bout de papier, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1998) — Spring 1998 // Printemps 1998, p. 6
Charles Taylor died on July 8, years too young. He was my close friend.
He and I worked in Hong Kong and China. He was the far east correspondent for the Globe and Mail. His assignment was to get a Globe bureau open in Peking, as it was then called. But the Chinese did not want him or his bureau. They left him, for a long time, dangling in Hong Kong.
I was in Hong Kong, disguised as a trade commissioner. In fact, I was a political and economic officer of the (then) Department of External Affairs. Canada then had no diplomatic relations with China. But as trade commissioner I could, and did, travel in China, with my boss, the real trade commissioner, Bob Thompson, a distinguished foreign service officer, dead many years ago.
The Chinese knew exactly who and what I was. “Canadian spy”, they said, with a twinkle. But they let me come and go, ing a Friend s’laylor observing and reporting on the political and economic scene. But also helping them to sell to Eatons, back home, their gorgeous Tiensing carpets, made with child labour, which I observed.
Meanwhile, as I made my trips to Peking, Shanghai, Wuhan, Canton and other exotic places, Charles Taylor sat in Hong Kong, fuming in his gentle way. No visa, no Peking bureau for the Globe. His Toronto bosses were patient, but not pleased.
Charles was then a single man. I had a wife and two little kids. He came often to our house. We went for dinner to his simple bachelor pad. He and I lunched together in a restaurant called, I think, Jimmy’s Kitchen.
Gradually I fed him stuff. What I had seen and heard in China. After consulting me, he began to file this material to the Globe. He was totally discreet. My name appeared nowhere, nor any trace of me.
I had other information. The Americans in Hong Kong, with whom I was close, had no direct information about China. They were very interested in talking to me when I came back from my trips. In exchange, they gave me what they knew — not secret agent stuff but high-tech intelligence about the state of the harvest in Kwangtung province and tractor production in Shanghai. All of this I of course reported to Ottawa. But, recognizing that Charles was an absolutely reliable colleague, I began giving him this stuff too. He filed. The stories appeared in the Globe and Mail.
If he had given so much as a hint of where he’d got his news, I’d have been out of a job next day.
Then our little world stood on its head. Charles got his visa, and the Globe its bureau, with Charles as chief. He got on the train for Canton, the one that I had so often taken but that he could not, and went to Peking. Gone out of our lives.
Not quite. Peking in those days was not an easy place. There was a lot of news, and a lot of interest in it in the west. Charles was alone. He wrote and filed furiously. When he could take no more, he got on the train for Hong Kong.
But before he came he always sent me a carefully encoded telegram. During his years in Hong Kong he had a beautiful relationship with a beautiful young Hong Kong woman. In those days writing letters from Peking to Hong Kong was out of the question. So he lost touch with her. Hong Kong people move house constantly. My task was to find her, and tell her Charles was coming Her name was Angie.
Then the shoe was on the other foot. Charles came to our house and was delightful with our little children. He and I lunched, as before, at Jimmy’s Kitchen. But now it was he, not I, who had the dope about China. I listened intently, made notes afterwards, and then sent my telegram to Ottawa.
Before, External Atlairs had ted the Globe and Mail. Now the Globe and Mail was feeding us.
A useful relationship, one that all the foreign service knows. Charles Ritchie built his career on it: poker, whisky, and the top journalists in Washington. But watch your back.
I miss Charles Taylor.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1998) — Spring 1998 // Printemps 1998, p. 6. Read the rest of this issue →
