bout de papier, Vol. 13, No. 4 (1996) — Winter 1996 // Hiver 1996, p. 40
Lyon Weidman, a former departmental officer, died in Ottawa on July 13, 1996 at the age of 62.
Lyon joined the Department in 1960 and in 1961 was posted as Vice-Consul at the Consulate General in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa). His next assignment, in 1964, was an unusual one at the time and testified to his ability. He was, if I remember well, the Department’s first officer posted to the Ecole Nationale d’Administration in Paris. He had studied in France, at Montpellier, and his French was superb.
I had met him on and off during the 1960s, but it was in Washington where we both served in the late 1970s that I got to know him well. He was Minister-Counsellor at our Embassy, in charge of its administration and finances. This was a highly complex assignment and he fulfilled it with competence and dispatch. At the same time, he ran my administration and budget — minuscule affairs compared to his — but it was reassuring to know that in his hands the Permanent Observer Mission to the OAS had really nothing to worry about administratively.
Lyon was extremely conscientious and thorough about everything he understood. He was a perfectionist. No detail was so small as to escape his attention. Many perfectionists can be testy with lesser mortals, but not Lyon. Although demanding, both of himself and others, he was always patient, courteous, and polite. He drove himself hard, but was invariably kind-hearted and well-disposed towards his staff.
He wrote beautifully, both in French and in English. His style was elegant and the vocabulary at his command impressive. From time to time, for a book I was working on, he would show me some of his studies on Federal-Provincial relations. This was one of his last assignments in the Department before his move to the Office of the Official Languages Commissioner and later to the Treasury Board. He had a knack for presenting complex problems succinctly and clearly. If departmental analyses were primarily literature, these could be described as classics.
Lyon died as he lived: with grace and dignity. With his passing, many of us have lost a good friend.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 13, No. 4 (1996) — Winter 1996 // Hiver 1996, p. 40. Read the rest of this issue →
