The Hungry Diplomat: Bannock
BANNOCK. When I was hired as a Foreign Service Officer in 2006, the Department was still a year away from cutting the Cross Canada Tour – a powerful tool to ensure a broad perspective of the Canada we were to represent abroad.…
Consular Christening
As a new Foreign Service Officer, I looked forward to my first foreign assignment — a training mission to a tropical island nation. As a diplomat-in-training, my trip in late March was not intended for pleasure, a fact I could not long…
Roloff Beny in Algeria
If Yousof Karsh had not produced such brilliant portraits of world figures like Winston Churchill and Pope Pius XII, Canada would certainly have recognized the late Roloff Beny as its greatest photographer.
Diplomatic Anecdotes
A history professor at Royal Roads Military College in Victoria, B.C., Gordon Martel has combed nearly three hundred diplomatic memoirs for anecdotes illustrative of the life and work of Foreign Service officers abroad over the past century. Six excerpts from this collection…
Distressed Canadian: A Tale
It was no nine days’ wonder. It was only a small part of work “as usual” in the life of the Canadian High Commission in Wellington, New Zealand.
The Howling Cats of Moscow
(Editor’s Note: This article is a chapter from Sidney Freifeld’s book Undiplomatic Notes: Tales from the Canadian Foreign Service, with illustrations by Susan Macartney, published by Hounslow Press, Toronto which has gone into a second printing.)
Watch out for the Moose, Now!
[Author’s Note: In mid-May, the Newfoundland branch of the family gathered to bid farewell to one of its senior members and, thus, we abruptly left humid, fuggy, rainy Central America for the chilly, windy, not-quite-yet-Spring Rock ….]
The Prisoner
“I am sorry, but we must be sure that there are no mistakes,” said the Deputy Superintendent (DS), sensing my irritation and fatigue. It was dusk, and I had returned, once again, for the Prisoner. I found the DS in his underwear…
Et moi, je n’ai rien à faire
A crossposting in 1972 from Dakar as new Second Secretary at the London High Commission where I was Head of Personnel with an office in MacDonald House, Grosvenor Square, was quite a change. Two years later, I was re-assigned as Head of…
Coming, Looking and Going in the Darien Gap
One of the periodic pleasures of being the spouse of a member of the foreign service is the opportunity to visit out-of-the-way places. Without question, the tiny native settlement of Arimae in the southern region of the Darien province of Panama is…
