Canada and the New World Order / Le Canada et le nouvel ordre mondial
In the past year we have been exposed to a barrage of references to a “new world order”, and the PAFSO Professional Committee was quick off the mark to help members to define what this is all about, and what it means…
Interview with Rick Hansen
Many of us had the pleasure of meeting Rick and Amanda Hansen during the “Man in Motion” tour. I had the added privilege of being associated with them when he served as Canadian Commissioner General at Expo 88.
Constitution-Building in Namibia: Could it Happen Here?
“In the process of negotiating, bargaining and hammering out this constitution, the Namibians developed a special Namibian way of resolving internal differences and contradictions. The method is:
A “New Internationalism”?
Some Canadian governments consider it desirable to encapsulate the thrust of their foreign policy in code words or phrases. Mackenzie King was anxious that his government should be recognized internationally, after the Second World War, as enjoying authority as well as status.…
Parallel Lives
[J.W. Pickersgill and Escott Reid both enjoyed illustrious careers as public servants. Pickersgill at the right hand of Prime Ministers Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent before he became a Minister of the Crown, and Reid through 25 years at External Affairs.…
In Defence of Diversity: Towards the Legitimization of Dissent
The lack of an established channel through which dissenting analysis might reach decision-makers has been highlighted repeatedly in the recent past, most strikingly, in the wake of the Gulf crisis. While it is clearly important that the Department, and indeed the government,…
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,…
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…
On a Hinge of History
From prehistory until about 1000 AD, the world’s population did not increase by much. In earliest times, life was so precarious, and food supplies so unreliable, that a rough balance obtained between births and deaths notwithstanding an undoubtedly high fertility rate. The…
A Soliloquy for Septuagenarians
In recent months some of our historians have published their matured spin to explain the course of Canadian events way back in the Trudeau era. Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy cries out for comment on its treatment of policy development…
