reflex rejection of everything that the Mulroney government had proposed or implemented was no policy at all. I was convinced that we Liberals had lost a second election in a row because the party had found itself on the wrong side of history and could offer nothing in the way of constructive alternatives. I set about to see what I could do to bring about an ideological shift in the party: the embrace – not just the passive acceptance – of globalization, the harnessing of markets, and above all the restoration of Canada’s fiscal health. Only then would the party, it seemed to me, recover its traditional centralist position and be seen as responsible – and electable – after almost a decade in the wilderness. A leadership convention was called for June 1990 in Calgary, intended to carry the Liberal banner into the Conservative heartland. Turner was not yet out of office before Chrétien and Martin informally indicated their intentions. Chrétien had twenty years in Parliament and nine cabinet

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appointments behind him. Much of the rhetoric of his leadership campaign was aimed at Quebec separatists (who mistakenly described him as a bumpkin). On other issues he was, to my mind, sound on the necessity for fiscal frugality and the need to site foreign and trade policies primarily in multilateral and regional organizations. Martin, although new to the House of Commons, was clearly determined to succeed where his father had failed in 1948, 1957, and 1968, but it seemed that he, hitherto an able businessman in Montreal, still had a political apprenticeship to serve before he was ready to present himself as a seasoned leadership candidate. Against Chrétien, Martin was decidedly less articulate and did not appear to be yet ready for the inevitable slings and arrows of partisan politics, but I did not doubt that in time he could make a good minister. I supposed that his impatience to present himself as a candidate for the leadership, however formidable Chrétien’s edge, was a means of proclaiming for all to see his longer-term ambitions. At the Calgary convention, Chrétien was elected by a convincing margin. Martin promptly did the gentlemanly, if merely formal, gesture of making the selection unanimous. However, it was clear that his large and well-funded, if not notably competent, team would remain in readiness to relaunch the campaign whenever it suited them – but not necessarily Chrétien – to do so. There was no mistaking Martin’s ambition for the leadership and from there for the prime ministership, the realization of which had been repeatedly denied to his father. On the same day as the Calgary convention elected Chrétien, Mulroney’s proposed Meech Lake agreement finally expired, leaving the Liberal leader, in the eyes of some Quebecers and most Conservatives, as the villainous manipulator behind it, and Trudeau behind him. But Liberal election expectations nevertheless kept mounting. The now deeply distrusted Mulroney was falling rapidly in the polls, although, paradoxically, throughout his seemingly irreversible decline in most of the country he had somehow held the support of his caucus. To our astonishment, we hardly heard a squeak about him from the Tories to the day he resigned. The contrast between public disdain and caucus loyalty was striking and ultimately baffling, quite unlike Diefenbaker’s departure.

9


It Was Great Fun

Chrétien was rightly determined to present himself as a decisive leader. In time, he would dither over the gst, but meanwhile on other issues he tested ideas that were being drafted for inclusion in the Red Book, which was being put together under the general direction of Chrétien’s competent senior policy adviser, Chaviva Hošek, and Martin. The Red Book would constitute the Liberal platform for the 1993 election and help to bind together those who had followed opposing routes in the recent leadership contest. Largely at the urging of Martin, Hošek, and Edward (“Eddie”) Goldenberg, a major policy conference was convened for Aylmer, Quebec, in November 1991 (evoking memories of the successful and appropriately named Port Hope conference of King and Massey in 1933 and the Kingston conference of Pearson and Sharp in 1960). At Aylmer those who had opposed the Canada-US free trade agreement and the now proposed nafta, the gst, and any real constraints on government spending confronted the others, notably John Manley, myself, and a more wary Martin, who were advocating the acceptance of the pending trilateral free trade agreement and the gst, as well as a determined, systematic fiscal programme to reduce and finally to eliminate the current account deficit. We won the crucial debate at the Aylmer conference and consistently at numerous lesser skirmishes thereafter. It would be difficult to exaggerate the impact on subsequent Liberal policy of the Aylmer conference. Participation was limited to 125. The caucus as a whole was not invited, although the chairpersons of caucus committees were. Accordingly, as chairman of the caucus economic committee, I listened with satisfaction to several speakers follow much the same lines as we had taken in my committee and my several policy papers, emphasizing the need for the government to get its fiscal house in order and to concentrate its direct support, including tax incentives, on research

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and innovation. In particular, John Hancock and I had produced for the caucus and the party generally a discussion paper, Wide Open, which argued the case for launching free trade negotiations with the European Union and selected countries of Latin America and Asia. The US-Canada free trade agreement should be regarded as the first step towards a truly global, outward-oriented trade strategy, with the goal of making Canada the most open, connected, and competitive economic space in North America. Much of our thinking made its way into the Red Book and the Aylmer conference. Trade liberalization at whatever level – multilateral, regional, or bilateral – was once and for all endorsed and internal trade barriers condemned, culminating in Chrétien proclaiming roundly in language wonderfully reminiscent of Wide Open, “Protectionism is neither left wing nor right wing. It is simply passé. Globalization is not right wing or left wing. It is simply a way of life.” Later, in the election campaign he was to repeat bluntly, “If you don’t like nafta, vote ndp.” After the election the main lines of government policy would depart in no major way from the broad lines set out at Aylmer. Meanwhile, the Tories knew full well that with Mulroney’s standing in the polls now in the low teens – unprecedented for a serving prime minister – he had to go. In addition to his own dismal ratings, his government was increasingly beset from the right by the new, largely western, and cranky Reform Party. Then the Conservatives made the colossal error of selecting Kim Campbell as Mulroney’s successor as leader. Visibly incompetent, she had consistently displayed her ineffectiveness when she was one of his later ministers. She nevertheless seemed to purblind Tories to possess major, if to us invisible, electoral assets over their admittedly even more unilingual veterans, Michael Wilson and Don Mazankowski. While we Liberals had been preoccupied with our own long leadership campaign and then the election campaign itself, the Conservative government had been involved in the final design of nafta, not with the Republican Ronald Reagan, but with the newly elected Democrat Bill Clinton. Building on the US-Canada bilateral agreement, both the United States and Mexico hoped that free access for Mexico to the American and Canadian markets would, over the longer term, introduce such stability and prosperity, relatively speaking, into Mexico that narcotics criminals would be hobbled and more aspiring “wetbacks” would decide to stay at home. However, in the presidential election Clinton and the Democratic Party had valued greatly the support of the afl-cio, which au fond had

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long been skeptical of trade liberalization, especially with developing countries such as Mexico. They remained convinced that union jobs might be lost to cheap imports from Mexico (the fact that trade liberalization has historically created jobs did not deter them). As they saw it, Mexico would export to the United States products that undercut the cost of USmade goods by exploiting cheap labour and by environmentally abusive practices. Clinton’s response was to propose two side agreements, one on labour and the other on environmental standards, but Canada and Mexico at once suspected that the side agreements would be employed by a Democratic administration to hinder or exclude certain imports unwelcome to its supporters in organized labour. The standards proposed in the two side agreements were not especially onerous (even Mexico could meet them readily enough on paper), but there remained in our minds serious misgivings about seeing such extra-trade elements injected into an international trade agreement. The International Labour Organization had long been in place to deal with

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labour standards, and the nascent United Nations Environment Programme could be strengthened to deal with environmental matters. As the Opposition trade critic, I received several visits from the new US ambassador, the good-natured and effective former congressman and governor of Michigan, Jim Blanchard, and the capable and charming Mexican ambassador, Sandra Fuentes. Both were eager to be reassured that if a Liberal government came to office, as every poll clearly forecast, it would embrace nafta as negotiated and not balk at the two draft side agreements, the sine quo non for Clinton to get nafta through Congress. Chrétien led us into the election called for 25 October 1993 full of confidence. He had every reason to be so, as all the polls since the autumn of 1992 had suggested that he was ahead, except in Quebec. The Conservative government of Kim Campbell, whose brief term as Prime Minister had been even shorter than Turner’s (though it did at least exceed the earlier regime of her fellow Tory, Sir Charles Tupper), was widely regarded as doomed. Few, however, had predicted the degree of popular contempt for Mulroney. It was he whom the vote was in fact against, Campbell being dismissed as a silly nonentity. The desire for honest, effective government translated into defeat of all Conservative candidates across Canada, except two, a record in national electoral history. The Tories held only one seat in Quebec and one in New Brunswick (the Liberals would have won the latter if we had not mishandled the nomination there). In Ontario we won 98 of the 99 seats, and the ndp only 1, despite – or perhaps because of – the poisonous support of Bob Rae’s provincial government. The first major surprise of the election was how well we had done in English-speaking Canada. The second was how badly we had done in Quebec. There the Bloc Québécois gained so many seats (57 to the Liberals’ 19) that the bizarre situation arose of a party dedicated to the breakup of Canada as we had knew it forming Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. The Bloc soon announced that it would participate neither in question period nor in debates that did not raise matters affecting Quebec, a self-denying, unrealistic pledge that its members soon forgot. The House of Commons promised to be a peculiar affair. Despite the popularity of the Bloc in Quebec, Chrétien managed to pull through in his old constituency of Shawinigan (he had sat for a New Brunswick constituency since late 1990, popular mistrust of his strong federal commitment being then so pervasive in Quebec). Martin was readily elected in Montreal, despite the earlier uncertainties of his legion

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of advisers about whether he would not have been safer in his father’s old seat in Windsor, Ontario. I won Etobicoke North by 28,000 votes to the Reform candidate’s 9,500 and the Conservatives’ 5,000. The 1993 election was, however, in every way Chrétien’s victory. In the short run, the fact that the Bloc Québécois would unexpectedly form the Opposition was a good thing for Chrétien. Like Napoleon’s generals, he had made his good luck through his own diligence. The Bloc was ostensibly committed to an independent republic of Quebec within nafta. I was never convinced that, a few nutters aside, most Bloc members supported the idea of a wholly independent republic but that they continued to embrace instead the vague and ultimately impracticable idea of “sovereignty association.” But by adopting such an incomprehensible goal, and having briefly limited themselves as the official Opposition to those questions which they saw as affecting Quebec, they thereby relieved the Prime Minister of the day-to-day scrutiny and harassment that an effective Opposition can mount in question period and beyond. To be sure, Chrétien’s hold on Quebec became even more tenuous in the face of the Bloc’s role as Official Opposition (with staff and funds allocated to it), but the reverse was true beyond Quebec. In English Canada the Prime Minister was welcomed as a Quebecer eager to stand up to the separatists, who punctuated his speeches across the country with his fine-honed “Vive le Canada!” Few prime ministers have been so welcomed – outside Quebec – upon coming to office. It is something of a cliché to observe yet again Chrétien’s remarkable political sense. From time to time I would doubt a specific political judgment or reaction. In the event, I was frequently wrong and he was almost invariably right, with the notable exception of his pledging to abolish the gst. With a desk devoid of paper, he generally took his decisions in discussion with his closest associates, who conspicuously did not include his ministers. They were not generally decisions that flowed from the various policy papers which from time to time eager ministers sent to the Prime Minister’s Office, and they never appeared to be filtered through any elaborate intellectual apparatus. Rather, they were the result of Chrétien’s own remarkable intuitive sense of what “the little guy” across the country wanted. He allowed his ministers much freedom in their portfolios – enough to hang themselves but not him, as he would occasionally observe. He held strictly to his ruling that regular Wednesday cabinet meetings must never exceed two hours, with contributions by ministers limited to

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a minute or so: “If you can’t say in a minute what you want to say, it’s not worth saying.” I was gratified, only wishing that Trudeau had followed a similar discipline, instead of patiently giving the floor to some of the leading bores of the Western world. In short, I thought of Chrétien the same way as Henry Grattan, the Dublin mp, regarded his Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval: “He is not a great man, Sir; and he is not a little man, Sir; I will tell you what he is. He is a man who will go out in all weather.” While still in opposition, Chrétien’s famed political instincts had failed him occasionally, the most noted instance being the contentious goods and services tax. The Tories before us had known – at least Wilson and, later, Mazankowski must have known – that it was imperative government spending be sharply reduced, but Mulroney never had the stomach for it. Instead of cutting spending, the Conservatives introduced a consumption tax. After prolonged debate in both the House of Commons and the Senate (the august upper chamber reduced itself to yet unplumbed depths of fatuity, one Liberal Senator even playing some sort of musical instrument to disrupt the raucous debate), the Tories finally forced through legislation creating the gst. During the debate Chrétien could never seem to make up his mind what he would do about the tax when he came into office. With Copps in the lead, our more simplistic members relentlessly urged him in caucus to announce immediately that, as Prime Minister, he would simply withdraw it. John Manley and I – without Martin, as I recall – joined in an attempt to convince Chrétien that for any future government to attempt to forego the huge revenue that the gst was already generating would require one of three unpalatable offsets: increasing the already staggering public deficit and hence the debt and all that entailed, increasing the already high corporate and personal income taxes, or even more drastically reducing government spending. There was, in our view, no way by which our government could reach its immediate target of a deficit of no more than 3 per cent of gdp if we did not keep the gst while cutting spending. I asked to see Chrétien and entreated him to give no pledge to withdraw the tax, but without much response. Manley, supported by me, pressed our case in caucus, appealing to our members and senators not to place the prime minister-to-be in a false position. The reaction of both Chrétien and the caucus was continuing indecision. It was one of the few times that I saw him dither (he was later to exhibit uncertainties in the run up to the Quebec referendum).

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Finally, shortly before the election, and amidst the incessant clamour of Copps, Tobin, Dingwall, et al., he emerged from a weekly caucus meeting and before the assembled media committed the incredible gaffe of pledging his government-to-be to withdraw the gst and to replace it, if necessary, with some lesser but wholly undefined tax. It was immediately evident from public opinion polls that no one believed him, as Manley and I had uneasily forecast. However, such was his popularity in much of Canada that he survived even that remarkable faux pas. There was so much else against the Mulroney government that Chrétien was later able to wiggle his way out of his ridiculous pledge and even include in his cabinet someone who had urged such folly upon him. Well before the election, media speculation about whom Chrétien might select for his cabinet became increasingly intense, some fantastical ideas, as always, being advanced. On 26 October, the day after the election (and my fifty-ninth birthday), the Prime Minister’s Office telephoned me in Toronto to ask whether I might fly to Ottawa the next morning to see Chrétien. After a few triumphant words about our election victory and a rhetorical question about why we had not eliminated the Conservatives altogether, he invited me to be Minister for International Trade. I was not surprised, having been the shadow minister for trade, although I never felt that Chrétien regarded me as a real politician but, rather, it was said, an Anglo egghead from Bay Street. He always had a curious regard for a “street fighter,” but I was never included in that particular encomium. He said a kind word or two about my work as trade critic in opposition, surprisingly feeling the need to assure me that I would enjoy working with him in his government. He added, even more surprisingly, that some people believed he was stupid. But, he assured me, that was fine with him since he was able thereby to fool his critics, which gave him a great advantage over them. Wondering why he was thus musing aloud to me, I rose to leave, but he immediately added that the previous day he had invited Martin to be Minister of Finance. Martin had procrastinated, apparently believing, with some reason, that the Finance portfolio was traditionally the graveyard of ambitious politicians – and, Chrétien added, Martin is certainly that – especially if it involved unpopular swingeing cuts to government social spending. Mulroney had funked it. Turner, for his part, had declined to make deficit reduction the centre of our opposition fiscal

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policy. Trudeau and MacEachen had simply spent. Against this background, Martin had evidently become convinced that his long-pursued passage to the prime ministership would be derailed by a term in Finance. In this he was conforming to conventional wisdom, but he may have also suspected that Chrétien was offering him the post as a poisoned chalice, a deterrence to his not-so-covert bid for the leadership. Martin had apparently sought instead either Trade and Industry combined or Environment. I was not surprised. His reaction was something of a rerun of two or three years before, when the roles of opposition critics were being handed out by Chrétien. “If Martin declines again this morning, you will be Minister of Finance,” he said. I responded that if he were to appoint me to Finance, I should reject any tinkering with the gst. I would eliminate the dangerously swollen government deficit as rapidly as possible through spending cuts, so rapidly, in fact, that he as Prime Minister might be uncomfortable. Unlike Mulroney and Turner, Chrétien replied enthusiastically, “You won’t go too far too fast for me!” Overnight, however, Martin changed his mind or at least allowed himself to be persuaded that his acceptance of Finance, now indisputably the second post in any cabinet, could in fact be the final stepping stone on his way to ultimate office. On the second time of Chrétien’s asking, Martin accepted. Chrétien gave him his full support, although Martin himself, ever with his eye on his leadership bid – the sooner the better – appeared at first uncertain how best to proceed, still vaguely speaking of growing the economy out of the deficit, thereby increasing tax revenues and lessening charges on the exchequer by reducing unemployment and other social payments. Chrétien knew very well that there was no time left for such a gradualist approach. He encouraged his Finance Minister to do what was urgent: to cut spending across the board. When Martin did do the job, he did it very well, but I wondered at first whether he retained misgivings about Chrétien’s urgency, possibly again suspecting that the Prime Minister wanted to trip him up in his ambitions to succeed him, sooner rather than later. I was confirmed as Minister for International Trade, freeing me of the request by Jean Pelletier, Chrétien’s able chief of staff, to remain by a telephone in Ottawa (I do not use a mobile telephone) until Martin’s decision was finally known. At Rideau Hall for the third time in ten years I swore that I would “serve Her Majesty truly and faithfully … honestly and truly declaring my mind and opinion to the honour and benefit of the Queen’s

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In October 1993 Chrétien welcomed me as Minister for International Trade, once it became evident that Paul Martin would after all accept the difficult role of Minister of Finance in a government that was facing the daunting challenge of putting Canada’s fiscal house in order.

Majesty, and the good of her subjects without partiality or exception of persons, in no wise forbearing so to do from any manner of respect, favour, love, need, displeasure or dread of any Person or Persons whatsoever.” I was delighted to be Minister for International Trade. I was equally delighted to have as my Deputy Minister Allen Kilpatrick, my shrewd, experienced, and valued friend from 1959–60, when we had been together in the legation in Prague. More than thirty-five years later, when Kilpatrick was home from a successful tour as high commissioner to Australia, we were to work happily together again. The able John Weekes was the Assistant Deputy Minister for Trade Policy (he would eventually go to Geneva as ambassador to the World Trade Organization). Kilpatrick recommended a career officer, Susan Cartwright, whom I had met briefly in Bombay when she was consul there, as my senior departmental assistant. Her industry, discipline, and intelligence were such that I decided then that I was more than thrice blessed, with the addition of the quite brilliant and immensely loyal John Hancock, my assistant from Opposition (and happily another Cambridge man). I had an outstanding

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quartet of trade policy and trade promotion advisers, backed by a highly capable departmental staff and a personal office managed efficiently by Tracey Hubley, who had been with me from Opposition days, making me confident that both at home and abroad Canada would be able to respond effectively to the two immediate challenges we had inherited from the outgoing Conservative government: the completion of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (gatt) and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Whether or not Clinton’s side agreements on labour and the environment were to be added to the draft nafta, a vocal minority in our new cabinet and caucus – and certainly beyond – remained opposed to Canadian participation, as they had earlier argued against the Canada-US bilateral agreement. They were not deterred in their opposition by the support of the Aylmer conference for nafta. Nor were they daunted by the fact that, in the absence of a trilateral agreement, Washington would be free to pursue its own separate accord with the ever-eager Mexico, thereby making itself the hub of two separate bilateral agreements and leaving Mexico and Canada as two spokes to shift as best they could for themselves. Indifferent to this dimension and quoting extensively from earlier attacks by Axworthy and Copps on the US-Canada free trade agreement, the opponents in caucus contended that Canada should reject the snare of nafta and let the United States and Mexico go their own way with a bilateral agreement. I disagreed. What was far more important, so did Chrétien, although less obviously as he strove to maintain caucus unity. It appeared selfevident to both of us that Canada was in the bilateral free trade agreement with the United States to stay. Provincial governments, business, and labour, as well as the federal government, were continuing to adapt to its terms to gain maximum economic benefit, a few even believing, somewhat naively, that Canada would attract massive capital inflows from overseas investors, who would see the country as a sophisticated but lower-cost base for manufacturing products destined for the large and then vibrant US market. Further, the ludicrous interprovincial trade barriers had predictably prevented Canada from gaining full benefit from its duty-free access to that vast market. But after five years in the bilateral free trade agreement, Canada could not now, pace Copps and Axworthy, simply extricate itself from its enveloping embrace. To the contrary, I had convinced myself that Canada had become like Macbeth: “I am in blood

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stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.” We were in the Canada-US free trade agreement to stay; by extension, we had no choice, like it or not, but to “go o’er” in nafta as well. In the event, the results were markedly less sanguinary than for Macbeth, whatever the naysayers had gloomily predicted. Canadian sovereignty – along with the Canadian wine industry – survived, and trans-border trade in those boom years continued to flourish. Given sufficient inventiveness, Canada could exploit the trilateral nature of nafta to blunt some of the sharper edges of the earlier bilateral Canada-US agreement. If Washington pursued continental policies antithetical to Canadian interests, the presence of additional members, starting with Mexico, would be a way of helping to counter the flawed nature of the bilateral agreement and to complicate several-fold any deleterious course that the United States was contemplating. The more the merrier. The practicable answer to popular misgivings about excessive American influence in Canada was to bring more members into nafta, while pursuing trade and investment liberalization across the globe. When we came into office, to sign or not to sign nafta was immediately before us. It had already in effect been accepted by the Liberal Party at the Aylmer conference, even if a few in caucus continued to growl. The election had been on 25 October 1993. Three days later, after Eddie Goldenberg had been named the prime minster’s senior policy adviser and before the cabinet had been appointed, the US ambassador telephoned Goldenberg to say that Clinton was struggling to get nafta accepted by a skeptical Congress, wary as it was of free trade with low-cost Mexico. Canada could derail the fragile congressional support for nafta if it refused to join in, a signal that the US administration itself must have missed something fundamentally wrong with the agreement. If Clinton in turn lost the congressional vote, his credibility would receive an early and major knock. By 31 October Mickey Kantor, the US trade representative, and Goldenberg had agreed upon enough over the telephone to allow Chrétien, recalling the endorsement of the Aylmer conference, to confirm his support in principle to Blanchard on 2 November. When I was sworn in as Minister of International Trade two days later, Chrétien in general terms and Goldenberg and officials in greater detail promptly briefed me on what they had already agreed with Clinton. To give some substance to earlier Liberal reservations about certain aspects of the agreement recorded in the Red Book, Hancock and I put together

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some “conditions” for Canada’s adhesion, sufficient for the Prime Minister to say with a straight face that he had carried out his campaign promise to seek changes to the agreement negotiated by the previous Conservative government. Clinton, for his part, could now assure Congress that Canada, as well as Mexico, supported nafta. As Chrétien recalled in his memoirs, “On November 4, I appointed Roy MacLaren, a Toronto businessman and former diplomat, as Minister for International Trade to continue the negotiations. My thinking was that if the deal fell apart at the last minute, MacLaren’s reputation as an ardent free trader and his connections to Bay Street would help reassure the business community that we had tried our hardest. In short order, however, he was able to get side letters on energy, culture, and water that didn’t require reopening the agreement, as well as a joint statement to set up two working groups to seek solutions to the problems of subsidies and dumping.”* At a press conference Chrétien, with me at his side to answer detailed questions, announced briefly that his government would subscribe to nafta, leaving to me the media questions about what had happened to our pre-election conditions, made to placate at least the more moderate among our critics, who saw us as reneging on our earlier opposition. However, the media had, since the Aylmer conference, assumed that either a Conservative government reconfirmed in office, then an increasingly unlikely prospect, or a Liberal government that replaced it would embrace nafta. I fielded the questions readily enough, for example, denying that the trilateral agreement required us to permit the export of bulk water to the United States, a political anathema everywhere in Canada, and explaining what the so-called cultural exemption meant (not much). Questions about our likelihood of success in banishing the incongruous trade remedy practices of the United States from nafta were not so easy to handle. Everyone recognized that Congress would not permit any erosion of its cherished commercial power, especially the freedom to continue to impose countervail and anti-dumping penalties, even in a free trade agreement where they had no place. The assembled media let me off easily, presumably because they knew, as we did, that by the time a two-year study of trade remedy practices that we and the United States had agreed upon was completed, Canada would be entrenched in nafta, as the country had to be – unless, of course, we were to do the unthinkable and * Jean Chrétien, My Years as Prime Minister (Toronto, 2007), 85.

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In late 1993 nafta was stalled by widespread skepticism in the US Congress about any free trade deal that included Mexico. When we met in Seattle, Bill Clinton was eager to secure the backing of Chrétien’s new government. We immediately confirmed our support, having already committed ourselves at the Aylmer conference earlier in the year.

withdraw from the Canada-US agreement itself. (It was Mulroney who had first accepted the US trade remedies in the agreement, thereby opening the door to endless future attacks via Congress on our exports of softwood lumber.) A few days later, on 18 November, at a meeting in Seattle of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (apec), Clinton, Chrétien, Kantor, and I met with a small group of officials to agree upon the final text of nafta and its two side agreements (as Clinton acknowledged to me privately, it was tacitly assumed that Mexico would gratefully accept anything that Canada and the United States had agreed upon between them). Getting to know at first hand the thinking of Clinton and Kantor was already progress. The president was, as always, immensely persuasive. His was a remarkable talent to convey the impression that no reasonable person

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could possibly disagree with what he had to say. But his real strength was an extraordinary ability to convince you that his attention was focused exclusively on you and what you had to say, never looking over your shoulder to see who else was in the room, a singularly compelling practice, Lee assured me, especially with women. However, there remained for me back in Ottawa the challenge of guiding the nafta enabling legislation through the House of Commons. Chrétien rightly wanted to get it out of the way before beginning to tackle the deficit. Since the two remaining Conservative members, as well as the Bloc (for its own fanciful separatist ends), would support nafta and only the ndp stridently opposed it, there was never any doubt that the agreement would pass. It soon did. With nafta out of the way, I set out to give additional body to my often-reported quip that I would free trade with anyone who would free trade with me. On the other hand, I encountered several senior officials who were bewitched by the idea of continental integration, one or two advising me that the trade policy role of the minister had been completed with nafta – the end of history – and accordingly my focus should be on trade promotion alone. I disagreed with them. We would diversify our trade and investment. It was meet and right so to do. Later, when Clinton concluded that Congress, partly in light of l’affaire Lewinsky and the opposition of organized labour, would not extend his “fast track” authority to bring in more members to nafta, he could not join Canada and Mexico in welcoming Chile, which was eminently qualified to be a member. Instead, Mexico and Canada in time concluded separate bilateral agreements with Chile, each diversifying our tariff-free trade links, but it would have been preferable for everyone if Chile had simply been able to be the first through the gate of what had the potential to become a regional accord. I was barely in office in November 1993, clearing up the tag ends of nafta, when I departed for Geneva for the final weeks of the gatt’s seven-year-old Uruguay Round of trade negotiations. My primary task, as it was for my Conservative predecessor, was the unwelcome and disagreeable one of ensuring that “supply management” of our dairy and poultry products was not terminated by the final agreement of the Uruguay Round. Supply management was an euphemism for a gross form of agricultural protectionism which had long heavily cost the consumer. The import of eggs, milk, butter, poultry, and so on, which, given their limited shelf life, came largely from the United States, was sharply limited

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by quotas, thereby driving up the price paid by consumers in the absence of competition. I could never understand why farmers should be so protected while manufacturers and providers of services were not. In any case, being an advocate of the abolition of all tariffs (as Singapore had done), I found it little to my liking to be in Geneva to defend our noxious supply management, largely by passively endorsing various US and European protectionist practices in agriculture in return for their acquiescence in our own self-defeating protectionism. Given my efforts in Geneva, I was astounded, when reporting to Chrétien during a brief visit to Ottawa on our success in defending the continuation of supply management, to be told by the Prime Minister that he did not give a damn, despite the fact that the beneficiaries of supply management were chiefly in Quebec. “They don’t vote for me anyway. They’re all separatists.” But it was too late. I had already negotiated away much else to the United States and, to a lesser extent, to the European Union and Japan in return for their acceptance of our particular form of agricultural protectionism. What an opportunity lost to rid ourselves of the whole ill-conceived system! No doubt we, being fair-minded Canadians, would have only gradually phased out those licensed dairy and poultry farmers, as Australia and New Zealand had so successfully done. The total cost, however large, would have been far less than the Canadian consumer was paying over the years for the overpriced domestic product. The conclusion of the Uruguay Round did at least require that the invisible quotas on imports of agricultural products be transformed into visible tariffs. gatt members could, however, set the tariffs as high as the sky, as we did subsequently for dairy and poultry products at as much as an obscene 300 per cent, an astronomical level which upon my return to Ottawa I in vain argued against. At the end of the day it is not the Minister of Trade who sets tariff levels but, anachronistically, the Minister of Finance, since tariffs were seen in pre-income tax days as a major source of revenue, not primarily as a device for manipulating trade. Later I proposed to Martin that Canada phase out all its remaining tariffs, including those on foreign-made industrial components. With the introduction of nafta, preferences for least developed countries, and the reductions flowing from the Uruguay Round, we were already well on our way to doing so, but my advocacy was too much for officials in Finance. They looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses. Martin accepted their negative advice.

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The “Quad” met at least annually in rotation among the countries of the four trade ministers. In October 1995 at Ripley Castle in Yorkshire, gathered for informal talks are (from left to right) I; Ryutaro Hashimoto, the Minister of Trade (and future Prime Minister) of Japan; Sir Leon Brittan (later Lord Brittan), the commissioner for trade of the European Union; and Mickey Kantor, the US trade representative.

But this is to anticipate. At Geneva I first met my “Quad” colleagues from the European Union, the United States, and Japan: Sir Leon Brittan, Mickey Kantor, and Ryutaro Hashimoto. The Quad was, as its name suggest, four-sided, the members representing the then major trading countries. For Canada, membership in the Quad also reflected recognition of the liberal role that we had consistently played in multilateral, rules-based trade negotiations since the foundation of the gatt in 1949. The Quad met at least annually, each of us, in taking our turn as host, striving to outdo the others in choice of a place. Brittan did very well with Castles Ripley and Howard, Kantor with Hollywood, and Hashimoto

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with Tokyo, but I thought that I outdid them all with Whistler. In the final days of the Uruguay Round, the Quad had a major, if offstage, role, with the director general of the gatt, Peter Sutherland, cleverly playing upon individual members to reach a compromise agreement. The burly Sutherland, always as determined as only an Irish rugger player can be, as well as being highly intelligent, was unusually adept, in his immensely goodhumoured way, at arguing, bullying, cajoling, and threatening the members of the Quad and whoever else was delaying the final agreement. That achievement remained in some doubt to within days of the final, final, final deadline that had been set, following seven years of negotiation. Over one hundred trade ministers of the world – in the case of the United States, Vice- president Al Gore, as well as Mickey Kantor – gathered with Sutherland of the gatt in Marrakesh in April 1994, the guests of the king of Morocco, to sign the final act of the Uruguay Round and to establish, to the surprise of many observers, a new World Trade Organization to replace the gatt. (It was a surprise because the United States had since 1947 vetoed an international trade organization, preferring instead the contractual gatt.) The king of Morocco pulled out all stops, somehow even performing the miracle, with the help of his army, of banishing the omnipresent unwashed legions of beggars from the streets of Marrakesh for the duration of the conference. For Lee and me and my immediate staff,

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the conference was made even more agreeable by late night viewings of Morocco and Casablanca, leaving us as eager as Marlene Dietrich to follow Gary Cooper into the Atlas mountains or Ingrid Bergman into Rick’s. It was in Marrakesh that I learned to better know and like Mickey Kantor, the lean and sinewy Washington lawyer whom Clinton had appointed US trade representative. Officials in Ottawa and at our embassy in Washington had assured me that he was a miserable son of a bitch. I certainly never found him so, possibly because at Marrakesh we had an early showdown that set the stage for our following years of easy and fraternal work together. In a one-on-one meeting called a “bilateral,” Kantor stirred himself up into a tirade about some supposed Canadian trade misdemeanour – I have forgotten now what it was – shouting in his peroration, “Don’t you know what happens to a chicken when an elephant begins to dance?” When he had finally subsided, I said that I was astonished at his metaphor of an elephant: “I had always understood that an elephant was the symbol of the Republican Party and the symbol of your Democratic Party was a jackass.” Kantor began to laugh. Thereafter we got along well. Even less promising as the route to a regional agreement was Canada’s participation in the American-led initiatives to create regional free trade in Asia through apec (Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation) and in the Western Hemisphere through ftaa (Free Trade of the Americas). Both were originally conceived in part as regional threats to the European Union if it did not make greater concessions in the multilateral Uruguay Round of the gatt. Despite Canada’s long-standing commitment to multilateral trade liberalization and the continuing rhetoric about the superiority of the multilateral system over bilateral or regional agreements, Canada and the United States had lost their virginity by embracing their own bilateral agreements. Subsequently, partly as an additional means of putting pressure on the EU in the closing phase of the Uruguay Round, the United States began to advocate a Western Hemisphere free trade agreement (from which it would exclude Cuba) and an Asian free trade agreement (which would include China, not then a member of the gatt). To our incredulity, partially at Washington’s behest, wholly unrealistic dates were set for the completion of the two agreements: for ftaa 2005 and for Asia 2010. Of course, neither date was ever achieved. Indeed, ftaa and apec may have proven useful for informal encounters, but they have not yet shown any real sign of becoming embryonic trade agreements. At the least, Brazil is

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unenthusiastic about any pan-American accord dominated by the United States, and as for the Pacific, the protectionist US Congress gives no sign yet of being ready to endorse the creation of a free trade area that would incorporate both China and the United States. Accordingly, the apec meeting in Seattle in November 1993 and the Summit of the Americas in Miami in December 1994 offered nothing to alter my free trade priority with the European Union. My participation in the Miami meeting did, however, leave at least an impression on Chrétien. “One evening the driver and military escort assigned to Roy MacLaren lost their way while taking him to a dinner in honour of all the trade ministers. MacLaren ended up way out in the Florida countryside late at night in a place so remote and so dark that both the driver and the soldier were too scared to get out of the car to ask for directions back to the city. By the time they returned to downtown Miami, three hours had passed and the dinner was over.”* During my first year as Minister for International Trade, we had an admirable golden retriever misnamed Bardolph (both Bardolphs in Shakespeare are scoundrels). He frequently sat next to my driver as I arrived at the Centre Block for cabinet meetings, an event recorded from time to time by the cbc. So well-known did Bardolph become that the cbc-tv national news eventually noted his sudden death. Chrétien was not the only one to telephone condolences. I also received a kind call from a Mrs Harper in Calgary. She explained that her husband, Stephen, was a newly elected member in the Opposition, adding correctly that I probably did not yet know him but that they, animal lovers both, were aware how much I must miss our late Bardolph. She added that Stephen was so devoted to their cats in Calgary that he telephoned them nightly from Ottawa, she holding the telephone receiver to their ears so that they could hear him speak to them. For the Minister for International Trade, trade policy and trade promotion are twin responsibilities. Soon after we took office, Kilpatrick proposed that we underpin our trade promotion efforts with something called Team Canada, to be formed by bringing together the provincial premiers with the Prime Minister and the Trade Minister and as large a delegation of business people as could be mustered, for visits to those countries in which the state still played a role in major commercial decisions * Chrétien, My Years as Prime Minister, 92.

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(such a collective approach to trade promotion was rightly seen as inappropriate in free market economies). My first reaction to Kilpatrick’s proposal was, wrongly, one of skepticism. Although Team Canada seemed to me to represent a rather crude, circus-like approach that disregarded the various subtleties and distinctions of individual command or dirigiste economies, I undertook to recommend the idea to the Prime Minister. To be sure, when I raised it with him, Chrétien was equally unenthusiastic, soon staring out the window as was his wont whenever he ceased to listen. His attention span being short, he prided himself on his desktop being wholly devoid of papers and on taking quick decisions. I soon concluded that he had no interest in Team Canada. However, as I continued to drone on, his attention suddenly revived when I described how all the provincial premiers would be invited. “You mean that they will follow along behind me – including the premier of Quebec?” Even when I expressed some doubt whether all ten would find themselves able to participate in every visit, Chrétien’s new-found interest did not diminish. He was clearly enchanted by the idea that if the Quebec premier accepted to participate, the constitutional status quo would be visibly affirmed; if he declined, he would be seen as failing to advance the commercial interests of his province while nine other premiers were doing so for theirs, thereby tangibly demonstrating federal-provincial cooperation. Thereafter Chrétien’s commitment to Team Canada never flagged. While I was the Minister for International Trade, we implemented the idea in China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Vietnam, each visit being concluded by a staged display of contract-signing (that some of the “contracts” were no more than letters of intent which unfortunately later went unfulfilled did not reduce the glory of the occasion itself). And Quebec participated in several. It was in Hanoi, where the Prime Minister and I opened the new Canadian chancery as well as drawing the attention of the Vietnamese government to the merits of various Canadian products and services, that I rejoiced in what, in a narrowly personal way, was the high point of the several Team Canada visits to state-economy countries. As I later recounted in a footnote in Canadian Peacekeepers in Indochina, the surveillance to which we were endlessly subjected (Indians and Poles as well as Canadians, in both the North and the South) was forty years later to have a sequel. At an initial meeting during a 1996 official visit to Hanoi, Chrétien introduced me, his Minister of International Trade, to Le Duc

Chrétien and I sit under the benevolent, if plaster, gaze of Ho Chi Minh while the Prime Minister and the first secretary of the Communist Party welcome us to Vietnam in fluent French. For Lee it was her first time in the North, an area closed to her when she was serving at the US embassy in Saigon.

Sultan Muhammad El-Qasimi of Sharjah, the smallest of the Gulf emirates, whom I found especially appealing in his combination of traditional benign ruler and a doctorate in history from the University of Exeter.

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Anh, the president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and Do Muoi, the secretary-general of the Vietnamese Communist Party and long-time comrade-in-arms of my old acquaintance, General Giap. Chrétien referred to my service with icsc almost four decades earlier. Le responded, to my surprise, that I was widely known as a “vrai ami du Vietnam,” substantiating his intended compliment by readily reading from what was clearly the 1958 dossier of the North Vietnamese intelligence service about one Roy MacLaren, third secretary, of the International Commission for Supervision and Control: “six feet tall, brown eyes, dark brown hair, etc., etc.” In time, Team Canada ran its course. The number of countries where the government still played a major part in commercial decisions was gradually diminishing. Well after I had stood down as minister, Team Canada began to visit market economies, even, incongruously, several regions of the United States, displaying the degree to which the idea had been overworked. Predictably, a sort of promotional lassitude set in, with increasingly skeptical participants going through the motions. Team Canada faded away, over-exploited and unlamented. However, as originally intended, it did help to relaunch global export promotion in parallel with our conclusion of the Uruguay Round of the gatt. It set the stage for more to be done later in China and India pre-eminently, but unfortunately my successors became preoccupied with other matters, neglecting the opportunities that Team Canada had opened in both rapidly emerging markets. Another venture that I launched was less evident but in time had greater effect. I had long believed that the Export Development Corporation should expand further, well beyond its original export insurance mandate. Among other initiatives that I explored with the corporation was how export finance support might better be provided to small and medium-sized enterprises. The response, under the direction of Sandy Stuart, whom I had appointed as chairman, was early and remarkably productive, and edc rapidly expanded beyond recognition.

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Paul Martin, with the indispensable support of the Prime Minister, did exceptionally well in curtailing government spending, which in turn helped to bring down interest rates, stimulate employment, and otherwise assist business in the all-important task of improving its productivity. Manley at the Department of Industry (where, among other things, he battled against the iniquitous interprovincial trade barriers) and I at International Trade worked to enhance the circumstances in which a growing economy would generate more revenue and employment, thereby reducing the heavy costs of unemployment insurance and welfare. In fact, Martin, Manley, and I – early dubbed the “three Ms” by the media – were all working to the same general end, the confirmation of Chrétien’s commitment to a vital private sector. We knew full well that the only way to restore the Canadian economy to a competitive place in the burgeoning global economy was to reduce government spending and, with it, interest rates and inflation. Canada could not compete when 37 cents of every tax dollar were going to service the national debt. Some of our colleagues, however, did not agree. With Copps as chairperson, the Social Development Committee of cabinet called for more, not less, social spending, while the Economic Development Committee, on which all three Ms sat, called for less, as one of the most effective ways of eliminating the current account deficit. Martin deftly resolved the mounting differences between the two cabinet committees (fully aware, as he was, of which of their two conflicting approaches Chrétien supported) by simply declining to attend meetings of the Social Development Committee. (As Minister of Finance, he was an ex officio member of both.) Without him present, the committee and its increasingly frustrated chair could go nowhere but down. It never had influence.

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Martin’s necessarily limited first budget in 1994 did set the stage for what was to come. Having endlessly rehearsed his debutante budget speech, often sotto voce while sitting next to me in the House, he set out well the new government’s future fiscal course, along the broad lines of the Red Book and with the full support of the Prime Minister. Between the formation of our government in November 1993 and his first budget the following February, there was simply insufficient time for Martin to do much more than to pledge that in his second, the 1995 budget, the real restraints on government spending would come. It was already widely understood among ministers that a post-budget “programme review” by Treasury Board would closely scrutinize all government spending in preparation for the crucial second budget. With only two or three exceptions, programmes would be cut across the board. Publicly, at the end of Martin’s first budget speech, the jury remained out, both nationally and internationally. Several economic ministers were despatched across the world – I to Japan – to help reassure our international partners that the new government of Canada was serious in its intent. To be sure, there was not all that much to sell beyond promises, but our interlocutors as well as we ourselves knew that on the second budget our reputation for fiscal reform would stand or fall. The pivotal nature of that budget was made even more so by a timely editorial in the Wall Street Journal in January 1995 that spoke of the “peso of the north” and of Canada becoming “an honorary member of the third world.” That tore it, as the Brits are wont to say. Such a condign judgment coming from a foreign source of course evoked more consternation than any domestic observation. The immediate pressure on the Canadian dollar was unwelcome, but unlike most of my colleagues, I thought that the Wall Street Journal’s broadside played a significant part in the acceptance by cabinet of Martin’s programme cuts. Recalling my brief sojourn as Turner’s finance critic, I greeted the launch of the Treasury Board’s review, conducted by its able president, Marcel Massé. I readily agreed to the 20 or more per cent reduction proposed for my own departmental budget, but several of my cabinet colleagues were not so acquiescent. They went behind Martin’s back to appeal directly to the Prime Minister to spare them from the rod. Chrétien, to his credit, was having none of that, declaring definitively in more than one cabinet gathering that he supported the Minister of Finance. Period. On only one point did Chrétien dissent. One day, late in the long budget process of 1995, a dejected Martin told me during question

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Lee and Hillary Clinton at breakfast at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa in February 1995. Beverley McLachlin, a justice of the Supreme Court, is behind Lee, Chaviva Hošek is on Clinton’s left, and Aline Chrétien is on Lee’s immediate right.

period how Chrétien remained flatly opposed to cuts in assistance to senior citizens. Martin gloomily speculated that he might resign over this difference, having pledged himself to spread the supposed fiscal misery with an even hand across the board. A cold terror gripped me, both on an international and national level and especially on a personal one. Martin’s resignation would send the unmistakable signal that, after all, Canada was not really serious about reducing and eventually eliminating its current account deficit and lowering the debt. On a personal level, I wondered whether Manley or I would be the lucky fellow asked by the Prime Minister to pick up the pieces. But in my heart of hearts I doubted that, at the end of the day, Martin would resign and split with Chrétien – at least not yet. And he wisely did not. A year later, in 1996, several modifications to old age assistance completed the cuts in every spending programme, affirming “the fairness between generations” that Martin had pledged in his second budget. To the gratification of veteran and newly elected members alike, Martin in his second budget built upon the initial undertaking in the Red Book – as earlier advocated by Manley and me – to reduce the annual

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current account deficit from 6 to 3 per cent of the value of our gross domestic product, a target that the European Union had set itself as it embarked upon the fiscal disciplines essential to the introduction of its single currency. Thanks in part to falling interest rates and a booming world economy, we did even better than that. After our third year in office, we had reduced the deficit not to 3 per cent but to 1 and in our fourth year to zero. In setting the stage, Martin’s second budget received the national accolades it deserved. That budget, in introducing real fiscal restraint, looked to reduce spending in almost all departments, except the rcmp, csis, and Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Such a reassuring achievement in public policy was widely and rightly acclaimed, but it was soon somewhat overshadowed by the confrontation that Brian Tobin, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, engineered with Spain and Portugal in the spring of 1995 over their gross overfishing, especially of cod and turbot, in the international waters of the North Atlantic. Having failed to stop Martin’s cuts in government social spending in particular, the irrepressible Tobin had turned to another problem closer to the particular interests of his home province of Newfoundland. Martin’s second budget was trailed for several months by Tobin’s fish war, but the real victim of his unthinking exuberance would shortly be reflected in the deterioration in Canada’s long-term relations with the European Union. Admittedly, the prospects for the early negotiation of a nafta-eu or even a Canada-eu free trade agreement were not then promising, as repeated soundings had shown, given the imprecise but strongly held conviction in the European Commission in Brussels that in a negotiation with Canada points might need to be given away that should be held back for any eventual negotiation in the wto or with the United States. Individual eu members, especially Germany, were more positive toward an agreement with Canada, but under eu practices, trade policy was made exclusively in Brussels, not in the capitals of the member states. The commission’s reservations about any trade deal with Canada – I never fully understood them – were suddenly increased tenfold as a result of the “fish war,” which required the member states of the eu to close up behind Spain and Portugal. Their deleterious overfishing in international waters beyond Canada’s 200-mile territorial limit, despite repeated protests and warnings, was all but destroying the centuries-old fishery. Further negotiations or multilateral mediation to attempt to enforce what Ottawa regarded as

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a violation of good international management would, Tobin was convinced, lead nowhere. He sought and won widespread public support for his simplistic get-tough policy. While the fish dispute with Spain was approaching a crisis stage, André Ouellet, the always agreeable Foreign Minister, having first discussed with his officials their recommendation to embark upon an international campaign to ban landmines, went on a holiday to his house in Mexico. Although as Foreign Minister he had been made aware of what was brewing in the Atlantic fisheries, it was understood that he had left instructions that his holiday was not to be disturbed by constant messages from Ottawa. Tobin, cocksure as always, was eager to exploit the resultant policy vacuum in his ill-considered attempt to win, among other things, greater national recognition for his leadership capacities. With his eye always on an eventual bid to succeed Chrétien, he sensed that his national eminence would be enhanced by his self-portrayal as “Captain Canada.” Certainly, Chrétien gave him his head as a possible contender (despite Tobin’s complete absence of French) in the eventual Liberal leadership campaign against Martin, about whom he had many misgivings and growing resentments. Chrétien’s own senior advisers as well as officials from the departments of Foreign Affairs and Justice joined several other ministers and me in urging caution, arguing that there remained diplomatic avenues yet untried and that certain eu member states, chiefly Britain, sided unofficially with Canada in the dispute, but their arguments did not deter Chrétien in his support for Captain Canada. Yet the country as a whole paid heavily for Tobin’s anachronistic armed response to a nato ally. Additional efforts at forging closer trade and investment links with Europe were now out of the question, as my old friend from Uruguay Round days, Leon Brittan, the European commissioner for trade, affirmed during a notably chilly visit to Ottawa. eu opponents of transatlantic free trade, especially France over agriculture, lined up behind Spain and Portugal, seizing on the fish war as one more reason why free trade discussions with Canada could not possibly be contemplated. Chrétien, perhaps by way of self-reassurance, later said that he was very proud of how the government had acted. I was not. Having had to recognize that a Canada-eu agreement was now in the deep freeze, I continued my efforts to give substance to my often-repeated assurance that I would free trade with anyone who would free trade with me. A free trade agreement of sorts was eventually reached with Israel,

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but it was more a response to domestic political pressures than a fullfledged, comprehensive trade and investment agreement. The European Union remained the major prize, but I also began sounding out AustraliaNew Zealand, Japan, Singapore, and even the wobbly Mercosur (Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina). About that time, Chrétien, on a visit to Paris, was to speak to the French Senate. I arranged for a passage to be included proposing free trade between the eu and nafta, but dead silence followed in Paris, Brussels, and Washington. The European Commission remained intractable, at least for the foreseeable future. In principle, Leon Brittan was receptive enough, but there was clearly little that he could do in the wake of the fish war without the active support of France and Germany. Although highly intelligent and experienced, he remained a mistrusted figure at the commission in Brussels, especially by the French, who were convinced that he, whom they regarded as the personification of perfidious Albion, had gone behind their backs in concluding the “Blair House agreement” on agricultural subsidies with the United States, which had effectively broken the log jam at the Uruguay Round. For its part, the British government, eager to retain its place in the Canadian market and wary of the deepening and expansion of the eu, remained only vaguely supportive. Once I had reluctantly recognized that I was spinning my wheels during my visits to the European Commission in Brussels, I turned to the remnants of the decades-old European Free Trade Area – Switzerland, Norway, Luxembourg, and Iceland – as a potential early means of demonstrating for all to see that transatlantic free trade was in fact feasible. Having already concluded free trade agreements with most countries around the world, efta immediately welcomed our overtures until Norway identified our long-standing but wholly futile shipbuilding and ship-repair subsidies, which of course were incompatible with a free trade agreement. I set about the long process of attempting to rid Canada of them in order to meet the understandable demand of efta, despite Tobin’s opposition, until he suddenly resigned from the government. In the meantime, gay rights, gun control, federal funds for postsecondary education and research, and that perennial, the reform of medicare, I supported strongly. I was much less active in the campaign against the separatist forces re-emerging in Quebec and the referendum that Parizeau contrived for the autumn of 1995. His question was posed in even more convoluted terms than Lévesque’s: “Do you agree that

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Quebec should become sovereign, after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership, within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12 1995?” Chrétien, throughout the prolonged agony of that renewed challenge to the unity of Canada, regarded the separatist issue as his and his alone to solve. He came within an ace of losing it. From the first days of the four-week Yes/No campaign, he told the Liberal caucus that, given the number of loose cannons amongst us, he did not want English-speaking members speaking publicly in Quebec, but if they could not resist, they must first clear with his office what they intended to say. To English-speaking ministers, he was even blunter: stay out of Quebec and make no comments elsewhere – “I shall deal with Quebec.” Although our, the federalist No, side in the referendum, which began formally on 2 October, appeared to be increasingly floundering, Chrétien remained from the beginning optimistic, initially offering reassurances that we federalists were winning 70 to 30 or, a few weeks later, at least 60 to 40. Public polls, however, were already indicating that it had become a horse race. Restless non-Quebec Liberal members watched with mounting dismay, not convinced that Chrétien’s belated interventions were in fact helpful, especially a late speech at Verdun at which Jean Charest, the leader of the Opposition in Quebec, was the star performer. I provided Martin – he as a Quebec member was free to wade in – with ample ammunition for a refutation of the separatists’ easy assumption that an independent Quebec could readily slide into nafta without first overcoming the difficult hurdle of becoming a member of the wto. He used the material with some effect both in the House and in speeches in Quebec, but we non-Quebec ministers could do little or nothing of substance. Finally, Chrétien made his major intervention in the campaign on national television, but it seemed to me – and to others – perilously late. At this low point the irrepressible Tobin and several impatient colleagues broke out of the gate, directing their energies to organizing almost overnight a massive No rally in Montreal – or what we all hoped would be a massive rally – in the appropriately named Dominion Square. What had transformed the referendum into a yet closer horse race was the replacement, three weeks before the vote, of Jacques Parizeau as the lead advocate of “sovereignty association.” Lucien Bouchard’s immediate and profound transformation of the separatist campaign was not immediately recognized by federalists, but the polls soon revealed the

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degree to which he had further impressed himself on Quebec voters. Support for the Yes side was clearly accelerating. Whether the huge rally in Dominion Square on 27 October contributed materially to the subsequent slim victory of the No side three days later is unascertainable. The federalist victory was, in any event, terrifyingly thin: 50.6 No; 49.4 Yes. However unconvincing our victory, it did at least allow time for a deeply disconcerted Ottawa to respond more thoughtfully to the challenge of the referendum. In the short run, the much-chastened Chrétien offered Quebec several largely symbolic concessions. Far more significant was his later, highly controversial, Clarity Act, adopted under the able direction of Allan Rock, the Minister of Justice, who had led the debates on gay rights and gun controls with equal distinction. It set clear and irrefutable guidelines for the conduct of any future referendum touching upon the constitution of Canada, if it was to be recognized by the federal government. The Clarity Act was a remarkable accomplishment. It gave rise to much nervous twitters in cabinet and caucus, but it will have a salutary, moderating effect on the future conduct of any constitutional issues. Beyond the many Team Canada excursions, Lee and I travelled frequently, export and investment promotion and multilateral trade conferences requiring no less. Only the spouses of the Trade and Foreign Affairs Ministers were able to travel internationally at the taxpayers’ expense – whenever possible on Air Canada – on the grounds that the incessant travel would otherwise result in prolonged and sometimes difficult separations. On all such trips Lee played an indispensable role. Well experienced in the ways of the diplomatic world and wise in the political, she moved easily through the receptions that met us on every hand, later in the evening sharing with me her observations and the information that she always charmingly obtained. I do not now recall all the countries that we visited, generally with my closest policy assistants, Susan Cartwright and John Hancock, but Lee and I having travelled so much as students and later in diplomacy and business, there were not many countries that we did not already know. South Africa was especially memorable. The courageous and rather self-effacing F.W. de Klerk warmly welcomed me to Pretoria, while Nelson Mandela’s senior people in Capetown were no less appreciative of the fact that I had come to, among other things, reopen the consulate general in Johannesburg. In Buenos Aires I shared the stage of the Argentine bankers’ association with George Bush senior. However, everywhere we went, we

In Pretoria in February 1994 F.W. de Klerk told me something of his extraordinary efforts to win the agreement of his white compatriots, however reluctant, for elections with universal suffrage, which would certainly bring into office an African National Congress government. Subsequently he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela.

The Prime Minister of India, Narasimha Rao, and I in October 1994, on one of my several visits to India to promote trade and investment and ultimately free trade. He emphasized his admiration for Pierre Trudeau, “a great leader of the Commonwealth,” and his gratitude for Canadian development assistance over several decades, beginning with the Colombo Plan.

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encountered the query, “How is Pierre Trudeau?” He had made an impression across the world that had not faded with his departure from office. On one visit to India I called upon the wise but somewhat frail Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao, to explore the possibilities of closer Indo-Canadian collaboration in light of the emergence of that country as a trading partner, especially in information technology. But first an inquiry about Pierre Trudeau. I replied that he was well, living in active retirement in Montreal. So well in fact that he had recently had a daughter. “He is a father again? How old is he?” “Seventy-four.” “Oh well, perhaps there’s hope for me yet!” But upon striking his sunken chest, he added sadly, “No, I guess not.” In neighbouring Pakistan in January 1996, I accompanied Chrétien on his formal call on Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Islamabad. The visit had a decidedly unpromising beginning. Bhutto began the conversation by observing to Chrétien that Canada seemed to have problems with separatists. Chrétien, understandably regarding whatever separatist challenges there might be as a purely domestic matter, made but the briefest of replies, but Bhutto was not to be deflected: “You should do with them what we do with separatists in Pakistan. We shoot them.” A somewhat more reassuring encounter, relatively speaking, followed. I had told my staff that if I had any free time in Islamabad, I would like to visit the old garrison church in nearby Rawalpindi. I was right in believing that the memorials on its walls would reflect much of the history of the Northwest Frontier and the Great Game. My request was conveyed to Pakistani protocol, who kindly laid on a whole fleet of black Mercedes to carry Lee, me, and our somewhat bewildered entourage to Rawalpindi, on the long route to the Khyber Pass and Afghanistan beyond. However, instead of delivering me to the garrison church (Church of England), we found ourselves at dusk passing down a narrow street crowded with women and children, all applauding and cheering and throwing rose petals in the path of our cars. Directly ahead of us was the Roman Catholic cathedral church (seemingly dating from the 1960s), with more welcoming crowds both outside and packed into the building. To the first pew we were carried by a phalanx of brawny men, who pressed their way through the crowds. The bishop and his subordinate clergy and the mother superior of a convent all greeted me enthusiastically. It was obvious that we had been taken to the wrong church, but I remained baffled by what was happening. One of the High Commission staff ac-

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companying us learned from protocol that the mistake was theirs, they being unable to discern the niceties separating Christian denominations. For some reason, they thought that I wanted to go to the Roman Catholic church, which was in turn delighted to celebrate a mass of thanksgiving, to demonstrate to their generally hostile Moslem neighbours that the great outside world took a close interest in their welfare, as evidence by my presence amongst them. Upon being ushered to the front pew, I had to get through the liturgy of the Roman eucharistic mass without having anyone in front of me to signal when I was to stand, kneel, or genuflect. The last thing that I wanted to do was to fail the cathedral church in its celebration of the visit of its unexpected protector from Canada. Building on the eucharistic liturgy of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, I bluffed my way through the Roman mass and bypassed the injunction denying the Eucharist to a non-Roman. Our enthusiastic hosts remained convinced that I was one of them – as, indeed, in a broad sense I was. I found the whole thing rather moving, the faith of the large congregation being everywhere so evident. With the cheers of the croyants still resounding down the flower-strewn street, we finally made our way to the quiet seclusion of the garrison church, there to revel in the accounts of the service, each seemingly from the pages of Kipling, Henty, or Boys’ Own, of those who had, as much as two hundred years earlier, performed feats of courage and daring that resound to this day. On a separate to visit to neighbouring Bangladesh, then the prime recipient of Canadian development assistance, it was foreseen that we would have a weekend free. In advance, I asked whether my delegation might make a trip that I had longed to take: to travel by river steamer from Dhaka down the Ganges to Chittagong. The Bangladeshi were wonderfully responsive. The Ghaza, a small sidewheeler built in 1906 for the British Inland Waterways Commission, was placed at our disposal – or at least the best part of it. The upper deck cabins and saloon were ours exclusively. Under arc lights, in a scene worthy of Last Train from Nanking, our Mercedes pushed their way along the docks through the surging crowds attempting to board the lower decks of the Ghaza before its midnight sailing. On the boat the next day the placid river and the anything but placid curries proved an unending delight, although the distant riverbanks themselves were not always easily detectable amid the perennially flooded lowlands, despite the fact that it was not the monsoon season. It

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The captain and the first mate of the good ship Ghaza, almost a century old since its early days with the British Inland Waterways Commission. Our Bangladeshi hosts could not have made us more comfortable as we leisurely made our way in the sidewheeler along the Ganges from Dhaka to Chittagong.

was bliss, except for one small and temporary problem. Our hosts, the Bangladeshi, in their eagerness to make us as welcome as possible, had painted and varnished all the cabins and the saloon on the upper deck. Unfortunately, in their enthusiasm, they also painted the shower heads, thereby plugging them and cutting off the flow of all water. Until the hasty scraping away of the fresh paint was complete, we remained soaked, in a rather different way, in the humid 40 degree heat.

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My three years as Minister for International Trade were invariably stimulating and amusing. But in 1993, upon returning to office, Ouellet and I had concurred with Chrétien’s suggestion that before the election foreseen for 1997 we should make way for younger ministers. In any event, the prospect of a sixth election campaign filled me with no ardour. Chrétien offered me instead the Senate, the lieutenant-governorship of Ontario, or the high commissionership in London. That was not a difficult choice. London was the appointment that I had long anticipated as another opportunity to seek greater diversity in Canada’s economic ties and at the same time to disprove Arnold Smith’s observation at my External Affairs selection board of forty years before. As Paul Martin senior had repeatedly stated, to be the high commissioner in London was to have the best job in the government, as well as the opportunity to glory again in the eccentricities of the English. I readily fell in with the Prime Minister’s suggestion that I should think of departing for London in mid-1996 if I had definitely decided that I did not want to stand in the next election. In making room for younger ministers, he recalled the precedent of Pearson, whose government Chrétien had himself joined at age thirtythree, when several older ministers departed. By way of kindness, the Prime Minister unexpectedly added that no doubt my parents would be proud of their son being Canada’s representative in Britain (in fact, both my parents were long dead). In response, I questioned whether in fact they would have been quite so gratified as he assumed, conscious as they were of the fate of the MacLarens at the hands of the vengeful Duke of Cumberland, as they stood fast in the first line at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. I added gratuitously that in addition to being ardent Jacobites, my Perthshire ancestors, who sailed from Port Glasgow to the newly named Prince Edward Island in the summer

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of 1803, spoke some English, but celebrated their deliverance from the perils of the sea in Gaelic, employing a thanksgiving liturgy of the Episcopal (i.e., Anglican) Church in Scotland. That seemed to baffle Chrétien, who questioned what their language could possibly have been other than English. I did not pursue the matter, his original observation being kindly meant, but Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia would have understood. I was not sorry to leave politics. I had enjoyed it all immensely, but the time had come. It is always better, if at all possible, to depart from somewhere, anywhere, on an upbeat note than to linger on to inevitable decline. But I would not have missed it. As our friend Peter Carrington, the British Foreign Secretary and secretary general of nato, once wrote in response to a question about how he felt upon leaving politics, “Honest answers must include the element of enjoyment: basically in spite of the exasperations, the alternations of overwork and disappointment, the often frenetic lifestyle and the not infrequent abuse – basically despite all this, politics is fun.” The residence of the high commissioner for Canada to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, to give the full title, at No.3 Grosvenor Square awaited our arrival in late June 1996 after I had given a speech in Vienna on the scintillating subject of the international harmonization of competition policy. Accordingly, our first official event was a Canada Day reception at the Savoy, followed by a thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey. The next day I recorded in my diary: 2 july 1996. On my knees at Westminster Abbey for an evensong calling God’s blessings on Canada. The countries of the Commonwealth are so remembered on or near their national day. Better still, I have a heavily cushioned stall in the great carved wood choir of the Abbey. Over my bowed head is a scroll proclaiming that I am the High Commissioner for Canada, a long way for a Master of Divinity from Trinity to ascend. Clad in my old reliable morning coat, I read the lesson at evensong, my loud Canadian voice seeming even to me nasal and sharp. When the great organ bellows out “O Canada,” I almost weep. I am hardly less moved when the Dean and a platoon of acolytes and I form the procession to the west door following the service. The Dean, Wesley Carr, is a delight in our intermittent and whispered conversations. Although I have been High Commissioner for only a week, I am promptly invited to sign the fly leaf

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of a great, red morocco-bound Canadian High Commission bible which Vincent Massey supplied in 1935. The signature of every High Commissioner during the sixty years since is there (except curiously that of my immediate predecessor).

Directly across the leafy Grosvenor Square from where an earlier high commissioner, the “shrewd, quiet, rather pawkish” Lord Strathcona, had resided, the Canadian residence at No. 3 was the whole ground and first floors of a larger building that had been the United States embassy until the completion of the new and ugly chancery across the square in the 1960s. In the early years of the Second World War the frightened and defeatist Roosevelt ambassadorial appointee, Joe Kennedy (jfk’s father), had occupied the same office as I did at No. 1 Grosvenor Square. Later in the war, rooms at No. 3 had been the resort of Roosevelt’s special envoy, Averell Harriman, and his paramour, Pamela Churchill, the wayward wife of the unspeakable Randolph Churchill, Winston’s son, then absent with the equally unspeakable Evelyn Waugh in Yugoslavia with a clandestine British mission to Tito. One wag suggested that one of London’s famous blue plaques should be let into the floor to mark the spot where those two ambiguous wartime lovers had their own clandestine affair. The room that I much preferred was not on Grosvenor Square at all but, rather, in Canada House on Trafalgar Square, the room that Charles Ritchie had once rightly described as a “Mussolinesque.” It was, however, unavailable until a year or so after our arrival. The restoration of Canada House, which had been sadly mutilated in the overcrowding of the 1960s, when the total staff peaked at 750, took more than two years. When the work was completed, the High Commission was commodiously housed on both Grosvenor and Trafalgar Squares, ample office space for a splendid group of local and Canada-based employees. Three senior colleagues arrived from Ottawa at almost the same time as Lee and I did. The affable Jacques Bilodeau, the new deputy high commissioner, was an experienced officer, having most recently served as ambassador to Senegal. The wily and amusing Tom Macdonald, whom I had admired when I was Minister of Trade, was the able head of the large commercial section. The third, Gilles Landry, the political counsellor, made a notable contribution, drawing upon his long experience around the world, until he died suddenly on the sidewalk of Grosvenor Square (a few score metres from where Adlai Stevenson had expired in the arms of Marietta Tree). For the military people

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I always felt a close affinity, a response, it was evident, that they had seldom perceived in my predecessors. Headed first by Rear Admiral “Dusty” Miller (a Miller in the navy is invariably known as “Dusty”) and subsequently by the air force’s Major General Rick Bastien and eventually by Brigadier John Richard, the military were a pleasure to work with, perhaps partly the result of my own amateurish military past as well a mutual recognition that we had much to learn from each other. Not only did I deplore, upon my arrival, the isolation of the defence staff, regarding it as having been rendered incapable by neglect of playing its full role, but I looked upon much of the mission as slack, each component possibly operating effectively enough in its own silo, but with little sense of being part of a mutually supportive, larger Team Canada. To get hold of the mission and to help ensure that the maximum was obtained from closer team work, I promptly instituted, with Bilodeau’s ready support, a daily meeting of the heads of the various departments at 0830. There they described and discussed with their colleagues and me their current activities and plans. The senior military adviser seemed especially pleased; it had been a long day since the High Commission as a whole had regarded the military as a fully integrated component. On the other hand, the agreeable head of the immigration section, himself a former high commissioner in Sri Lanka, never seemed to be wholly comfortable at our daily gatherings, probably rightly sensing that his colleagues around the table considered his department in Ottawa as notoriously poorly managed, uncertain in its directions, and confused in its purposes. Lee and I settled readily into Grosvenor and Trafalgar Squares. We moved easily through both Westminster and Whitehall, as well as the City and the West End, thanks to the unfailing welcome and congenial attitude toward Canadians that we everywhere encountered. We were, however, puzzled by a parallel British sycophancy toward the United States, which would become especially evident after Tony Blair came to office. We relished the unique vitality of London and of course gleefully observed the myriad eccentricities of the English – not in this case British – establishment. The Empire had all but faded away, but the traditional pomp and circumstance lingered on. My years at Cambridge and a summer that Lee had spent at Oxford added to the base of friendships that we formed across Britain. For example, Derek Hill, the portraitist, who had painted Lee years before, was one of several friends who introduced

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us to the contemporary art world. They were frequently helpful in our constant travels across Britain from the Channel Islands to Shetland. When we began our tour, I was sixty-two years old but not, I think, diminished in either energy or understanding. In any event, we would not make the mistake of some heads of diplomatic missions of spending much or even all of their time in London, enticing although that prospect always remained. My journal that I kept intermittently reflects something of our first months in London. 8 july 1996. In making my protocol calls on certain selected heads of mission (I cannot possibly call upon all 150 or so), I walked across Grosvenor Square to the monumentally ugly US chancery for a chat with Admiral Crowe, an early and crucial supporter of the Oxonian Clinton and now, in reward, US Ambassador to the Court of St. James. I sit uneasily in his surprisingly small room, uneasily because I need to avoid the hats that are piled everywhere (Crowe seems to have a hat fetish). We talk mainly about the Gulf War rather than bilateral or trilateral relations, Crowe agreeing that the British forces remain first-class, but adding that they can no longer go anywhere in any numbers unless the usa transports them. Crowe mentioned, en passant, that he believed Bush was entirely right not to invade Iraq, not to stir up that particular wasp’s nest for no purpose. 12 august 1996. Call at the Edinburgh end of the Scottish Office (I shall call at the London end shortly). Promising economic discussions, despite the preoccupation at every hand with the anticipated devolution of powers from Westminster to Wales and Scotland that a Labour Government has promised to enact. In the morning I saw Lord James Douglas Hamilton, the heir to the Selkirk title (from whom we bought our pei land in 1803). Reputedly the most courteous man in Britain, it is said that when he was a junior minister in an earlier Conservative Government, he was assigned a woman driver. Every time they reached his destination, he would leap out of the car first and dash around to hold the door open for her. 21 september 1996. Before the Normandy invasion, several Canadian regiments were billeted in Wilton Park [the Foreign Office country house

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in the south of England]. Fearing the worst, I enquired whether licentious soldiery had behaved themselves. To my gratification, I was readily assured that they had. However, one of the staff led me to view a splendid small seventeenth century portrait which, to my surprise, he lifted from the wall to reveal a pencil sketch of a nude young woman. A Canadian infantryman, immediately before embarking for Normandy, had been inspired by the popular wartime newspaper cartoon strip (in two senses of the word) “Jane,” which habitually began with Jane fully clothed in the first of the four boxes and fully unclothed in the fourth. After the departure of the invasion troops and ever thereafter, Jane had been carefully preserved as a memento of the Canadians. The conference itself, in which high commissioners, officials, academics, and businessmen joined, discussed, inter alia, Canada’s long-standing role in the economic, if not political, evolution of the British West Indies. Perhaps Borden’s cabinet should have accepted Lloyd George’s unsolicited offer of the West Indies and been done with it. Not surprisingly but disappointingly an inconclusive gathering, without anyone being able to suggest a panacea – or even anything less. On the second day from Wilton Park to Lewes for luncheon with the Briggs. Both at their articulate and perceptive best – which is very good indeed … The neighbouring Jim Callaghan, the former rn petty officer who became a Prime Minister, rattling along with everyone else, not giving away anything about what he thinks of Tony Blair, the current leader of his beloved Labour Party, but somehow I inferred that he was not wild about him. He was much more forthcoming about Clement Attlee. Later that splendid autumnal afternoon Lee and I moved from Lewes to the nearby Brighton for the first of the three political party annual conferences. We are starting at the easy end: the Liberal Democrats, the smallest of the three major parties which has the unusual merit of being clear in its policies … but their commonsense, pragmatic approach never seems to get them much closer to office. 25 september 1996. Morning visit to the Canadians on the staff of the Northwood nato Command Centre near London. Luncheon at the residence with the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Runcie, whom I had assumed by contrast with the morning would be wholly unmilitary. I had forgotten, however, that he had won the mc in the Guards Armoured Brigade during World War ii. Instead of a learned exposition of transub-

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Fergus, the king of the castle, regally accepted all the care and attention liberally bestowed upon him at the Canadian High Commission residence in London. From the dog shelter at Battersea to Grosvenor Square was indeed a progression open to few.

stantiation, I received a gripping account of what it is like to turn a corner in a Sherman tank in Normandy and find a Panzer Tiger awaiting there. Runcie amusingly sardonic about the relative merits of a Sherman punched out by General Motors as if it were a Chevrolet and a wonderfully designed Panzer Tiger finely machined by Mercedes Benz. Runcie uneasy about the gathering storm over the ordination of homosexual priests (male or female), not from inherent misgivings but from apprehensions about the divisions that it may create even within the notably flexible Anglican communion, especially in Africa.

Once settled in London, we set about the necessary arrangements to welcome a small dog to Grosvenor Square, small enough to adapt to the intensely urban life of Mayfair. We had left our golden retriever, too large a dog for the streets of London, with Malcolm in Toronto. The arrival on Grosvenor Square of a rough-haired Jack Russell, a feisty little street dog from the slums of east London promptly and appropriately given the

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good Scots name of Fergus by Lee, proved spectacular, eventually being recorded in the Globe and Mail by its able London correspondent, Alan Freeman. Three London newspapers reported his transition from East London to Mayfair and his quickly becoming the centre of affection of three maids, a butler, a cook, and a driver, as well as, of course, the chatelaine of the residence and myself. Fergus soon became a television performer. The bbc made a fifteen-minute film about his progress from “Wags to Riches,” from Battersea dog shelter to Grosvenor Square. itv, not to be outdone, followed with an appearance by Fergus on its daily breakfast show. Fergus brought with him a grace that remained with us throughout our five years in Britain, ingratiating himself with all our many guests, whether from Canada or Britain or, indeed, elsewhere, and certainly with us. He barked briefly and appreciatively after every one of my short words of welcome to our luncheon or dinner guests. He took control of the residence, even amazing our Portuguese maids with his understanding of Portuguese, reflected in his prompt responses to their gentle admonitions. Alan Freeman of the Globe and Mail wrote about Fergus before our departure in 2000: posh pooch Mutt with a butler “most famous Canadian” in U.K. Rescued by High Commissioner Roy MacLaren, Fergus dines with royalty and is set to become a tv star alan freeman European Bureau, London He has dined with the Queen, shopped at Hermes and is about to star in a tv show before an audience of millions. Not bad for a little mutt who almost ended his days in the pound after being abandoned on the streets of east London. Walt Disney couldn’t have created a better film script than the true-life tale of Fergus MacLaren, The tiny terrier whose life took a dramatic turn for the better four years ago when he was plucked from an animal shelter by Roy MacLaren, Canada’s high commissioner to Britain, and his wife, Lee. A film crew from the British Broadcasting Corp. has just finished shooting a segment of its popular series Battersea Dogs Home that features Fergus and his Pygmalion-like life story, which Mr. MacLaren dubs “from Battersea to Grosvenor Square,” the posh location of the high commissioner’s residence in central London.

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“You’re looking at the most famous Canadian in Britain,” says his proud owner, marvelling at the 6.5 million viewers expected to see Fergus on bbc-tv later this summer. “I’m usually lucky if I get 200 people to one of my speeches.” When the MacLarens were posted to London in 1996, they left their golden retriever with their son in Canada because of Britain’s draconian antirabies rules, which would have forced the dog to remain in quarantine for half a year. “Six months in a cage or in a pen is simply not something that we were prepared to do,” said Mr. MacLaren, who was trade minister from 1993 to 1996. “It’s terribly cruel.” So the MacLarens got in touch with London’s Battersea Dogs Home, perhaps the world’s most famous animal shelter, and said they were interested in a small dog. It arranged a showing of six pooches, all abandoned and aching for a home. “I thought of taking all six,” Mr. MacLaren said. “They were all appealing and rather pathetic.” Mrs. MacLaren figured that would be taking charity a little far. “Wiser heads prevailed.” Fergus got the nod. The dog, described as “part Jack Russell terrier and part I don’t know what,” had been turned in at a police station in Plaistow, a tough part of east London, and then sent to Battersea. “He’s had a rough life,” said Mrs. MacLaren, pointing to the deep scar above his nose she assumes came from an attack by a bigger dog or a sharp blow by a human. And he still has a limp – a rear leg clearly was broken and never set. But you’d never know Fergus has suffered, judging from his current lifestyle. Three weeks after his adoption, an inspector was sent to see if Fergus was being well cared for. When the butler answered the door, the inspector determined the dog wasn’t about to starve and decided there was no need to come in. “He definitely doesn’t get ill treated here,” said the butler, Stephen White. “He’s the boss.” He’s also a lively, determined dog who instantly befriends visitors to 3 Grosvenor Square, usually by jumping into their laps. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a clever dog,” said Mr. MacLaren, who says Fergus can understand several words in English, including

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The Queen, Prince Philip, Lee, and I at the Canadian High Commission residence on Grosvenor Square before a luncheon at which Fergus, with his unerring good taste, selected Her Majesty for his special attentions. The Queen rose to the occasion, as she invariably does, by welcoming him as a Battersea boy who had done well for himself.

“walk.” The high commissioner takes him for a long stroll at 6:30 a.m. every day in nearby Hyde Park. Fergus pretty much has the run of the high commissioner’s quarters and, although he’s not supposed to jump on the furniture, he does anyway. “He’s always pushing the envelope,” Mrs. MacLaren joked. There’s just one small problem. “He does wee-wee sometimes where he shouldn’t,” said Mr. White. Fergus is a fixture at receptions and is often the most popular presence, especially among the animal-crazy British.

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“When the Queen came here, he came racing in after lunch and jumped in her lap,” recalled Mr. MacLaren, who quickly apologized to the monarch for Fergus’s unregal behaviour. When Mr. MacLaren told the Queen that Fergus came from the Battersea home, she remarked: “I should have known. I’m the royal patron of Battersea.” Fergus especially appreciates the Queen Mother, who treated him to chocolates when she visited the high commission. He has also played host to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and his wife, Aline, but Fergus seems to have a particular soft spot for his fellow Scots – including Lord Robertson, the Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Donald Dewar, head of Scotland’s government. He’s also become used to the demands of diplomatic life. “If I make a speech at a dinner party or a reception, he immediately barks when I finish,” the high commissioner said. When hanging out with the Royal Family or other guests, Fergus wears his party collar, an elegant red-leather accessory from Hermes, a gift of Trinity Jackman, daughter of Toronto financier Hal Jackman, a family friend. “When he goes to bed, his collar is removed. It’s like putting on his pyjamas,” Mrs. MacLaren said. Added Mr. MacLaren, “It’s all very different from the streets of east London.” The mutt’s tale caught the attention of Stephanie Harvie, a bbc director working on Battersea Dogs Home, a popular 30-minute tv series that tells the stories of dogs and cats at the home. Ms. Harvie was told of Fergus by the home’s “chief rehomer,” who was there when the MacLarens arrived to choose Fergus. “I think he’s done very well,” she said. “He’s chirpy, really happy and full of life.” After four years at Grosvenor Square, he obviously worries about the prospect of being abandoned once again. Whenever he sees suitcases being packed, Fergus goes into something of a depression. “When they’re away, he looks pretty miserable,” Mr. White explained. “If Madam goes out, he’ll check the cloak room to see if her coat is back.” Fergus shouldn’t be so anxious. The MacLarens say they’ll take Fergus to live in Canada when they move back home.

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Our first year in London was the final year of John Major’s Conservative government. Affable but still strangely ill-defined, even after a decade in ministerial office, Major was presiding over the end of his government’s term when Lee and I arrived. It had not been expected that he would win the election of December 1992, following the forced resignation of Mrs Thatcher, but to the general astonishment and quite possibly to his own, he did, only to see a series of petits scandales among his lacklustre ministers and backbenchers erode the already reduced popular support of the Conservatives, reminding me a little of Mulroney’s initial year in office. The media gloried in each sordid detail of what they universally welcomed as “yet more sleaze,” contributing to the widespread impression of an affable but essentially weak Prime Minister rapidly going down the tube. It was widely assumed that Major and his increasingly ramshackle government would be for the high jump in the election of 1997, despite the buoyant economy on which the government itself placed so much hope for electoral salvation. Soon after my arrival, I called on Major in the cabinet rooms at No. 10 Downing Street. Our conversation was lively and amusing – a little bit about nafta but mainly about the unending Tory antagonism toward the European Union, then well on its way to defining its common currency – but I came away with the not very surprising conviction that however flourishing the British economy, only an electoral miracle would save the bedraggled Tories. Friendships within the government – Douglas Hurd, Malcolm Rifkind, Ken Clarke, William Hague, Geoffrey Howe, David Howell, and Alastair Goodlad, the chief whip (in Britain traditionally holding a seat in cabinet) – kept us informed of the various increasingly desperate election stratagems contemplated by the Conservatives. In the end, the challenge for Major and his front bench was to make public recognition of the undoubted prosperity of the United Kingdom prevail over the increasing conviction that, after a total of fifteen years under the Conservatives, it was time to give the other party, reformed Labour, a chance to show what it could do. (This assessment did not recognize the fact that electorates generally blame governments for economic recession but credit the private sector for economic growth.) The third party, the Liberal Democrats, continued to be a mere shadow of what they had once been, and no one paid much attention to them, despite the fact that they, unlike the two larger parties, got many basic things about right. Blair let the Conservative government defeat itself, which was fortunate since

At some point in late 1996 John Major, always courteous, listens attentively to whatever banalities I am offering. He had to everyone’s astonishment – and perhaps his own – won the election of 1992, following the forced departure of Mrs Thatcher. The following year, dogged by colleagues who seemed to engage in endless sleaze, he could not for a second time withstand reformed Labour, despite the booming economy and his personal popularity.

much of the electorate did not seem to understand what he intended, aside from his rather vague promises to improve health and education, those two perennially elusive goals that appear to admit of only peripheral tinkering in a liberal democracy.* Wherever we went in the United Kingdom, the past as well as the present in Anglo-Canadian relations was always with us. * Some, not crediting Blair with the ability to think for himself, pointed to The Third Way of Anthony Giddens of the London School of Economics as a sure guide to the Labour leader’s thinking, but try as I might, that gobbledygook remained incomprehensible to me, even after face-to-face encounters with Giddens.

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26 october 1996. To Wales via the Westonbirt arboretum, looking lush and fertile. The great firs made me think of David Douglas carrying the seedlings home to Scotland from what is now British Columbia before he was gored to death on the Sandwich Islands on a second voyage by an enraged wild buffalo. Commemorative service at the louring Brecon Cathedral, overflowing with those who wanted to join in marking the eightieth anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. When I had learned that the South Wales Borderers (of which the cathedral is the garrison church) went over the top on that first morning of the Somme with the Newfoundland Regiment, I had readily accepted the invitation to speak at the service. However, when it came to my turn to speak from in front of the altar to the densely packed assembly, lit fitfully by candlelight, I could hardly do so. I was deeply moved, even lachrymose, at the thought of young Newfies, having survived a drear childhood on the Rock and having already been decimated at Gallipoli, being cut down in their hundreds alongside the swb on that first day of July 1916. Knowing a little of what my father had endured after Passchendaele, I thought with remorse of their sufferings and could hardly begin what I wanted to say. With an effort I pulled myself together, wiped away the tears and spoke extemporaneously for ten minutes or so. Despite the gratitude of the bishop, clergy, generals, honorary colonels and the families of the swb, it was not my most articulate moment. 9 novemeber 1996. On Armistice Day the Queen lays a wreath at the cenotaph in Whitehall, followed by the Prime Minister and High Commissioners. Rehearsal today at Chelsea Barracks is for those High Commissioners who have not participated before. Having been an officer in the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve and now an Honorary Colonel in the Royal Canadian Artillery, I flattered myself that I could probably manage the laying of Canada’s wreath without making too much of a balls up. But in the event I was delighted not to have missed the rehearsal on the Chelsea parade ground in front of a plywood mock cenotaph where the twenty or so High Commissioners were shepherded. There awaiting us was a immaculate regimental sergeant major of the Guards who appeared to be seven feet tall with a ramrod instead of a spine and a voice like a foghorn. Under his steely eye, two or three of us performed adequately in laying our make-believe wreaths, but the diminutive High

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Commissioner from Sri Lanka could not apparently distinguish readily his left foot from his right. With mounting incomprehension, the poor little man cringed under the bellowing of the increasingly incredulous rsm, who strayed several times dangerously close to crossing the line of ambassadorial respect, hurriedly adding “Sir” to his several expostulations. Sri Lankan left foot remaining indistinguishable from right, there was nothing for it but to pass on to the next High Commissioner and eventually to a Colonel of the Coldstreams who enquired at the conclusion of the rehearsal whether there were any questions. One still somewhat bewildered High Commissioner from a southern African country timidly enquired whether he might wear his national dress instead of the de rigueur morning coat. Colonel of the Coldstreams: “What, Sir, is your native dress?” Thoroughly intimidated High Commissioner: “A sort of blanket, Sir.” Colonel: “A blanket, Sir? Only if you wear a belt.” High Commissioner: “A belt, Sir? But a belt is not part of my national dress.” Colonel: “A belt, Sir. There may be a high wind.”

On election evening, 1 May 1997, Lee and I, as the guests of Nik Gowing, the highly effective presenter, watched the election returns slowly come in at bbc television news central (voter turnout was in Canadian terms low). Early or late, they all confirmed what opinion surveys had long forecast: a Labour sweep. In the early hours of the morning, Tony Blair became Prime Minister. A good measure of Blair’s electoral success was the result of his completion of the hazardous party reforms of his suddenly deceased predecessor, John Smith. No longer was the Labour Party to be quite so classconscious, union-dominated, and disputatious. Somehow, against the well-entrenched opposition of many of its members, Smith and later Blair had succeeded in moving the party to a more moderate, centralist stance, where the largest numbers of undecided voters are, and thereby occupying traditional Tory territory and reassuring English voters. (Labour already held much of Scotland and Wales, while Northern Ireland was as usual obsessed by its quasi-religious tribal squabbles.) With first Smith and then Blair, the Labour Party could no longer be portrayed simply as a group of fanatics marching to the “Red Flag” and bent upon the nationalization of what little was left of the British manufacturing industry and the imposition of punishing taxes on the rich. Blair won over most Labour

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members by the seemingly simple expedient of demonstrating that his reforms could win elections. To the irreconcilable left, however, he appeared to be another Margaret Thatcher, several of whose policies he followed with remarkable fidelity. But given his undeniable electoral success, all that they could do would be to wait for him to stumble. Blair had not impressed me when I first met him as leader of the Opposition. Upon assuming office, he remained something of an unknown, other than a new face with a penchant for surface rhetoric. He took into office a new team almost none of whom had been long in Parliament, let alone ever in government. Labour had last been in office in 1979, fifteen years before, and it showed. Just how new the experience was for all of them came home to us in a variety of ways, but perhaps in no instance more symbolic than at the annual diplomatic reception at Buckingham Palace. There brilliant uniforms, long gowns, and white tie and decorations were rig of the day, unwelcome to those of Blair’s cabinet unaccustomed to such unproletarian regalia. Early on at the crowded reception, I found a rather anguished-looking Cherie Blair standing awkwardly alone near the centre of one of the large drawing rooms. When I greeted her, she inquired shyly whether I knew anyone there, since she did not, the Blair and Palace teams having evidently not watched over her. I looked about quickly to see who was immediately at hand. Those everagreeable high Tories Peter Carrington and Anthony Acland being directly behind me, I promptly introduced them to the wife of their Prime Minister. I left them, as I knew they would be, easily chatting with her, yet wondering myself at the way in which the wife of the Prime Minister had seemingly been abandoned by everyone at Buckingham Palace to pursue her lonely devices. An initial audience that Lee and I had with the Queen was largely apolitical, in both British and Canadian terms. Having seen everyone and heard everything for the fifty-five years of her reign, the Queen knows almost uniquely how the great world wags. Inquiring about Chrétien and his government, she revealed a detailed knowledge of Canadian politics and history. In her understanding of the Commonwealth and the European Union, she was at every point both perceptive and amusing. In contrast to Blair’s government, she took the liveliest interest in the multiracial Commonwealth, of which she is the head. She attended Commonwealth events with diligence. Curiously, the pushy United States ambassador (Crowe’s successor) did also, somehow obsequiously seeking invitations

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and participating joyfully as if there had never been an American War of Independence. The Queen remained indefatigable in fulfilling her duties as head of the Commonwealth and head of state of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as of several smaller nations of the Commonwealth, even during the distractingly wayward antics of her several sons. At her parents’ knees she had learned well how to reign. The likes of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother we shall not see again, other than through her virtues now reflected in her daughter. Whenever we were with the Queen Mother, I took pleasure in talking with her about times past, although occasionally we found ourselves steering different courses. One day I spoke of the Luftwaffe bombing of London and how harrowing it must have been. She replied that it had indeed been a trying time to see the great silver cylinders caught in searchlights as they slowly made their way over London. I suddenly realized that while I was speaking of the Blitz of 1940–41, she was recalling how as a teenager during the First World War she had watched as Zeppelins made their night raids on a largely defenceless London. On that occasion the Queen Mother went on to speak of her brother’s death on the Somme. In turn, I recalled my father’s severe wounds at Passchendaele, the battle that led Sir Robert Borden to threaten to send no more Canadian troops overseas if such carnage continued. She recalled her own impressions of Lloyd George’s equal horror at the endless slaughter and his conflicts with Asquith and the generals, who seemed incapable of offering anything else but a mindless war of attrition. At the one hundredth birthday celebrations for the Queen Mother at the Guildhall in August 2000, the 150 or so guests were first gathered in an arc in the foyer to await her arrival. To my surprise, she came straight over to me among the awaiting guests and said without any preliminaries, “High Commissioner, Mr Mackenzie King was most helpful to His Majesty and me in preparing for our brief visit from Canada to President Roosevelt at Hyde Park and to the World’s Fair in New York [in June 1939, following their transcontinental trip to Vancouver, which had been a matter of interest to at least one small boy]. His Majesty and I did not know the United States, but Mr King did. As minister in attendance, his advice was important to us. Thank you, High Commissioner.” The birthday party subsequently attained a certain renown as the occasion when the Queen Mother, having made a brief but felicitous speech of thanks, sat down and, not realizing that the microphone was still open, was heard

The Queen Mother shortly before her 100th birthday. Over luncheon she described the Zeppelin raids on London more than eighty years earlier with an immediacy that made one feel that Lloyd George was still Prime Minister. But she was equally forthcoming on the merits and difficulties involved in the devolution of powers on Scotland and Wales, a policy then being implemented by Blair.

to say firmly to her neighbour, the archbishop of Canterbury, “Archbishop, please put down that glass. That is my wine!” The Queen Mother’s thanks to Canada were not limited to her gratitude to Mackenzie King. She frequently referred to the First and Second Canadian Divisions, which had arrived in Britain in 1939 and 1940, as providing much of the reassurance so desperately needed by the British people against invasion after the fall of France. Accordingly, on another

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occasion she readily responded to my request that the visiting Barney Danson and his wife might call by, promptly inviting us all to luncheon at Clarence House. Danson, badly wounded in Normandy, had been Minister of Defence in Trudeau’s government (the title of his memoirs is, appropriately, Not Bad for a Sergeant). His English war bride, Isobel, vividly recalled the Queen Mother’s visits to bomb sites during the Blitz. The Queen Mother took every interest in the vigorous responses that veterans (including Danson) and historians had made in the controversy surrounding a recent revisionist cbc television series about the shortcomings of Canadian forces in the Second World War. She was having none of it, recalling, among others, the almost ten thousand young Canadians who had lost their lives in Bomber Command. The Queen Mother’s younger daughter, Princess Margaret, whom we had known in Barbados and Mustique, was by 1996 a rather sad, solitary figure, unwell and given to excesses. Her evenings seemed routinely to centre upon West End musicals followed by supper, generally in the company of several rather louche familiars. When we duly invited her to the theatre, we learned that she had already seen all the musicals then playing. We quickly substituted a well-received Doll’s House and included in our small party our political counsellor, the sophisticated bachelor Gilles Landry. Over supper à quatre after the performance, it became evident in our discussion of the play that the princess was unfamiliar with the works of Ibsen, but she did say wistfully that she had found The Doll’s House rather like her own life. I responded carefully, keeping away from any discussion of Ibsen’s other plays (pace Leavis), but I did recall her unsettling observation during the following months, when illness overcame her and led to her death in 2002 at age seventy-one. One day in May the Queen invited Lee and me to the Royal Windsor Horse Show, a private event of which Prince Philip, almost as horse-inclined as the Queen herself, was president. For three or four hours in the afternoon I sat on her left, struggling to make observations about the horses and their riders that would sound something less than incorrigibly ignorant about all things equestrian. (I was fully aware of the Queen’s ease with horses. Lee and I had recently participated in the rcmp’s presentation to her of a splendid horse, James, to replace Burmese, famed for his long service at Trooping the Colour.) Having failed miserably in conveying my equestrian enthusiasms to Her Majesty, since I barely knew one end of a horse from the other, I redoubled my thanks to her at the

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In 1999, with several senior officers, Lee and I joined in the rcmp presentation to the Queen of a new horse, James, to replace the long-serving and cherished Burmese. Her Majesty was no less at ease with the great rcmp horses, habitually riding Burmese at Trooping the Colour, than she was with all other aspects of her duties as head of the Commonwealth.

conclusion of the afternoon for kindly inviting us to the show. When I repeated, rather lamely, how much Lee and I had enjoyed it all, she kindly responded with a further invitation to join her for the three-hour evening event. What could I do but accept? Three more hours passed amidst my mumbled approbation of all and sundry, but suddenly toward eleven o’clock the Queen, evidently recalling Fergus, laughingly said, “High Commissioner, you’ll especially enjoy this.” Out on to the turf came three or four men with steel wire and spikes, which they rapidly ranged across the grass of the large riding ring. They placed a white mechanical rabbit on the thin wire, around which it flew at great speed. The men promptly reappeared with a sackful of Jack Russells. Having been released on the grass, the Jacks chased the mechanical rabbit with a vigour and perseverance that could not have pleased Her Majesty or us more. We all laughed and laughed with such delight that the longueurs of the seven or so hours of dressage, jumping, et tout ça I soon forgot.

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Prince Charles and Princess Diana had become estranged long before we arrived in London. We saw something of him, including at home at Highbury, but almost nothing of her, whom we had first met during their first visit to Canada. Although the marriage had long clearly been in tatters, Diana’s death came wholly unexpectedly when Lee and I were on summer leave in Canada, staying for a few days on Georgian Bay with friends Robert and Julia Foster. Perhaps my diary entry will convey a little of the extraordinary response of many British to Diana’s death, although it offers no explanation for it. Of that I, and others, have remained incapable. 6 september 1997. On 31 August the Fosters’ son, Simon, who has a summer job at the Calgary Herald, reached us on the radio telephone to say that the news services had just reported that Princess Diana had been seriously injured in an automobile accident in Paris. A second call soon followed. She had died. I knew then that I had to get moving. The Palace having assigned me a place at the memorial service in the Abbey – the only High Commissioner to be present? – yesterday I caught a late afternoon flight to Ottawa and there joined Axworthy to fly in a government jet which landed us at Heathrow about 2330. Despite unusually heavy traffic, Peter [Chapman, my driver] had us in central London in less than an hour, all of us still awake enough to make our way on foot through the dense but silent crowds along the tree-lined Bird Cage Walk and Pall Mall awaiting today’s memorial service. Everywhere against the incredible banks of flowers and, for some obscure reason, piles of teddy bears, there were banners and hand-lettered signs grieving at the loss of the “People’s Princess” (one said simply, “Farewell Princess of Whales”). Having been happily sunning myself half-asleep on the shores of Georgian Bay not long before, I was ill-prepared for the near mass-hysteria of yesternight. I simply don’t get it. Lee and I had met Diana’s father years ago. He seemed an amiable Tory squire. Quite how he could have produced such an unusual daughter always eluded us. Axworthy admired her for her support for an international treaty banning landmines (an initiative begun in Canada’s case by Ouellet), but the near-hysteria at her death remained puzzling. Today was even more unexpected. The service in the Abbey, although by invitation only, had everyone jumbled together. With whom Axworthy sat I do not know, but I found myself placed between a keening Jamaican nurse’s assistant and, on my other side, a sort of red-faced Irish washerwoman. Knowing that we would be asked to arrive long before Her

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Majesty and members of the royal family, I suddenly had the inspiration, when leaving the residence, to put into an inner pocket of my morning coat a paperback copy of Charles Ritchie’s endlessly droll The Siren Years (while awaiting the memorial service, I was diverted by Charles’ view of London in the Blitz, from the same great windows from which I gaze daily on Trafalgar Square). The unorthodox memorial service was bizarre, marred fundamentally by a vociferous attack on the Queen and royal family by Diana’s brother. One felt that one had intruded upon a quite poisonous family dispute become public, perhaps a curiously fitting ending for a deeply troubled life.

The prickly but highly principled foreign secretary, Robin Cook, soon became a good friend, immediately claiming kinship based upon the close collaboration in the Jacobite cause between the MacLarens and the Stewarts of Appin, from whom his mother descended. The chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, the personification of the dour Scot of caricature, was clearly of greater intellectual ability than Blair and most of his cabinet colleagues, but, taciturn and reserved, he was difficult to know, other than his obvious ambition to succeed Blair. Derry Irvine, the lord chancellor, was already a friend. The Secretary of State for National Heritage, Chris Smith, the shrewd Donald Dewar, Secretary of State for Scotland, and Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (known more familiarly as “the Prince of Darkness”), soon became friends, as did the capable Minister of State at the Foreign Office, Liz Symons. But perhaps our closest friend in the new cabinet was the Secretary of State for Defence, George Robertson, later, as Lord Robertson, secretary general of nato. One of the many intelligent Scots in Blair’s cabinet, he was certainly the most droll, regaling us, inter alia, with happy holiday tales of driving with his London policeman brother and their wives from Vancouver through the Rockies to Calgary, before the heavy burdens of ministerial office had suddenly came upon him. With all members of the government I had a sort of camaraderie, as there had been with members of Major’s cabinet, arising from the shared experience of electoral politics, a century-old argument for appointing, whenever possible, former parliamentarians as high commissioners. At the same time as Lee and I learned to know the incoming government better, we continued to travel extensively throughout Britain by car, our resourceful and indefatigable driver, Peter Chapman, always at the

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235 George Robertson, Secretary of State for Defence and later, as Lord Robertson, secretary general of nato, invited me to address an all-male Burns Night dinner in his former constituency in Lanarkshire. The anticipation, by those attending this boys’ night out, of copious and repeated toasts to the “immortal memory” was such that Robertson had stipulated beforehand that I must speak before dinner and be brief, two conditions I readily accepted, to subsequent wild applause.

wheel. Devolution of more political power to assemblies in Cardiff and soon in Edinburgh was high on the Labour agenda. The planning for what was certainly less than a federation but more local authority in the basically unitary United Kingdom understandably gave rise to endless debates in universities as well as in Whitehall. Scotland beckoned doublefold. 18 september 1997. Following a morning meeting of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission at Maidenhead, Lee and I flew yesterday to Inverness to visit Canadian companies active in the north of Scotland (there are a surprising number). On to the small village of Rogart in the high Highlands to unveil a plaque on a plinth marking the birthplace of both parents of Sir John A. Macdonald. When a village councillor wrote and telephoned the High Commission to invite me to unveil the plaque, she mentioned that I should understand that it was a second plaque on an existing plinth that I should unveil. When I enquired why there needed to be two plaques, she explained that the first had been unveiled by Diefenbaker almost forty

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years ago. He had required, as a condition of his acceptance of the invitation to do so, that so much be included on the plaque about himself that that scarcely any room remained for even a reference to the parents of Sir John A. Macdonald. Hence the need for a second plaque. The whole village, including an able young piper, had gathered for the unveiling. At the ceremony, he played with just the right degree of melancholy and lament. Upon congratulating him, it became immediately evident from his accent that he was a Canadian and, as I guessed correctly, from Ontario. I also learned to my astonishment that not only was he the village piper but he was also the village Gaelic teacher. I recalled for him how my own ancestors had celebrated their safe crossing of the Atlantic by repeating on the shores of Prince Edward Island the Anglican liturgy of thanksgiving in Gaelic. I enquired why the village had had no local Gaelic teacher only to learn, not entirely to my surprise, that St. Anne’s College in Cape Breton supplies more Gaelic scholars and teachers than any comparable institution in Scotland itself. The new world righting the balance of the old. The piper’s pupils must be very bright if the children of six to nine years old whom we visited in their two classrooms are any guide. They had prepared in advance a great range of questions about Canada (where many of their ancestors had gone). Certainly I was happy in response to natter away about my favourite subject, but only later over tea-and-cakes (they milk) did we begin to take something of their full measure. Their two young teachers are obviously entirely committed to their small charges and the benefits are everywhere evident. Disciplined, inquisitive, well-mannered and courteous, articulate and simply very bright, they seemed to be the product of the distilled pedagogy of years past, being happily isolated in the Highlands from the flash innovations that too frequently surface in urban areas only to fade away again as promptly.

The devolution of powers on Wales and Scotland was of course quintessentially a domestic matter, but for a moment I became indirectly involved. Early in the career of the newly established Welsh Assembly in Cardiff, I accepted an invitation to address it. I decided that I would talk about our long experience in Canada of bilingual government, a subject close to the hearts of every Welsh person. Having decided that it might be well received if I were to begin with a few sentences in Welsh, I was coached in London beforehand in the difficult pronunciation. For several

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I did my best to pronounce a few words in Welsh at the beginning of my speech to the newly created Welsh Assembly in November 1999, but fortunately the remainder of the speech about bilingual government went much better.

days thereafter, I repeated my lines in my best Welsh accent in front of my shaving mirror. On the great day I was gratified by the rapt attention of the assembly, first to my introductory sentences in Welsh and then to my message itself. The kind words of many followed, although I was a little deflated by one enthusiastic assemblyman who warmly congratulated me, especially for beginning my speech about bilingual government with a few sentences in French. My travels were partly conditioned by invitations to speak – in Glasgow, York, and Bristol as well as in Toronto, Montreal, and Regina – but my happy years at Cambridge in the 1950s prompted many visits there, most frequently of course to my own college, St Catharine’s, and to its South African–born master, the heart surgeon Sir Terence English. (“You don’t need brains,” he remarked, “but you do need strong arms.”) We spent most weekends in country house parties, some redolent of Evelyn Waugh’s novels but more frequently of a rare intellectual content provided by the table talk of, among others, David Cannadine and Linda Colley, Roy and

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Jennifer Jenkins, and Isaiah Berlin. On Shakespeare’s birthday in April (his baptismal day on 26 April) the town of Stratford-upon-Avon has long held a luncheon with three hundred guests in a large marquee in the park adjoining the church where he is buried. Somewhat to my surprise, in 1998 I was invited to be one of three speakers at the great gathering. The other two were Dame Judi Dench and Germaine Greer. Sitting between them (Lee was between the lord mayor and Dench’s ailing actor husband), I could not but notice Dench’s seeming nervousness, even when I recalled for her how, as a contemporary down from Cambridge, I would stand in the gods at the Old Vic for a tanner to marvel at her remarkable talents. She still being obviously uneasy, I asked whether I could do anything for her. She explained that on stage she spoke other people’s lines, not her own. She was, moreover, seldom alone on the stage as she would be on the podium. I suggested that if those were the reasons, then she should simply act the part of a character making a speech. Of course, in the event, she spoke wonderfully well. Less so did a rather battered-looking Germaine Greer. It was whispered about that her female partner had punched her up the night before. Certainly, something left her unexpectedly inarticulate, even incoherent. Whether I did any better was for others to decide, but I did manage to describe the great benefits that the Shakespeare Festival of Stratford, Ontario, had received from Stratford-upon-Avon when Tom Patterson and Tyrone Guthrie had presided over its birth and the happy collaboration that continued to this day. I managed also to get a lick in en passant at Leavis, in a little jeu d’esprit about the critic A.C. Bradley. All in all, a memorable day, one that I had never foreseen as I hitchhiked to ubc for a much anticipated Shakespeare lecture. The Church of England was also a sure foundation for our travels. George Carey, the benign but understandably troubled archbishop of Canterbury, and Wesley Carr, the thoughtful dean of Westminster Abbey, became valued friends and mentors, despite their being preoccupied with the growing divisions within the church, principally over the ordination of women in Britain and of homosexuals everywhere in the communion. On the former, I could point with satisfaction to the relatively easy transition that we had made in Canada. On the latter, I learned something of the depth of feeling when, in 1999, I was unexpectedly invited to address a committee of the decennial Lambeth Conference, not on some vexed theological question such as whether Corinthians ii should, chronologically speaking, precede Corinthians i, but rather about debt forgiveness

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to the least developed countries. When, beforehand, I asked the dean what was the principal issue before the Lambeth Conference, his answer was, not unexpectedly, homosexuality. He added that some West African bishops were especially opposed to the ordination of homosexuals even being discussed at Lambeth, asserting that homosexuality was not in their tradition or understanding. If the archbishop of Canterbury and his counsellors continued to insist that it was a question that must now be addressed, they would bring forward a proposal to endorse polygamy as a long-standing practice in rural Africa. It was a tradition that had economic and societal justification, even if it was not sanctioned by the church. That, for the moment, ended the prospect of homosexuality becoming a central topic in that particular Lambeth Conference (although of course it continued to be prominent offstage and in other church gatherings). My single contribution to the never-ending discussions about the liturgy of the Anglican church was to tell Carey over dinner one evening of my dislike of disrupting the even flow of the liturgy of Cranmer et al. with the evangelical “peace.” I wanted to stare ahead in tranquility, not be distracted as if I were at a cocktail party (where, to be sure, I had spent enough of my life). Carey replied that he rather liked the peace greeting, but added that a young curate had been sent temporarily from a genteel parish in the south of England to the rough and tumble of a northern parish. Upon arrival, the curate assured the clearly skeptical wardens that the peace should be added to the liturgy. Over their protests that such innovations were unwelcome, the curate moved at the appointed moment down from the altar into the congregation, grasped the hairy hand of the first man in the front pew, and declared “the peace.” “Booger off” was the only reply. Speaking of church wardens, one day the Queen recalled for Lee and me that a Sunday or two before at Balmoral, where the royal family attends service at the local parish church, she was surprised – although probably not very much, since I doubt that anything any longer really surprises her – to hear an enthusiastic overseas visitor stand up several times during the service and proclaim, “Praise the Lord! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!” The Queen was amused, but the congregation by the fourth or fifth exclamation was most decidedly not. Finally, the two wardens, as dour as the reputation of Scots would have them, went to the visiting enthusiast and said loudly, “Sit down! We don’t praise the Lord in this church.”

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Blair and Chrétien did not spend much time together, even at Commonwealth and g7 meetings. Chrétien’s one official visit to the United Kingdom during my term as high commissioner is pictured above. Blair found Chrétien’s assumption of an elder statesman’s role unconvincing, and Chrétien regarded Blair’s slavish following of the United States as a silly yearning after a long-dead “special relationship,” if indeed it had ever existed.

Chrétien paid one official visit to London while I was high commissioner (he passed through London overnight several other times). On this occasion he left Blair with the impression that he regarded Blair as a young and inexperienced Prime Minister who could learn something from his own years in that high office. At the meeting I did not myself have an impression of resentment on Blair’s part so much as indifference to Canada and the Commonwealth, dazzled as he appeared to be by the United States and preoccupied by uncertainties about the place of Britain in the European Union. A private audience with the queen of Canada at Buckingham Palace was more to Chrétien’s liking. The conversation was easy and included a review of current public policy in Canada (as all prime ministers do in their audiences with the Queen). The luncheon following was made even more enjoyable for Chrétien by my breaking a chair. Seated on the Queen’s left, I guffawed at one of her endless store of anecdotes by leaning back heavily in my small, fragile golden chair. Snap, crack. A footman deftly removed the offending chair from under me – I had the fleeting

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impression it was not the first time that he had carried out such a swift manoeuvre – and replaced it with a sound one without batting an eye. Chrétien was immensely pleased. He later recounted to others, with obvious delight, how I had distinguished myself at the Queen’s luncheon for him. Amidst these and other jollities, I completed a book, African Exploits: The Diaries of William Stairs, 1887–1892 (1998), about a young Canadian who set out on an unusual voyage of self-realization, only to die of malaria at age twenty-eight at the mouth of the Zambesi, still beset by doubts and misgivings. Captain William Grant Stairs, re, of Halifax, an engineering graduate of the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, left journals of his two expeditions in central Africa. The first, in the Halifax Public Library, and the second, in the Musée Terveren in Brussels, set forth his adventures on Henry Stanley’s third and final African expedition and, later, on his own attempt to secure Katanga for the Congo Free State of the despicable King Leopold ii of the Belgians. With his total control over his hundreds of black porters and his armed superiority over the indigenous people, Stairs ultimately proved the adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Beginning with little more, on the one hand, than a sense of boredom with the peacetime British army and, on the other, a strong sense of imperial adventure, he epitomized those young Canadians, many of them graduates of rmc, who sought fulfillment in the late empire of Queen Victoria. But that voyage of self-realization was not for Stairs a very pretty one. And at its early end he was still attempting to convince himself that what he was doing in the heart of darkness was a good thing. Another museum led to the following entry in my diary: 17 april 1998. Lee and I lunched with Lord Armstrong at the Victoria and Albert where he is chairman. He and his trustees have brought the V. and A. through a thin patch, including the government-mandated removal of entrance fees (except for special exhibitions) and the rejection of Liebskind’s controversial design for a “crystal” addition to be shoehorned in between the museum’s two Victorian buildings. A rejection widely acclaimed.

The only occasion on which I believed that I detected some mild, if passing, ministerial interest in the Commonwealth was when, in October

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1999, General Musharraf forced out the corrupt civil government of Pakistan and installed himself as president. At a small meeting at the foreign secretary’s residence on Carleton House Terrace, I sat skeptically through the loud denunciations of Musharraf by Axworthy and Robin Cook, each seemingly seeking to cap the other in enthusiasm for the expulsion of Pakistan from the Commonwealth, or at the very least its suspension. Military dictatorships do not at any time appeal to me, but neither do corrupt civil governments. In any event, I regarded membership in the Commonwealth in much the same way that Norman Robertson, the Undersecretary for External Affairs at the time, had described it when South Africa was applying for readmission upon becoming a republic in 1960: “Robertson declared himself against any chastising action by Commonwealth countries. He saw the Commonwealth as a product of history, a family, some of whose members went to church, others to jail, but not susceptible as a group to discipline nor a court of morality.”* In time, of course, Pakistan became the valued collaborator, to a degree, of the United States, Britain, and all those foolish enough to involve themselves in the nonsensical invasion of Iraq. I do not know to what degree he was a doughty opponent of terrorism, but he was not, all in all, pace Axworthy and Cook, worse than his predecessors in the ceaseless turmoil of Pakistan’s highest office. I had no doubt that he was as devious as Benazir Bhutto and her corrupt husband, but my advice to go slowly with condemnations of regimes and with any ambitions to attempt to change them – you might like the successor regime even less – was not well received. Throughout my term as high commissioner, Northern Ireland continued to be a tiresome, and occasionally deadly, nuisance. The infinitely patient retired chief of the Canadian Defence Staff, General John de Chastelain, had joined former Finnish Prime Minister Hari Holkeri and US senator George Mitchell on a commission established jointly by the Irish and British governments to help foster the circumstances in which an agreement might finally be reached between the extremists on both sides of the seemingly endless disputes in Ulster. The British themselves were bored out of their heads by the centuries-old Irish problem, and most would have liked nothing better than to be shot of it. However, a decided, although diminishing, majority of Protestants in Ulster had continued since Home Rule days to make clear their desire to remain part of the United * H. Basil Robinson, Diefenbaker’s World: A Populist in Foreign Affairs (Toronto, 1989), 126.

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Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Irish Republican Army, the militant arm of Sinn Fein, engaged in various deadly terrorist activities until eventually the embargo of the American government on the transfer of funds from various “Irish charities” in the United States, following the dolorous 9/11 events, finally reduced or put an end to that major source of financing, although not those accruing from narcotics trafficking and sundry other criminal enterprises. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 between the governments of Ireland and the United Kingdom was a promising start toward a final settlement based upon participation by Sinn Fein in the Ulster government. During my visits to Belfast and convivial evenings at Stormont with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (first Patrick Mayhew, then Mo Mowlam, and finally Peter Mandelson), I remained convinced that the extremists on both sides had long since forgotten both their religious teachings and their original grievances, engaging instead in a vicious dispute between haves and havenots. The have-nots, although recognizing that their high birth rate was on their side, would not wait until they became the majority in Ulster. The Northern Ireland Office in London arranged for me to meet several leaders from both sides, including the mendacious Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein and the bigoted Ian Paisley of the Protestant fanatics, both on uncertain trajectories that would eventually carry them from extremism to a more statesman-like status. The latter harangued me – it was anything but a conversation – in a room in his small Belfast house, looking like a latter-day Mr Toad of Toad Hall but devoid of Mr Toad’s irresistible charm. Paisley assured me that the ira were terrorists who had no respect for democracy and civil authority. He would never negotiate with gunmen. Over his shoulder was a photograph from before the First World War of the Unionist leader Edward Carson and his followers armed with German-supplied Mausers. When I inquired whether in 1914 Carson had shown respect for democracy and civil authority, he replied blandly that Carson and his followers had armed themselves simply to keep civil order. After that and several convoluted conversations with Adams, it was always a pleasure to engage with the intelligent and moderate David Trimble – who well deserved his Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 – in reviews of the evolving confrontation and the prospects for what in time became the Good Friday Agreement. Several Canadians also assisted in the fractious peace process, but none made a more sustained contribution than the competent and infinitely patient General de Chastelain and the equally qualified and experienced

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retired chief justice of New Brunswick, William Hoyt. For years de Chastelain lived in isolation, if not danger, in Belfast, ready to monitor and endorse any real disposition of arms by the insurgents. In 1998 Hoyt had undertaken, with a British and a New Zealand (later Australian) jurist, the daunting task of revisiting “Bloody Sunday,” the day in 1972 during which a clash between pro-ira demonstrators and British soldiers left a total of fourteen dead. Hoyt had understood that he was volunteering for two years of hearings and close review of the evidence (an earlier commission had quickly exonerated the British army of any wrongdoing). It was, however, only in June 2010 that the commission reported, possibly because the British and Irish governments, which regarded the reopening of the matter as part of the ira price for its acceptance of the Good Friday Agreement, decided to let some years pass and emotions to cool, if they could, before the commission’s findings were released. On one visit to Northern Ireland, Londonderry (or Derry as the southern Irish prefer) was included in our itinerary. I confirmed in advance with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission that there were, as I suspected, a sizable number of Canadian sailors and even a few airmen buried there who had died in the Battle of the Atlantic. Our official hosts were duly informed that I intended to lay a wreath on those Canadian graves. Even before I left London, however, it was intimated that to do so would be “awkward and even dangerous.” When I arrived in Northern Ireland, I repeated emphatically that during my visit I would lay the wreath. Again a demurral. Again a yet more emphatic statement that I was the high commissioner for Canada to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the sailors were Canadian dead, and I fully intended to lay the wreath. In light of that ultimatum, it was finally explained that the sailors had been buried in what was the civic cemetery during the Second World War. Later, part of it became the Roman Catholic cemetery. If I were seen taking a wreath into or through the Roman Catholic cemetery, it might be thought by Protestant fanatics that I was honouring ira gunmen buried there and a potshot or two might be taken at me pour encourager les autres. All that seemed to me highly unlikely. But true or false, I repeated that in any event I was going, alone as necessary. Instead, a phalanx of six or eight uniformed members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary surrounded me as I made my way in the dark, driving rain to the silent rows of Canadian dead.

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Our Commonwealth membership meant that I was ex officio Canada’s representative on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which since the First World War has tended supremely well the graves of Commonwealth soldiers, generally buried near where they were killed. In its care are 1.7 million graves in total, including those of 110,000 Canadians. To Flanders, Anzio, and Gallipoli Lee and I went with the commission (Lee at our expense) to visit the immaculate cemeteries. In our subsequent private travels across Libya and Syria, I reported back to the commission on the state of Commonwealth cemeteries there, since its representatives were seldom able to obtain local permission to inspect them. I was also ex officio a governor of the Imperial War Museum. It not only had its crowded South London location (which was, wags happily observed, earlier the site of the Bedlam Hospital), but it also operated the remarkably comprehensive air museum at Duxford near Cambridge, the popular underground war cabinet rooms off Whitehall, and hms Belfast, a veteran cruiser of both the Second World and Korean wars moored near Tower Bridge in the Thames. My particular self-appointed role was to ensure that full coverage was given to the part played by Canadian forces in the wars since 1914. When an “American Museum,” focused chiefly on the 8th usaaf, was added to the air museum at Duxford, the Canadian contribution to the bombing offensive against Germany in the Second World War was even more overshadowed, despite the fact that Canadian dead far exceeded US dead relative to the total population, and they were not very far behind even in absolute numbers. There is no particular merit in counting and comparing the dead, but I persisted in my campaign to ensure that at Duxford as well as elsewhere in the Imperial War Museum the contributions of Canadians were fully reflected in the displays, as Bob O’Neill, the highly competent Australian chairman, consistently did for Australia. The museum kindly lent me from its vast and unique collection of war art a large and magnificent oil sketch of three Canadian soldiers, painted by Augustus John, himself for a time a Canadian war artist, as well as smaller equestrian oils by Alfred Munnings, another Canadian war artist. In way of supplement, the Canadian Club in New York, to our delight, provided several of its Canadian pastoral paintings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on indefinite loan. Current collaboration in things military also took the more direct form of exchange officers between Canadian and British forces and the inclusion

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of Canadians in advanced training in Britain. The numbers had sadly dwindled over recent decades, except for armoured units training every summer over the vast, empty terrain near Suffield, Alberta. The raf still flew low-altitude exercises over Labrador, despite the misgivings of the few Native peoples in the region. I did whatever I could to promote such projects, believing that we each continue to have much to learn from each other. So too did I promote with a receptive Liz Symons, who had become the Minister for Defence Procurement, the purchase by the British army of the Bowman field radio system manufactured by what was then Computing Devices of Canada (a subsidiary of the US General Dynamics) and recently adopted by the Canadian army. The order, worth several billion dollars, was decidedly greater than the cost of the four diesel submarines that I assisted Art Eggleton, the Minister of National Defence, and his senior naval advisers to purchase so as to maintain a needed submarine capability – and a silent one compared to nuclear boats – in the Canadian navy. There was soon agreement on the submarines but none at all on the treatment accorded those other denizens of the deep, seals. One diary entry says it all. 11 february 1997. A meeting with the Wildlife and Countryside Link, one of several animal rights groups, all deeply opposed to the Canadian seal hunt. How could such a civilized country as Canada, they ask, tolerate such an obscenity? Television clips frequently repeat those dreadful images of louts clubbing to death baby seals with baseball bats. The demonstrations from time to time on Trafalgar or Grosvenor Square are well-conducted (the organizers inform the police in advance who in turn inform us) and I suspect that in any case the whole of the High Commission staff privately agree with the protestors. Nevertheless we go through the motions of at least of attempting to justify the “hunt” in terms of the need to cull the herds; the alleged damage that they do to the already sadly depleted cod stocks; the importance of the seal fishery to certain isolated Newfoundland communities; etc., etc. No fun there. We have not seen the last of the protestors nor on British television the last of blood on the ice.

During Blair’s years in office he was constantly on the lookout for additional ties with the United States. He suffered, with far less reason, from

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the same self-delusion as Mrs Thatcher that some sort of a transatlantic “special relationship” lingered on with the United States from the governments of Churchill and even Macmillan. I was never convinced that Leon Brittan bought into that self-serving illusion, but in Brussels he nevertheless placed priority on the amelioration of trade and investment problems between the eu and the United States. Various lesser bilateral initiatives, all of which came to little, were pursued at the expense of the more ambitious idea of a eu-nafta agreement or the much less ambitious but pioneering one of a eu-Canada accord. As always, eu agriculture subsidies and their implications for trade globally and with the United States in particular remained a major barrier to enhanced transatlantic links. Brussels, prompted by the then incorrigibly protectionist-minded French, would hear of no real modification to the Common Agricultural Policy of the eu, despite its being in essence a rural social welfare programme. Brittan knew full well from his painful Uruguay Round experience that France would not budge on the cap, least of all for the trifle of an euCanada free trade agreement. In my frustration, I took an unworthy perverse pleasure in continuing to challenge eu commissioners and officials about why they, who proclaimed their undying loyalty to trade liberalization, did not see merit in the enlargement of Canada-eu trade and investment that would flow from the dismantling of barriers, a merit that they had recognized with our nafta partner, Mexico. Unwilling even to admit that a major stumbling block was agriculture and its implications for relations with the United States, they imaginatively concocted a dozen reasons to reject out of hand any free trade soundings from us, a country that had proposed fifty years before that any North Atlantic alliance worthy of its name would have economic underpinnings as well as military. As I was completing my third year as high commissioner, the term of Renato Ruggiero as director general of the World Trade Organization came to a highly successful conclusion, despite the fact that his brilliant bulldozer of a predecessor, Peter Sutherland, the first director general, had left him a hard act to follow. However, Ruggiero, more subtly persuasive, had subsequently overseen the conclusion of three important sectoral agreements, without attempting to launch a further comprehensive round of trade negotiations. Once he departed the wto to become the Foreign Minister of Italy, the pressure for another round began to mount, led in part by Leon Brittan, who should have known better. At first conceived

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as “the millennium round,” the proposed comprehensive negotiation soon came to be described as “the development round,” its advocates apparently convinced that however meaningless the phrase, it would somehow foster support among skeptical developing countries for the wto in general. Eventually it was so endorsed, with unfortunate results, at a gathering of wto trade ministers in Doha, Qatar, thereafter being designated the Doha Development Round. Happy although I always was in London, the appeal of heading the wto in succession to Sutherland and Ruggiero was a prospect that I found alluring, a major opportunity to press globally the merits of further liberalization of rules-based trade and investment. I had the greatest misgiving about a further round before the new organization had the opportunity to consolidate itself and before China had the opportunity to settle in – or, more importantly, before the wto had time to adapt itself to the presence of China in its ranks. Since the support of the United States was crucial to any successful candidature, I first sounded out Mickey Kantor, then in private law practice in Washington. While the question of US support of course resided with his successor as ustr, his former deputy, Charlene Barchevsky, he himself welcomed my possible candidature, kindly undertaking to do whatever he could to help. Similarly, Brittan offered his support but cautioned that his influence among some of the eu member states had been reduced by the opposition of France to what he had conceded, on behalf of the eu, in agricultural trade negotiations to bring the Uruguay Round to a successful conclusion. That was not too promising, but decidedly less promising was my subsequent telephone call to Chrétien, who wearily said that he had spent so much time and so much political capital – far more than he had anticipated – in attempting to persuade the largely reluctant heads of government of the member states of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd) to support the candidature of our erstwhile cabinet colleague, Donald Johnston, as its secretary general that he had no stomach for a yet larger wto campaign. He was convinced, and not wrongly, that at least the member states of the oecd, who then dominated the wto, would not welcome the candidature of a second Canadian to head a major international economic organization. I understood his reaction, having myself experienced, when Trade Minister, the extraordinarily difficult challenge of mustering support among oecd members for Johnston’s candidature. In light of Chrétien’s response, I hesitated, knowing just how

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crucial the vigorous advocacy of a head of government is to a successful international campaign. It is she or he alone who can telephone other heads of government, promising in return her or his support for a candidate from the other country on another occasion. My hesitation was, however, short-lived; I decided that my age alone suggested that if I was ever to seek the job, there could be no delay. “Fortune, good night: smile once more; turn thy wheel!” Tom MacDonald immediately and enthusiastically volunteered to be my campaign manager in his spare time. I could not have had a better one, but I was beginning with two major handicaps: first, I did not have the active support of my head of government with all that implied, and, second, many European countries, knowing that they themselves could not hope to win the post following the Europeans Sutherland and Ruggiero, urged that the next director general should come from among the developing country members, thereby making their support for the wto more likely. A few added that I was simply too old. Soon the confirmed candidates shook down to four: a Moroccan, a New Zealander, a Thai, and me. I obtained a modest travel budget from Ottawa and began the flights to the major capitals and international meetings that the other candidates were also taking, but by then I was already becoming less certain that I wanted the job. Part of the nowestablished election process in international organizations is to meet with representatives of member states at the headquarters of the organization, as well as to travel to national capitals. When, for example, I met the Geneva representatives to the wto of the central European countries, they listened to me patiently enough. However, in the discussion that followed, the Polish ambassador promptly informed me that he had long had difficulty finding a parking space in the wto lot. Peering out the window at the lot, he asked me what, if I were to become director general, I proposed to do about that problem. About that time I departed for Washington to make the obligatory visit there. Upon my arrival, our embassy told me that, at the suggestion of the ustr, I was to see Sweeney, the head of the afl-cio. An agreeable old Irish-American buffer, he was pleased to hear my skepticism about holding another round in the foreseeable future. He was far less pleased about my opposition to the insertion of environmental and labour standards into trade agreements (complete with sanctions against violations). I was already aware, from the final stage of the nafta negotiation, how

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the afl-cio had introduced what, if misapplied, could become a novel form of protectionism. I was having none of it. But, said Sweeny, the New Zealander would. Shortly after my ill-fated Washington visit, an article in the Financial Times informed me that the United States had let it be known that it had narrowed its support to the New Zealander. Clinton would need the afl-cio in the election campaign for a second term. Thereafter an excited Swiss so-called mediator, speaking on behalf of the paralyzed wto council, informed me that despite the fact that I was building support faster than the other candidates in the various straw votes that were being constantly taken, I, like the Moroccan, would no longer be considered in the race. Sensing that a deadlock would sooner or later emerge between the Thai and the New Zealander, I declined to withdraw. The officious little Swiss, increasingly impatient, assured me that, the United States having now made its preference known informally, I had no chance whatever of becoming the head of the wto. The rest of the tale is consistent with its opera buffa beginnings. For sometime thereafter New Zealand and Thailand continued to hurry about the world ever more frantically seeking support, but the frustrated Swiss could, week after week and even month after month, only report continuing deadlock. Eventually the fragile wto was burdened with yet another handicap. Solomon-like, its council finally decided to break the deadlock by splitting the seven-year term between the two remaining candidates. The net result was that the organization had been made to look yet more ineffective: it could not even manage a consensus for a single candidate for a seven-year term. Perhaps it was in the end as well. Neither served with distinction. “Tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée.”

12


A Room with a View

By this time, I had long since happily returned to my day job as high commissioner, a job made easier by the adequate resources that we had to meet informally with British parliamentarians, officials, academics, business people, and colleagues from the diplomatic corps. 10 october 2000. Annual thanksgiving dinner at the residence again a great success, a holiday not known to the British. An immense advantage to our total representation is that we have not only an adequate – if not overwhelming – residence on Grosvenor Square but large flats for the Deputy High Commissioner and the Chief of the Defence Liaison Staff and a good town house on Regent’s Park for the head of the commercial section, all of which are well suited to the essential entertainment which goes with the job. Thank goodness someone years ago had the imagination to purchase them and others. We would never be able to acquire anything so suitable today.

In addition to continuing to welcome, with Lee and Fergus, the seemingly endless stream of Canadian visitors to London, I resumed full-time the fostering of Anglo-Canadian relations in commercial as well as cultural and political terms and the role that Britain might play in the European Union, along with Germany, as the principal advocate of more liberal economic relations with Canada, partly valuable in themselves and partly as an offset to the predominant presence of the United States in Canadian life. I wrote at length what in former days would have been called a dispatch, urging a multifaceted approach to the question of Canada’s relations with the rapidly evolving Europe, freed from the paralyses of the Cold War. I addressed it to “My dear colleague” Lloyd Axworthy, then Minister of Foreign Affairs (no longer did the office bear the more resounding title of

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Secretary of State for External Affairs), but I doubt that he ever read it. In any event, I received no reply. Evidently two privy councillors were not to discuss any weighty subject between them. The text of my homily was as follows: This is a letter about the Canadian need to strengthen Canada-Europe relations. It urges a major effort to negotiate free trade with the European Union. Before arriving at that particular conclusion, it offers along the way some thoughts about the importance of the relationship, both in terms of Canadian national unity and of balancing, to some degree, the remarkable United States présence in Canadian life. Canada has benefited materially from its free trade with the currently burgeoning United States economy. Estimates of how much of Canada’s total merchandise exports now go to the United States range up to 87 per cent (gross). U.S. investment in Canada has continued to multiply. Whether against this background Canada has also benefited from free trade in maintaining its own distinctive traditions and values is less clear. The economy of the United States (not, say, of Germany or Brazil) is now tacitly regarded by many Canadians as the sole measurement of how well their own country is doing economically. The criteria for them have become American. And if Canada is seen as not doing as well as the United States, then the reason is not because we have different traditions and circumstances arising from our own peculiar history, but rather that our institutions, traditions and values have not yet been sufficiently modified as to match United States practices. They are convinced that only when they do match shall we achieve a greater approximation of the affluence (however unevenly distributed) of the United States. For example, some Canadians (Québec separatists prominently among them) would readily surrender monetary control to the United States – more than already exists – by the adoption of the United States currency, even with a concomitant reduction in our ability to pursue an independent fiscal policy, if such an unlikely step were seen as contributing to the achievement of near-U.S. economic standards. In short, if the United States economy is so buoyant, then the holus-bolus adoption of U.S. practices and values must be the sure route to comparable Canadian affluence. Some might say that this “Americanization” is a challenge not unique to Canada. It is a natural function of both globalization (however that may be defined) and technology that all countries today encounter.

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Canada may be the most advanced case of “Americanization,” but it is not alone. Others might argue that in any case the question is only transient. The United States will not continue indefinitely as the most powerful and influential country. A different sort of global equilibrium will eventually emerge. We have not yet reached the end of history. For those of us who can still readily identify and hold worthy a range of institutions and values that are uniquely Canadian and do not define Canada only in terms of gdp per caput, there can be a range of responses. In no particular order, here are some. The teaching of Canadian history is generally in a deplorable state, whether in English or French-speaking Canada. It is, in fact, little taught and frequently confused with various pseudo- or neo-academic subjects. This is not, of course, an area of responsibility for the federal government, but federal support for Canadian arts (including abroad) can indirectly foster greater understanding of where we have come from and who we are. Decades ago, John Kenneth Galbraith advised his fellow Canadians to accept free trade with the United States for the material advantages that it would bring, but warned them to do so only by matching it with much greater support for Canadian broadcasting, writing, theatre, music and, yet more broadly, education. Otherwise, as he once said to me, you will rapidly find that you have sold your soul for the proverbial mess of pottage. Equally, in social policy, both health and training programmes can be of fundamental importance to fostering a more dynamic Canadian society, capable of retaining and asserting its own values. It is, however, about the contribution that our diplomacy can make to that more general policy of promoting our traditions that I write today. This is not a revival of the “Third Option” thesis of the Trudeau era (although that challenging paper continues to reward re-reading today). Since then, the world has changed; for example, the Cold War has ended and globalization and technology have injected new elements into the earlier equation. My suggestions below continue to focus upon the central importance of promoting our relations with Europe as a major way in which the durability and adaptability of our own values can be enhanced, our national unity strengthened and our trade and investment expanded. But let us be clear: the “Third Option” did not – and I certainly do not – advocate the elaboration of our relations with Europe at the expense of our relations with the United States. There is in fact no need to choose. We can do both. It is, however, equally clear that frequently our economic

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relations with the United States necessarily consist of anticipating or countering problems, rather than creating additional opportunities. This is understandable, given the disparities of our two economies in a free trade area and in an era of U.S. “exceptionalism.” The opportunities for positive and creative expansionary initiatives reside more in our relations with other regions of the world, most immediately with Europe, the now affluent ancestral continent of most Canadians. For our purposes here, let us set aside Africa, Asia and even Latin America as offering to any comparable degree opportunities for creative diplomacy in support of both Canadian unity and Canadian values. They may offer such opportunities in time, but they do not yet. Europe today is of course significantly different from the Europe of three or four decades ago. It is unnecessary to rehearse here how the economic recovery and unification of Europe has wrought such profound change, but nothing has altered the basic fact that Europe – and preeminently Britain and France – is the primary source of our parliamentary government, judicial system, culture and moral traditions. The reinforcement of those several distinctive traditions against the impact of manifold continental pressures in North America will be found partly in more vigorous transatlantic cultural and academic exchanges, in internships and scholarships, in tourism and professional collaboration and in environment collaboration. But the most productive route remains the economic. Enhanced transatlantic economic relations, while in themselves not of course an antidote to all our continental excesses, can offer the most substantial and tangible route to the greater transatlantic intimacy that we seek as inherently valuable and as an element in the strengthening of Canada. Membership in nato, while continuing to be central to our total collaboration, cannot alone provide that route. nato in any case has evolved significantly: Article 2 of the North Atlantic Treaty (the “Canadian article” which required of member states closer economic collaboration) was stillborn in face of U.S. opposition; the Cold War is over and we have withdrawn our troops from Europe; and nato now operates militarily beyond the boundaries of its member states. Indeed, if the recently revived – and revised – idea of a European defence force ever takes on real substance, nato will become even more altered and bipolarized, leaving Canada yet more at the periphery of the North Atlantic than we have ourselves already chosen to be. Against this background, we have been laggard in offering how Canada could retain a voice in the formulation

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of European security and defence policy … Lesser transatlantic institutions than nato in which Canada engages fitfully (oecd, osce, Council of Europe, ebrd, the UN Economic Commission for Europe) can with imagination all be exploited, but not to such a degree as to be significant opportunities. What do I mean by “enhanced economic relations” as offering the readiest (but by no means only) route forward? Globalization and technology have contributed gradually to a more universal approach to questions of trade and investment, with one consequence being that European countries no longer concentrate largely on the United States and their other former colonies. This notable diversification in European trade and investment interests has, however, contributed to Canada moving further to the edge of the European radar screen. Canada, moreover, is not seen as an independent player on the global scene (unlike Mexico), when more than 85 per cent of our merchandise exports supposedly go to (or at least pass through) the United States and when the rate of investment continues to be so substantial. The common European impression of Canada is that it is a small yet prosperous market, but it remains dominated by the United States, including in culture and increasingly in corporate ownership. While the European Union is seen as more confident in its evolution and prosperity, Canada is seen as less confident, less able to pursue distinctive external policies independent of the United States. Without doubt, difficulties will be encountered in the management of the Eurozone, its expansion, and the formulation of a common defence and foreign policy, all areas on which European attention will understandably be concentrated. Nevertheless, the expectation is that an increasingly affluent European Union, enlarged as it may be in the years ahead and united in a single currency, will be better able to promote its culture, technology and learning, while Canada is seen as passing increasingly under the hegemony of the United States. Despite all this, Canada has succeeded in concluding secondary economic agreements with the European Union … but these particular agreements together do not add up to Canada-eu or nafta-eu free trade, as the Prime Minister called for in 1994 and again last year. All of them together cannot have the political, cultural and social impact that a comprehensive free trade agreement would have. The potential benefits to Canada from such an agreement with the eu go well beyond incremental trade opportunities narrowly defined. There would be benefits in attracting additional European investment to Canada and a synergistic influence

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on the Canada-eu relationship more broadly. In addition, a Canada-eu initiative would address the current anomalous situation wherein Canada has either negotiated or is pursuing free trade with almost all its major trading partners except the eu (through nafta, ftaa, apec); has bilateral free trade agreements with Chile and Israel; and is discussing bilateral possibilities with Singapore, Central America, Korea and even Japan (that most inscrutable of potential free trade partners).

There followed a discussion of the factors that would likely be in the mind of the European Commission and an analysis of the “business case” for a comprehensive accord. After a review of the several arguments that the eu might still make against its negotiation, I continued: The bottom line is that, to my mind at least, there are no insurmountable obstacles to a Canada-eu free trade initiative. There is, on the other hand, much to be gained. What we seem to have lacked to date is the sustained political will to drive it forward, possibly because we were preoccupied with nafta and the wto. One thing, however, has become increasingly clear during recent years. The mere maintenance of the status quo is not an option, given the growing economic integration on both sides of the Atlantic. Without the major initiative of a free trade negotiation, our relations will continue to diminish as the inexorable forces of economics – if this does not sound too Marxist-determinist – continue to promote regional integration on each side of the Atlantic and lessen transatlantic ties.

I concluded with some proposals about how to proceed step-by-step: Otherwise, the trend of drifting apart will continue, a trend which Canada must counter if in the end for no other reason than the peculiar Canadian requirement to restore and enhance our relations with our two founding European nations. It does not require much imagination to see that Canada’s participation in a free trade area with both Britain and France would reduce the opportunities for separatists in Canada to seek encouragement and support from the other side of the ocean in their efforts to gain a greater degree of international recognition and legitimacy.

No reply. Nothing deterred, I tried again a few months later, this time with a despatch about Canada and the Commonwealth, prompted in part

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by Axworthy’s single-minded campaign to win a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations. I realized that he had set himself such an all-consuming goal when, during the wto contest, several countries had responded to my candidature with the question of why little Canada should have at the same time headship of the oecd and the wto and a seat on the Security Council. One of Axworthy’s principal objectives in seeking the seat was to use it as a platform for his “human security” advocacy, but it seemed a most unpromising place to attempt to foster support. I knew from my five years at the United Nations that the Security Council was a fire brigade, understandably preoccupied with attempting to put out the omnipresent bush fires. It was unable to find time – even if the five permanent members had wanted – to debate the merits of what Axworthy appeared to regard as a new form of foreign relations. In a long despatch about Canada and the Commonwealth (not exactly a hot topic in Ottawa), I dwelt at some length on the opportunities that a multinational organization of which the United States was not a member could offer to advance his human security thinking: As you and I once discussed, the Commonwealth has evolved during the past decades almost beyond recognition. The first major turning point was the addition of India, Pakistan and Ceylon fifty years ago. The second was the creation of a secretariat in 1966. And the third was Britain’s somewhat unenthusiastic entry into the European Economic Community in 1973. Today the Commonwealth membership stands at fifty-four countries, large and small, in every region of the world. It is one of the few international organizations – for that is what it has decidedly become – that embraces both north and south, developed and developing. All these and other considerations in the evolution of the Commonwealth could be elaborated, but perhaps only the third needs elaboration here. Britain’s participation in the European Union has reduced British leadership in the Commonwealth, leaving it today to play in several instances a role no greater – and perhaps less – than that of a number of its other larger members. To be sure, London remains the seat of the Commonwealth secretariat, but official attention – or, indeed, popular attention – is greatly overshadowed by Britain’s continuing uncertainties about its role in the European Union. Developing country members, on the other hand, have come to look upon the Commonwealth as reflecting their own particular interests.

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Commonwealth ministerial meetings, technical assistance and the work of the Commonwealth Foundation and various ngos are regarded with especial satisfaction. Small state members see the Commonwealth as one of the very few international organizations which give them a voice, recognize their peculiar problems, and attempt to do something about them. A range of cultural activities and academic and judicial programmes have continued to flourish and the periodic Commonwealth Games are widely popular. Even trade policy between north and south (replacing the century-long debate of proposals for an imperial preference) has become a subject for Commonwealth discussions as the wto flounders. It is, however, in the realm of public policy, especially the promotion of democracy and human rights, that the Commonwealth has more recently made remarkable progress. The idea of a multi-racial Commonwealth complete with a secretariat, assessing and intervening in areas traditionally regarded as being within the sovereign right of nation states, would once have been an anathema to Mackenzie King. Today, however, the countries of Africa and to a lesser degree Asia so value the endorsement of Commonwealth membership that Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the Gambia have all, to varying degrees, recently taken heed of Commonwealth mediation declarations or sanctions (especially following the leading role of the Commonwealth in the successful elimination of apartheid in South Africa). There has arisen, no one knows quite how, a feeling that the Commonwealth has become preeminently an organization of especial value to small states and to African members. This has become increasingly evident in the subject matter and discussions at the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings (chogm). It is an emphasis even more present in the evolving Commonwealth Ministers Advisory Group (cmag). What began as a tentative foray by the Commonwealth into the complex world of peacekeeping has taken on a life of its own, confidently expanding and deepening its mandate as it proceeds … Two points regarding Canada emerge from the above. If we want to play a more prominent part in an increasingly dynamic north-south organization, the opportunity is there (especially given the British preoccupation with Europe). There is a price: we would need to channel more cida technical assistance through the Commonwealth; we would need to enhance our participation in the Commonwealth Secretariat; and we would need to increase our staff here at the High Commission beyond the one person who can currently give only one

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part of her time to the Commonwealth, including liaison with its secretariat. The second point is that Canada’s “human security” agenda can probably be more readily advanced through the Commonwealth than in any other international organization. Its traditions, priorities and composition render this so. This point could be expanded, but it may suffice to say here that the Commonwealth awaits that initiative. A third and final point is that we can more readily conduct our relations with many small states, including in the Caribbean, in the Commonwealth context, than we can anywhere else, including in the United Nations. I recommend that we consider closely the benefits that would flow to Canada from undertaking a leadership role in the Commonwealth.

No reply. For a second time I had struck out. Too bad, since the Commonwealth might possibly have enabled Axworthy to get a receptive international hearing for his otherwise stillborn idea of human security diplomacy. As was the case of Canadian relations with the European Union, I telephoned him several times about the opportunities offered by the Commonwealth, only to be told by his staff that he was busy but would return my call. Evidently he took little interest in the Commonwealth, attending a few meetings in a perfunctory sort of way. Not surprisingly, the Department itself reflected its minister’s indifference. Commonwealth meetings were attended with minimal Canadian representation, the secretary general was seldom consulted, and Commonwealth committees and agencies were only occasionally invited to meet in Canada. To the periodic Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings (I attended one in Edinburgh in 1997 with Chrétien, at which Nelson Mandela was received with something approaching reverence and awe) Canada has advanced few or no ideas. Britain, with its entry into the then European Economic Community in 1973, had effectively abdicated its leadership. Canada had no ambitions to take Britain’s place, preferring, it seemed, to let the Commonwealth atrophy. Too bad, since Trudeau was right when he said of the Commonwealth, “It may well prove to be the most important of all international bodies simply because it has no role and because it emphasizes nothing but the importance of the human relationship.” All too soon, the time came to leave Britain. Jean Pelletier, Chrétien’s chief of staff, telephoned in the early summer of 2000 to say that my term would expire later in the year. I thereupon felt a little like Charles Ritchie,

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who in 1971 had recorded, “When I wrote to [the undersecretary] and told him that I did not wish to ‘cling to this job’ I meant precisely the opposite. I do wish to cling to this job and he knows that I do.” The observation of Paul Martin senior had been proven right: to be high commissioner in London is to have the best job in the gift of the government of Canada, especially, as Arnold Smith had noted more than forty years before, for a superannuated politician. As I wrote to John Manley, who by then had become Minister of Foreign Affairs: There was a day when a head of mission, upon completing his term of office, offered the Secretary of State for External Affairs his reasoned observations about the country from which he was departing (and occasionally a self-serving observation about what an outstanding job he had done in representing Canadian interests). Today, however, despatches are no longer. The stylistic corruption seemingly inherent in the internet and other such electronic devices has had such an adverse impact upon the form as well as the substance of our writing that the only approximation to a despatch that I could envisage is this letter … I leave Britain after more than four and a half years. During those years, the institutions of Britain itself, even the understanding of what a notably affluent country it has become, have been modified to a remarkable degree. The constitution, the role of the Church, the army, parliament, the universities, the status of women and visible minorities, Britain’s place in Europe and the yet larger world (including the Commonwealth) are constantly evolving, although sometimes without much apparent forethought. It is a cliché to say that all countries are in a state of change. To take but one example, in a speech in 1967, the then Canadian High Commissioner stated “that rapid change has been one of the chief characteristics of the first half of the sixties.” Other High Commissioners have said much the same thing at different times. What is, however, undeniable, is that a degree of uncertainty has been a characteristic of British foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. Dean Acheson’s observation, although now almost a half-century old, that Britain had lost an empire and not found a vocation is not yet irrelevant in light of continuing indecision about Europe. The uncertainties are not a product or even reflection of Blair’s socalled “Third Way” (that particular piece of jargon from the London

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School of Economics appears to have lost rather than gained any real meaning). Nor is the change and uncertainties all the result of initiative by the government. To take but two examples of this curious inversion of leadership – the led leading – the government of what was once one of the most centralized countries in Europe first devolved powers on Wales, Scotland and London (Northern Ireland has had substantial powers since 1922) and only then appointed a commission to consider the many implications of what it had done. Likewise, the government reduced (although has not yet eliminated) the hereditary principle from the House of Lords and only thereafter appointed a commission to consider what should be the composition and powers of a reformed second chamber. In the case of the military forces (which, broadly speaking, remain more popularly esteemed than in Canada), the government has reduced both numbers and equipment yet at the same time has added peacekeeping and other demanding international commitments. In the case of the Church, a century ago it was the central institution in a Christian Britain; today it is not, although it remains established, and certainly Britain is no longer as Christian as it once was. Forty-five years ago, when I began a degree at Cambridge, there were only a handful of universities in Britain; today there are almost one hundred, but discontent still appears to be widespread about who should attend and who should pay the bills … All these and other uncertainties are secondary to Britain’s continuing misgivings about its place in Europe, its reluctance to affirm its participation in a single market by adopting a single currency and, beyond monetary union, fiscal – including tax – harmonization (a taboo subject in polite circles here). In the minds of many, a single currency, as the Governor of the Bank of England has said, “involves the deliberate pooling of national sovereignty over important aspects of public policy, in the interest not first of collective economic advantage, but of perceived wider political harmony within Europe.” But to achieve that “wider political harmony within Europe” at the price of a diminution of sovereignty is one bridge too far for many British. Some – most notably Blair himself – cling to the idea that Britain has a “special relationship” with the United States which brings benefits (undefined), while proclaiming at the same time that Britain must be “at the heart of Europe.” De Gaulle would recognize it all: the yearning for a transatlantic link coupled somehow with an acceptance, however reluctant, that Britain, like it or not, is in Europe, if not entirely of it. Entangled in the confusion of Britain in Europe is a growing

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realization that globalization is here to stay and that somehow free trade as preached by Cobden and practised by the Conservative Salisbury and the Liberal Asquith alike remains Britain’s safe haven. The debate about the Euro, however one-sided it has become, masks a more fundamental popular concern about Britain in Europe. The young may be marginally more receptive to Europe than the older, but all public opinion polls suggest continuing reservations if not hostility about the deepening of eu commitments (not quite the same reservations apply to widening: some British see the accession of additional members as a brake upon additional deepening). All this contributes to a degree of uncertainty or even confusion in British foreign policy, to a lack of precision and purpose. As noted above, from time to time, the Prime Minister speaks of placing Britain “at the heart of Europe,” but no one is clear what he means – probably he is not himself – recognizing privately that no member state outside the Euro can be at the heart of Europe. Blair’s ministers do not, in any event, pay much attention to what their Prime Minister says on the subject: they variously support and oppose British participation in the eu with equal vigour. If the British government were more single-minded in its foreign policy, co-operation with friendly countries (including Canada) in international pursuits might be better realized. As it is, the blurring of British priorities resulting from the uncertainties over Europe reduce the precision of the British contribution to the United Nations (despite being a permanent member of the Security Council), in the Commonwealth and in a variety of other international organizations. In the case of Canada, the opportunities for joint measures in the Commonwealth are diminished by doubts whether, in the absence of any clear evidence to the contrary, Britain can walk in the eu and chew gum in the Commonwealth at the same time. More instances of the effects of policy uncertainty could be cited, but at least candid political consultation and intelligence exchange between Britain and Canada continues unabated and at levels seldom, if ever, achieved elsewhere. If the British Government were more single-minded in its foreign policy – seeking to place itself at the heart of Europe – it could be, paradoxically, a more effective international leader among nations, including those of the Commonwealth.

I then repeated some of the elements that argued, in my mind at least, for closer collaboration with Commonwealth members before returning to what I perceived as the absence of focus in British foreign policy, which

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confuses whatever thinking there actually is in Britain about transatlantic unity against the background of the changing role and membership of nato. British uncertainties about its own role in Europe have reduced any ambitions – certainly in the eyes of others – that it might otherwise be expected to have to be a champion … of liberal trade and investment ties across the Atlantic, leading to free trade. The Nordic members and Germany would be likely allies, but with continuing British indecision, little is accomplished. For Canada this must be a matter for regret. The historical ties between Canada and Britain and France should provide, as Borden and Mackenzie King, Diefenbaker and Trudeau at different times and in different ways envisaged, an ameliorating factor in Canada’s otherwise stark relationship with its massive neighbour. Canada has itself not done much – if anything – in recent decades (beyond the military ties of nato) to seek such amelioration; certainly we have displayed no comparable vigour to that which went into the single-minded pursuit of free trade with the United States ... Anglo-Canadian transatlantic co-operation, however, remains more immediately realizable in military enterprise, whether in nato, peacekeeping or defence procurement. As noted above, the military retain a respect in British life that is unfamiliar in peacetime Canada. The government, moreover, is at least as quick as Canada to offer its stretched forces for whatever peacekeeping or more especially peacemaking challenges emerge. Already close, the co-operation between Canadian and British forces (as in Bosnia and Kosovo) … promises well for the future and can, if developed skilfully, offer additional, non-military dimensions. In the increasingly electronic world of culture, Canadian performers are welcomed. Those of first quality are warmly received without any prompting from the High Commission and the honorary consulates. It is the lesser-known aspirants whom the cultural programme of the High Commission can occasionally assist. So it is with commercial and investment opportunities. Large Canadian companies … know what they are about; they need no one to tell them how to export to Britain or where to invest in manufacturing or research here. Again, it is the smaller, lesser known enterprises whom the High Commission can assist. What High Commission staff in both the cultural industry and commercial areas can do is to promote Britain as a place for smaller Canadian companies, many already familiar with the United States market, to find new opportunities to participate or to invest. This may be seen by latterday mercantilists as trade promotion in reverse, but not if trade and

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investment are increasingly understood to be one and that creation or expansion of Canadian multinational companies are of direct benefit to the domestic economy of Canada. There is, of course, a similar role to play among smaller British companies contemplating opportunities in nafta, but this too can be best conducted in a general way by the High Commission …, especially by organizing visits to Canada of smaller companies seeking Canadian partners as well as new markets. Given the remarkable affluence of the British economy, there is today little emigration to Canada from Britain itself (apart from a few farmers) … Student exchanges and scholarships are slowly growing in number … In the case of Canadian students in Britain, the benefits are yet more pronounced: a knowledge of Europe is to be readily had, offsetting to some degree that peculiarly parochial Canadian preoccupation with the United States. More than 800,000 British visitors to Canada annually offer a lucrative market for small enterprises in Canada as well as large, but that volume of visitors also does much to reinforce that knowledge of and regard for Canada which Britain has long harboured. Inherent in much of what I have written is the opportunity to build upon the sure foundations of the past and to encompass the European dimension to produce yet more beneficial relations between Canada and Britain. But if such success is to be realized, more needs to be done in Ottawa to think through and implement enthusiastically a rejuvenated policy toward a vibrant Britain, something that has not been particularly evident, despite prodding from here, since free trade with the United States became the centrepiece of Canadian foreign policy. If the increasingly affluent Britain’s occasionally wayward evolution in the face of electronic globalization is difficult to define with any assurance, it does offer additional opportunities for Canada to develop profitable links in the arts, in military co-operation (including peacekeeping), in trade and investment and in international affairs. Even in its random and sometimes seemingly absent-minded reconstitution of itself, Britain looks to its friends for advice and example. The number of government officials (national and regional) and academics who now visit or study in or about Canada has grown markedly over the past years. For these exchanges and more tangible ones in the arts, trade and military and diplomatic matters there is the sure and continuing foundation of kinship. Scratch almost any Englishman – especially any Scot – and you will find a Canadian beneath. They all seem to have aunts in Winnipeg or

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brothers in Prince Rupert or they did military or academic training in Alberta or Newfoundland or they have bought and sold in Toronto or Montréal. This should not be dismissed as some sort of post-colonial sentimental tosh. To the contrary, it is an omnipresent door-opener for Canadians, an advantage that the love/hate relationship with the United States does not allow and the suspicions of Brussels do not countenance. This sense of kinship, of a shared history (especially in two world wars) of common if evolving institutions, of converging arts and academic pursuits, not only take many British to Canada annually, but has fuelled the mounting trade in merchandise and the unquantifiable but burgeoning trade in services. British investment has continued to expand in Canada as Canadian investment (generally of a high-tech character) has so grown as to exceed for the first time that of Britain in Canada. That such growth will continue between two nations so affluent and of such affinity as Britain and Canada is axiomatic (with some occasional helpful prompting from the two respective high commissions). Commercial relations and investment would of course grow more rapidly if free trade existed between Canada and the European Union (or, more ambitiously, between nafta and the European Union). Mexico, our partner in nafta, has already achieved it, with British support. If we want free trade badly enough with the eu, if we want it as an earlier government wanted free trade with the United States, we could probably pull it off, given the number of European friends that Canada could count upon to join in the advocacy of such free trade as one stepping stone on the way to eventual global free trade and to yet stronger and more beneficial transatlantic ties.

That was, more or less, my swan song. I eschewed the temptation to repeat Charles Ritchie’s final thoughts about Britain in his journal for 1971, but perhaps they are appropriate here. “Throughout the stresses and strains of those years the underlying strength of the British character and institutions remained intact. The English themselves were – as they always had been – kindly, ironic, and stoical. Britain remained one of the most civilised countries in the world, if civilisation is to be judged by standards of tolerance and humanity.”* It seemed to me that it still was, and I hoped that it would remain so. In November 2000, after speeches to the * Charles Ritchie, Storm Signals: More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1962–1971 (Toronto, 1983), 92–3.

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Caledonia Club (suitably kilted), the English-Speaking Union, the Royal Agricultural College, the British Museum, the Canada Club, the Export Club of Newcastle, Lloyds in the City, the Canada-UK Chamber of Commerce, and the livery companies of Brewers, Armourers and Braziers, and Distillers, Lee and I bade farewell to a whole regiment of English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish friends. We told the staff at the residence as well as at the High Commission of our deep gratitude for all that they had done for us – they were, quite simply, outstanding – before boarding an Air Canada flight to Toronto with Fergus somewhere in the cargo hold. He arrived in Toronto miraculously spry, happy to see us after eight or nine hours in his small cage before turning his attention to the various olfactory mysteries of Pearson Airport.

13


Past Forgetting

While the house on Russell Hill Road was being restored from the ravages inflicted by its tenants, Lee, Fergus, and I stayed in Rosedale with Hal and Maruja Jackman, our old friends and happily frequent visitors in Britain. Before our departure from London, several offers of corporate directorships had been foretold, among which were Brascan, Algoma Central, Canadian Tire, Patheon, and two small companies in especial need of tender loving care, Pacific Safety Products and Broadview Press. All the boards, large and small, were to prove interesting and enjoyable, although the sometimes bizarre micromanagement gyrations of the Canadian Tire board were fortunately offset by its outstanding senior staff. Brascan easily led the pack in terms of size, imagination, and inventiveness, with both the board and the management providing an extraordinary level of energy and diversity of skills. But in the aftermath of our recent posting in Britain, the board that helped us to sustain our many transatlantic links without hiatus was that of Standard Life in Edinburgh. For five years I flew to the United Kingdom every month and occasionally even every fortnight for a board or committee meeting. Additionally, a consultancy to the large British engineering company amec added yet another transatlantic dimension. With that proximity, I was able to continue to follow the fortunes of Blair as he pursued his grovelling Pancho to George Bush’s self-assumed Don Quixote. More reassuring was the opportunity to observe at first hand the continuing evolution of the European Union. I also became chairman of the seventy-five-year-old but chronically impecunious Canadian Institute for International Affairs. Additionally, in the hope of fostering stronger transatlantic ties, I served as chairman of the Atlantic Council, the institution that in each member state of nato promotes the Atlantic alliance. Its mandate had taken on a new meaning

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as nato struggled to define its role in the post–Cold War era. I willingly responded also to an invitation to become chairman of the Canada-India Business Council, in recognition of Canada’s urgent need to diversify its trade and investment with one of the rapidly emerging great economic powers. Boards, both commercial and non-profit, kept me for much the year in Toronto, but in addition to the monthly board meetings of Standard Life in Edinburgh, I travelled to Britain regularly for meetings of the council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Ditchley Foundation (in Ronnie Tree’s beloved Palladian house in Oxfordshire). Lee and I roamed farther afield to attend biennial meetings of the Trilateral Commission, joining former colleagues such as Allan Gotlieb, Gordon Smith, and Peter Lougheed in agreeing how much better off the world would be if we were all still in office. On the side, I readily supported my old friend Don Johnson, once head of Burns Fry, in his ultimately successful campaign to eliminate the capital gains tax on securities donated to any registered charity in Canada (building on Paul Martin’s earlier reduction of the tax to one-half). Introducing Johnson to the arcane ways of gaining local mp support was a delight for both of us. Concurrently I was honorary colonel of the 7th Toronto Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery, the sole surviving militia artillery regiment in the Toronto area, a position I had assumed while still Minister of International Trade. Naturally, I soon became convinced of the superiority of gunners over any other branch of the service and an enthusiastic promoter of the militia in general. Reserve soldiers filled the ranks of our depleted permanent-force contingents on peacekeeping or peacemaking missions in the Middle East, the Balkans, and Afghanistan, but equally the discipline and the training that they offer is a net benefit to civil society. I was eager each summer to join the Ontario militia units on their annual exercises at Petawawa, where Tom Bata, Hal and Eric Jackman, and other friends from the Toronto Club also served as honorary colonels. Ten days with our troops in Bosnia – sharing a tent with Bata, whose sole concern was that I did not snore – convinced me that Canada had a capability in peacekeeping and peacemaking that was not to be lightly jettisoned in a search for other military roles, but it equally convinced me that the recruitment system for both the permanent force and the reserve army was in need of reorganization. Discussions with General Rick Hillier and others contributed to the eventual recognition of its cumbersome inadequacy and its replacement by a more efficacious process.

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As the honorary colonel of the 7th Toronto Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery, I spent a week in Bosnia in August 2001 with other “honoraries” from across Canada, in particular visiting the volunteers from our own militia regiments, who provided as much as 20 per cent of our total forces on the ground.

Before our departure from Britain, I had begun an account of the High Commission from its informal inception in 1870 to the completion in 1971 of Britain’s long and painful efforts to join the European Economic Community. As high commissioner, I had daily passed the photographs of all the high commissioners, beginning with Alexander Galt, ranged down the staircase of No. 1 Grosvenor Square. They were surprisingly few in number for a full century of service, each (except the impecunious Galt) being delighted to enjoy their appointment for as long as feasible. I often wondered, as I passed them, what were their particular challenges or opportunities and what their thinking against the backdrop of an evolving Canada. Soon, however, in beginning to write an account of their varied service, I realized that I was writing something more than their potted biographies. Willy-nilly, Commissions High: Canada in London, 1870–1971 (2006) became an account of Anglo-Canadian relations, within and without the Empire/Commonwealth, during a century of

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sometimes intimate collaboration, sometimes bland indifference, and occasionally even disagreement, as gradually the United States, in an absented-minded fashion, came to dominate Canada in ways that Britain never did nor would have sought to do, following the hard lessons taught by fellow Englishmen in the American War of Independence. The High Commission, under only the occasional direction of Ottawa, was, especially during its early decades, a centre of decision-making. Choices were made, prejudices displayed, and opportunities exploited – or missed – in the evolving status of Canada within the Empire/ Commonwealth. Whatever were the foreign interests of the young dominion, they were expressed largely in London until 1909, when the embryonic Department of External Affairs was formed. The consultation and worldwide information on offer in London, seldom accepted by a suspicious Mackenzie King, was especially forthcoming in the decades when the incumbent was a former politician rather than a career civil servant, an advantage several early incumbents believed would have been further enhanced by requiring that the high commissioner concurrently be a member of Parliament and a cabinet minister (as several were). But that, as one says, is another story. Commissions High was for me an effort to understand more about the parts played by individual Canadians and the dominion itself in its evolution to the Canada of the twenty-first century. Having contributed the entry on Robertson Davies to the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, I provided a chapter to a Department of Foreign Affairs history before embarking upon this memoir in Toronto and at our house in rural Alabama, generally with the now nonagenarianequivalent Fergus snoozing at my feet. Additionally, during our occasional visits to Lee’s home state, we – all three of us – have remained unmovable in our conviction that the making of great films in Hollywood and London ended about 1950. Television partly saw to that. And in any event, Lee and I have long wanted to see the films that our parents would not let us see when were children. Evenings at home with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Jimmy Stewart, Marlene Dietrich, Irene Dunne, Edward Everett Horton, Claude Raines, and Erich Blore we treasure, especially if Zazu Pitts and Googie Withers are also along. Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night: bliss. In 2001 I became the first chairman of the awkwardly named CanadaEurope Roundtable for Business (cert). Its progenitors, notably Alcan and Bombardier in Canada and Siemens and Glaxo in Europe, were even-

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tually joined by more than one hundred major transatlantic corporations, thanks largely to the wit and perseverance of cert’s young executive director, Jason Langrish. Together we got to work seriously on promoting ties with the European Union, particularly a Canada-eu free trade agreement. Canada, having concluded nafta with Mexico and the United States, would, it seemed abundantly clear to us, benefit from greater diversification in its trade and investment – in the first instance in what had become the world’s largest market, the European Union. It was not, to be sure, a novel idea. As I have noted, it had been around as early as 1949, when Pearson and Robertson had urged in vain that the proposed nato should be an economic as well as a military alliance. That imaginative proposal having unfortunately gone nowhere, forty years and more later the challenge remained. A comprehensive trade and investment agreement between nafta and the eu was our preferred vehicle, as Chrétien had proposed in speeches in Paris and London (partly in my persistent drafting). However, given the indifference in both Washington and Brussels to the grand idea of a nafta-eu agreement, a bilateral Canada-eu agreement offered the most promising way forward. (Mexico, with the support of Spain, had already concluded its own bilateral agreement with the eu.) In the short term, even the bilateral route was not promising. As noted above, in 1994 I had proposed to Leon Brittan, then the eu commissioner for trade, that negotiation was an idea whose time had come. Although of a forthcoming disposition himself, he understandably looked over his shoulder at the traditionally protectionist-minded members, conscious as he was that the Commission in Brussels had never cleared its thinking about liberalized trade with developed, as distinct from developing, countries, with which they already had a plethora of bilateral or regional agreements. Brittan’s successor, the unimaginative Pascal Lamy, took much the same line but even more assertively. It was Lamy’s successor, Peter Mandelson, who in mid-2008 proved himself to me and to my European co-chair, Bill Emmott, lately editor of the Economist, to be the prince not of darkness but of light in committing the eu to negotiation with a developed country. At a meeting in Brussels with a transatlantic business delegation that cert had assembled, backed by the formidable and always perceptive Deputy Minister of Trade, Marie Lucie Morin, and her senior officials, we finally achieved the breakthrough. Mandelson announced that the Commission would engage with Canada in “scoping” the negotiation of a comprehensive trade and investment agreement,

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based upon a recently completed joint study of the specific benefits that would flow from such an agreement. This scoping exercise underlined for the Commission the need for a clear statement by the ten provinces that they would faithfully implement those provisions that fell within their jurisdictions (what an opportunity for Canada to rid itself once and for all of those noxious interprovincial trade barriers!). That and other points having been met, partly at the indispensible prompting of Jean Charest, I rejoiced – after twenty years of advocacy – in joining Prime Minister Stephen Harper and José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Union, in Prague in May 2009 to announce the formal beginning of negotiations. I had assumed that the European Union would be my last free trade hurrah. But yet more distant horizons beckoned. In 2007, at the annual Montreal Conference (a sort of North American Davos), while wearing my hat as chairman of the Canada-India Business Council, I met with David Emerson, the capable Canadian Trade Minister, and Kamil Nath, then the Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry, to consider ways in which trade and investment between our two countries might be further enhanced. The conversation was at first so desultory that I soon became bored. To enliven matters, I suddenly proposed that Canada and India should negotiate a free trade agreement. Nath was immediately enthusiastic, Emerson hardly less so. Subsequently the Departments of Foreign Affairs of Canada and India, joined by Rana Sarkar of the Canada-India Business Council and Jason Langrish, on loan from the Canada-Europe Business Roundtable, cleared away much of the underbrush, gradually defined the scope of the negotiations, and marshalled private-sector support, including that provided by Manley at the Council of ceos. At the time of this writing (2010), the negotiations, blessed by Prime Ministers Harper and Singh, are making progress toward what is now called a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. Hallelujah! For my part, it was one more confirmation that Canada should free trade with anyone who will free trade with us, that we should enthusiastically embrace globalization and trade and investment diversification, having achieved sound fiscal health. Humphrey Bogart, I seem to recollect, was once asked by an eager young journalist what message he was attempting to send in his films. His reply was entirely characteristic: “Listen, buster, if I wanted to send a message I’d call Western Union.” I feel a little like that when confronted with

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the challenge of concluding this memoir with some suitably didactic or even inspirational observations. In fact, I do not know that I have any. A few appear to me be implicit in the text, standing by for the observant reader to draw forth. Like any autobiographer, I have necessarily engaged in a form of special pleading by the very act of selecting from times past those events or trends or attitudes that seem to me of importance or particular amusement. I am, in a sense, merely the dog who barks as the caravan moves on. If, however, it is for me to draw forth any observations or reflections, the first that I would offer is the indispensability of a sense of humour as one makes one’s way along. I frequently wanted to say to colleagues – and sometimes did – what Laurence Sterne has Tristam Shandy say: “As we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short at anything – only keep your temper.” A sense of humour has long appeared to me essential if one is to do with any grace and civility good to others – which is, after all, what business, politics, and academia are, or should ultimately be, about. Certainly, I learned, as the caravan moved on, to value that rare quality, a sense of humour. As Addison once observed, “Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.” Laughter helps us to understand. It entails a sense of proportion, judgment, and equilibrium. And civility is its product. The second observation that I would offer is that with age there comes a conviction that there is indeed little or nothing new under the sun. I have seen things needlessly repeated and errors made because we do not take sufficient time to reflect more closely on what was experienced or done in the past. For example, few if any happenings in international relations are entirely new; they all seem to have a precedent and hence a lesson somewhere. Here again a sense of proportion can result. Otherwise in the future our actions or our response will certainly, as Swift said, arouse our wonder at the excitement, enthusiasm, or alarms we once displayed. A little more reflection on what experience – or history, to use a larger word – can teach in the way of moderation is to be prized. Perhaps that is why I felt in politics that partisanship was much overdone. What Talleyrand said to diplomatists is equally instructive for politicians: “Surtout, messieurs, pas trop de zèle!” It never seemed in politics – or in business, for that matter – that my colleagues and certainly not I had any monopoly on good ideas. From such basic understanding comes a side product, civility. It undermines ideology, something to be avoided at all costs. In

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short, humour, proportion, judgment, and courtesy are all first cousins. Among other institutions, Parliament would certainly achieve more, and achieve it more cooperatively, if all those first cousins were in greater evidence. It may be objected that these few concluding words are too laid back, certainly not inspirational or visionary. But then whenever I encounter the word “vision,” I recall Göring, who allegedly said that whenever he heard the word “culture” he reached for his revolver. Certainly, my words have an undertone of compromise. But perhaps that is no bad thing for a Canadian, compromise being, as Trudeau often said, “a good Canadian term.” Canada was not born in rebellion or revolution. French Canadians saw nothing in Robespierre’s France that appealed. English Canadians (understood here to include Scots, Irish, and Welsh) saw nothing worthwhile in the excesses of the rebels to the south. So, in the long evolution of Canada, French and English compromised, learning lessons from living together that remained useful when later immigrants from elsewhere began to arrive in substantial numbers. And compromise has remained a good thing in the mosaic called Canada, contributing indirectly and in its own mysterious way to whatever good humour, proportion, tolerance, judgment, and civility we have achieved. When such fundamental things apply, we can learn more about how best to live together, to develop public policy, and to cherish the natural environment of which we are the stewards.

Index

Acland, Sir Anthony, 142, 228 Adams, Gerry, 243

Atomic Energy of Canada, 27, 81, 123–6

Afghanistan, 210, 268

Attlee, Clement, 218

African Exploits, 241

Australia, 5, 15, 124, 134, 156, 158,

Alabama, 35, 36, 270 Alberta, 105, 113, 114, 120, 121, 135, 246, 265 Aleutian Islands, 33 Alexander, Lord, 8, 51, 52

187, 193, 206, 229, 244–5 Austria, 44, 53, 56, 70, 131 Axworthy, Lloyd, 175–6, 188, 233, 242, 251, 257, 259 Aylmer conference, 179, 180, 188–91

Algeria, 56, 70 Allison, Tom, 170

Bangladesh, 211, 212

Alsop, Joe, 75

Barbados, 75–8, 136, 160, 231

Alsop, Susan Mary, 75

Bardolph (dog), 197

Amory, Derick Heathcoat (Lord

Barroso, José Manuel, 272

Amory), 53

Bastien, Rick, 216

Anderson, Doris, 106

Bata, Tom, 268

Andrew, Arthur, 44

Baxter, Clive, 53, 64

Angkor Wat, 35, 41

Baxter, Cynthia (Molson), 53

Anne, Princess, 147

Belfast, 26, 243–4

apec. See Asia Pacific Economic Co-

Belize, 153–6

operation Arcand, Ted, 44 Armstrong, Robert (Lord Armstrong), 241 Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (apec), 191, 196, 197, 256

Bell, Vanessa, 91–2 Berlin, 56, 169; and the Cold War, 57–64, 169 Berlin, Isaiah, 237–8 Bermuda, 95, 133 Bhutto, Benazir, 210

Aspen Institute, 98

Bilodeau, Jacques, 215

Atlantic Council, 267

Binnie, Ian, 90

276 Blair, Cherie, 228 Blair, Tony, 216, 218, 227–30, 240, 246, 260, 262, 267

index Cambridge, University of, 17–25, 35, 42, 77, 111, 187, 216, 237–8, 245, 261

Blanchard, Jim, 182

Campbell, Bennett, 129

Bloc Québécois, 182

Campbell, Kim, 180

Bonaventure, hmcs, 26

Canada-Europe Roundtable for

Bonn, 57, 60, 61

Business (cert), 270–1

Borden, Sir Robert, 96, 218, 229, 263

Canada-India Business Council, 268

Bosnia, 263, 268, 269

Canadian Business, 101–3, 159

Bouchard, Lucien, 171

Canadian Institute of International

Bourassa, Robert, 105 Brascan, 267 Brazil, 70, 90, 92, 196, 206, 252 Briggs, Asa (Lord Briggs), 98, 136–8, 218

Affairs (ciia), 90, 267 Canadian Peacekeepers in Indochina, 31, 198 Canadians behind Enemy Lines, 127, 128, 144

Briggs, Susan, 137

Canadians in Russia, 95–6, 98, 127

British Columbia, 4, 7, 9, 10–12, 17,

Canadians on the Nile, 98–9

101, 226 British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, 4, 6

Candu reactor, 116, 117, 123, 126 Cannadine, Sir David, 237 Canon, Lucien, 35

British North America Act, 124, 138

Carey, George, 238–9

Brittan, Sir Leon (Lord Brittan), 194,

Carr, Wesley, 214, 238

205–6, 247, 271 Brown, Gordon, 234

Carrington, Peter (Lord Carrington), 214, 228

Bruce, David, 74, 75, 77

Carter, Tom, 35

Bruce, Evangeline, 75

Cartwright, Susan, 187, 208

Brussels, 204–6, 241, 247, 265, 271

Castro, Ramón, 181

Burns, E.L.M., 74, 79

Charest, Jean, 207, 272

Bush, George H.W., 168, 208, 217

Charlottetown accord, 173

Business Council on National Issues

Chile, 71, 177, 192

(bcni), 99–100 Butler, R.A.B., 77

China, 4, 12, 32, 34, 56, 70, 72, 76, 92–5, 137, 196–8, 248 Chrétien, Jean, 52, 114, 124, 140;

Cairo, 145–7

ambitions, 151, 159; and Aylmer

Calcutta, 82–4, 93

conference, 179–80; and deficit

Callaghan, James (Lord Callaghan),

financing, 201–14; elected leader,

218 Cambodia, 32, 33

177–8; and free trade with the United States, 176–7, 188–92; and the

277

index gst, 184–5; luncheon with Queen, 240; and Meech Lake and Charlotte-

Copps, Sheila, 176, 184, 185, 188, 201

town accords, 170–3; and nafta,

Coutts, Jim, 105, 138, 157

188–92; Queen’s inquiries about,

Coyne, James, 51, 64, 67

228; Red Book, 198–200; and Team

Crombie, David, 105

Canada, 198–200

Crowe, Bill, 217, 228

Christ Church College, Oxford, 18

Cuba, 55, 66, 137, 155, 181, 196

Churchill, Pamela, 215 Churchill, Randolph, 215

Danson, Barney, 109, 231

Churchill, Sir Winston, 4, 14, 63, 70,

d’Aquino, Tom, 100

74, 96, 247

Davey, Keith, 105, 111

Clarity Act, 208

Davies, Robertson, 270

Clark, Joe, 149, 157, 175; govern-

Davis, Bill (William), 114, 147

ment, 104–14 Clarke, Ken, 224 Clay, Lucius, 60 Clinton, Bill, 180, 182, 190–2, 217, 250

de Chastelain, John, 242–4 deficit, federal, 173–4, 184–6, 192, 201–4 de Gaulle, Charles, 65, 80, 87, 110, 261

Clinton, Hillary, 263

de Klerk, F.W., 208–9

Colbert, Claudette, 77

demilitarized zone (dmz): in Vietnam,

Collenette, David, 170

32–3

Colley, Linda, 237

Dench, Dame Judi, 238

Collishaw, Ray, 96

de Pencier, Michael, 101–3, 106, 159

Colombo Plan, 88, 209

Dewar, Donald, 234

Columbia University, 87

Diana, Princess of Wales, 233

Commissions High, 269–70

Diefenbaker, John, 27–30, 54, 63–9,

Common Agricultural Policy (European Union), 247 Commonwealth, 4, 6, 14, 23, 25, 29,

119, 149, 178, 235, 263 Diem, Ngo, 34, 56 Dimma, Bill, 140–1

30, 55, 64–6, 116, 142, 155, 214,

Dingwall, David, 170, 185

228–9, 240–5, 256–9, 262, 267,

Discovery, hmcs, 12

270; Canadian initiatives, 157–9

Ditchley, England, 75, 268

Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 244–5

Drew, George, 50 Duncan, James, 95

Congo, 54–6 Cook, Robin, 234, 242 Cooper, Duff, 74, 75 Cooper, Jim, 106, 108

Economic and Social Council (ecosoc) (United Nations), 71, 173 Economist, The, 49, 271

278

index

Eden, Sir Anthony (Lord Avon), 24

Fleming, Jim, 107

Eggleton, Art, 106, 246

Food and Agriculture Organization

Egypt, 145–53

(United Nations), 92

Eisenhower, Dwight, 54

Foot, M.R.D., 127

elections, British: 1997, 227–8

Forster, E.M., 22

elections, Canadian: 1984, 157–8; 1988, 169–71; 1993, 182–3

Foster, Julia, 233 Foster, Robert, 233

Elizabeth (Queen Mother), 3, 229–31

Fournier, Jean, 65

Elizabeth ii (Queen), 12, 125, 222,

France, 4, 24, 30, 32, 35, 56, 63, 129,

228–9, 234, 239 Ely Cathedral, 21, 24

136, 160, 205–6, 230, 247–8, 254– 6, 263, 274

Emerson, David, 272

Fraser, Malcolm, 134

Emmott, Bill, 271

Freeman, Allan, 220

English, Sir Terence, 237

free trade agreement, Canada-US,

Estey, Willard, 136 European Economic Community, 29, 56, 63, 64, 269. See also European Union

169–72, 176–80, 188–9 Free Trade of the Americas (ftaa), 196–7, 256 Fuentes, Sandra, 182

European Free Trade Area (efta), 177, 206

Gagliano, Alfonso, 170

European Union, 169, 180, 194, 197,

Gallipoli, 226, 245

203–6, 224, 240, 247, 251, 255,

Gandhi, Indira, 80

262, 265–7, 271. See also European

Gelber, Marvin, 89

Economic Community

General Agreement on Tariffs and

Evans, John, 105 External Affairs, Department of, 89,

Trade (gatt), 70, 71, 80, 192, 194, 200

96, 270; author’s introduction to,

Geneva, 73, 77, 79, 193

25–31

Geneva Agreements (Indochina, 1954), 32–3

Fairclough, Ellen, 54–5

George vi (King), 3, 14

Fergus (dog), 219–23, 232, 251, 266–

Germany, 4, 12, 56–61, 204, 206,

7, 270 Finance: author appointed Minister of State for (1983), 136–7 Finck von Finckenstein, Graf, 52 “fish war” between Canada and the eu, 204–5 Fleming, Donald, 67

251, 263 Ghaza (sidewheeler), 211–12 Giap, Vo Nguyen, 34, 200 Giddens, Anthony, 225 Gillespie, Alastair, 107, 109 Girouard, Sir Percy, 99, 145 Goldenberg, Eddie, 179, 189

279

index Goodlad, Alastair (Lord Goodlad), 224

Hong Kong, 5, 10, 33, 35 Honourable Mentions, 109, 159

goods and services tax (gst), 184

Hošek, Chaviva, 179

Gorbachev, Mikhail, 169

Howe, Geoffrey, 224

Gordon, Charles, 4–6, 98, 137, 145

Howell, David (Lord Howell), 224

Gordon, Walter, 30, 70, 79, 89, 97,

Hoyt, William, 244

106

Hubley, Tracey, 188

Gore, Al, 195

Hughes, Sam, 102

Gotlieb, Allan, 76, 268

Hurd, Douglas (Lord Hurd), 224

Grant, Duncan, 91–2

Huron, hmcs, 16

Grant, Monty, 38 Gray, Herb, 177

Ignatieff, Alison (Grant), 79

Green, Howard, 55, 68, 79

Ignatieff, George, 64–5, 79

Greene, Graham, 31, 46

Imperial War Museum, 245

Greer, Germaine, 238

India, 32, 37, 80, 198, 200, 210

Griffin, A.G.S., 89, 98, 160

Indochina, 31, 37, 47, 56, 76, 88

Guinness, Sir John, 91

Indonesia, 38, 198 International Commission for Supervi-

Hague, William, 224 Hahn, Freiherr von , 51–2 Halaby, Lisa (Queen Noor), 98 Hancock, John, 180, 187, 189, 208 Hanoi, 31–42, 198 Harkness, Douglas, 68 Harper, Stephen, 197, 272 Harriman, Averell, 215

sion and Control (Indochina), 31, 32, 35 International Institute for Strategic Studies (London), 268 International Labour Organization, 181 International Trade: author appointed Minister for (1993), 185, 190

Hashimoto, Ryutaro, 194

Iran, 98

Havana, 66, 69, 72, 155, 172

Iroquois, hmcs, 16

Heath, Ted (Edward), 73

Irvine, Derry, 234

Heeney, Arnold, 64

Islamabad, 210

Henn, Tom, 20

Israel, 24, 205

Hepburn, Mitchell, 91 high commissioner to the United Kingdom: author appointed (1996), 213

Jackman, Hal, 90, 95 127, 140, 168, 223, 267, 268

Hill, Derek, 216

Jackman, Maruja, 267

Hitler, Adolf, 4, 5, 6, 63

Jamieson, Donald, 147

Ho Chi Minh, 34, 39, 199

Japan, 5, 6, 12, 202, 206

Holmes, John, 36, 89

Jardine, Alec, 44

280

index

Jenkins, Roy, 77, 237

Langrish, Jason, 271–2

John, Augustus, 245

Laos, 32, 33

John o’Groats, Scotland, 160, 161, 168

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 67–8, 96, 148–9

Johnson, D.K., 268

Leavis, F.R., 19, 35

Johnston, David, 48

Léger, Jules, 29

Johnston, Donald, 248

Leitch, Merv, 120–1

Joyal, Serge, 147

Lévesque, René, 105, 113, 124, 206 Lewis, C.S., 19, 35

Kantor, Mickey, 189, 191, 194, 196, 248 Kennedy, Jack (John F.), 17, 49, 53–9, 64, 70–1, 110, 215 Kennedy, Jackie, 54, 84 Kennedy, Joe, 215 Kennedy, Robert, 77

Liberal leadership conventions: Ottawa, 1984, 151–2; Calgary, 1990, 177–8 Llewellyn Davies, Richard (Lord Llewellyn Davies), 80 Lloyd George, David (Lord Lloyd George), 218, 229–30

Khartoum, 4, 36, 52, 98, 147

Longworth, Alice (Roosevelt), 75

Khrushchev, Nikita, 44–5, 62, 66

Lougheed, Peter, 120, 122, 268

Kilpatrick, Allen, 44, 187, 197–8

Lumley, Ed, 106

King, William Lyon Mackenzie, 3,

Lumumba, Patrice, 53–5

28–30, 57, 67, 96, 116, 149, 179, 229, 258, 263, 270 King’s College, Cambridge, 22

Macdonald, Donald S., 24, 77, 109–11, 169

Kirby, Michael, 117

Macdonald, Sir John A., 135, 235–6

Kissinger, Henry, 75

MacDonald, Tom, 215, 249

Kitchener, Herbert, 99, 145

MacEachen, Allan, 111–12, 117, 123,

Kitsilano High School, 6, 7, 148

141, 186

Knowles, Stanley, 53

Mackasey, Bryce, 138

Korea, 12, 115–16, 123–4, 177, 245,

MacKinnon, David, 99

256

Macmillan, Sir Harold (Lord Stockton), 24, 29, 64–5, 110, 247

La Hulloise, hmcs, 13, 15

Magnificent, hmcs, 12

Lalonde, Marc, 104, 113, 118, 119–

Major, John, 224–5

21, 126, 129, 137, 139, 141, 149

Malaysia, 38, 70, 98

Lambert, Norman, 66–7

Malraux, André, 53

Lambeth Conference, 238–9

Mandela, Nelson, 209, 259

Lamontagne, Gilles, 128, 134

Mandelson, Sir Peter (Lord Mandelson),

Lamy, Pascal, 271 Landry, Gilles, 215, 231 Land’s End, England, 160–2

234, 243, 271 Manley, John, 179, 184, 201–3, 260, 272

281

index Mao Zedong, 93–4

Mowlam, Mo (Marjorie), 243

Marchi, Sergio, 170

Mubarak, Hosni, 145

Margaret, Princess, 231

Mucha, Alphonse, 46

Marrakesh, 195–6

Mucha, Jirˇ i, 46

Martin, Paul (junior), 98, 182; as envi-

Mugabe, Robert, 142

ronment critic, 175; as Finance

Mulroney, Brian, 105; and Canada-US

Minister, 186, 207, 268; leadership

free trade agreement, 169–76; and

ambitions, 176, 177–8, 185–6; and

Charlottetown accord, 172–3; and

Meech Lake Accord, 172; in opposi-

election of 1984, 159; and federal

tion, 184–6; and the Red Book,

deficit, 141, 174, 184–6; and Meech

178–9

Lake Accord, 172, 178; as prime

Martin, Paul (senior), 65, 69, 77, 87, 98, 178, 182, 213, 259 Masefield, Sir John, 13

minister, 177–180, 224 Munnings, Sir Alfred, 245 Musharraf, Pervez, 242

Massé, Marcel, 202 Massey, Vincent, 79, 138, 179, 215

Nath, Kamil, 272

Massey-Ferguson, 89–96, 103

National Energy Programme (nep),

Maugham, Somerset, 31, 36 Mauroy, Pierre, 129–30 Maybee, Jack, 69 Mayhew, Sir Patrick (Lord Mayhew), 243 Mazankowski, Don, 180, 184 Mboya, Tom, 53

117–24, 132 National Revenue: author appointed Minister of (1984), 156 New Brunswick, 16, 126, 182, 244 New Delhi, 80–7 Newfoundland, 13, 16, 40, 117, 173, 204, 226, 265

McDougald, Bud, 91, 95, 97

Newfoundland Regiment, 226

McLachlin, Beverley, 203

Newman, Peter, 53

Meech Lake Accord, 172–3, 178

New York , 53, 69, 71, 73, 77, 80, 82,

Mercosur, 206 Mexico, 177, 180–1, 188–92, 205, 247, 265, 271 Military Assistance Advisory Group (maag; US in Vietnam), 32 Miller, “Dusty,” 216 Mirvish, Ed, 146–7 Möbius, Arnold, 53 Monpetit, Jacques, 47–8

87, 97–8, 136, 229, 245 New Zealand, 5 Niobe, hmcs, 12 Noor (Queen). See Halaby, Lisa North American Air Defence Agreement (norad), 29–30 North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta), 179–82, 189–2, 204, 207, 247–9, 255, 264–5, 271

Morin, Marie Lucie, 271

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Morocco, 20, 23, 195–6

(nato), 30, 62–6, 79, 169, 205,

Moscow, 47–8, 92, 118

214, 254–5, 263, 267–8

282 Nova Scotia, 214 Novotný, Antonín, 45

index Pickersgill, Jack, 65, 119 Pitfield, Michael, 115, 117, 138 Plath, Sylvia, 21

Offa’s Dyke, 163–5

Poland, 4, 32, 42, 43, 61

Ogilvy, Anne, 75

Portsmouth, England, 13, 14

Ogilvy, David, 75, 77, 89, 96, 100–1, 160 Ogilvy and Mather (Canada), 96–8, 100, 103 O’Neill, Robert, 245 Ontario, hmcs, 13, 15 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd), 248, 255 Oxford, University of, 18, 19, 136, 216

Portugal, 204, 205, 271 Prague, 36, 42–4, 47–9, 50, 53, 55, 131, 187 Prebisch, Raúl, 72 Prince Edward Island, 6, 16, 127, 129, 143, 213–14, 217, 236 Princess Elizabeth (cpr coastal steamer), 10 Princess Joan (cpr coastal steamer), 10 Princess Norah (cpr coastal steamer), 10

Paisley, Ian, 243 Pakistan, 37, 41, 198, 210–11, 242, 257 Parizeau, Jacques, 207

“Quad” (trade group), 194 Quebec, hmcs, 13, 15 Quiet American, The (Greene), 36

Parry, cgss, 9, 12 Passchendaele, 4, 129, 226, 229

Rangoon, 5

Pearl Harbor, 5

Rankin, Bruce, 87

Pearson, Hilary, 109

Rankin, Mona, 87

Pearson, Lester (“Mike”), 24, 28,

Rao, Narasimha, 209–10

64–9, 76–9, 87, 109, 179, 213

Rasminsky, Louis, 64

Pearson, Maryon, 78

Rawalpindi, 210

Pell, Claiborne, 60

Reagan, Ronald, 169, 180

Pelletier, Gérard, 149

Reece, David, 153, 155

Pelletier, Jean, 186, 259

Reece, Nina, 153, 155

Pendergast, David, 154

referendum, Quebec (1995), 206–8

Pendergast, Elizabeth, 154

Reid, Escott, 57, 61

Pennine Way, England, 164–7

Richard, John, 215

Peters, Svetlana, 77

Rideau Club, 66

Pham Van Dong, 39

Rifkin, Sir Malcolm, 224

Philip, Prince, 222, 231

Ritchie, Charles, 76, 215, 234, 259,

Phnom Penh, 35, 41 Pickersgill, Frank, 119

260, 265 Ritchie, Sir Neil, 134

283

index Road Back, The, 119 Robertson, George (Lord Robertson), 234, 235 Robertson, Norman, 25, 29, 44, 57, 71

Singapore, 5, 35, 177, 206 Sioux, hmcs, 13, 14, 15 Smith, Arnold, 25, 213, 260 Smith, Chris, 234 Smith, David, 90, 143

Robinson, Basil, 29, 242

Smith, Gordon, 268

Rock, Allan, 208

Smith, John, 227

Rogart, Scotland, 235

Smith, Sidney, 30, 55

Rommel, Erwin, 63, 134

South Africa, 208, 209

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 229

Soviet Union, 30, 32, 34, 48, 56,

Ross, Sandy (Alexander), 101–3, 106

60–2, 70, 76, 93

Royal Canadian Air Force, 43, 49

Spain, 204–5, 271

Royal Canadian Artillery, 226, 268,

Special Operations Executive (soe),

269 Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 49, 231–2 Royal Canadian Navy, 10, 12, 26, 133, 144, 226

127 Speidel, Hans, 63 Sri Lanka, 216, 227 Stadacona, hmcs, 12, 13, 15 Stairs, William, 241

Ruggiero, Renato, 247–9

Stalin, Joseph, 12, 45, 77

Runcie, Robert, Lord Runcie, 218

Standard Life (Edinburgh), 267–8 Stanfield, Robert, 87, 105, 177

Sackville, hmcs, 132

Stettler, hmcs, 16

Saigon, 31–8, 88, 199

Stevens, Sinclair, 111

St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, 18,

Stevenson, Adlai, 75, 77, 215

20, 22, 24

Stoner, Gerry, 64

St Laurent, Louis, 10–11, 14, 28, 29

Stratford-upon-Avon, 238

Salisbury, Lord, 77

Strathcona, Lord (Donald Smith), 215

Sarkar, Rana, 272

Stuart, Sandy (Alexander), 200

Sauvé, Jeanne, 125

Suez Canal, 23, 24, 29, 31

Schlesinger, Arthur, 74, 98

supply management: in agriculture,

Scott, Peter, 47 Selkirk, Lord, 217 Senate, Canadian, 135

192–3 Supreme Court of Canada, 90, 116, 117, 124, 136, 139, 151, 203

7th Toronto Regiment, rca, 268

Surprise, hms, 15

Shakespeare, William, 7, 146, 148,

Sutherland, Peter, 195, 247–9

197, 238

Swansea, hmcs, 13, 15

Sharman, C.H.L., 96

Sydney, hmas, 15

Sharp, Mitchell, 70, 79, 106, 179

Symons, Liz (Elizabeth; Lady Symons),

Shepherd, Sir John, 22

234, 246

284

index

Taiwan, 72, 92

unicef Canada, 90

Team Canada, 197–200, 216, 268

United Nations, 66, 69–71, 76, 80, 88,

Termagant, hms, 23 Thant, U, 73 Thatcher, Margaret (Lady Thatcher), 142, 143, 224, 225, 228, 247 Thomas, Dylan, 11 Thornbrough, Albert, 91, 95 Tobin, Brian, 170, 185, 204–5, 207 Toronto Club, 134, 140 Tree, Marietta, 74–8, 160, 215 Tree, Ronald, 74, 77, 160 Tremblay, Paul, 71, 79, 86 Trilateral Commission, 268 Trimble, David (Lord Trimble), 243 Trinity College, University of Toronto, 25, 26, 109, 214 Trudeau, Justin, 130–1 Trudeau, Margaret, 104

92, 182, 262 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development: I (Geneva), 71–3, 86; II (New Delhi), 80–7 United Nations Development Programme, 71, 73, 82 United Nations Environment Programme, 182 University Naval Training Division (untd), 12, 23 University of British Columbia, 7, 10, 11, 18, 19, 23 University of Toronto, 25, 26, 30, 90, 160, 176 Upper Canada College, 151, 160 Uruguay Round (gatt), 192–6, 200, 247–8

Trudeau, Pierre, 76–7, 87–8, 97, 169, 172, 173, 263, 274; and the Com-

Vancouver, 3, 4, 5, 10, 26, 33, 51, 55

monwealth, 259; and the constitu-

Vanguard, hms, 15

tion, 114–17, 124–6, 173, 178; and

Vanier, Georges, 54

elections of 1979 and 1980, 110–13;

Victoria (Queen), 83, 84

and the National Energy Pro-

Victory, hms, 13

gramme, 117–22; political career,

Vietnam, 31–4, 42, 75, 83, 89, 91,

148–51, 173, 184, 186, 209–10, 253; resigns, 148 Turner, John, 65–6; and Canada-US free trade agreement, 170–7; on

198, 200 Vietnam, North, 32, 35, 76, 200 Vietnam, South, 32, 33, 35, 56 Vimy Ridge, 129

deficit financing, 173–5; elected leader, 151, 156; leadership cam-

Walsh, Janean, 21–3

paign, 87; and Meech Lake Accord,

Washington, 29, 34, 35, 37, 42, 48,

172; in opposition, 156–9; as Prime

49, 56, 66, 75, 76, 138, 146, 177,

Minister, 151–8; resigns as leader,

188, 189, 196, 206, 248–50, 271

177–8; resigns as Minister of Fi-

Waugh, Evelyn, 215, 237

nance, 104

Weekes, John, 187

Turner, Vernon, 25

Welsh Assembly, 236–7

Twaits, Bill (William), 99

Wente, Margaret, 102

285

index Whelan, Eugene, 138

Woolf, Virginia, 91–2

Wilgress, Dana, 72, 74, 96

World Trade Organization (wto),

Williams, Shirley, 98

195, 204, 207, 247–50, 256

Wilson, Michael, 108, 169, 180 Wolseley, Garnet (Lord Wolseley), 98, 99

Zhou Enlai, 92, 110