bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2006) — Summer 2006 // Été 2006, pp. 19–20
Memories of John Small by Arthur Menzies at memorial service in Ottawa on 31 May 2006.
John Small was a China Mishkid like me. He was born December 19, 1919 in Chengdu, the capital of the big highly populated southwestern province of Sichuan. Before World War Il the only access to Sichuan was by boat up the great Yangzi River. Smaller boats pulled by gangs of trackers moved passengers up through the churning waters of the Yangzi Gorges, where a giant dam has just been completed. Canadian United Church missionaries stationed in North Henan, where I was born, only met their Sichuan colleagues at Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangzi River or back on leave in Canada. John attended the Canadian Mission school in Chengdu and returned to Canada for university training.
John’s older brother William was a classmate of mine at Victoria College in the University of Toronto. I first met John at a soccer match when the University of Toronto intermediate team played the Aggies in Guelph where John was studying at the Ontario Agricultural College.
On graduation in 1941 John enlisted as a Sub Lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve and put in four arduous and risky years in naval convoy work in the North Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, in the Normandy landing and later in Australian waters. He was discharged in 1946 as a Lieutenant. He returned to university studies in Toronto, earning a BA degree in 1949.
John joined the Department of Trade and Commerce as an Agricultural Trade Commissioner. He was posted to The Hague from 1950-55. During their stay in Holland there were some bad floods. When John returned to Ottawa I was Head of the Far Eastern Division of External Affairs and I talked to him about transferring to External Affairs as we needed officers with some background in China and the Chinese language. We sent him to the University of Toronto to brush up on his Chinese language. I don’t think this was a great success because his teacher wanted him to read Tang poetry instead of drilling him on reading current newspapers. John was posted to Hong Kong in 1958 when Canada began selling large shipments of wheat to the People’s Republic of China, where mismanagement during the Great Leap Forward campaign had resulted in starvation for many peasants. John made a number of trips into the PRC as a Trade Commissioner. He wrote some very informative reports on what he saw and heard on these trips, at a time when we had no diplomatic relations with the PRC.
John and family returned to Ottawa in 1961. I returned from a posting to Kuala Lumpur at the same time, so we were able to renew our friendship.
John’s next posting was a Counsellor in Pakistan from 1963-65.
He was then appointed Permanent Representative to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. This was at the time of student riots in France. Despite this turbulence, I think he and Jean and the family enjoyed their time in Paris.
John returned to Pakistan as High Commissioner in 1969 at a time when Bangladesh was separating from Pakistan. He was concurrently accredited as Ambassador to Afghanistan.
John was cross-posted in 1972 as Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China because our first Ambassador to the PRC, Ralph Collins, developed a blood circulation problem. This was a challenging time to serve in China because we had just established diplomatic relations in 1970 after a 20-year estrangement. The tumultuous Cultural Revolution was still in full force. Yet Canada was trying to build its relations with Communist China through the 1973 visit of Prime Minister Trudeau and other Ministerial visits. John managed this complex situation with panache and still found time to play tennis with the American diplomatic representative, George Bush senior, later President of the United States and father of the current President George W. Bush.
At the end of the war in Vietnam in 1975 John was dually accredited as Canada’s first Ambassador to the People’s Republic of Vietnam and travelled to Hanoi to present his credentials.
In the autumn of 1976 I was appointed to succeed John as Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China and concurrently Ambassador to the People’s Republic of Vietnam. My wife and I were kindly invited by the Chinese Ambassador Zhang Wenjin to a farewell dinner at the Chinese Embassy the day that word came through that Chairman Mao had died. The dinner was postponed. In discussions in the Department it was thought prudent to leave John in Beijing for the transition period. I should mention here that the great Tangshan earthquake took place in August with very destructive force and it’s effects extended to Beijing. Sheila and I met John and Jean in Hong Kong where we got the latest briefing. Then we made our way by rail to Canton and on to Beijing.
Following his four years as Ambassador to China, John was posted to London as Deputy-Secretary General of the Commonwealth. His duties included finding the right expert to assist smaller Commonwealth countries in building up their governmental structures.
John’s final overseas assignment was as High Commissioner to Malaysia and Brunei from 1982-84. As I had opened our High Commission in Kuala Lumpur in 1958 I was interested to learn from John about the growth of the Malaysian economy in the intervening 24 years.
After retiring in 1984 John was asked to take on the responsibility of Administrator for the Canadian Code of Corporate Conduct in South Africa, seeking to ensure that Canadian companies working in South Africa maintained a high standard in their treatment of their South African employees.
John’s record of distinguished public service was recognized by Guelph University, the modern home of the Ontario Agricultural College from which he graduated in 1941, with the conferring of an honourary LLD degree.
In retirement John and Jean enjoyed their cottage in the Rideau Lakes. John continued to play vigorous tennis games with a group of old friends, and they were active members of the China-Canada Friendship Society, the Royal Commonwealth Society, the Canadian Institute of International Affairs and the Retired Heads of Mission Association.
Today we look back on the varied career of an officer who served Canada in the Navy during World War II and maintained the highest standards of public service at home and abroad, with ability, steadiness and unfailing good humour! What a career! What pioneering work he did! What attention to duty! He was also a devoted husband to Jean and father of their four daughters. Let us give thanks for the full and productive life John shared with us, his friends and admirers. And to Jean and family our thanks for sharing John with us.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2006) — Summer 2006 // Été 2006, pp. 19–20. Read the rest of this issue →
