bout de papier, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2011) — Summer/Fall 2011 // Été/Automne 2011, p. 15
Canada has long been involved in the Model Forest Project on Chiloe Island in Southern Chile that Rolando Ramirez mentions. In May of 2001, then Governor General Clarkson and her multidisciplinary delegation of distinguished Canadians made a State Visit to Chile. She visited the Aboriginal Hazelnut farm as well as the Centre for Education and Technology (CET) within the Chiloe Model Forest. The International Development Research Centre was deeply involved with the development of the Model Forest and was successfully working with the local population to benefit the inhabitants of the area while sustaining the forest’s viability.
The visit went extremely well. A highlight, for me, was a short encounter between acclaimed novelist Roch Carrier, then Director of the National Library of Canada, and a local woman selling sweaters during the delegation’s visit to the CET. I was a departmental escort officer on the visit and was interpreting for Mr. Carrier as he purchased a hand knitted sweater.
To me the lesson was clear: the dividends of woman held out her Grandmother’s thick, old, and very well-used book of dye recipes to Mr. Carrier. She showed him the one she used for his sweater — the bark from one of the forest trees was the base ingredient in the mixture used to dye the wool sheared from sheep raised on a farm in the forest. Tactfully, the sweater (for fans of the NFB’s marvellous adaptation of Carrier’s The Hockey Sweater) was neither the rouge of Les Canadiens nor the blue of the Maple Leafs….
Earlier in the visit, Mr. Carrier had presented a collection of books to the Chilean National Library written over the previous two decades by members of the Chilean community in Canada. Events such as the visit to the Model Forest and the presentation to the National Library highlighted the diversity of Canadian- Chilean relations.
This comprehensive style of state visit strengthened relations across broad sections of society, giving them new depth. The smooth organization of a subsequent Team Canada visit in 2004 and the ease with which then PM Paul Martin’s participation was organized in the 2006 APEC Summit in Santiago owed much to the ties developed during the 2001 State Visit by the Governor General and her diverse delegation. To me the lesson was clear: the dividends of a multi-faceted relationship, made possible in part through a vibrant NGO sector, are more substantial than they may at first appear.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2011) — Summer/Fall 2011 // Été/Automne 2011, p. 15. Read the rest of this issue →
