Who Skewered Turk McGurk?
It was a Wednesday night, cloudy and cold. The few working streetlamps weren’t trying very hard to push back the shadows. The sax player who follows me around was moaning a blue note, about a Pantone 3591C. A tall thin man in…
Mike’s World
IN A RECENT GLOBE AND MAIL COLUMN, John Ibbitson complained that, with the switch of Champagne for Garneau, Canada has had 14 foreign ministers in just over 20 years. 14! And many of them non-memorable. We grump about Canada’s loss of credibility…
Péripéties de diplomatie de la Gaspésie à Paris
JACQUES ROY LA ÉCHAPPÉ BELLE! Il aurait pu se prénommer Flandin, en l’honneur du ministre Pierre-Étienne Flandin, venu à Gaspé en août 1934 pour représenter la France lors du 400° anniversaire de l’arrivée de Jacques Cartier au Canada. Impressionné par le discours…
Planet Canada
ANYONE WHO HAS SERVED ABROAD knows about the Canadian expatriate community. Canadians are everywhere in the world, from the halls of academe in Europe to California’s Silicon Valley, to the displaced persons camps in the Congo to the remote mining operations of…
The Hungry Diplomat: Pasta
PASTA. One of my favourite unexpected discoveries here in Brussels is that it’s full of … Italians.
The Dinner Party
JOHN AND I WERE EXCITED about our posting to the Canadian High Commission in Ghana, where John would serve as the deputy. I was determined to help him shine at our official functions.
The National Museum of American Diplomacy
PRUDENCE BUSHNELL WAS THE US AMBASSADOR to Kenya when al Qaeda terrorists bombed her embassy in 1998, killing more than 200 people. Blown to the floor by the blast during a meeting in a nearby building, Bushnell, a career Foreign Service Officer,…
Diplomatic Reflections on the Myanmar Uprising, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the Generals
“Far away from the centres of global power and international media, wedged in between India, Bangladesh, China and Thailand, lies the fascinating, culturally rich country of Burma (Myanmar to its long-time military rulers) where an epic drama has played out for decades between a stubborn, authoritarian and entrenched military caste and the democracy movement led […]
The Decline of Democracy in the World
FREEDOM IN THE WORLD, THE 2021 ANNUAL REPORT of Freedom House, a US institution, carried the title, Democracy Under Siege. It noted with sadness that 2021 marked the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. In 2020, its evaluation was that…
A Career in International Photography
MY POSTINGS THROUGH GLOBAL AFFAIRS have been a wonderful experience. My husband, James Trottier, was a diplomat. And for me, living abroad meant being able to continue to do my freelance photography and journalism.
