bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 4 (1999-2000) — Winter 1999-2000 // Hiver 1999-2000, pp. 36–37
The following is from the eulogy by Blair Seaborn at the service for Pat Black on November 6, 1999.
Many of us remember the good-looking, bright young Montrealer who came to Ottawa in 1949 to join the Department of External Affairs after serving two years with the Canadian Navy in the North Atlantic during the war, then getting his bachelor’s and law degrees at McGill. He was from a traditional Westmount family but, unusually for the time, he spoke good French; and he had spent a summer in Yugoslavia helping to build “Tito’s railway.” Better still, he arrived with a beautiful and lively wife, Francine, whom he met at law school and who was, intriguingly, Luxembourgoise. In the few months before he arrived in this town, he had passed his law exams at McGill, passed the bar ad, passed the External Affairs exams and been married. Impressive!
Pat was part of that wave of recruits to the Department in the few years after the war, many of them veterans. They came in excited by the challenge and promise of working for a Canada whose stature and self-confidence had grown greatly, and of working under Mike Pearson and the other early greats of the Department. They came from every corner of the country, they shared interests and formed friendships and they were proud of what they were doing.
Pat, I think, had and maintained throughout his life particularly well-articulated and strong convictions about the essential nature of this country, about the importance of bilingualism for both its anglophone and francophone citizens, and about its unity. Those strong beliefs are perhaps symbolized by the flag which you see, by his choice, on his coffin today. It was the flag which flew over the Canadian Embassy to the Holy See while he was Ambassador there on his final assignment. It was presented to him, with a citation, on his retirement.
I would like to refer briefly to some of Pat’s assignments which stand out, for him and his family, and for the Department. The first posting, as a Third Secretary, was to Moscow in the early fifties, in some of the darkest days of the dreadful Stalin era. That experience, I believe, had a strong and lasting effect on his thinking throughout his career.
Many years later, in the late sixties and early seventies, he served as Minister at the Embassy in Paris during what was undoubtedly the most difficult period in Canada- France relations. Our strained relations with France were intimately linked with a critical period for Canada’s continuation as a bilingual and bicultural country. An account of the events of those stressful years has been documented by Pat Black in his book “Direct Intervention.” And Pat’s involvement in this drama continued when he returned from Paris to head the Bureau of European Affairs.
Less stressful, but fascinating for Pat at the end of his career, was his appointment as Ambassador to the Holy See where he could observe at first hand the inner workings of that unusual entity popularly referred to as the Vatican.
For all of us who knew and worked with Pat, however, his major and continuing contribution throughout his career was in the defence and intelligence fields, both abroad and in Ottawa: DL(II) Division, liaison officer to the Joint Intelligence committee in London, DL(I) Division, Assistant Deputy Minister (Policy) at National Defence, Assistant Deputy Minister (Security and Intelligence) back in External. In the defence assignments, we witnessed the hard-headedness and clarity of his thinking and writing, and his convictions about the essentiality of NATO and collective defence throughout the long years of the Cold War. In the intelligence assignments, we saw the importance he attached to cooperation with our close allies, his constant attention to the rigour and clarity of intelligence analysis, and his determination to have the intelligence product relevant to, and used by, the decision-makers.
Bringing together all these varied assignments, a picture of the man himself is clear. Pat was a person of great integrity and of strong convictions based on moral values as well as intellectual rigour. He wrote clearly and forcefully, and with a certain economy of words which was the more welcome in a field which always has the temptation of verbosity. He never hesitated to put forward his well thought out views on events and policies and people, even when they were not always popular and even when they did not always endear him to his superiors.
Pat had a delightful sense of humour — sometimes a little biting, often related to the absurdities of life — which expressed itself with a smile or a chuckle rather than a guffaw. He loved good food and good wine and good parties, and he and Francine gave wonderful parties. He enjoyed literature and the arts, and somehow found time for both. He was very proud of his children and his grandchildren, in whom he instilled that devotion to Canada and that same sense of integrity and values and service which governed his life. And he loved the quiet communion with nature which he found at the Five Lakes Club. There in the long days of June, he and Francine could share that experience with visiting children and grandchildren, and expose them to the beauties of their natural surroundings, and take his sons-in-law Bill and Ron fishing
Francine, Pat’s beloved companion for fifty years, is a woman of deep faith, of intelligence, of strength, of convictions, of charm, of warmth and kindliness. She has been a tower of strength to Pat and their family, and she has captivated us all. Their relationship was well summed up by Pat, with his usual succinctness yet completeness, in the dedication of his book: “To Francine, my partner in the Foreign Service.”
Despite failing health in recent years, Pat pushed himself to do the needed research and to write his book, Direct Intervention, because he felt strongly that the events of those years must be recorded. For the sake of the country, they must not be forgotten. He was in a key position in the struggle between Paris and Ottawa over Quebec’s relations with France. The book is written with a determination to report things as he lived them and understood them.
We give thanks for the way he touched and will continue to touch our lives. We give thanks that he is now at rest.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 4 (1999-2000) — Winter 1999-2000 // Hiver 1999-2000, pp. 36–37. Read the rest of this issue →
