On Six Continents A Life In Canada's Foreign Service, 1966-2002

by BARTLEMAN, JAMES K.

• ISBN13: 9780771010910
• ISBN10: 0771010915
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-09-06
• Publisher: Douglas Gibson Books

Summary

Muskoka, the University of Western Ontario, Ottawa, New York, Colombia, Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Peru, Cuba, Israel, Belgium, South Africa, Australia the place-names tell the story of an amazing career. Then there are the people involved Trudeau, Clark, and Chretien, Kissinger, Castro, Rabin, Walesa, Havel, Mandela and dozens of others. Not to mention the moments of high drama: when young Jim Bartleman becomes Ottawa's security expert on terrorism during the FLQ crisis in 1970; or when he leads the movement to bring countries like Poland and Ukraine into NATO and the West. But this is also a light-hearted look at what our diplomats actually do and is full of funny stories: so watch young Jim attend a drunken party with Trudeau; compete with Mother Teresa for Bangladesh babies; or sweep his Belgian bride off her feet to the altar. Bartleman also writes candidly about falling prey to depression, and about his concern, as a native Canadian, to see aboriginal peoples well treated. In summary, a richly varied career, as the only Canadian diplomat to serve on all six continents, well told by a remarkable character. *** On Six Continentsis a Douglas Gibson Book. From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

James Bartleman rose from humble circumstances in Port Carling, Ontario, to become Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister in 1994. He is the author of the prize-winning memoir Out of Muskoka. In 2002 he became the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario. Mr. Bartleman is donating his 2004 royalties to the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto to support a lecture series entitled “Political Power and Mental Health”, designed to engage the public in discussion on issues central to “Shared Citizenship” in Canada.


From the Hardcover edition.

Table of Contents

Prologue	1	(1)
Part One: The Apprentice 1966-198	1	(126)
1 Canada and New York	7	(18)
The Foreign Service
Foreign Affairs in 1966
The United Nations
Canada's Centennial Year
2 Adventure in Colombia	25	(20)
Canada's Forgotten Diplomatic Outposts
My Responsibilities
The Fine Art of Diplomatic Hospitality
Embracing the Third World
Native Peoples
The Antiques Roadshow
3 Ottawa	45	(13)
The World in 1970
The October Crisis
Counterterrorism
Abroad Again
4 Canada's First Mission in Bangladesh	58	(19)
Apocalypse Now
The Father of the Nation
Hunger and Disease
A Planeload of Babies
Canada's Diplomatic Presence
The Face of Evil
La Condition Humaine
Last Days in Bangladesh
5 NATO During the Cold War	77	(19)
The Madness of Man
First Impressions
Trying to Change the Doomsday Scenario
Learning on the Job
The United States in Temporary Decline
Canada Loses Ground
A Personal Alliance
6 Turmoil in the Caribbean Basin	96	(17)
Foreign Affairs in 1977
The Commonwealth Caribbean
Trouble in Central America
Central America in 1979
On the Defensive
7 Crisis Management	113	(14)
Incident at Gander
Saving Saint Lucia
Return to Peru
Part Two: The Ambassador 1981-2002
8 Cuba in Castro's Days of Glory	127	(26)
Infatuation and Disillusion
Castro's Views
Canada and Cuba
My Views
The Good Years
The Mood in Havana
El Commandante en Jefe
Personal Relations
Dirty Tricks
Punishment, This Time from Canada
9 Israel in Crisis	153	(24)
A Regional Hot Spot
Rescuing Marie Jeanne
Return to Israel
The Strategic Environment
Canadian Policy
The Intifada
Parliamentary Visits
Return to Normal
10 Return to NATO	177	(18)
The Cold War and Its Demise
From Containment to Détente
Strategic Miscalculations
Clandestine Wars
Protecting Canada's Foreign Service
Post–Cold War NATO
Canada's Highest Priority
Championing Ukraine
11 Crises in the New NATO	195	(23)
The Collapse of the Soviet Union
Closing the Bases
The Collapse of Yugoslavia
The New Europe Drops the Ball
Lift and Strike
Resumption of Fighting
12 Parallel Lives	218	(13)
Cultivating the Military
Four Years Not in Provence
13 Changing Skies	231	(21)
Ottawa 1994-1998
The Onset of Illness and South Africa
Australia and Recovery
European Union and Adieu
Epilogue	252

Excerpts

Prologue

I first saw Dhaka on a sweltering afternoon in June 1972. The two-­hour flight from Bangkok over Burma and the Bay of Bengal gave me time to sit back in air-­conditioned comfort and feel that everything was going my way. Here I was, from the wrong side of the tracks in small-­town Ontario, setting out at the age of thirty-­two to open up the first Canadian diplomatic mission in Bangladesh. Life was good. Around me elegant flight attendants served exotic foods and supplied ice-­cold beer in the luxury of Thai International business class.

Approaching landfall, the aircraft descended through black monsoon clouds until we could see the lush green delta of the Meghna, Ganges, and Bramaputra Rivers. From that far up, there were no signs of the recent catastrophes that had hit the new country of Bangladesh: the cyclone of 1970 that killed half a million people; the just-­ended civil war against West Pakistan in which hundreds of thousands died; the massive smallpox epidemic that was still ravaging the population.

The landing at Dhaka International Airport was rough — the tarmac was still pockmarked with crudely repaired craters left over from the heavy bombing by the Indian air force the previous December. Workers rolled the airport’s only functioning set of stairs up to the aircraft door and the petite attendant smiled as she opened the door to . . . another world. A stench of humid, sweet-­and-­sour air poured in, smothering the sterile air-­conditioned comfort of the cabin. A mob of half-­clad beggars waited, clamouring piteously for baksheesh, or charity, as I descended the rickety staircase. Some with hands but no feet hobbled on their knees, grabbing at my clothes. Others, with feet but no hands, stuck damp stumps of their festering limbs in my face. Their eyes were wild and their skin pitted with smallpox scars. Within seconds I was drenched in sweat.

There was no protocol officer to greet me, even though I was Canada’s new acting high commissioner. In fact there were no officials of any sort present to keep order as I fought my way through packs of mendicants to the immigration counter and then to the baggage reception area. Once again I was besieged, this time by porters fighting among themselves to carry my one bag. I grabbed it myself and joined a half-­dozen other expatriates competing for transport into the city. A solitary taxi waited at the exit. Watching all those old American war movies then paid off. Like Milo Minderbinder of Catch-­22 in wartime Italy, I pulled out a carton of American cigarettes and held it aloft as our safari-­suited band of brothers bore down on the driver. I was the chosen one. The driver flashed me a smile, opened the back door, and, leaving the others behind, drove me to the only modern hotel in the city, the Intercontinental.

Afterwards, curious to learn more about this city that was now my new home, I made my way, fascinated and appalled, through the crowds that choked the roads and sidewalks day and night in Bangladesh’s capital. The streets were filled with bicycle rickshaws decorated with hand-­painted scenes from the civil war, pushcarts manned by sweating labourers, buses with more passengers on the roof than inside, wandering cattle, and wagons and stagecoaches drawn by skeletal horses. Overhead, tangles of wire cluttered the telephone poles and the sky was black with crows and, yes, vultures. Cloying smoke from the burning dried cow dung used for cooking hung in the air, mixing with the acrid smell of black exhaust fumes spewing from ill-­maintained bus, truck, and car motors and the odour of tens of thousands of unwashed bodies.

Women modestly enveloped from head to foot in burkas, black garments with openings for the eyes and nose, and men dressed in dhotis, a type of skirt, thronged the thoroughfares. Mentally disabled people, often naked and filthy, competed with stray dogs foraging for food among the garbage heaps. In the absence of sanitary facilities, men and women, their mouths crimson from the juice of betel nuts, squatted in the gutters with as much dignity as they could muster. Others exposed the corpses of their loved ones on the sidewalks, begging for money to accord them a decent burial. In this, my initial encounter with South Asia, the colour, vibrancy, and authenticity of local life that I was later to discover were overwhelmed by poverty and human misery.

Beggars surrounded me just as they had at the airport. About five hundred metres from the hotel, I gave a small coin to a half-­blind man crawling along on the sidewalk. Another, more robust, individual snatched it from him and a crowd sprang up clamouring for more. I turned and headed back to the hotel with the wretched of the earth following behind, howling. The wronged recipient of my bounty wobbled after me, crab-­like, wailing that he had been robbed and appealing for another handout. I did not want to run — after all, I was Canada’s acting high commissioner.

I walked faster. Somehow the beggar kept up. The crowd followed, hoping I would weaken and offer another coin that they could steal. I went faster but the half-­blind beggar kept coming. The crowd stopped at the hotel property line but the poor unfortunate continued through. The uniformed doorkeeper opened the heavy glass door to let me in and slammed it in his face. Literally. I looked back — his face and body were squashed against the glass, his tongue hung from his open mouth, and his protruding eyes met mine. I went up to my comfortable room but did not sleep well that night, and not for many more to come. I had not counted on this when I joined Canada’s foreign service.

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Excerpted from On Six Continents: A Life in Canada's Foreign Service, 1966-2002 by James K. Bartleman
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.