bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1985) — Winter 1985 // Hiver 1985, p. 26
It was on a January morning in 1961 that a cypher telegram from External Affairs in Ottawa came in to the Canadian Embassy in Dublin informing us that, in response to an earlier invitation, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, accompanied by Mrs. Diefenbaker, would make an official trip to Ireland on Sunday and Monday, March 5-6, if those days were convenient to the Irish Prime Minister. They were.
Our Ambassador, Alfred Rive, was vacationing on the Continent when this telegram arrived and I was Chargé d’Affaires at the Embassy. External’s telegram informed us also that the Diefenbakers would arrive in Dublin from Belfast, following a short visit to Northern Ireland, and that from Dublin they would be going on to London where Mr. Diefenbaker would attend a Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference.
As soon as this message was decyphered
– our Dublin Embassy was primitively equipped in communications at that time —l decided to telephone the Ambassador, one of the kindest and gentlest persons with whom I had ever worked, to give him this important news and, at the same time, to urge him to complete his vacation, since we could utilize the intervening time to get on with the preliminary preparations. As we expected, the Rives returned to Dublin forthwith.
F rom the moment the Ambassador returned, he emphasized to us that Mr. Diefenbaker was a teetotaller and that we must direct our planning to minimize, if we could not eliminate entirely, any exposure of our Prime Minister to alcohol – no small feat in convivial Ireland.
Although the Diefenbakers were originally scheduled to arrive on a Canadian government plane at I a.m. on a Sunday, Mr. Rive happily seized an opportunity of delaying the arrival until 2:15 p.m. His ploy was to ensure that our teetotalling Prime Minister’s first function, after the arrival ceremonies at the airport, would be tea at the Embassy residence, to which Dublin’s Canadian colony and our Embassy staff would be invited. Mr. Rive’s manoeuvre, as it turned out, was successful.
Mr. Diefenbaker agreed that he and the Canadian official party would be housed, like other visiting Heads of Government, at the Shelbourne Hotel, a fine old Dublin hostelry on St. Stephen’s Green just across the square from Iveagh House, headquarters of the Irish Ministry of External Affairs. Thus it would be at the Shelbourne that Mr. Diefenbaker would give the official Canadian reception. He moment this was decided, Mr. Rive began scouring the Shelbourne for a suitable room for this reception. To our surprise, he turned down those that seemed obviously right and that were constantly used for this purpose. We finally realized that he was seeking a large room in the shape of an “L”; his gambit was that Mr. Diefenbaker would receive his guests at the top of the “L” while the bar – which the Ambassador unhappily agreed could not be eliminated — would be around the corner at the other end of the “L” and at least out of sight and smell of our Prime Minister.
And so the planning went – with the Ambassador preoccupied continuously about how to minimize his teetotaller Chief’s exposure within Ireland to whiskey, wine and Guinness Stout.
Then, a couple of days before the visit was due to commence, still another telegram came in from Ottawa, signed ROBINSON. It was from Basil Robinson, the External Affairs officer who, at that time, was serving as the department’s special assistant in the Prime Minister’s Office. I could hardly believe what I read which, in paraphrase, was BEST WAY TO ENSURE SUCCESSFUL VISIT IS TO MAKE CER- TAIN THAT CHAMPAGNE GETS FROM AIRPORT TO SHELBOURNE AHEAD OF PRIME MINISTER.
]Il rushed to the Ambassador’s office and exclaimed: “Have you seen this incredible telegram from Basil? Here we have been going crazy for a month trying to keep the Prime Minister removed from alcohol, and they are bringing over their own champagne on the official plane! Apart from the P.M.’s teetotallism, one just doesn’t do such a thing. Can’t they trust us to procure in Dublin any drink they might require?”
The perplexed Ambassador, sensitive that it had been he who had been fussing for weeks about how to keep alcohol away from Mr. Diefenbaker, put in a transatlantic call to Basil Robinson (we hadn’t telephoned to or received a phone call from Ottawa in the two years I had been in Dublin – this was another era). When he had finished the call, Mr. Rive came out to us grinning and, ever so gently, told us that Basil had explained that CHAMPAGNE (telegrams at that time were entirely in upper case) was not a beverage but the name of the Confidential Messenger, Gilbert Champagne, who had been serving Canadian Prime Ministers ever since the days of Sir Robert Borden and who, for the first time, was being taken on a trip abroad by Mr. Diefenbaker; it was important to get Champagne – upper and lower case — to the Shelbourne quickly, with the Prime Minister’s luggage, while the arrival ceremonies were going on at the airport, so that he could have fresh clothes laid out for Mr. Diefenbaker for the quick change the PM would have to make before going on to this first function.
It was only later that I learned that similar confusion arose in Belfast. In his Autobiography (Vol. III), Mr. Diefenbaker recounts that a telegram from his office PRIME MINISTER WILL BE BRINGING CHAM- PAGNE appeared to annoy Canadian officials in Northern Ireland preparing for his visit; they apparently feared that Dief was questioning the quality of champagne in Ulster and that he was “initiating the practice internationally of B.Y.O.L. – bringing your own liquor.” Mr. Diefenbaker writes that, in Belfast, they even had a panel truck, equipped with wine racks, wheeled out on the tarmac “to accommodate our Champagne” as soon as his plane landed; in Dublin we, by then forewarned, had a station wagon ready at the airport to rush (Mr.) Champagne to the Shelbourne.
Although they may not have realized it at the time, Mr. Diefenbaker and Basil Robinson had provided us with a welcome diversion from the weighty briefs we had been preparing for the Prime Minister on Irish nationalism, partition, President de Valera and the Gaelic revival. A
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1985) — Winter 1985 // Hiver 1985, p. 26. Read the rest of this issue →
