bout de papier, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2002-2003) — Fall/Winter 2002/2003 // Automne/Hiver 2002/2003, p. 24
COOPER’S SNOOPERS AND OTHER
FOLLIES, by Peter Johnston, Trafford
Publishing, pp. 180, $21.00
There is a big disappointment, for which you should prepare yourself, when you get to page 164 of this little book: it ends. And it ends far too soon. To be fair, the author has subtitled it “Fragments of a Life” and memoirs that are too complete are often boring. That this one is neither is certainly due, in part, to the selection of fragments that he has chosen to set down, giving “an account of himself” not only to his children but to the rest of us. I doubt that all the parts he has left out were boring and perhaps he will write another delightful book about them someday.
Peter Johnston entered the Department of External Affairs in a rather roundabout way in 1957, just as he turned 36. The first half of this book is about the military side of that roundabout. From 1940 to 1945, Johnston served in the Canadian Army, mostly in England and Italy, mostly in what came to be the dominant aspect of his career, “security and intelligence”.. (I’ve put the quotation marks around those words because, from what he tells us, he had a hard time taking either one of them seriously, though I remember taking him very seriously indeed when I was marginally involved with security in my own early days in the Department.)
In the army, his ability with languages got him some interesting positions, snooping and interrogating, and he was once mentioned in dispatches, a singular honour that sounds quaint today but that had to be earned on the battlefront or just behind it. He makes his adventures in the long advance of the Canadians up the boot of Italy sound funny, ridiculous and touching but they give a vivid picture of war and the men who fought in it. That little bit of the war that he saw, neither organized nor coherent to any single individual, was his introduction to counter-intelligence.
After the war, Johnston completed his degree in modern languages at the University of Toronto and went to work for the predecessor of CSE, listening. It was very secret work in those days and he says he found it boring; for whatever reason, he hasn’t written about it. But he gives a wonderful picture of the almost accidental way he entered the foreign service. His age and experience gave him a perspective that other newcomers lacked and his stories and comments on the situations and people he encountered are, while generally kind, great fun and sometimes scathing — the sort of thing we all wish we’d had the courage to say at the time.
His explanations of his tasks in the “intelligence community” (his quotation marks this time) illustrate many problems that are still there, though the names have changed. His first posting was in London and his relations with the British are enlightening; he even gives us tiny insights into the Cuban missile crisis and other parts of the cold war with Communism as seen from UK eyes. For much of his career, Johnston dealt with just such matters; that he was clever and able in them, and spoke Russian to boot, might make it surprising to anyone outside the foreign service that he was never posted to Moscow. His only posting, among six, behind the “iron curtain” was as ambassador to Prague (where I succeeded him). Surely it was not because it was boring that he omitted his Czechoslovak life from this book, so I am looking forward to the next volume.
Johnston writes with a light touch. My wife laughed out loud several times as she read this book and that’s something rare in reading memoirs of the foreign service! He gives us his insights through his narrative; his anecdotes often leave the reader to infer the point he is making. His wry comments on Canadians and Canadian policies are sometimes a little uncomfortable, as I am sure he intended, but in general it is obvious that he enjoyed his work and the life that went with it. He concludes with a chapter on his time as ambassador in Indonesia and his post-retirement stints monitoring elections abroad, enough to show that he has been reluctant to let go of this sometimes difficult but often fascinating professional life. At page 164, that’s just how I felt about his book — reluctant to let go. If it’s not at your bookstore, you can order it from the publisher at www trafford com.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2002-2003) — Fall/Winter 2002/2003 // Automne/Hiver 2002/2003, p. 24. Read the rest of this issue →
