Liebnitz at the Chicxulub Club
T HE ROOM WAS AWASH THE ROOM WAS AWASH with more lasers and open flame than the invasion of Iraq, more smoke and mirrors than the press briefings afterward. The music was so loud, carved figures on the Mayan temples outside were…
Noble Power
Noble Power, of whom a past CIDA President once remarked “You meet his name before you meet the man,” died on October 16, 2002, in Barbados, West Indies, and was laid to rest at the Barbados Military Cemetery on October 21. He…
Iraq and Honeymoons
The outbreak of the Gulf War suddenly provoked this attack of nostalgia, and more. The current Iraq war did it again. In both cases, the result was the same — “Iraq and Honeymoons”. Honeymoons were (are?) an oval-shaped, chocolate-covered treat every Montreal…
In Arabia Felix
On the one hand, it was generally agreed to be a member of President Bush’s Junior Axis of Evil; it had been on the wrong side in the last Gulf War; it was the ancestral home of the bin Laden family and…
An Inside Look at External Affairs During the Trudeau Years: The Memoirs of Mark MacGuigan
shaping Canadian foreign policy. “Trudeau’s style,” MacGuigan writes, “was … dangerous. His instinct, it always seemed to me, Was not just to establish objectively that he was right, by demolishing his opponents’ arguments, but also to destroy their self-respect, to hurt them…
A Moveable Marriage: Relocate Your Marriage Without Breaking It
A Moveable Marriage: Relocate Your Marriage Without Breaking It is a wise and courageous treatment of sensitive issues that are frequently ignored. Without doubt, it should allow women to stop beating up both on themselves AND on their husbands. Robin Pascoe logically…
Why Canadian Unity Matters and Why Americans Care: Democratic Pluralism at Risk
“If democratic pluralism fails in North America, where else can this grand experiment prevail? In the new millennium, the people of Canada can leave no greater gift to humanity than the knowledge, based on a history of shared political culture, that democratic…
(Also in) Paris 1919
Margaret MacMillan, the Provost of Trinity College and Professor of History at the University of Toronto, has earned international acclaim for her elegant, witty and remarkably comprehensive account of the Paris Peace Conference, which was published first in the United Kingdom as…
The Dawn of Diplomacy
While diplomacy may not quite qualify as the “oldest profession”, there is one phrase — used to describe a position or a text that is still under negotiation — that, better than any other, illustrates the antiquity of this craft: “it is…
A 21st Century Foreign Service Career
My career in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) has been unusual. I joined in 1975 at age 21, having achieved grades so pitiful during my undergraduate years that no scholarships were in reach for further studies (even in…
