Keith William MacLellan 1920-1998
Born in Aylmer, Quebec on November 30, 1920, Keith grew up in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Montreal. He left McGill without a degree to join the Royal Montreal Regiment in 1942, and in 1944-45 served in Britain’s famous “1st Special Air Service Regiment” (SAS), where…
Open House
On November 2, DFAIT held its first Open House to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Lester B. Pearson Building. This event was meant to increase public awareness of the work and accomplishments of DFAIT and to make the Department more open…
Excerpt from Closely Guarded: A Life in Canadian Security and Intelligence
With the permission of University of Toronto Press, we publish below an excerpt from John Starnes’s recently published memoir. He joined the Canadian foreign service in 1944. From 1962 to 1966, John Starnes was Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. He…
Recollections From a Haiti Posting
It is clear that there are many misconceptions about Haiti. Admittedly, it is not without its difficulties, fully deserving its rating as a hardship post.
Mwalimu and Me
by Christopher Brown
Diary of a Tropical Storm
The October 24-25 weekend:
In Pursuit of Excellence
It was a sell-out days before it happened. This happy fact provided an up-beat mood for PAFSO’s dinner and presentation of the 1998 Foreign Service Officer awards on June I at the National Arts Centre. The evening proceedings got under way with…
Visibilité nulle
Six personnes ayant joint le ministère des Affaires étrangères et du Commerce international comme agents du service extérieur en 1997, dont moi-même, se sont réunies récemment pour échanger sur notre perspective et tenter d’esquisser nos préoccupations. Dans les lignes qui suivent, nous…
Looking and Seeing: Foreign Policy and Squeegee Kids
In the early 1980s as a junior political officer I was posted to Bangkok, Thailand. The Southeast Asian wars had ended less than a decade earlier, although the horrors of the Cambodian genocide were still vivid. Cold War geostrategists had imposed a…
Tools of the Trade: A Review Article
This profession of ours has existed in one form or another since Biblical times, and we who practice it have spent much of that time taking notes. Wax-covered wooden plaques, clay tablets, papyrus, parchment, 20-pound bond – the materials have changed, but…
