Apartment Hunting in Paris — A Liberal Education
The editors of bout have scored a fine coup in securing for publication this personal letter written in February 1947 from Paris by Charles Ritchie to the then Under-Secretary Mike Pearson, relating his incredibly humorous vicissitudes in finding lodging in the early…
Letters // Correspondance
I was privileged to be a good friend and colleague of John W. Holmes when I served with the Canadian Institute of International Affairs (CIIA) as a Director of Branch Relations and Development, while he was still the Director-General in the early…
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…
Canada and India: The Negotiations for the Supply of the N.R.X.
On May 18, 1974, India detonated an underground nuclear device in the Rajasthan desert. In its official announcement, the Indian government laconically stated that the nuclear explosion experiment was solely conducted for “peaceful” purposes. The experiment would help India in underground research…
Shadow of Heaven: The Life of Lester Pearson. Volume One: 1897-1948
The perfect title for this biography of Lester Pearson would have been simply “Mike,” but, since Pearson had already used it for his own memoirs, John English had to cast around for something different. He hit upon an expression used by Milton…
This Shouldn’t Happen to A…
(Editor’s note: Sidney Freifeld’s new book about some of the amusing sidelights of the Department over the years, Undiplomatic Notes: Tales from the Canadian Foreign Service, is being published by Hounslow Press in October.)
Farewell to the Dupont Chancery
A long and colorful chapter in Canadian diplomatic history came to a close last spring when the moving vans lined up in front of the venerable old Dupont Chancery in Washington in preparation for the move to our new building on Pennsylvania…
George Ignatieff: A Diplomat and Peace-Monger
par Yvon Beaulne
An Interview with Allan J. MacEachen
Canny, shrewd, machiavellian are the adjectives applied to the current Liberal Leader in the Senate, Allan Joseph MacEachen P.C. To many, he is the personification of the consummate politician. Yet, his involvement in politics only came after he had first established a…
The Poets of External
External’s early archives yield such amazing gems! Readers of bout de papier may remember, for example, my yarn (in Vol. 5, No. 3) about the unbelievable correspondence in the middle of World War II between the Canadian Legation in Washington, ie. Mike…
