Founded as the Department of External Affairs in 1909, Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade took full advantage of its recent centenary celebrate its past. Among the manifestations were a large banner on the outside ofthe department's headquarters, the Lester B. Pearson building in Ottawa, a postage stamp, several conferences, and a number of publications, including the proceedings of a conference held in Ottawa in December 2008 and a collection of important documents created over the years since the department's establishment.1 What has the department done record its history over those years and make it known, and what can be learned from it?THE ORIGIN OF THE HISTORICAL RECORDThe department's first under-secretary (deputy minister), Joseph Pope, appreciated the value ofthe record. Having already been frustrated, as a negotiator on matters such as the Canada-US boundary, by the spotty nature of Canadian documentation, Pope made it one of his first items of business pull together as complete as possible a set of records dealing with international subjects of interest Canada. It was his intention be thorough. am naturally desirous, he wrote, to carry the date of our beginning as far back as possible and I do not see why I should not start with the... Commission Jacques Cartier from Philippe Chabot, Admiral of France, dated 30 October 1534. 2 The object of this exercise was not search for lessons from the past, but ensure that Canadian negotiators were properly briefed on the basis of all the relevant documentation. The collection was for internal use only, and no provision seems have been considered, or have been requested by outside users, for any kind of public access.MAKING THE RECORD AVAILABLEThis situation prevailed for many years, not surprisingly, perhaps, given Canada's limited involvement in international diplomacy at the time. The Second World War and its aftermath, however, changed all that, and senior officials and the minister, Lester Pearson, gave thought gathering some of the record in a documentary publication. As in Pope's day, this was not seen as a search for lessons from history; the object, rather, was inform the public and no doubt receive some good publicity from accomplishments of the past. The comparative youth of the department, however, was a stumbling block. Much ofthe documentation in the earlier files was British, and still closed in the United Kingdom. Many ofthe participants in the work that would be recorded were still departmental employees actively engaged in formulating policy advice and carrying out the government's instructions. Progress, therefore, was slow and cautious.The importance ofthe department's record was acknowledged in 1950, when the directorate of research and reports (redesignated a in 1952 and renamed historical division in 1957) was created, numbering among its responsibilities the oversight of an archives unit charged with the development of policy governing the department's dormant records. In 1956, this came under the direction of George Glazebrook, a once-and-future member of the history department at the University of Toronto and the author of well-known studies of Canada's external relations.3 Among his assigned tasks were the preparation of recommendations on research be carried out by the department and the development of regulations for access the files by outside researchers. Lack of staff, however, prevented fulfilment of these objectives. Academics and other researchers, meanwhile, were getting more interested in Canada's international activity, and the department began experience criticism for the inaccessibility of its records: in 1962, for example, the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Historical Association adopted resolutions condemning the department's glacier-like pace in making records available. …