bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1999) — Summer 1999 // Été 1999, pp. 39–40
Sandra had been transferred out of the division almost a month previously, so she was getting politely annoyed about my continuing to call her up about things. But this time, I believed I had a legitimate question.
“Sorry to bother you again, Sandra,” I sorried, “but I have a little query.”
“Go ahead.”
“The Department of National Defence keeps sending me coded messages,” I explained, “At least, I think they are coded. The words seem to be shortened, and there are no articles or punctuation marks. Also, do you know someone named Stan Avforlant?”
“Standing Naval Force Atlantic,” she said, and I could hear the italics.
“Ah.”
“I’ll be over in a minute,” Sandra sighed, “Meanwhile, pull out the Fairey Firefly File.”
“Ah.”
My first lesson in applied geopolitics involved neither caviar nor sanctions. It started with a referendum and ended with a soirée, but in between it was about a carrier-based combat aircraft called the Fairey Firefly. Canada used to own several of these planes back when we had an aircraft carrier, but long ago sold or retired them. Some ended up in Ethiopia. Bits of Ethiopia became Eritrea. That’s where we come in.
On a hot day in a hot month in the Horn of Africa, when Sandra was the desk officer for the region, a Canadian Forces officer made a discovery. At an airfield near the Eritrean capital, Asmara, he found five Fairey Fireflies. From their markings, he was able to determine that these aircraft had once been flown by the Royal Canadian Navy. And here they were, collecting dust in eastern Africa. Something had to be done.
After a race against military museums in Britain and Australia, but without a spy mission or a curator’s scuffle, Canada won the generous approval of the Eritreans to repatriate two Fireflies. My sister’s Air Force wing took part in the recovery, which involved three Hercules transport aircraft flying to Eritrea. Our division, Eastern and Southern Africa Relations, had a role in loading some relief supplies from a Canadian NGO on to one of the transports.
The NGO was headed by Eritrea’s Honorary Consul-designate in Canada, with whom I spoke on a daily basis for several weeks (and who is an all-around good guy).
This happened at the same time that Eritrea was preparing to send its first-ever Ambassador to Canada. We officially recognized the state of Eritrea in April, 1993, after the civil war had ended and a referendum on separation from Ethiopia had been overwhelmingly approved by Eritreans. The Ambassador, based in Washington, would be accredited also to Canada and to the United Nations.
The new Ambassador had a successful first day in Canada. In the morning he received his accreditation, and was told by the Secretary of State (Latin America and Africa) that Canada would provide $5.5 million in emergency humanitarian assistance to the people of his country. Our CIDA colleagues deserve credit for having moved up the schedule of one of their announcements to coincide with the Ambassador’s arrival in Ottawa.
To mark the occasion of the Ambassador presenting his credentials, the chargé d’affaires of a certain Embassy hosted a small reception at his residence in Ottawa. To represent Canada at the soirée, the chargé invited Ed my boss, a reformed CIDA guy named Chris, and the chap who worked across the hall from me, Sparky. The chargé would have asked Sandra to come, but she was busy with peace talks, and her predecessor was in Addis Ababa, and the electrician had the ’flu, so they had to settle for me, instead.
When my wife Leslie and I were on our way home from work that evening, I rolled down the fogged-up passenger side window of our old-but-still-hale Chevrolet Cavalier wagon. The window would not roll back up again. Given the prevailing rain and wind in the Nation’s Capital, and our need of the car to take us to the dinner party, this posed a bit of a problem. Fortunately, my vast, previously unheralded background in engineering (I once went to happy hour at an Engineers’ campus pub), meant I soon had a solution. We drove the rest of the way with a raincoat slammed into the car door.
It would be imprecise to say, therefore, that we arrived at the dinner in style. Rather, we arrived in the style to which we had become accustomed – in an eleven-year-old Chevy with a raincoat hanging out of the window. We deftly parked the car with the raincoat facing Island Park Drive, and away from the residence of the chargé. Had our dangling windbreaker been from L.L. Bean or Roots, nobody would have minded. It was so obviously from Zellers, however, that the neighbourhood watch tried to have our vehicle towed away and buried.
We were on time, which meant we were among the first guests to get there (only Sparky pre-arrived us). An ancient butler butled us into a well-appointed drawing room with plaster mouldings, lots of oak and utterly non-IKEA furniture. Subsequent guests sat down in the two separate conversation areas of the room. By statistical fluke, there were no two guests seated next to each other who spoke the same language fluently. The couple nearest me, on a broad, flowery sofa, were a handsome First Secretary and his silent spouse. We waxed eloquent for minutes on end about Fairey Fireflies, Ottawa summer weather and Ottawa winter weather. I regretted that Leslie was in the other conversation area, because a) unlike me, she normally has something intelligent to say; and b) I do not have to work as hard, because people prefer to talk to her.
There are three main approaches one can take to diplomatic receptions: wittiness, flirtatiousness and quiet erudition. I would love to be witty, but I can’t seem to think up anything clever to say until after someone else says it first, or until at least two hours after the party is over. I have tried being flirtatious, but this came across as obvious and icky (mental note: don’t try to chat up the wives of Kuwaiti diplomats). Quiet erudition has also been a non-starter. While guests and hosts alike are delighted by my silence, I can only sustain it for so long. Inevitably, I am overcome by the desire to misquote Papa Hemingway or to share some deeply obscure fact about fungus or the inventor of the torque wrench.
The food, elegantly laid out in the next room, was marvellous if somewhat incendiary. The only things I recognized were the flatbread and the napkins, so I just took one serving of every dish. Following the example of my pal from the sofa, I ladled on a generous portion of a thick brown sauce. This was a mistake. The sauce was made from the same substance they use to make emergency road flares, but I could not very well be seen not to eat the food I had selected. For the next hour, I was preoccupied by thoughts of spontaneous human combustion.
Things were tranquil for my sweetie on the other side of the room. Leslie had been up late every night for a week, writing essays for graduate seminars in semiotics, hermeneutics and other light topics of conversation. While she looked great, she was totally exhausted. Our hostess seated Leslie in a plush armchair between the new Ambassador and the fireplace, with a good view of the gigantic flower arrangements and no view of her floundering husband.
When asked by the prehistoric butler if she wanted something to drink, Leslie said, “Could I just have some water, please?”
“Yes, madam.” She received scotch on the rocks.
With all her experience in teaching English as a Second Language, Leslie should probably have seen this coming. In an ESL environment, “yes” does not mean “yes, I understand”. It means, “yes, I understand that you just said something.” She accepted her Johnny Walker in lieu of water, and did not make a fuss. The scorching vittles meant she had to drink something, however. Now, this is not the sort of lady who would ordinarily partake of a chug-a-lug contest, even if she wasn’t sleep-deprived and seated in a luxuriously comfortable chair next to a roaring fire. So an ounce of Johnny Red might have been a fistful of Sominex for the effect that it had on her.
The conversational environment, which had been relaxed and friendly, took a turn for the drowsy after dinner. While the plates were being cleared away, the hostess had the furniture in the drawing room rearranged. Instead of two rectangular talking zones, we now had a large oval of chairs and sofas, where everyone could see everyone else. This did not facilitate dialogue in quite the way the hostess intended.
Instead of the guests chatting away in broken English or French with one another, only one person would talk at a time. The conversation became a series of largely unrelated, but warm and laudatory speeches. First Ed spoke, then the chargé, then the Honorary Consul, then Chris, and so systematically around the oval. With broad terms and philosophical did each speaker speechify, until nothing, and everything, remained to be said.
• Leslie insists that she did not actually fall asleep. Well, she wasn’t snoring, anyway. So when the hostess stuck a fork in her knee and asked if she was a little tired, dear, Leslie did not shout or leap out of her comfy chair. A momentary the-house-is-on-fire look flashed across her face, replaced by I’m-late-for-work, and finally her usual, gentle smile. My wife graciously admitted that she was a trifle tired, and asked by the way what was the Amharic word for “water”. ’. She then tried this new vocabulary on the ancient butler, who brought her gin. While the handsome First Secretary was holding forth about the structure of the United Nations Security Council, I was trying to reconstruct the original intent of the previous speech, which had included a number of two-dollar terms such as “ex post facto” and “pusillanimous”. • And then, abruptly, the First Secretary came to his conclusion. They all started to look at me. It was my turn to make a speech. But what would I make my speech about? Fairey Fireflies? Ottawa weather? Torque wrenches? The First Secretary looked at me intelligently. Ed smiled at me encouragingly. Leslie was nodding off again. I looked for the exit.
And then somebody stood up.
I don’t remember who it was, or why, but they rescued me. One person on his or her feet meant it was time for everyone to go, and I did not have to make a speech, after all. My career was saved. Not saved for much, as is demonstrated by my singularly unmeteoric rise through the ranks. But at least I survived to push paper another day.
For Leslie, this was her first official function as wife-of. Unfortunately, it was as wife of a laughably minor government official who could not even afford an L.L. Bean windbreaker to put in the car window. But she loves me, which I will never understand. Then again, I do not understand black holes or Caramilk bars or spontaneous human combustion, but I believe in them, anyway.
As for the Fairey Fireflies, my brother later saw one of them being prepared for display at the National Aviation Museum. That file is closed, and whether DND has lost it or shredded it is none of my beeswax.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1999) — Summer 1999 // Été 1999, pp. 39–40. Read the rest of this issue →
