bout de papier, Volume 13, Issue No. 3, 1996
bout de papier, Volume 14, Issue No. 1, 1997
bout de papier, Volume 4, Issue No. 1, 1985
Social Purgatory in the Socialist Paradise
Readers of bout de papier wil! be familiar with John Watkins, whose last letter to John Holmes was reprinted under the title “From one ‘fantaisiste’ to another” (Volume 23, Number 2). In the aftermath of the revelations by Igor Gouzenko about Soviet…
Letter to the Editor
I refer to the John Watkins letter to John Holmes that was published in your Vol. 23, No. 3, where you indicate that there was an addition on the left margin referring to a lunch “at the Gardens (Gordons?).” I am not…
From One “Fantaisiste” to Another
John Benjamin Clark Watkins was born in Norval Station, Ontario, in 1902. He had specialized in Scandinavian studies at the University of Toronto and at Cornell University, from which he received his doctorate in 1944 (after working for more than a decade…
Ronning Amok?
On New Year’s Day, 1969, Pierre Trudeau was interviewed by Norman Depoe for the CBC. In the course of their discussion, the Prime Minister casually questioned the justification for diplomatic representation in the modern world and he suggested that much of what…
Reds in Rockcliffe?
Sixty years ago, the defection of a cypher clerk from the embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in Ottawa focussed world attention on Canada in an early and dramatic episode of what became the Cold War. Documents and testimony from…
A Skelton Legacy: Diplomats, Scholars and the Canadian Foreign Service
The history of Canada’s Department ot External Attairs is one of uneven but nevertheless sustained growth over a period of nine decades. Created by act of parliament in 1909, the Department started life as little more than a small secretariat with a…
John Holmes: Thou Shouldst Be Living at This Hour
Every generation at DFAIT creates its own legends. A legend for my generation was John Holmes. It may stimulate efforts of the current generation and those of others in and out of Government, to consider the enduring values of some of the…
