Abstract
Reviewed by: Robert Bothwell (bothwell@chass.utoronto.ca ), University of Toronto
Diplomatic memoirs of time served in Ottawa are sparse. For the ninety years that Canada has hosted foreign missions, there may be as many as fifteen or twenty—if we understand, as we must, that Canada usually accounts for a chapter or less in memoirs that must span whole careers, usually as a prologue, or perhaps an entr’acte. The United States, as befits Canada’s sole land neighbour—and for many years its largest trading partner, military ally, and cultural mecca—accounts for a large part of the literature. Two recent US ambassadors, James Blanchard and Paul Celucci, published books that deal exclusively with their service in Canada, and others, such as David T. Jones, a former embassy counsellor, are well represented in the literature of Canadian–American relations.
Americans who publish books on Canada find themselves in the odd position that their principal market is not at home, but in Canada. This was especially the case with Blanchard and Celucci, who sold to the Canadian market through Canadian publishers. The Canadian public, or the part of it that buys and reads books, has an inexhaustible interest or anxiety about what the Great Neighbour thinks of them. (The truth being, not much.) And in all probability, when Blanchard and Celucci are remembered in the future, it will be as ambassadors to Canada rather than as governors of their home states, respectively Michigan and Massachusetts, where at best their names will adorn some misbegotten public facility, so that people may wonder who they were.
John Stewart’s is a different kind of memoir. He is a Canadian who worked for the US embassy in Ottawa as an economic adviser from 1990 to 2010. Stewart observes that he was trained in history, and notes that the internet and digitization have altered our ability to compile research and understand contemporary history. This accounts for one of the strengths of the book: that it compiles contemporary documentation from largely US sources bearing on relations with Canada. It is also a weakness, as the many long indentations interrupt the flow of the argumentation. And in the documentary sphere, Stewart has to compete with Wikileaks, which has published a fair amount of US diplomatic reportage on Canada. In fact, it is easier to find and trace Wikileaks’ material than the documents cited in Stewart.
One condition of access in diplomatic establishments is discretion. That is understandable and laudable, but it puts a large security blanket over what one can write and say. “Senior officers” abound in Stewart’s book, often writing interesting things that are duly quoted, but Stewart cannot tell, and we cannot say, what their bureaucratic weight might have been. Stewart thinks well of some of the ambassadors, for example Celucci and Wilkins. From my own observation he may well be right, and is certainly right to balance the Canadian nationalist critique of the two men.
The twenty years from 1990 to 2010 marked the height of US power. The United States had the largest economy and the biggest military. In the 1990s, Western countries, led by the United States, were storing up future trouble, but that was by no means apparent at the time. Where Canada was concerned, the United States did not throw its weight around. For some problems, solutions were found; for intractable and perennial issues (fish, or softwood lumber) there was little that could be done, no matter how much effort and good will were fed into the diplomatic machinery. There were fantasies of economic integration, not for the first time in Canadian–American history. Stewart is useful and insightful on these.
After 2001, things were different. The United States became preoccupied with security, and tightened its frontiers, including that with Canada. Canada responded, generally constructively, so that trans-border constrictions did not really hinder trade. Stewart sees the hand of anti-Americanism in some of the words and actions of the Chrétien and Martin governments, and as a Canadian he is only too aware of the anti-American threads woven into Canadian history and politics. Americans visiting Canada, even diplomats, are often shocked when they discover this Canadian trait. Some take it in their stride, and even reflect that this is what can happen when a small country lives beside a much bigger one. Here he occasionally goes overboard, as in his enthusiasm for the unproven (to put it mildly) anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defence system. It is not essential that Canadians should jump in to every US enthusiasm, no matter how stupid. It’s enough to support the many good ideas that flow from south of the border, and to sympathize with the many Americans who take rational and sensible positions on the world. Sometimes indeed the “good Americans” need a bit of comfort and support. That is especially the case in the Age of Trump.