Randolph Gherson
Randolph Gherson was born in Cairo and educated at the London School of Economics. In 1958 he came to Ottawa with Joan, his Winnipeg born wife, following his work as an economist at the International Wheat Council. A spell with the IWC…
Basil Robinson
Basil Robinson, who died on December 21, 2012, at the age of 93, entered the Department with the classic background for a foreign service officer of his generation. Although born in England, he grew up in Vancouver, where his parents settled in…
Unlocking the Wastebasket: How an Academic Built Canadian Foreign Intelligence
“They Lock Up Their Wastepaper Baskets” read the headline of the February 28, 1950, edition of The Standard. The article included a photograph of a tall, lanky man and described his job at the Joint Intelligence Bureau as supplementing “the intelligence on…
Trivial Pursuit (of an FS Position)?
For those applicants who had survived the ordeal depicted in the last issue of bout de papier, there remained further tests. Before the oral examination, candidates were expected to answer yet another set of essay questions as well as one of those…
William McKenzie (Bill) Wood
My father was born on St. Patrick’s Day in Montreal in 1922. He studied at Upper Canada College in Toronto and McGill University and became an officer in the Black Watch Regiment (RHR) of Canada, serving in the North West Europe Campaign.…
Tom Delworth
Tom Delworth was born in Toronto in 1929 — a child of the Depression. He attended Weston Collegiate in Toronto and Victoria College at the University of Toronto, where he was a student in honours psychology. He received his BA in 1951.…
Peter Bakewell
Peter was born in the UK and educated at St. John’s College, Oxford. He moved to Canada in 1972 and taught elementary school in British Columbia where he met his first wife Ann. Moving to the Maritimes, he worked for about five…
Questions extraordinaires?
Candidates for the Canadian foreign service in 1949 could be forgiven for concluding that the examination process was an elaborate form of torture inflicted on the unwary for the amusement of the examiners, who clearly were a nasty lot. To enable their…
Robert Parke Cameron
Born in Montreal, October 15, 1920, died in Ottawa, Ontario March 12, 2012, aged 91.
Gary Harman
Editor’s Note: The following is RHOMA colleague Michael Bell’s eulogy of Gary Harman at his memorial service held in Ottawa on July 28, 2012.
