bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 3 (1999) — Fall 1999 // Automne 1999, p. 36
Our colleague Yvon Beaulne passed away last June 8 in his 81st year, from complications related to the diabetes which he had borne lightly, but from which he had suffered for a long while.
In another memorial, earlier this year, it was noted that for all of us RHOMANs the loss of a colleague, a fellow Foreign Service officer, always has a special resonance. Because in our work we are so often cut off from the more normal neighbourly contacts that life at home in Canada provides, we find it especially poignant to lose any one of our partially expatriate collegium, especially someone like Yvon, who was not only one of us but also, to many of our older members, a helpful colleague and a good friend.
His funeral service, a choral Eucharist, was held on Saturday, June 12, in St. Joseph’s Church in Hull. It was a perfect early summer day, and the interior of the church, a modern structure, was bright and uncluttered. Looking around the capacity gathering of family, friends, colleagues and dignitaries, I could not but reflect that Yvon had been a very fortunate and lucky man. Yvon was blessed by being born into a close and caring family, and by having had a long and happy marriage to his wife and companion, Thérèse Pratte, the girlfriend of his youth, whom he married after his return from overseas. He was blessed by children of whom he could be proud and by a truly exceptional and personally fulfilling career. He was also fortunate to have survived WW II, during which he fought in the Italian campaign.
Yvon was a very committed, highly dedicated diplomat. As one of us noted in the obituary that appeared in the Citizen, “He had a great sense of style and elegance in everything he did.” Both in his personal and professional life he was at all times a particularly courteous and considerate colleague. This did not mean, however, that he was not also a fighter for those causes and principles that he so actively and proudly defended. Nor did it mean that he was not both practical and down to earth. Another of our colleagues recalls that many years ago, when he was about to leave on a posting to a somewhat insalubrious place, Yvon had advised him to acquire and pack a hand gun in case of need
Yvon was proud to be a Franco-Ontarian. From 1912 to 1927, Regulation 17 forbade the use of French in Ontario Schools; as a child in Ottawa, Yvon had thus experienced discrimination firsthand, being unable to attend elementary school in French. article written later in his life he commented that his own experience was one of the reasons he was so passionate about and concerned with the defense and advancement of human rights everywhere.
Yvon was also proud to represent Canada. He made no great claims personally but his life and career speak for themselves.
It was during the Italian campaign in WW II that Yvon made his first international mark. In 1943, as a young lieutenant caught up in the siege of Florence, he found himself among a group of allied troops searching for Germans in a nearby castle. Instead, they discovered a considerable number of partially crated works of art. Only Yvon recognized among them Botticelli’s “Primavera”. He contacted the appropriate liberated Italian authorities and thus the paintings were able to be salvaged. Some forty years later, in 1982, when the refurbished “Primavera” was to be officially unveiled, the Italians contacted Ottawa to invite the soldier concerned to the ceremony. They were informed that Yvon was already in Italy, as Canada’s ambassador to the Vatican! Thus the decorated WW II veteran was able to revisit Florence, where he received the thanks of the mayor. By coincidence, he and Yvon had first met during the liberation of the city, where the mayor had been a resistance leader!
Before going overseas, Yvon had graduated in philosophy from the University of Ottawa. After his return to Canada and marriage to Thérèse, he worked for a time in the House of Commons as a translator; Yvon eventually spoke at least five languages well. There, by another coincidence, he caught the eye of the then Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Louis St. Laurent, who suggested Yvon join External Affairs.
In the late 1950s, already an expert on Latin America and able to speak Spanish as well as French and English, Yvon was asked to accompany Prime Minister Diefenbaker on a mission to Latin America. During the 1960s, with the usual home postings in between, he served successively as our ambassador to Venezuela and the Dominican Republic (1961-1964), to Brazil (1967-1969) and then to the UN (1969-1972).
On a personal note, during Canada’s stint on the Security Council in 1967-68, I was with our UN Mission as a sort of Security Council Legal Advisor. The only time I actually served under Yvon was briefly during this period, toward the end of 1969; it was quite a contrast to working under his predecessor George Ignatieff! Later, however, I was lucky enough to be able to work closely with Yvon in the UN and UNESCO, and in the field of Human Rights.
Following his years at the UN, Yvon returned to Ottawa, where he worked in Secretary of State, setting up new Canadian human rights machinery and institutions. This work and the earlier reputation he had gained as a champion of human rights while at the UN led in 1976 to Yvon’s being named Canada’s ambassador to the UN Commission for Human Rights, on which he served for nine years at a crucial time in the evolution of its powers. He was eventually to become the only Canadian ever to serve as Chairman of that body and is widely regarded as one of the most influential members ever to have served on it.
At the same time, Yvon was also appointed as our ambassador to UNESCO, where he served for three years (1976- 1979). For me, in addition to the outstanding work he was doing in the general field of human rights, the highlight of his UNESCO period was the month and a half we spent together in Nairobi during a biennial UNESCO conference. In those days Nairobi was still one of the great, civilized, safe cities in Africa. We all worked very hard, but we played hard too, spending almost every weekend on Safari in one or another of the game parks throughout Kenya. Yvon and his wife presided over a large, potentially fractious delegation, comprised of numerous departments as well as NGOs, with skill, kindness and aplomb.
Yvon’s final posting was to the Holy See, from 1979 to 1984. There he was able to continue with his Commission for Human
Rights activities. There too, as noted above,
– the wheel of his career came full circle and the senior diplomat finally reaped the thanks which the young soldier had earned so many years before. Yvon, who retired in 1984, was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1992. Towards the end, Yvon’s quality of life was somewhat diminished by his illness. Nonetheless, even though he had increasing difficulty walking, and relied more and more on a cane and eventually a chair, he was a regular attendant at the monthly RHOMA lunches. He was always cheerful when with his colleagues and never complained. We shall all miss him greatly. He was a diplomat of the old school and there aren’t many like him around today.
Angus W.J. (Ron) Robertson
Note: See Clyde Sanger’s Canadians and the United Nations, the chapter entitled: “Yvon Beaulne — A Passion for Human Rights” (page 167). This is Yvon’s own apologia and is well worth reading if one wishes to gain a fuller understanding of his work and interests in this field.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 3 (1999) — Fall 1999 // Automne 1999, p. 36. Read the rest of this issue →
