Born in Toronto in 1930, Maxwell (Max) Yalden obtained his BA at the University of Toronto in 1952, studied in Paris, and got his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Michigan in 1956 — the year he joined External Affairs. Assignments included Moscow, the Geneva Conference on Disarmament, and the Embassy in Paris. He was Assistant Under-Secretary of State in the Department of the Secretary of State (1969), Deputy Minister of Communications (1973), Commissioner of Official Languages (1977), Ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg (1984), and Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (1987). He was elected to the UN Human Rights Committee in 1996 and re-elected in 2000.
