The Wealthy Diplomat: A Simple Approach to Material Wealth
This may sound like a contradiction in terms, given the abysmal salary levels of members of the Foreign Service (particularly at the FS-1 levels) vis-à-vis other professional groups in the Public Service. Nevertheless, it is possible to become financially comfortable on a…
La francophonie, le Québec et le Canada par les yeux de Monsieur Jean-Louis Roy
Monsieur Jean-Louis Roy est né le 1er février 1941 à Normandin (Québec). Licencié en philosophie et docteur en histoire, il dirigea le Centre d’études canadiennes-françaises de l’Université McGill de 1971 à 1980, avant de devenir directeur du quotidien montréalais Le Devoir de…
The Birth of the PJBD
August 18, 1990 marked the 50th Anniversary of the so-called “Ogdensburg „Declaration” which established the Canada-USA Permanent Joint Board on Defence (PJBD). Ironically, on that precise date two years before the PJBD came into being, President Franklin Roosevelt, who may have been…
Soweto — City of Dark and Light
“What is Soweto really like?” I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve been asked that. Soweto resonates in the imagination of Canadians as the very symbol of black suffering under Apartheid. But how do you describe the largest township in South…
The Canadian Embassy to the Holy See
Why does Canada have an Embassy at the Vatican? First some facts and some history. The Roman Catholic Church is the oldest and largest religious institution in the world with approximately 900 million baptized members of which over half are in the…
Celebrating Diplomats Day
The following is an unclassified report dated June 8, 1990, received from “our” illustrious diplomat in Brasilia.
This Shouldn’t Happen to A…
(Editor’s note: Sidney Freifeld’s new book about some of the amusing sidelights of the Department over the years, Undiplomatic Notes: Tales from the Canadian Foreign Service, is being published by Hounslow Press in October.)
Driving Habits Reveal Character
Dining-out across cultures, working across cultures, dating across cultures. Among all the platitudes earnestly delivered over the years to prepare people for the shock of discovering that there is more than one effective way to do things, such as cook rice or…
Outsider Inside
For most of my working life I have been a professor, but for two years I was metamorphosed into a strange hybrid — the resident sinologist and cultural attaché in the Canadian Embassy in Beijing. I left the tranquillity of academic life…
“Pirouette”: An Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from Professor(s) J.L. Granatstein and Robert Bothwell’s book entitled Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy published in August 1990 by the University of Toronto Press, (477 pp., $35.00). The excerpt is taken from Chapter 2, A…
