bout de papier, Volume 7, Issue No. 2, 1989
bout de papier, Volume 11, Issue No. 4 – Vol 12, 1995
bout de papier, Volume 6, Issue No. 1, 1988
Prose, not Poetry
Scholars and others may debate whether or not there was a “golden age of Canadian diplomacy” but there is little doubt that Canadian diplomats of the 1940s and 1950s were distinguished not only by the quality of their despatches and memoranda but…
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…
Life in a Gilded Cage
It was late spring in Havana in 1969 when there was a knock on our door. There stood a short, elderly grey-haired gentleman whom we recognized after a moment as the doorman from the hotel we had stayed in some months earlier…
Low Politics
Visits by Ministers and other VIPs can be the bane of a diplomat’s existence at an overseas post – so many things to go awry, so little appreciation when things go right. Murphy’s Law usually takes over. One incident, forever etched in…
Paving the Way in Delhi
Hyen in sustain a a dead lifty years ago I was on temporary years in Australia, when a telegram came from Ottawa ordering me to go to Delhi to “pave the way for a new mission”. Those were the days when one…
Cockroaches and Caviar
by Mary Taylor
The Head of Mission’s Most Valued Friend
When the Right Honourable Roland Michener was about to go to India as High Commissioner he asked me, because he temporarily occupied an office next to mine, for advice on how to conduct himself as a Head of Mission (HOM) at a…
