bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 4 (2000-2001) — Winter 2000/2001 // Hiver 2000/2001, p. 36
The following is from the eulogy by Blair Seaborn at the service for Harry Carter on January 13, 2001.
January 15, ZUU1.
I first met Harry Carter when he and Pam arrived in The Hague in the autumn of 1954, where my wife Carol and I were just completing our first posting. Harry was to take over as number two in the mission under Ambassador Tommy Stone. He came with what were for me formidable credentials: a BA in Political Science and Economics and a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Toronto where he had been enrolled at Trinity College, as I would be later. He had fought “a good war” between 1940 and 1944, serving in the United Kingdom and Northwest Europe as an artillery officer. Whisked into the Department of External Affairs straight out of the Army, he always regretted that he had been unable to complete the European campaign. He had already served a full posting at the Permanent Mission to the UN in New York, where he had the great good fortune to persuade Pam Price, then a member of the UN Secretariat, to marry him. He came with a reputation for intelligence, impatience, bluntness of speech, strong convictions and little tolerance for fools. In our brief time together in The Hague, he lived up to that reputation.
Harry’s directness of speech had landed him in some trouble during a brief assignment in the consular section of the Embassy in Washington, prior to New York. I am reliably informed that an incident there had led a very senior member of the Department to say to him: “If you see any other work prospects in the want ads, don’t let us stand in your way.” Mike Pearson was more understanding of the young officer trying to adjust to civilian life, and Harry, fortunately, chose to ignore that rather frosty suggestion.
Our lives did not cross again directly as long as I was in External Affairs, but I followed with interest his progress from Counsellor in The Hague, to Counsellor in New Delhi, and then to his first Ambassadorial appointment, to Finland in 1964, where he spent five years.
After Finland, Harry was posted directly to Pretoria/Cape Town in 1969 as Ambassador to South Africa, a period he wrote about most forthrightly in a chapter of David Reece’s book, Special Trust and Confidence. Harry held strong anti-apartheid views and did not want to take the posting. Once there, however, he made his views abundantly clear in reporting to Ottawa and advising on what Canada’s policy should be. He was equally clear in expressing to South Africans, up to and including the Prime Minister, how misguided and unethical he found apartheid to be. The official views of the Canadian Government and the personal views of its representative were in complete consonance in this respect.
After South Africa, Harry returned to Ottawa in 1972 to become Director of the Anglophone Africa Division for six years, and then Director of the Historical Division until his retirement in 1983.
In the years just prior to and after his retirement I got to know Harry again and to appreciate his many qualities and wide interests. He had a keen and inquiring mind, which was with him until his death. He thoroughly disliked large social events, as he was essentially quite shy, but he enjoyed more intimate gatherings and the lively conversation which went with them. He expressed his views forcefully, but did not mind apologizing when he recognized that he was in the wrong. He was a good raconteur with a delightful and rather wicked sense of humour, and lots of irreverence.
Harry maintained throughout his life a keen interest in church affairs and was for many years a lay reader in the Anglican Church, in which capacity he sometimes read service and preached the sermon in the absence of the rector. He had an outspoken preference for the Book of Common Prayer over the Book of Alternative Services on liturgical, literary and historical grounds.
He also taught American history for a few years to the boys of Ashbury College, not all of whom appreciated his erudition, and wrote a good history of St. Alban’s Church in Sandy Hill.
A scholar at heart, Harry joined an art study group at the National Gallery and between 1991 and 2000 produced for it no less than nine very thorough and well-researched papers on artists ranging from Reynolds to Gainsborough to Velasquez to Van Gogh to Tom Thomson.
Several people here today recall with delight men’s doubles tennis games with Harry at the Rockcliffe Lawn Tennis Club, which were always lively and enthusiastic, and sometimes a little boisterous. When his knees began to fail him, and there was no way he could get to a ball heading more or less in his direction, he would shout to his partner “Yours!” — regardless of whether there was any chance of his partner getting it back. Since then, the phrase “a Harry Carter Yours!” has become part of our tennis language.
At least from the time he joined the Canadian Army in 1940, Harry Carter proved himself a deep humanitarian, a democrat, and an egalitarian. Often he seemed a little blunt for a professional diplomat, and even friends could get the rough edge of his tongue when he felt strongly about the matter under discussion. But he was always a warmhearted as well as a principled man, one in whom intellect and passion combined to make a strong personality. He will be missed not only by his family, but by all of us.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 4 (2000-2001) — Winter 2000/2001 // Hiver 2000/2001, p. 36. Read the rest of this issue →
