bout de papier, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2001) — Summer 2001 // Été 2001, pp. 15–16
The Driver (from a dispatch home) — by Diane Harper
We had a reception last night in honour of Mayor Bourque and his trade delegation from Montreal, organized with the World Trade Centre in Montreal. Toward the end Francisco, the Embassy driver, came in with some messages from the office. As usual, he was faultlessly dressed – better than many of the Canadian guests. As it was well past supper time and he blended in nicely, he got a plate of food and sat down with several colleagues from the office. The next thing we knew, Mayor Bourque had joined him at the table and they were having a splendid chat.
Chicken Dinner — by Frances R. Delvoie
One funny incident happened to a friend of mine while she was in China. The diplomats all lived in a special compound and she was having a dinner for a number of them. When her servant entered the dining room with the main course, which was chicken, he tripped and fell, throwing the chicken all over the floor. He picked himself up and with some dignity said, “So sorry Madame; I’ll get the beef.” Other servants came in, cleaned up the floor and, within minutes, the beef arrived on the table. She was somewhat mystified but nonetheless grateful. It was only later that she learned that the dinner party downstairs had been served chicken instead of beef!
Wily Scots — by John Noble
While posted in London in 1975, Secretary of State Alan MacEachen asked me to organise a caleidh (a musical evening with lots of liquid refreshment) for him in Edinburgh Castle. When I raised the matter in London with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, they were flabbergasted. They maintained that no foreigner, not even a Foreign Minister, had ever been granted such a privilege. However, MacEachen knew that the Castle contained a few square feet of Nova Scotia territory, dating from the time that Scottish barons had been offered land to settle there. One of the terms of the grants was that they had to set foot in Nova Scotia once a year. The wily Scots decided to forsake the trans-Atlantic journey and declare a piece of the Castle to be Nova Scotia territory so that they could meet the terms of the grants. Foreign Secretary James Callaghan was more sympathetic than his officials, and agreed with the request. Hence, Alan J. became the only Foreign Minister to have hosted a caleidh in Edinburgh Castle.
Honorary Citizenship — by Alan Bones
Mexico City is a surprisingly liveable city, considering that you’re surrounded by 22 million of your closest friends. But things can get a little congested if, say, your Deputy Prime Minister is one of more than a dozen state envoys to the inauguration of the Mexican President, who all happen to be staying at the same hotel
The year was 1994, and the Mexican government had laid on motorcades to get luminaries and their delegations from their hotels to the (heavily guarded) Congress for the inauguration of President Zedillo. The snag was that they had insisted on using dedicated motorcades, instead of a system of ’generic’ motorcades where a functionary would insert the appropriate flag into the fender mount of the vehicle in question, and usher the luminary and his/her party into the first available set of vehicles.
With a couple of dozen dedicated motorcades, and a very cramped loading area in front of the hotel, the inevitable, of course, happened. With Deputy Prime Minister Copps, her assistant, the Ambassador and the Mexican Ambassador to Canada waiting, two thirds of the Canadian motorcade fought its way through the chaos and presented itself to the delegation.
The Mexican Ambassador was a take-charge kind of woman. She ushered Ms. Copps into the limo; she then pushed our Ambassador unceremoniously into the other vehicle, hopped in herself, and waved the police car onwards. Off they went, with yours truly and Ms. Copps’ assistant staring rather stupidly at the tail lights of our departing demi-motorcade for a moment, before we were pushed out of the way by Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzales and his entourage.
Fortunately, we had a Plan B, in the form of our finest Embassy driver lurking around the other entrance to the hotel, behind the wheel of the most imposing vehicle in the Embassy fleet, guaranteed to command the respect of bystanders for the might and glory of Mexico’s other NAFTA partner – a Plymouth Minivan. In we piled, and off we went.
Waving my diplomatic pass through the minivan’s windshield, we managed to bluff our way through security and onto streets closed to all but motorcade traffic. Despite the inherently suspicious nature of our motorcade of one, we actually made it to the front gate of Congress. Buff and polished security was out in full, humourless force. We pulled to the curb just before a motorcade bedecked with Costa Rican flags. Hauling Ms. Copps’ non-Spanish speaking assistant out of the van, I pointed him at the disembarking Costa Ricans, and told him, “Hold out your invitation, and don’t say a word until you’re inside. For the next 15 minutes, you are Costa Rican.”
It worked. And I still have a job at Foreign Affairs.
Afro-Affrontery — by Stephen Woollcombe
My first posting with External Affairs was, I thought at the time, about as remote as thy they come. Yaoundé: a name that called up am images of a somehow romantic life on the mit African jungle frontier. Maybe it would be a d even more exciting than those assignments Gab in Indochina that I’d heard other bachelor ister FSO probationers brag about. As I set off, rece however, I didn’t dream I would be thrust high into a new war zone, and indeed a much Fina more vital one for Canada. Or that I might even have my own 15 minutes of glory a la Andy Warhol!
The war was with France, or rather de the Gaulle. The theatre was francophone our Africa, still largely dependent on France. the The casus belli was de Gaulle’s intent to ad( bring “independence” to another former colony, Quebec. Specifically, he had instructed Gabon to invite Quebec to a francophone education ministers’ conference to be held mid-February 1968 in Libreville, and not to inform Ottawa. The Gabonese duly complied and the invitation to Quebec was delivered January 17th. Gabon was one of five neighbouring coun tries to which we were accredited while resident in Cameroon.
Of course Ottawa soon learned of this impending attack on Canada’s sovereignty. So Undersecretary Marcel Cadieux mobilized his front-line troops into defensive action. This included the Yaoundé embassy. Suddenly the spotlight was on us, hitherto blissfully forgotten at our distant outpost. My ambassador had yet to present his credentials in Gabon but was nonetheless instructed to go to Libreville, less than a month before the conference. He was to seek an invitation for Ottawa. There was only one flight a week since almost all air connections between French African points still had to pass through Paris. His efforts were in vain, and on return to Cameroon he was told to go back and try again. He was still unsuccessful. Cadieux ordered him back a third time, but this time officially appointed him Chargé d’affaires and armed him with a direct and strongly worded message to the Gabonese president from Prime Minister Pearson himself.
Two days later, while Ottawa waited and I held the fort in Yaoundé, the phone rang at the Embassy. It was the Ambassador in Libreville. “Hello, Steve. I am sending you a message through our ’friends’,” was all he said. Realizing he was unable to communicate freely over the French-run phone lines, I headed off in my old Citroën (for once it didn’t stall) along the dusty 0 road to the US Embassy. The Second O1 Secretary (Political) was waiting, sympa- or thy written on his face, to hand me my sh ambassador’s secret message, just trans- Sh mitted from their Libreville embassy. What qu a diplomatic slap in the face! Not the So Gabonese president, not the foreign min- cla ister, not the senior deputies, no one would col receive this formal démarche from the very OUS highest level of the Canadian government. joir Finally, an assistant to the chief of protocol deigned to accept it without comment.
With the adrenalin pumping, I rushed in back to the office and went straight into str the tiny, lead-encased “secure room.” Using an our laborious old book-cipher, I transcribed rer the ambassador’s message into code. I then ra added an explanatory note and sent it off CO to Mr. Cadieux, signing it “WOOLLCOMBE” gr (a heady burst of daring for a Third Secretary). Talk about excitement!
As a direct consequence, a few days later, on March 4th, the Prime Minister stood up in the House of Commons to announce that Canada was suspending relations with Gabon.
The Bulgarian Ambassador and the Queen of the South Seas — by Ross Francis
In his memoirs, A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants, Earl Drake recalls his fascination, when he was Ambassador in Jakarta in the mid- 1980s, with Indonesians’ belief in myth and magic. As one example he cites the explanation he was given for the drowning several years earlier of a Bulgarian Ambassador.
The Ambassador had been swept under by the notoriously treacherous currents while swimming off a beach in the Southern Sea and his body had never been found. The popular Indonesian story was that this swimming spot was the domain of the Queen of the South Seas. She had once been a human queen who had lived on land but was banished from court after she lost her beauty, due to a magic spell. She had then been invited to become queen of the underwater kingdom of the South Seas. Each year she was allowed to claim a terrestrial man to join her watery court. To many Indonesians it was obvious this Ambassador had been chosen to join the monarch of the water spirits. The unfortunate Ambassador drowned while I was Chargé d’affaires in Jakarta in 1964. I did not know him well. My strongest recollection of him relates to an Asian film festival. At the official reception he chose to join the paparazzi rather than the rest of the diplomatic corps, and spent a happy time photographing the prettiest starlets from close range. Towards the end of the evening the Soviet Chargé said to me: “You realize he must have run out of film an hour ago.” After the Ambassador drowned, diplomats received a black-edged note from the Bulgarian Embassy inviting us to sign a book of condolences. I put on my darkest suit and tie and had the official driver take me to the Bulgarian Embassy. A sombre official met me at the door and escorted me to a room where there was a table with a black bound book to be signed. And there beside the table, on a bed of ice and surrounded by flowers, was the Bulgarian Ambassador. It was an unforgettable sight. An Australian colleague told me that when his Ambassador returned from signing the book he assembled all of his staff in his office. He told them that if anything unfortunate should happen to him during his posting, they were on no account to follow that example. In his memoirs, Drake concludes that Indonesians are not anti-scientific; they simply believe that our Western science reveals only part of the truth, which complements their older belief in the spirits that inhabit most things. In the case of the Indonesians who told him about the Bulgarian Ambassador and the Queen of the South Seas, however, the explanation is a little simpler and perhaps more universal. Do not let inconvenient facts spoil a good story.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2001) — Summer 2001 // Été 2001, pp. 15–16. Read the rest of this issue →
