Object: To talk faster than the speed of sound. Properties: Original hand gestures. Uses: Carrying around loose blotters. Occurrences: Feeds, Seeds and Fertilizer. — 1954 Kampus

All my primary and secondary education was in Kamloops, first at the Stuart Wood School and then at Kamloops Junior-Senior High, where I was in the class of ‘53, the first to graduate from the building that is now KSS, and then stayed on for Grade 13.

What I remember first about those schools is that they provided a very rigorous and disciplined educational environment, which gave me sound study habits. I did not always make full use of those habits, but they were there to come to my rescue when I got into difficulties, either because I had ventured into unfamiliar territory or because I had been slacking off.

There is a lot more to a good education, of course, than rigour and discipline. Those schools also taught that knowledge was exciting, and the foundation for a rich life of learning outside the classroom. I remember that Miss Crawford in Grade 3 had a shelf of fascinating books about faraway places and long-ago times that I loved to explore, and that Miss Lott in Grade 4 had travelled to many of the exotic places that came up in geography and history lessons. I decided early on that I wanted to travel, both in the world of the present and backward in time through the study of history. When I got to high school, I learned about the importance of languages to understanding our world, past and present, from Chris Wright (Latin), Des Howard (French) and Frank Potter (German).

History was one of my main interests throughout high school, stimulated by teachers such as Jock Morse and Mr. Duncan and above all Ruth Harrison, who brought a deep sense of engagement to the course on the years between the First and Second World Wars that she taught us in Grade 13.

Grade 13 was very important, in two respects. Because it was the equivalent of first-year university in BC, the teachers were very conscious of the need for us to develop good scholarly practices, which, for those of us not concentrating on the sciences, meant essay writing. What I learned from Miss Harrison and Eve Bradley (later Wright), in English, has stood me in good stead ever since. A second reason that that year was important to me is that the principal, Bill Gurney, was ambitious for his school and his students, and encouraged us to enter national scholarship competitions for McGill and Queen’s. I was fortunate to be awarded one to Queen’s, which turned going to university into more of an adventure than I had anticipated. Miss Foord, who was a graduate of Queen’s, helped divert my attention from my anxieties by telling how much I would enjoy the place, and she was right. But when I got there I was a long way from home and completely on my own for the first time, and I needed the benefits of the sound schooling I had received to get through the early months.

Miss Harrison’s course stimulated an interest in international affairs, and when I graduated from Queen’s in 1958 I was able to combine that with an undiminished urge to travel by joining the foreign service of what was then the Department of External Affairs. The desire for travel was certainly satisfied, for in 1961 I was posted as far away from Canada as one can get, to the Canadian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia. I did not approach this assignment without apprehension, and was heartened by a note from Miss Harrison (by then retired) telling me I was doing the right thing. (My mother wasn’t so sure: she said she had hoped the department would send me to “a nice safe place like Switzerland”, but she did change her mind after visiting me in Jakarta in 1962.)

Indonesia was fascinating and work in the foreign service was interesting, but I had been taught at KHS that scholarship was important, and I had a hankering to give it a try. I took a year off from my job in 1959-60 and did an MA in British history at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and then left the department in 1964 to study for a Ph.D (on early 19th-century India) at the University of London. After receiving my doctorate in 1968 I joined the faculty of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and in 1975 I returned to External Affairs (since renamed the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade) as a historical researcher. I became head of the Historical Section there in 1986, and retired at the end of March 2003.

The mandate of the Historical Section is to carry out historical research and publication that is useful both to the department and to the academic community and other interested readers in Canada and abroad. Like many foreign ministries, ours publishes a selection of historical foreign policy documents; ours is called Documents on Canadian External Relations. The series begins with the year of the department’s foundation, 1909, and now extends to 1958. I edited three volumes, for the years 1942-45, and then became general editor of the series. The other major publication is a history of departmental operations and policies, Canada’s Department of External Affairs, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press (and, in French translation, by Laval). I was the author of the first volume (1909-46) and co-author of the second (1946-68). A third volume covering the Trudeau years (1968-84), of which I am again a co-author, is at present underway.

It will be evident from what I have said about my university years that there was not much in the subject matter I studied then that was directly related to the work I did for the department, which occupied most of my professional life. This was a time, therefore, when it was a good thing that the work habits that I had learned at school were there to draw upon. They seem to have been effective, for the department’s historical publications have been well reviewed and I have received much welcome feedback from satisfied users. And I’ve had a good time, since the work I have been privileged to do has combined the three interests that started to develop when I was in school - history, international relations, and even (for research, conferences and such like) a modest amount of travel.