bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2009) — Spring 2009 // Printemps 2009, pp. 21–23
It happened in 1973, down along the Zambezi River at Victoria Falls. Zambian soldiers — idly watching tourists on the far shore — suddenly and inexplicably opened fire and killed two Canadian girls. Canada’s High Commissioner to Zambia at the time was Arthur Broadbridge. It was the darkest moment in his long life as a diplomat.
Arthur Broadbridge was not always a diplomat. In his time, he was a school teacher, an officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force and an archivist as well. He was an interested observer of world affairs, an engaged human being and a voracious reader. He did not just inhabit the world: he worked to understand it. Consider the irony, therefore, that Arthur always smilingly referred to himself as “a farm boy from Saskatchewan.”
Noone arrives so cheerfully at the age of 94 without certain outstanding qualities of body and spirit. Certainly, Arthur had a strong heart and body, shaped by a hardworking youth on a farm in Saskatchewan. Arthur’s family left southern England in 1920, heading for backwoods Canada. Arthur was just four. “My parents emierated,” he often said, “and I decided to come with them.”
Life on the farm was primitive, with no electricity or running water, and lots of hard work. Imagine Arthur as a little boy after feeding the chickens, heading back to the house with an empty pot stuck on his head. “My father looked at me,” Arthur remembered, “and said, ‘You don’t know how to be silly enough,” Imagine him also as a schoolboy sitting, book in hand, on the butter churn (which was something like a bicycle) and pedaling madly while the thick cream turned slowly into rich yellow butter. Imagine him as a handsome young man at harvest time, pitchfork in hand atop a wagon loaded with grain.
The Arthur we knew was a social creature. He wasn’t always so. In 1930, his mother firmly dispatched her shy, 15-year-old son to a masquerade dance in the village. She dressed him as a beer stein overflowing with froth. It wasn’t an easy costume to dance in, Arthur commented wryly, and it was only his family’s urging, “not to let the side down,” that finally persuaded him to go.
For Arthur always did his duty. That was a characteristic that served him well in 1932, when he left the farm. When Arthur — much to his own amusement — failed the subject of Agriculture in high school, he said that his family “saw the writing on the wall.” Despite shortages of cash in Depression-era Saskatchewan, the Broadbridges scraped together the money to buy Arthur a year of teachers’ training.
Arthur always counted his blessings. As a brand new, 18-year-old teacher in the backwoods, he nervously faced a class of some 30 children, many of whom could not speak English. He did his best, he said. At night, he retired to a nearby frame cottage where, on winter mornings, he had to break the frost on his blankets to get up. His salary, a few hundred dollars annually, was usually paid in kind by poor farmers. “But I was luckier than most,” he said with characteristic grit. “I had work.”
Arthur was always a hard worker, and he thrived as a teacher in a series of one-and two-room schools in Saskatchewan over the next six years. He was happy in his work but, when the war broke out in 1939, he saw it as his duty to enlist. In 1942, he left for England en route to Africa, Sicily and the Italian campaign. It was a journey
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765, St. Joseph, Gatineau (Québec) that opened his eyes to the world. Arriving in North Africa, he was fascinated by the ancient cities of Tunis and Carthage. During the winter of 1944, he had an office in the Bourbon palace overlooking Naples. He saw the famous Vesuvius erupt. He led a donkey train up to a mountaintop in Corsica to set up radar installations looking out toward France. He entered Rome days after it fell to the Allies. He spent the last days of the war in glorious Florence. He celebrated VE Day in Venice, where he glided through canals in a gondola and marvelled at one of the great cities of Europe.
Arthur was a man who loved history, books and ideas, and the war changed his life. He returned to Canada as a veteran at age 30, married Mavis Davies and, with government support, attended the University of Saskatchewan full-time. He graduated with an MA in history and found immediate employment as assistant archivist at the Saskatchewan Archives. Then he wrote a federal civil service examination and, in 1949, was drafted into the foreign service. His postings over the next 28 years included Chicago, Washington, Cairo, and Berlin, culminating in 1973 with his appointment as high commissioner to Zambia.
The career of Arthur Broadbridge in many ways paralleled that of George Grande, with whom he had a close, lifelong friendship. In 1941, they travelled to England together on the same ship — the rusty little Indo Chinois. Both served throughout the war as radar officers, and both entered Canada’s foreign service after the war. In the 1970s, both served as heads of mission in Africa — Arthur in Zambia (1973-77) and George in South Africa (1976-79). They reconnected as friends in recent years through the Retired Heads of Mission Association.
Arthur loved his work, but he loved his family even more. In 1945, he married Mavis Davies, whom he later wrote of as “wife, companion and friend for thirty-two years.” They had three daughters — Susan (who died in 2000), Wendy and Jennifer.
Mavis Broadbridge died in 1977. Two years later, Arthur travelled to Ottawa to visit an old friend — the recently widowed Ada Uren. They were married on Hallowe’en, October 31, 1981. Arthur always said, “I got the treat, and Ada got the trick.” Together, they shared 23 years of love, laughter and adventure. When Arthur completed his memoirs in 1998, he wrote this dedication: “to my wife, Ada, who brought joy … to the house.” Ada died, to Arthur’s great sorrow, in 2004.
Arthur was a brave man. He was also hospitable, courteous and generous. Even as he embarked on his 90s and a period of declining health, Arthur kept busy. He did the daily crossword. He dined out weekly, drove with a friend to nearby towns and into the countryside, read the lessons at church, kept up with current events and read constantly. The fact that he was able to keep going so strongly was due in part to his indomitable will. It was also the product of his ability to inspire friendship as, in the last few years, he answered the door to a steady stream of visitors.
In his last days at home, Arthur continued to entertain his guests with good humour and laughter, living life on his own terms to the last possible moment. The qualities he honed as a farmboy in Saskatchewan, a teacher in the backwoods and representative of Canada to the world, lasted him to the end of his days.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2009) — Spring 2009 // Printemps 2009, pp. 21–23. Read the rest of this issue →
