Review: Canada's Voice The Public Life of John Wendell Holmes

Abstract

CANADA'S VOICE The Public Life of John Wendell Holmes Adam Chapnick Vancouver UBC Press, 2009. 384pp, $32.95 paper ISBN 978-0774816724Adam Chapnick has written a fascinating and extremely well-researched book about John Wendell Holmes, whose work for the Canadian Institute of International Affairs covered three different periods of his life and is celebrated annually in an issue of the International Journal dedicated to his memory. Sandwiched in between his CIIA stints were 16 years in External Affairs, into which he parachuted during World War II in 1943 and from which he was secretively forced to resign in late 1959 as part of an ongoing purge of homosexuals in sensitive positions. In the fourth stage of his life, Holmes remained involved with the CIIA at a less intense level while teaching and mentoring postgraduates at the University of Toronto and Glendon College and commenting on Canadian foreign policy. Chapnick had access to Holmes's papers and carried out extensive interviews with former colleagues and friends. The resulting narrative weaves together a myriad of fascinating strands concerning Holmes, warts and all.Chapnick describes Holmes as embodying the ideals of postwar Canadian foreign policy. was an integral part of the cadre of civil servants who dominated the Canadian public arena during the nation's formative years as a world player. He played an equally crucial role in shaping the way that diplomats, scholars, and statespeople abroad understood Ottawa and its citizens, Chapnick writes. For students and practitioners of international affairs at home and around the world, he was Canada's voice (x).That someone whom Chapnick reveals as having a natural tendency towards indecision could end up playing such a role is just one of the many contradictions that come to light in the book. Holmes's trademark was to stress the importance of paradox in the formulation of Canadian foreign policy, and his own career and personal life were full of paradoxes in their own right. Some of Holmes's concerns and preoccupations (e.g., the importance of the Commonwealth and staying out of the Organization of American States) may have been somewhat overtaken by events, but many of his views, particularly the importance of managing relations with the United States and the value of the United Nations, still ring true today.Holmes's diplomatic career took him to London, Paris, Moscow, New York, the National Defence College in Kingston, and finally, killer's row in the east block of Parliament Hill, where he served as assistant undersecretary. reached this level in half the time that it took most other diplomats. En route to London, Holmes carried a letter from George Ignatieff to Alison Grant proposing marriage. However, she was unable to decipher Ignatieff's handwriting and it was up to Holmes to propose marriage on his friend's behalf.A 10-month posting to Moscow as charge d'affaires in 1947-48 ultimately led to Holmes's dismissal from External in 1959 because of the homosexual affair he had while in the Soviet Union. (Chapnick points out that the affair was not with a Soviet agent assigned to discredit Holmes (113).) But during the late 1940s and through the 1950s, he was a close confidant of the senior establishment in Ottawa at both the political and bureaucratic levels, and he served as mentor to many young foreign service officers. While at the National Defence College, Holmes enunciated six principles of Canadian foreign policy. His analysis drew on Louis St. Laurent's Gray lecture of 1947, but emphasized the centrality of foreign trade, the need for a counterweight to the United States, and the importance of being realistic about the extent of Canada's international influence. …