Joey — The Life and Political Times of Joey Smallwood
On Christmas Eve, 1989, Joey Smallwood turned 89. He has had a long and eventful life and it is no surprise that we now have two full scale biographies of him (Richard Gwyn’s Smallwood: The Unlikely Revolutionary was published in 1968, and…
Games of Intelligence, The Ultra Spy and Churchill’s Secret Agent, Codename ‘Jay Bee’
Nigel West is the pseudonym for Rupert Allason, a conservative MP for the Home Counties who has written a number of popular but controversial histories of Britain’s intelligence and security organizations. He also has written a spy novel.
Canada’s Department of External Affairs, Vol. 1. The Early Years, 1909-1946
There are a couple of departments in the federal public service which symbolize the modern public service. One is the Department of Finance where, between the early 1930s and the end of World War II, individuals such as Clifford Clark, W.A. Mackintosh,…
No Balm in Gilead: A Personal Retrospective of Mandate Days in Palestine
In early 1948, Sylva M. Gelber left the Palestine she had come to as a young woman sixteen years before. Her dream of participating in the building of the Jewish National Home had been shattered by the gunfire and bomb explosions of…
Japan, the Blighted Blossom and The Future Japan
Despite the general current trendiness of things Japanese and the significance for Canada of Japan’s increasing impact on the world, remarkably little has been published here about Japan. As a glance through almost any library shows, most books relating to Japan concern…
The Power Game — How Washington Works
Shortly before leaving office, Harry Truman made a famous remark about his successor, Dwight Eisenhower: “He’ll sit right here and he’ll say, ‘Do this. Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike — it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll…
Radical Mandarin: The Memoirs of Escott Reid
The Canadian “mandarins,” that remarkable group of public servants who came to prominence in the 1940s, have greatly enriched Canadian historiography and public debate since the 1970s. I suppose no-one has counted the number of books, articles, lectures, and essays that External…
A Visual History of Modern Canadian Business — Guts, Greed and Glory
In 1921, the readers of the Sunday Express in England were treated to a panegyric on the virtues of capitalism by the newspaper’s bumptious millionaire publisher, Canadian-born Lord Beaverbrook. Having cut his capitalist teeth as an itinerant bond salesman in the Maritimes…
Marler: Four Generations of a Quebec Family
Sir Herbert Marler is chiefly remembered in the foreign service community for certain foibles of personality and as the inspiration and financial backer of the remarkable property that still serves as the Canadian Embassy residence and chancery in Tokyo. Insights into both…
Undiplomatic Notes: Tales from the Canadian Foreign Service
When Sid Freifeld was active in The Department he was well-known and universally liked as a person who took on whatever was asked of him. That included opening a Press Office in spite of a management that really didn’t want us to…
