For many of us who joined the Foreign Service a decade after the end of the war, Louis Rogers was something of a legend in his own time; certainly in ours. Combining all the professional virtues for which “The Department” had become famous, with a refreshing non-conformist personal outlook and style, Louis stood out (but not in any flamboyant sense, which would have been quite out of keeping with his approach to work) as an alternative (dare I say it?) role model to a departmental norm at the time which was heavily didactic and influenced more than a little by academic modes of thought. Within the Department, the so-called University of the East Block was at its zenith reflecting strong lingering links with academe. Small wonder that at the annual External Affairs Christmas party one “freshman class” of the era produced a parody on My Fair Lady in which the Rain in Spain chorus was turned into:
“It’s not repeat not proper or traditional,
To use a verb except in the conditional
And when you have a choice,
Use the passive voice…”
and so on in the same spirit. A gentle but pointed spoof on what seemed an unnecessarily avuncular institutional ethos.
Interestingly Louis never seemed a part of all that — he would have been bad at it if he had ever tried to belong: his wonderful sense of the absurd would have been a prohibitive encumbrance. The vision of the Department, and of the professional commitment involved, in Louis’ case were of a very different order. Younger officers who had not yet been fully marinated in “the way we do things” were immediately drawn to this rather unusual and very un-precious influential “operator”. He was a fine draftsman — clear, spare, unornamented prose — but he was never didactic in helping new recruits to improve their skills, close to perfect though these skills might already have seemed in the collective self-appreciations of the recruits themselves. In a straightforward and unemotional way, he was a fine “teacher” “, if that is in fact what established officers are supposed to be for younger colleagues. Equally, he was quick and incisive in judgment, showing little patience for the “on the one hand but then on the other” mentality; that too was a useful lesson to learn early on.
But for many, the longest lasting memories will be, with a smile, of Louis’ ironic and gently iconoclastic approach to all those who peopled his working environment. Authorities got the respect they deserved: not less but certainly not more. Nowhere was this more evident than in Louis’ prescription for the most effective way of getting a telegram transmitting tricky policy instructions to a recalcitrant Ambassador through the critical inspection it would have to undergo in order to get it signed on Killers’ Row: make sure, he would say, that the instruction itself comes near the end, preferably about page three, and then go back and insert an egregious grammatical error towards the bottom of the first page which will almost certainly become the focus of corrective attention, leaving the instruction itself intact. Advice not to be taken too literally, of course, but as a procedural metaphor, it said a lot — about the various parties involved.
The angularities (as one senior officer referred to them) of Louis’s working persona were noted by all, found irritating by a few and admired, sometimes with a bit of awe, by many, especially the young, even if they did not always understand that this angular style was not a desire to attract attention by being obstructive or difficult, but rather a profound impatience with self-importance, silliness and pretension — none of these character traits, alas, being totally unknown in the profession of diplomacy.
In short, he was a breath of fresh air. But a serious breath of fresh air. For all his eccentricities, he was no contrarian dilettante, and certainly no passionate radical with a burning cause with which he tried to infect others. Like so many of his generation who had seen active service in the worst armed conflict mankind had ever visited on itself, he had personal convictions about his country and his profession — and a very personal view of how the two interacted.
Louis’ approach to the job to be done was decidedly unorthodox in many ways, and was imbued with a sometimes Byzantine skepticism about the workings of the institution through which he served his country. He could be refreshingly scathing about trendy idealism, long before it evolved into political correctness, and even more so about those who suffered from this deformation professionnelle. The open sharing of such critical views did not always, and with everyone, automatically pave the way for long and mutually appreciative friendships. But at the same time the close attention to departmental personal profile details was a central feature of his own administrative system. Over the years he had built up his own meticulous record of promotions and postings, and other vital information relating to the officer corps of the Department. (It would not be surprising if this Register also included an acerbic comment or two in deserving cases, but that can only be speculation). What was important was the ability this invaluable, if informal, roster (which today would probably be a human rights violation of some sort) bestowed on Louis to enter into managerial negotiations for staff resources on an equal footing. Indeed, it was often rumoured that the Rogers Register was more accurate than the departmental official system of files which were supposed to be regarded with something approaching the awe appropriate to Divine scripture because they were “very sensitive, you know”. A highly unconventional, but typically highly effective management practice.
But perhaps the most unusual glimpse of Louis as a manager has been provided by Edith Jarvis, in her recollections of serving as a member of his staff during his time as Ambassador to Israel. Somewhat daunted by the implications, back home in the Greek calends of post administrative support, of a particularly difficult local problem, she put the whole matter before the Head of Post for advice. With characteristic thoroughness and a keen awareness of the tangled political sensitivities among the administrative tyrants at HQ, Louis quickly drafted a compelling case for appropriate action, typed up the numbered letter himself and marched in on Edith to insist that she sign it herself to bestow the necessary credibility on it. It is safe to assume that seldom, if ever before or since, has a majestic Head of Post solved tough problems to the greater glory of his Admin Officer. Maybe, in this new era, such unorthodoxy has become part of DFAIT’s SOPs, but somehow I doubt it. Ditto the faultless Personnel Info Register!
The advent of the Trudeau era in which, at least at the beginning, all things were to be made new and whole again, shook the External establishment to its foundations. Anything that had been done for ten years — a classic definition of “established policy” — was automatically subjected to searching suspicion. The cult of youth was in the ascendant and the first stirring of the cyberworld brought forth such wonderful new ideas as a hexagonal foreign policy model; paradigm shifts had not yet become fashionable, but that is what, in truth, the hexagon was intended to usher into our lives. It was a world in which conventional wisdom was not in high demand, largely because many of those who were surfing the new wave had no experience with and no memories of the terrible turmoil and destruction that had preceded the post-war security order and therefore no understanding of the assumptions that characterized its operation, especially for Canada. In short Louis found himself — to quote his son Hume’s amusingly affectionate and perceptive appreciation — “out of step with the Department …. He was completely consistent in his opinions regardless of whether they coincided with those of the people for whom he worked, or if they were unfashionable”
Louis was indeed a serious and skilled diplomat — one can only admire and wonder at his achievement for example at the Madrid CSCE follow-up meeting in winning consensual agreement to holding an experts meeting on Human Rights in Ottawa (of all unlikely places: perhaps the Soviets thought that its very remoteness in CSCE terms would engulf it in transatlantic fog) to understand that diplomacy is sometimes the art, not of the possible, but the impossible.
Serious the man was; earnest he was not, even less an enthusiast except perhaps, personally, for photography. But that is what made him, for his friends, unique. And worth knowing. His generation of the Foreign Service — and he was certainly a prominent and creative member of the group — was without a doubt responsible in an amazingly short period of years for giving Canada a Foreign Service that was the envy of a world groping for solutions. A generation that believed deeply but mostly quietly in what they were doing. That is surely one of the cornerstones on which our affectionate recollections of Louis Rogers will permanently rest.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2002-2003) — Fall/Winter 2002/2003 // Automne/Hiver 2002/2003, pp. 39–40. Read the rest of this issue →
