A Tale Told By an Idiot
Having deciphered Jimmy the Turk’s report on the terrorist danger to the First Ministers’ conference, Liebnitz rushed with Chief MacBannock to board the Centre’s ram-jet snowmobile for a quick trip to the meeting site at Stratford, confident that their combined brainpower would…
Reflections of a Siamese Twin
To be Canadian means to be a citizen of the most culturally plural country on earth. It also means to be in constant debate over who we are culturally as a people. A comedian at the Juste Pour Rire festival in Montréal…
Halstead’s Pennant
As recalled in the Summer issue Vol. 15 No. 2 of bout de papier, John Halstead was a remarkable man of diverse talents and interests. Many associates of his on the editorial board of bout, as well as other readers, know that…
J.T. (Tom) Boehm 1941-1998
Tom was born in Toronto on June 22, 1941. After he received his BA at York University in 1963, he studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and then returned to the University of Toronto. He joined the Department of External Affairs in…
Robert Ford: Our Man in Moscow
“Are you very sure about the Methodists?”
Impressions of a Short Visit to North Korea
As a veteran of the Cold War and the realities of the division of the two Germanies, the parallel with the Korean situation has not gone unremarked. Unlike the German Democratic Republic, however, to which I was accredited from 1984-86, I have…
Lebanon Revisited — Past Idyll, Present Reality
This time we arrived in Beirut by air. Darkness was setting in. The plane turned sharply in the lee of the mountains, and I looked down at the lights on the spit of land where Beirut is built, and at the still…
The Cross Stream Assignment — Revisited
The typical attitude of Foreign Service officers towards the prospect of a cross stream assignment is one of scepticism. There is the widely held viewpoint that such a move can be severely career limiting. Traditionally, assignment officers have been reluctant or downright…
“From The Ambassador’s Table”
We reproduce below two extracts from Margaret Dickenson’s comprehensive guide to creative entertaining, published by Times Edition Pte. Ltd. Drawing upon her 28 years in the foreign service as a spouse, Mrs. Dickenson has put together a practical and imaginative guide to…
Un passage au Vietnam
En novembre 1997, je suis revenue à Hanoi dans le cadre du Sommet de la Francophonie, en devoir temporaire pour la troisième fois. La première fois fut en 1992 quand j’accompagnai le ministre Michael Wilson en tant qu’agent du Bureau du protocole.…
