bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1991) — Spring 1991 // Printemps 1991, p. 40
Undiplomatic Notes: Tales from the
Canadian Foreign Service by Sidney
Freifeld, Hounslow Press, October 1990,
194 pp., $19.95.
When Sid Freifeld was active in The Department he was well-known and universally liked as a person who took on whatever was asked of him. That included opening a Press Office in spite of a management that really didn’t want us to have one. What wasn’t known at the time was that while Sid spoke softly he carried a big notebook. Happily for all of us, as it turns out.
There are enough retired heads of missions around ready to write the definitive analysis of Canadian foreign policy at the drop of an advance cheque, but could they tell you what really went on when Castro took to travelling in Latin America? The account of Nicolae Ceascescu’s progress through Ecuador given in this book adds a whole new dimension to the literature on presumptuous upstarts.
The book also records some transitions, particularly the passing of one of the great features of life in External in the late 1940s. Agnes McCloskey, almost single-handed, administered The Department for many years and the book tells of her tight-fisted management of its budget before she was finally persuaded to accept an appointment in New York.
The story, however, doesn’t quite end there. There’s an addendum, no doubt apocryphal, to the effect that very shortly after her arrival in the metropolis a bitter letter arrived back in Ottawa, saying in effect that no one should be asked to live in that city on her allowances. There was no mention of the fact that the inadequate allowances were, in both senses, hers. This turned out to be, in all probability, Miss McCloskey’s most highly appreciated service to The Department. Her successor, basing himself on a recommendation by Miss McCloskey whose reputation was well known in Ottawa, had no trouble getting Treasury Board approval of a revised scale of allowances for the entire Foreign Service.
Some of the most interesting of Sid’s recollections are about people who left a more substantive imprint on External; many-sided people like Escott Reid and Archie Day who are rightly singled out for the rigourous standards of precision in the use of language that they demanded. Many of the niceties that they insisted upon would be hard to apply today. We have to face the fact that the infinitive, like the atom, has been irretrievably split. Their great contribution was to insist on the importance of saying exactly what you meant and not to accept even a close approximation of it.
General Victor Odlum was something else and in the eyes of his younger contemporaries, something to be avoided. He may well have been at the root of the saying “There are no bad posts, only bad heads of post.” His was a classic case of a person who was out of his proper environment and decided to change the environment rather than his way of thinking about it. There have been others who tried to make the job of ambassador conform to their preconceptions and The Department no doubt still has people in it who carry their scars.
The most enjoyable part of this fascinating book is the longest article in it in which the author shows that the practice of diplomacy was merely a means to a much worthier end. “Angling My Way…” betrays where Sid Freifeld’s real love lay; not in the salons of the haute monde of Latin America, not in the corridors of power in Ottawa, but up to his waist in rushing water just about anywhere in the world. Publishing a book is an act of self-revelation and although this book is not about Sid Freifeld, in the end it is the angler that the reader may remember best.
Those still plying The Trade should read this book. (Those who are now out of it, will anyway.) It has some good examples of some good diplomats but, just as important, it has some wonderful examples of some absolutely awful ones. And their stories lose nothing in the telling.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1991) — Spring 1991 // Printemps 1991, p. 40. Read the rest of this issue →
