MARCEL CADIEUX, the DEPARTMENT of EXTERNAL AFFAIRS, and CANADIAN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: 1941-1970

Brendan Kelly

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Toronto

Marcel Cadieux, the Department of External Affairs, and Canadian International Relations: 1941-1970

Brendan Kelly

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of History University of Toronto

2016 Abstract Between 1941 and 1970, Marcel Cadieux (1915-1981) was one of the most important diplomats to serve in the Canadian Department of External Affairs (DEA). A lawyer by trade and Montreal working class by background, Cadieux held most of the important jobs in the department, from personnel officer to legal adviser to under-secretary. Influential as Cadieux’s career was in these years, it has never received a comprehensive treatment, despite the fact that his two most important predecessors as under-secretary, O.D. Skelton and Norman Robertson, have both been the subject of full-length studies. This omission is all the more glaring since an appraisal of

Cadieux’s career from 1941 to 1970 sheds new light on the Canadian diplomatic profession, on the DEA, and on some of the defining issues in post-war Canadian international relations, particularly the Canada-Quebec-France triangle of the 1960s. A staunch federalist, Cadieux believed that French Canadians could and should find a place in Ottawa and in the wider world beyond Quebec. This thesis examines Cadieux’s career and argues that it was defined by three key themes: his anti-communism, his French-Canadian nationalism, and his belief in his work as both a diplomat and a civil servant.

iii

Acknowledgments

This thesis would not have been possible without the advice, support, and friendship of my supervisor, Professor Robert Bothwell. Before coming to the University of Toronto in 2008, I was told by Professor J.R. Miller, a mutual friend of ours and a mentor of mine at the University of Saskatchewan, that Professor Bothwell was deeply committed to his students. It has been my great privilege over the last seven-and-a-half years to witness that remarkable commitment first hand. It never ceases to amaze me how such a distinguished historian can devote so much time and energy to his many graduate students, whether it is answering (often at length) their frequent emails, meeting with them in person and on short notice (often over a delicious lunch at the Harbord House), or providing helpful (and always thorough) feedback on their chapters. There is no doubt in my mind that Professor Bothwell is one of the most dedicated supervisors at the University of Toronto. His support has been invaluable to me in my seeing this project to fruition.

I also wish to thank the members of my thesis committee, Professor John English and Professor Mark McGowan, two distinguished historians in their own right, for their advice at our annual meetings and for allowing my thesis to proceed to the oral defence so expeditiously. I am grateful as well to the Department of History for its financial support in awarding me Jeanne Armour Graduate Scholarships in Canadian History and the Margaret McCullough Graduate Scholarship in Canadian History, all of which provided me with vital aid in paying for my final years of study. The Faculty of Arts and Science also funded my work by awarding me one of the Associates of the University of Toronto Awards for Study of the United States. The School of Graduate Studies, for its part, gave me several travel grants to visit archives in both North America and Europe. Most importantly, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) generously funded my second, third, and fourth years in the program with a Joseph- Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship.

Historians need archivists and I was lucky to be assisted by many highly competent ones. While there is not enough space to list them all here, certain people at Library and Archives Canada were so outstanding that they must be mentioned: Paulette Dozois, Lana Merrifield, Alix McEwen, George de Zwaan, and the members of the Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP)

iv division, including Jean-François Coulombe, Diana Gibson, Betricia Abou-Hamad, Céline Jean- Marie, Marc Robillard, Diane Simard, and Barry Stead. I am also indebted to Greg Donaghy and Mary Halloran of the Historical Section at Global Affairs Canada for their help, especially in granting me access to archival material and transcripts of oral interviews held at the Lester B. Pearson building, and for their companionship during my time in Ottawa. In Toronto I benefited from the friendship of a number of fellow graduate students in History and residents at St. Michael’s College, including Jack Cunningham, John Dirks, Robyn Gifford, Peter Leimbigler, Stephan Dusil, and Michael He.

Finally, I could not have finished this thesis without the encouragement of those closest to me. The radiant optimism and good cheer of my fiancée, Michelle Chen, remain a source of inspiration and strength. My sister, Anne Kelly, a Rhodes Scholar, welcomed and introduced me to London and selflessly spent three days in Brussels doing research for her brother at the archives of the European Commission. Above all, my parents, Patrick and Darlene Kelly, English professors at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan, have given me more love and support than any son deserves and have always believed in me. This thesis is dedicated to them.

Brendan Kelly Toronto, Canada February 2016

Table of Contents Introduction ...... 1 Chapter One: Premières Armes: Ottawa, London, Brussels, 1941-1947 ...... 14 I – Ottawa ...... 14 II – London ...... 39 III – Brussels ...... 62 Chapter Two: The Making of a Diplomat and a Cold Warrior: 1947-1955 ...... 86 I – Headquarters ...... 86 II – NATO ...... 136 III – Vietnam ...... 150 Chapter Three: Climbing the External Affairs Ladder: 1955-1963 ...... 174 I – UN Division ...... 175 II – Legal Adviser and Assistant Under-Secretary under a New Government ...... 183 III – Deputy Under-Secretary and International Jurist ...... 200 IV – A Reluctant Administrator, an Anxious French Canadian, and the Fall of a Government ...... 228 Chapter Four: The Under-Secretary, the Minister, and the Department of External Affairs: 1963-1968 ...... 255 I – The Job of Under-Secretary ...... 258 II – The Minister ...... 279 Chapter Five: The Under-Secretary, the Minister, and Canadian Foreign Policy: 1963-1968 ...... 309 I – Crises...... 310 II – The United States, China, and the Vietnam War ...... 321 III – Defence...... 352 Chapter Six: The Under-Secretary, Nationalist Quebec, and Gaullist France: 1963-1967 ...... 361 I – The Emerging Alliance: Quebec and France ...... 362 II – Action and Reaction: Quebec and Ottawa ...... 388 III – Further Skirmishes ...... 405 IV – Le cri du balcon ...... 426 Chapter Seven: The Under-Secretary, Nationalist Quebec, and Gaullist France: 1967-1970 ...... 437

I – The Aftermath of le cri du balcon ...... 438 II – A New Theatre of Conflict: the Gabon Affair ...... 445 III – On the Periphery...... 479 Conclusion ...... 490 Bibliography ...... 496

Introduction

In 1940 Marcel Cadieux, a newly minted lawyer from Montreal, wrote the French entrance examination for Canada’s Department of External Affairs (DEA). As he scanned the choice of essay topics, one in particular caught his eye: “La question de l’unité canadienne.”1

Cadieux responded by advancing three arguments: French Canadians needed to exercise more influence in Ottawa, French Canadians should not be relegated to a subordinate economic role in

Quebec, and French-Canadian grievances should be addressed or Quebec would not remain in

Canada. When summoned before the oral examination board Cadieux was asked just one question by Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs O.D. Skelton: did he write the essay on national unity? When he said yes, Skelton did not pursue the point, but Cadieux was neither hired nor given the reason why.2 It was a curious incident since his arguments should not have offended Skelton, the biographer of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. As for Cadieux, he remained undaunted: in later years, both as a diplomat and a civil servant, he continued to act on principle, boldly making his convictions known.

Although rejection was initially Cadieux’s lot, in time he became arguably the most important francophone federal civil servant in Canadian history. When in 1941 the Civil Service

Commission (CSC) announced a new competition for junior diplomatic positions in Latin

America, Cadieux taught himself Spanish, passed the examination, and was admitted to the

DEA, beginning a distinguished forty-year career during which he ascended to the highest ranks of the Canadian Foreign Service. It is no exaggeration to say that Cadieux embodied Canadian diplomacy, a subject to which he devoted four books. He joined the DEA during the war, when

1 Library and Archives Canada (LAC)/Fonds Marcel Cadieux (MC)/Volume 5/File 13 – “Service Civil du Canada: Examen pour le poste de Troisième Secrétaire, [M]inistère des Affaires [E]xtérieures,” 1940. 2 Marcel Cadieux, interview with Don M. Page, Global Affairs Canada Oral History Collection (hereafter GAC), Ottawa, 29 June 1979.

1 2

Canada was forsaking colonialism for a foreign policy of its own. These were heady times but difficult ones as well for a francophone serving in an anglophone world. Posted first to London in 1944 and then to Brussels in 1945, Cadieux witnessed the end of the war and the early stages of European reconstruction. After his return to Canada he became head of the DEA’s Personnel

Division in 1949. His stint abroad had not produced amnesia where the place of Quebec in

Canada was concerned. On the contrary, Cadieux actively encouraged French Quebeckers to work in Ottawa – a challenge in the days before official bilingualism – but they had to be up to the mark. When, for example, a young Pierre Trudeau, fresh from backpacking around the world and sporting a beard, came to Ottawa looking for a job and expressed an interest in the DEA,

Cadieux vowed to bar his way.3 The standard he applied to himself and to others was an exacting one.

In 1951 Cadieux was sent to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Paris; three years later he was posted to Hanoi as a member of the tripartite International Control

Commission supervising the Geneva peace agreements. His harrowing introduction to communism in Vietnam would be corroborated by hundreds of other diplomats over the next decade, an experience which made the Canadian Foreign Service sympathetic to United States direct intervention in that country. When Cadieux returned to headquarters in 1955 he was first named head of the United Nations Division, then assistant under-secretary and legal adviser, and finally under-secretary – and all in nine years. A respected international lawyer, he became the first Canadian to be elected to the prestigious United Nations International Law Commission.

Yet it was in the 1960s that Cadieux made his name as a diplomat. Thrusting himself into a national debate in 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle shouted “Vive le Québec libre!” to

3 John English, Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Trudeau, vol. 1: 1919-1968 (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2007), 457. Curiously, a different story became part of Cadieux family lore. According to this version, Cadieux, far from opposing Trudeau’s candidacy, went to great lengths to get him an interview before a DEA oral examination board, only to be insulted when the candidate showed up for it in sandals. Francois and René Cadieux, interview with the author, Montreal, 22 May 2012.

3 cheering crowds outside Montreal City Hall. As under-secretary between 1964 and 1970,

Cadieux was tasked with countering de Gaulle and his sympathizers in the French and Quebec governments. A staunch federalist, Cadieux opposed any attempt to give Quebec an international legal personality. He believed that Canada should speak with only one voice in the world, a voice that was both English and French. Nevertheless, he was denounced in Quebec, the province he had spent his career trying to defend. National unity preoccupied Cadieux as under-secretary, but so did his difficult relationship with his superiors. He found Lester B. Pearson too weak and Paul

Martin too political. In his journal intime, one of the great diaries in Canadian political history,

Cadieux vented his frustration in ways highly illuminating to posterity.

Given the importance of Marcel Cadieux’s various contributions in the service of his country, it is surprising that his career has never received a full-length treatment. He appears here and there in the historiography of Canadian international relations between 1941 and 1970, most often in accounts of the Canada-Quebec-France triangle, but the only place where his career is assessed in its entirety is in an article by the historian Robert Bothwell.4 As a result, our understanding of Cadieux, and hence many of the issues that he was involved in as a diplomat, is incomplete. This neglect is underserved. As I argue in this thesis, his career was not only influential but also sheds new light on the Canadian diplomatic profession, on the DEA, and on some of the defining issues in Canadian international relations.

For decades after its creation in 1909, the DEA remained a small outfit of committed officers. Not surprisingly, it tended to reflect the personality and the interests of its head, who

4 Robert Bothwell, “Marcel Cadieux: The Ultimate Professional,” in Architects and Innovators: Building the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909-2009, eds. Greg Donaghy and Kim Richard Nossal (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009), 207-222. For a sample of the literature on the Canada-Quebec-France triangle in which Cadieux appears see Dale Thomson, Vive le Québec Libre (Toronto: Deneau, 1988); J.L. Granatstein and Robert Bothwell, Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990); J.F. Bosher, The Gaullist Attack on Canada, 1967-1997 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 1999); Robin Gendron, Towards a Francophone Community: Canada’s Relations with France and French Africa, 1945-1968 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006); David Meren, With Friends Like These: Entangled Nationalisms and the Canada-Quebec-France Triangle, 1944-1970 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012)

4 was the government’s foreign-policy adviser in the truest sense of the term. Two of Cadieux’s most important predecessors as under-secretary, O.D. Skelton and Norman Robertson, have been the subject of biographies by distinguished historians.5 So too has Lester B. Pearson.6 Other under-secretaries, whether they served in an acting or permanent capacity, have written memoirs of varying quality.7 Significantly, however, the DEA’s first two francophone under-secretaries,

Jules Léger and Cadieux, neither published their reminiscences nor have had biographies written about them. While this is perhaps understandable in the case of Léger, whose influence seems to have been limited, or at least difficult to discern, it is perplexing in the case of Cadieux, who made significant contributions at every stage of his career.

Part of the problem is that our image of the iconic federal civil servant remains much as

J.L. Granatstein sketched it in The Ottawa Men: The Civil Service Mandarins, 1935-1957

(1982): white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant.8 WASPs did in fact dominate the upper echelons of the federal civil service in this period, their towering reputations overshadowing the contributions of the minority actors. Because The Ottawa Men ends in 1957, our understanding of the mandarin class remains largely frozen in time. Perhaps, as Granatstein argues, the age of the mandarins was coming to an end, but where does this leave Cadieux, who was shaped by its ethos, who was deputy to its brightest light (Robertson), and who, because of the crisis of national unity in the 1960s, was as influential in his capacity of under-secretary as the mandarins of old? As one colleague told Cadieux days after de Gaulle’s cri du balcon, “As I have said to so many people on so many occasions, the responsibilities which you have been required to assume,

5 Norman Hillmer, O.D. Skelton: A Portrait of Canadian Ambition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015); J.L. Granatstein, A Man of Influence: Norman A. Robertson and Canadian Statecraft, 1929-68 (Ottawa: Deneau, 1981). 6 John English, Shadow of Heaven: The Life of Lester Pearson (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1989). 7 Escott Reid, Radical Mandarin: The Memoirs of Escott Reid (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989); Arnold Heeney, The Things That Are Caesar’s: Memoirs of a Canadian Public Servant (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972); Leolyn Dana Wilgress, Memoirs (Toronto: Ryerson, 1967). 8 J.L. Granatstein, The Ottawa Men: The Civil Service Mandarins 1935-1957 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1982).

5 related in large measures to special domestic developments outside the realm of international affairs, are more burdensome and wider in scope than the problems which have confronted any

Under-Secretary in the past.”9 Put simply, Cadieux was the definitive French-Canadian federal civil servant and one of the last great mandarins to serve Canada.

If Cadieux deserves to be in the same rank as Skelton and Robertson, his ethnicity and his politics have worked against such recognition. The words of another of Cadieux’s colleagues are enlightening on this score:

Marcel was a French persona. His character was French. His whole outlook was French. The trouble with so many of our ‘national heroes’ is that French Canadians have been tackled by English Canadians because French Canadians are wrapped up in their dreams of separatism. We often don’t see how important people like Marcel Cadieux were. [He] can only be handled by someone who can cope in French. People tend to judge Marcel as if he were an English Canadian masquerading or parading around in a funny costume. He was a French fact. His vision of French Canada saw Quebec as part of a wider truth and a wider power base. He had a lot of enemies.10

It is perhaps because Cadieux was such a “French persona” and a “French fact” that English-

Canadian historians have not paid as close attention to him as they should. The problem here is cultural and especially linguistic. It can no longer be assumed that Canadian historians, unlike the vast majority of their predecessors were, are fluently bilingual. The language issue means that many scholars today cannot cope with a subject like Cadieux, whose private writings are largely in French, and a very distinctive French at that. I am of French heritage (my ancestor was a certain Marie-Madeleine Cadieux who in 1677 married Antoine Fortier, the head of my mother’s line) and was educated at a francophone school in Saskatoon. I thus approached

Cadieux as a Fransaskois for whom both the language and the issues of my subject were readily accessible.

While it may have pleased Cadieux, given his vision of French Canada, to know that his career would be assessed by a francophone outside Quebec, it is regrettable that he has not

9 LAC/MC/4/6 – H.O. Moran to Cadieux, 2 August 1967. 10 Thomas Delworth, interview with the author, Ottawa, 2 August 2012.

6 received the attention he deserves inside Quebec. The history of the province is too often written as if there were only one theme, “the dream of nation,” to borrow the title of Susan Mann

Trofimenkoff’s excellent study on the subject, and consequently only two options for its French-

Canadian inhabitants: abstention from the larger Canadian nation or resistance to it. Cadieux embodied a third option that was and continues to be just as important but frequently overlooked: cooperation between English and French Canadians and a sense of mutual interest. My hope is that this study will prompt Québécois, historians and lay readers alike, to look at Cadieux’s career with a fresh and dispassionate eye.

It is of course not enough simply to describe that career from 1941 to 1970; it must be placed within a wider analytical framework. That framework, however, needs to be sufficiently broad and flexible to do justice to both the variety and complexity of the subject matter. Each stage of Cadieux’s career was distinctly different from the previous one, making it essential to avoid any overly rigid or narrow approach to it. Consequently, I argue that Cadieux’s contribution to the DEA was defined by three broad themes: his anti-communism, his belief in his work as both a diplomat and a civil servant, and his French-Canadian nationalism. While he was not the only member of the DEA to possess such convictions, he was unique in the way he came to embody them.

It is no exaggeration to say that Cadieux was probably the first and most prominent cold warrior in the DEA. His conservative Quebec Roman Catholicism predisposed him to a visceral hatred of communism as an ideology and to a deep suspicion of the Soviet Union as its main purveyor. These views influenced his attitude to the Cold War in general and to such specific issues as East-West relations, western defence, nuclear weapons, the UN, international law, and the Vietnam War. They also informed the tough negotiating stance that Cadieux believed the

West should take with the Soviet Union and its satellites and his strong support for the United

States, the leader of the so-called Free World. Needless to say, his anti-communism was at times a problem for his political superiors, who by personality and by profession were more flexible than he.

Cadieux was also passionate about his work as both a diplomat and a civil servant. Since

Canada was a relatively young country, he and many of his contemporaries conceived of the

DEA as the tangible expression of a newly won independence and believed that it was up to its diplomats to help form the nation’s fledgling identity. Of course, the Canadian foreign service was also young, and so Cadieux thought long and hard about what it meant to be a Canadian diplomat. He gave careful consideration as well to the role of the civil service and to its relationship to the government. As he saw it, the civil service represented nothing less than impartiality, continuity, the permanent interests of the state, and the highest calling for young people who wished to serve Canada. It was the ideal of a purist, one who had watched Norman

Robertson and other mandarins at work over the years, and Cadieux refused to compromise on it.

Not surprisingly, his sense of professionalism as a diplomat and a civil servant also led to friction with the politicians.

But it was French-Canadian nationalism that was dearest to Cadieux’s heart. A pan-

Canadian nationalist in the tradition of Henri Bourassa, he believed that French Canadians could and should find a place in the wider world beyond Quebec. It was this belief that brought

Cadieux to Ottawa in 1941 and which led him to become the strongest defender of French-

Canadian interests in the federal government. For two decades he worked hard to help not just

French Canadians in Quebec but those in other provinces. In the 1960s, however, in what the historian Marcel Martel has called the “break-up” of French Canada, a narrow Québécois nationalism supplanted the older French-Canadian variant and posed a direct threat to Canadian

8 national unity.11 Having always felt that there was nothing disloyal about identifying himself as both a Quebecker and a Canadian, Cadieux resisted the new nationalism and its attempts, with the assistance of Gaullist France, to establish an international legal personality for Quebec. It was a desperate battle that frequently led him to despair about the courage of his political masters and that left him with scars that would never heal.

I originally intended this study to be a full biography of Marcel Cadieux, from his birth in

Montreal in 1915 to his death in Pompano Beach, Florida, in 1981. However, it became clear to me last year that my goal was too ambitious. To give my readers a sense of who Cadieux was before his arrival in Ottawa in 1941, I will simply highlight a few key details about his life prior to his joining the DEA. He was the working-class son of Roméo Cadieux, a postman who worked long hours for little pay. He and his family, including a sister, lived in a small, semi- detached house at 10782 Boulevard St. Laurent in the Ahuntsic district in north Montreal. With the exception of an annual visit to relatives in Lowell, Massachusetts, Cadieux does not seem to have travelled outside Quebec. In the 1930s he graduated from the respectable (but not prestigious) Sulpician-run Collège André Grasset, earned degrees in economic and social studies

(LSEP) and law (LL.L.) from the Université de Montréal, and briefly did postgraduate work at

McGill University under Canadian constitutional expert Frank Scott while practising as a lawyer.

In tandem with his childhood friend Paul Tremblay, who was from Chicoutimi and who joined the DEA in 1940, Cadieux was a frequent contributor to student newspapers and nationalist periodicals in Quebec. Believing that Quebec’s future was with the rest of Canada and that he could interpret his home province to the national government, Cadieux took the relatively rare step for a French Canadian of seeking employment in Ottawa during the war.

11 Marcel Martel, French Canada: An Account of its Creation and Break-Up, 1850-1967 (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1998).

This biography, which is more a career study than a biography, thus begins with a chapter on Cadieux’s “premières armes” in the federal civil service, specifically his first seven years in

Ottawa, London, and Brussels. The focus is on his adaptation to a new environment, on his defence of French-Canadian interests, and on his formative time outside North America for the first time in his life. The second chapter, which covers the 1947-to-1955 years of Cadieux’s career, examines how he came to see himself as both a diplomat and a cold warrior by studying his early responses to the Cold War, his tenure as DEA Personnel Officer, his time with NATO, and his traumatic six months in Vietnam. The period from 1955 to 1963 is the subject of the third chapter, which describes Cadieux’s rapid ascent of the departmental ladder, first as head of UN

Division in 1955, then as assistant under-secretary and legal adviser in 1956, and finally as deputy under-secretary in 1960. Among the key issues discussed are Cadieux’s adjustment to the

Progressive Conservative government of John Diefenbaker, his contributions as an international lawyer, his relationship to under-secretary Norman Robertson, and his first reactions to the Quiet

Revolution sweeping Quebec.

The pinnacle of Cadieux’s career was his time as under-secretary and so I have devoted four chapters to it. Chapter Four examines Cadieux’s relationship with his minister, Paul Martin, and argues that its difficulties owed much to their respective professions as civil servant and politician. Chapter Five expands on this theme by considering the defining issues in Canadian foreign policy in the mid-1960s, including the Cyprus and United Nations Emergency Force

(UNEF) crises, relations with the United States, Canada’s diplomatic recognition of the People’s

Republic of China (PRC), the Vietnam War, and the Canadian defence effort in NATO. Special attention is also paid to how Cadieux and the DEA were often caught between the imperatives of their minister and of the prime minister, an experienced diplomat. The final two chapters in this thesis, Chapter Six and Chapter Seven, examine Cadieux’s critical role in Ottawa’s attempts to

10 counter the combined assault of Gaullist France and nationalist Quebec. Because it was

Cadieux’s greatest contribution as a French-Canadian civil servant, it is examined here, for the first time, in comprehensive detail.

Of course, as I point out in my conclusion, Cadieux’s career did not end with his involvement in the Canada-Quebec-France triangle. Indeed, I wrote three additional chapters covering the last twelve years or so of Cadieux’s life, including his response as under-secretary to the new Trudeau government, his years as the first French-Canadian ambassador to the United

States, and his final assignments as head of the Canadian mission to the European Economic

Community (EEC) and as Canadian representative in major negotiations with the United States over fisheries and maritime boundaries. When these three chapters were added to the seven previously described, however, my total word count approached 250,000. Out of respect for the

Department of History at the University of Toronto, which has kindly allowed me to submit a thesis over (within reason) the prescribed length, and in order not to try the patience of my readers, who are already being asked to read a thesis that is longer than usual, I chose to omit my final three chapters. This was a source of keen regret to me, particularly since it results in a lack of symmetry among my chapters and prevents an assessment of Cadieux’s career as a whole, but it was the only practical solution.

The sources on which this study is based are diverse and make substantial use of material from five major archives: Library and Archives Canada (LAC) in Ottawa, the Bibliothèque et

Archives nationales du Québec (BANQ) in Quebec City, the National Archives and Records

Administration (NARA) in College Park, Maryland, the United Kingdom National Archives

(UKNA) in Kew, and the archives of the French Ministère des Affaires Extérieures (MAE) in La

Courneuve. To a lesser extent, I also make use of files from the archives of the University of

Toronto, of Trinity College, of York University, of the University of Saskatchewan, of the

Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, and of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

My full thesis includes material as well from the archives of the European Commission in

Brussels and from the Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan presidential libraries.

The most important of these archives was LAC, which is home to the Fonds Marcel

Cadieux, a collection of more than forty volumes to which I was granted unrestricted access.

These papers are rich: Cadieux kept nearly everything he wrote – from class notes, to private letters, to a diary – and expressed his opinions with verve and candour. As good as they were, however, Cadieux’s papers could not provide a complete picture of his career and so I explored many of the private collections of his friends, of his colleagues, and of the politicians he served.

But personal papers are of uneven quality. Not surprisingly, the best source for Cadieux’s career was the records of the DEA. Of course, this material is organized by topic, not by author, and so

I consulted files from over five hundred volumes in an effort to recreate and to assess a complex career. Some files had never been consulted and so they were closed, prompting me to submit over one hundred access-to-information requests to have them opened. When the records of the

DEA led to dead ends or raised more questions than they answered, I broadened my search to include the files of other federal departments and agencies, including the Privy Council Office

(PCO). In short, the private and official files at LAC were so important and so voluminous that I chose to forfeit my teaching assistantship at the University of Toronto to live in Ottawa for two years, from May 2011 to May 2013, in order to give these files my full attention.

The national capital is of course home to many retired civil servants and diplomats, making it possible to interview those of them who had known and worked with Cadieux.

Including those people to whom I spoke over the phone, I ultimately interviewed over sixty individuals whose names can be found in my bibliography. I also met in person in Montreal with

Cadieux’s two sons, François and René, and had a number of discussions with them about their father over Skype and email. While this thesis does not make use of every conversation that I had about Cadieux, each one helped me to form a better impression of what he was like as a man. I came to see that it was not only what in his various capacities Cadieux did, but also how he did it that was important. My hope is that he appears to the reader, not as a cardboard figure, but as a real and complex human being.

To this end, it was important to know what Cadieux’s opponents in the Quebec government in the 1960s thought of him. The material held at BANQ proved especially helpful in this regard, particularly the private papers of Claude Morin, André Patry, and Jean

Chapdelaine. As for official government files, the archives of the Ministère des affaires internationales, created as the department of federal-provincial affairs in 1961 and renamed the department of intergovernmental affairs in 1967, were useful in gauging how Quebec both pursued its international activities and reacted to Ottawa’s determined attempts to circumscribe them. Although BANQ files form only a small part of my research on Cadieux, my time in

Quebec City was invaluable.

No historian of Canadian international relations can afford to ignore foreign archives. At

NARA I consulted the Canadian records of the Department of State, including its Central Files

(Central Decimal and Subject-Numeric) and its Lot files. It was illuminating to see how often

Cadieux appeared in this material and what impression he made on the American diplomats with whom he came into contact. Perhaps more importantly, NARA material gave me an outside, that is, a non-Canadian, perspective on a number of issues in which Cadieux was intimately involved, including the two Geneva conferences on the law of the sea in 1958 and 1960, the Vietnam War, and the Canada-Quebec-France triangle. The same went for my time at the UKNA, where I consulted Cabinet Office (CAB), Foreign Office (FO), Dominion Office (DO), and Foreign

Commonwealth Office (FCO) files. As with the documents at College Park, the material held at

Kew provided me with a window on Canadian foreign policy. Moreover, the candid remarks of

Canadian diplomats, including Cadieux, to their British counterparts helped to supplement their more guarded comments in the records of the DEA. Finally, my work at the French diplomatic archives of the MAE, where I was able to consult the entirety of the MAE’s files on Canada between 1960 and 1970, was instrumental in helping me to understand the Gaullist intervention in Canada, the defining issue of Cadieux’s career. All told, my time at LAC, BANQ, NARA, the

UKNA, and the archives of the MAE represented more than two years and three months of full- time primary research. While this is a relatively long period for a doctoral student to spend in the archives, I feel that it was justified on account of the scope and importance of Cadieux’s career.

Chapter One Premières Armes: Ottawa, London, Brussels, 1941-1947

Cadieux’s initiation into wartime Ottawa was profoundly unsettling. It was a period that would remain forever etched in his memory as “le grand déracinement.”1 Upon his arrival there in August 1941 he felt as if he had entered a foreign country: the customs were mysterious, the structures were byzantine, and the language was alien. Montreal was all that Cadieux had ever known. He had moved once before, in the 1920s, but merely from one part of the island to another. The annual visit to Lowell, Massachusetts aside, he had travelled little, if at all, beyond

Quebec. The family house at 10782 Boulevard St. Laurent, he recalled, was “un peu comme une

église, un monument: un point fixe dans un univers d’une stabilité rassurante.”2 Montreal was home to his relatives, to his friends, and to his mentors. He knew the city’s French-language newspapers, its editors, its artists, and its intellectual leaders.3 Until now he had communicated almost exclusively in his native tongue. Despite his brief stint at McGill, he had made no

English-Canadian friends and, if asked, would likely have been unable to name even one with whom he was acquainted. Simply put, Marcel Cadieux was a French fact, one half of what author Hugh MacLennan would soon term the “two solitudes.”

I – Ottawa

From the start, Ottawa seemed small, bleak, and thoroughly uncultured. There was little music, less theatre, and none of that animated “variété” and “abondance” that characterized the intellectual life of Montreal. A new arrival, Cadieux noted, had only to spend a Sunday afternoon in the city to realize that time itself moved more slowly.4 To be sure, the capital was not without

1 LAC/MC/42/10 – Marcel Cadieux, “Trente résidences” (Speech to the Quebec Medical Association, 30 November 1962), 11. 2 Ibid., 2. 3 LAC/MC/22/1 – Marcel Cadieux, “Allocution” (Speech to the dinner of Franco-Americans, Lowell, Massachusetts, 24 June 1973), 4-5. 4 Marcel Cadieux, Embruns (Ottawa: Le Cercle du Livre de France, 1951), 13-14.

14 15 its charm: the Rideau Canal meandered peacefully through its centre, the neo-Gothic Parliament buildings were perched impressively above the Ottawa River, and the natural beauty of the

Gatineau hills was just a short distance away to the north. But there was plenty of urban blight as well: slums and dreary streets, particularly in the impoverished quarter of Lower Town; lumber yards, stubborn heirs to the dying industry that had once been the city’s lifeblood; and a downtown core crisscrossed by railway tracks, its residents inconvenienced by the more than one hundred trains which pulled in and out of Ottawa daily, belching smoke and leaving a layer of soot in their wake.5 Selected by Queen Victoria in 1857 in part because of its symbolic position between the two ethnic groups of Upper and Lower Canada, the capital in 1941 still had not shed its reputation as a provincial backwater. Compared to the over 900,000 residents living in

Montreal, Ottawa was home to a mere 155,000. Montreal’s French population represented 66 percent of its total, whereas only 31 percent of those residing in the nation’s capital were francophone.6 Concentrated in Lower Town, Ottawa’s French Canadians were predominantly working class, eking out an existence in the teeth of a weak manufacturing base, a declining industrial sector, and a booming but unilingual civil service.7 Cadieux’s disenchantment with the city extended to its restaurants. As a bachelor unable to cook for himself, though a great lover of food, he had no choice but to eat out every night. Ottawa, he soon discovered, was a culinary wasteland. It got to the point where, upon leaving work, he dreaded the evening meal: “Un faible effort d’imagination et je respirais l’odeur caractéristique du restaurant choisi; je savais les menus par coeur. Parfois, j’étais trop dégoûté et je dînais d’une tablette de chocolat.”8 Finally, there was the problem of housing. Ottawa may have been small, at least compared to Montreal or

Toronto, but its rapid wartime expansion ensured that it was also overcrowded, with lodging

5 Shirley E. Woods, Ottawa: The Capital of Canada (Toronto: Doubleday, 1980), 281. Woods adds that there were one hundred and fifty level crossings within the city’s limits. 6 Eighth Census of Canada 1941, Volume 3, “Table 13: Population by racial origin, age groups and sex, for cities of 30,000 and over, 1941,” 186-86. 7 John H. Taylor, Ottawa: An Illustrated History (Toronto: Lorimer, 1986), 119-20. 8 Marcel Cadieux, Premières Armes (Ottawa: Le Cercle du Livre de France, 1951), 48.

16 scarce and rental rates among the steepest in the country. Cadieux’s first room was on the third floor of a boarding house on Laurier Avenue. As he reminisced, his window offered a magnificent view of nothing at all while his hosts, two dour unmarried women who lived off the income from their rooms, watched his movements carefully.9

The transition from Montreal to Ottawa, already jarring, was made even more painful for

Cadieux by the rigid attitude of his family. Advancement, they insisted, was to be found in the legal profession, the traditional breeding ground for Quebec’s elite, and not in some precarious existence outside the province’s borders. Cadieux’s success as a lawyer could have helped his entire tribu – the affectionate name given to his immediate and extended family – by enabling him to handle its affairs and to provide its younger members with an education. By forsaking this career path he was made to feel that he had forsaken the family. For Cadieux’s father, “having a son in Ottawa [was] like having a daughter who is a prostitute.” The law office, which Roméo had furnished at his own expense, was kept open for six months in the vain hope that his wayward son would return. It would take ten years, Cadieux was told, for his salary in Ottawa to match what his law practice might have raked in from a clientele built up through the family contacts. As well, he was pointedly reminded of the many eligible women inhabiting Montreal and of the family car whose use was granted to those who did not stray from home. To maintain ties with his family, and to escape an environment that was uncongenial at the best of times,

Cadieux returned to Montreal every weekend that he spent in Canada between 1941 and his marriage in 1956.10

When Cadieux arrived at the Department of External Affairs on 21 August 1941, the outcome of the war was very much in doubt. The United States clung stubbornly to its neutrality,

England had survived the Blitz only to be left exhausted by the ordeal, and the Soviet Union was

9 LAC/MC/42/10 – Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 3-4. 10 Marcel Cadieux, interview with Don M. Page, Global Affairs Canada Oral History Collection, Ottawa, 29 June 1979.

17 in full retreat before the German invasion. Thus, the imperatives of total war had decisively swept away the calculated aloofness of Canadian foreign policy in the 1930s. To a newcomer, the East Block of the parliament buildings at this time would have been very impressive, not to say daunting, for within its walls were found the DEA, the Department of Finance, the Privy

Council Office, and the Prime Minister’s Office. It also housed many of the “mandarins,” the elite of the bureaucracy. Theirs was a cozy world where government policy was made in offices concealed behind green baize doors or over lunch at the Chateau Laurier cafeteria. Those French

Canadians who were part of the civil service, and who therefore might aspire to join its senior ranks, were acutely aware of not being entirely of it. The source of their alienation was the dominance of the English language. The proportion of French-speaking employees in the administration had long been in decline: from an estimated 36 percent in 1863, to 22 percent in

1918, to a paltry 13 percent by 1946.11 Once sheltered by patronage, they were now being rejected by a Civil Service Commission whose system of merit prized education but made no provision for French. Those who squeaked through had to assimilate and fast. “This cultural blindness in Ottawa,” writes the historian J.L. Granatstein, “has to be seen as an unconscious expression of the English-Canadian view of Quebec as a land of happy (if slightly disloyal) peasants, notaries, and priests.”12 With twelve officers out of about forty-five, the DEA certainly had a higher proportion of French Canadians than any other federal department. Yet within the

East Block the only French words overheard were the ones spoken by francophones within their own circle.13 A strong British influence permeated the department, half of whose officers had been educated in England. Its head, Norman Robertson, was a Rhodes Scholar, while senior

11 J.E. Hodgetts, Pioneer Public Service: An Administrative History of the United Canadas, 1841-1867 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1955), 57; The Work World, vol. 3, Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1969), 101. Hodgetts cautions that the 36 percent figure from 1863 is deceptive since French Canadians also accounted for a mere 22 percent of the payroll. 12 Granatstein, The Ottawa Men, 6. 13 John English, Shadow of Heaven, 149. As English notes, neither Pearson nor his colleagues found this situation “unusual or deplorable.”

18 advisers like John Read, Hume Wrong, and Lester B. Pearson were fellow Oxonians. Like most

Canadians, those who served in the DEA viewed the world through the prism of the Anglo-

Saxon capitals of London and Washington.

That Cadieux’s grasp of English was rudimentary was obvious from his very first days in the department. Basic comprehension was not a problem; English-language movies and magazines had been too prevalent in Montreal to go unabsorbed. The greater challenge was adapting to an unaccommodating tongue, the peculiar idioms, formulae, and tournures of which frequently defeated him. It was not enough to speak and to write in English; as he himself noted, you practically had to think in that language as well. In a profession where communication is paramount, and in a department which insisted that submissions be analytical, succinct, and above all precise, Cadieux watched jealously as anglophone officers effortlessly plucked the required lexicon out of thin air. By contrast, a French-English dictionary rested conspicuously on his desk, a testament to hours spent in laborious translation. Sometimes, charitable and patient colleagues coached him. Often he would simply make copies of letters in English in order to provide himself with models of polished prose. Such working conditions produced in Cadieux a kind of mental paralysis. For what seemed like forever, Ottawa for him had only one redeeming quality: the Saturday train to Montreal. Escape was always too brief. On Monday morning, seeing the spires and turrets of Parliament loom into view, he was filled with dread at the prospect of operating once more under a crippling linguistic uniformity.14

No rule prohibited Cadieux from writing in French, just a stark reality. A memo composed in that language, no matter how elegant or cogent, was doomed to have a limited circulation, if any at all. Who would read it? Not the senior officers, many of whom were

14 For a sample of Cadieux’s comments on coping with Ottawa’s unilingualism, see Marcel Cadieux, “Débuts dans la carrière diplomatique,” L’action universitaire 14, no. 4 (July 1948): 290-91; LAC/MC/22/1 – Cadieux, “Allocution,” 5; LAC/MC/13/1 – Journal intime, 24 January 1972; LAC/MC/42/10 – Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 4; Marcel Cadieux, GAC interview, 29 June 1979; Cadieux, Embruns, 13; Françoise Côté, “Marcel Cadieux, nouvel ambassadeur du Canada aux États-Unis. Diplomate de carrière; ‘antidiplomate’ quand il le faut,” Le Droit, 7 March 1970.

19 unilingual and not eager to be reminded of it. The French memo, adorned with accents and cedillas added by hand, was a curiosity. On the rare occasions when one appeared, it was quickly swept away by the ceaseless flow of English-language documentation. Nor did the strange customs of the Ottawa bureaucracy make matters easier for Cadieux. His first secretary was both competent and bilingual, a rarity in the civil service and an asset to someone caught uneasily between two languages. When it came time for her performance review, his first such exercise, he was effusive in his praise. Three weeks later – to his amazement – the bilingual secretary was reassigned to someone else. After all, if she were as talented as he said, there was more important work for her to do elsewhere in the department.15

Lonely, disoriented, and overwhelmed, Cadieux might well have left the service had it not been for Laurent Beaudry, the DEA’s ranking francophone and an assistant under-secretary.

His title belied his real status. While his colleagues wrestled with questions of policy, Beaudry contented himself with matters of protocol and procedure. Nearing retirement and in ill health, he was a loyal if easily ignored member of the department.16 To the wartime francophone recruits, however, he was a protector and guide. A kind and gentle man, Beaudry understood their sense of isolation and tried to mitigate it. Recognizing Cadieux’s potential, but also his one great limitation, he assigned him to the protocol section of the Diplomatic and Commercial Division which he oversaw. In an age before the formal training of new officers in the DEA Beaudry sheltered Cadieux for nearly a year, saving him from certain embarrassment at the hands of less indulgent superiors. The work he did – which involved visas, passports, and exit permits – was hardly engrossing, but it served to initiate him into the methods and expectations of the East

15 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 15 February 1968. 16 When in 1937 Beaudry demanded that all correspondence to and from the DEA be conducted in French so long as he was acting under-secretary and Senator Dandurand was acting prime minister, Mackenzie King blamed Beaudry’s “nervous condition” and advised him to take a paid leave. Mackenzie King Diary, 22 April 1937; ibid., 23 April 1937; Lita-Rose Betcherman, Ernest Lapointe: Mackenzie King’s Great Quebec Lieutenant (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 380n17.

Block, albeit in one of its less intimidating corners.17 One day, in the spring of 1942, the humdrum of the protocol section was disturbed by the telephone’s ring. Cadieux answered.

“There’s someone here calling himself Saint X Perry, should we let him in?” asked the passport officer in Montreal on the other end. “Antoine de Saint-Exupéry?” replied the amazed Cadieux in perfect French. “Yeah, that’s the guy,” was the response.18 The French author, who had been living in exile in the United States and who in 1943 would publish Le Petit Prince, was eventually allowed into Canada, but visa problems (with the Americans, as it turned out) kept him there for five weeks instead of the two-day promotional visit his Canadian publisher had originally planned.19

Above all, Beaudry was a dedicated family man who knew well the appeal of hearth and home to his young Québécois charges. Every weekend, without fail, Cadieux and the other francophone officers left for Montreal. Would they return? If the resolve to persevere in Ottawa weakened in one, would it weaken in all? Alert to these dangers, Beaudry issued invitations to dinner at his house one week in advance, making his guests promise that they would attend.20

There, in the privacy and warmth of a French-Canadian home, the junior officers commiserated.

As Cadieux recalled to Beaudry, “Je n’oublie pas qu’à mon arrivée, alors que le moral était très

ébranlé, j’ai trouvé dans votre maison l’encouragement, les bons conseils et l’accueil qui m’ont décidé à rester à Ottawa. ”21 While Beaudry may have been a cipher, his role in retaining junior

French Canadian officers in Ottawa was instrumental.

If the DEA employed a greater proportion of francophones than other departments,

Cadieux soon learned that this was because many of them preferred service abroad to toil in

17 LAC/LB/3/40 – Diplomatic Commercial Division [undated document from late 1941 or mid-1942 listing the assignment of duties within the division]. 18 François and René Cadieux, interview with the author, Montreal, 22 May 2012. 19 Stacy Schiff, Saint-Exupéry: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 375-76. Schiff also notes that Saint-Exupéry, who left the United States without an exit permit, was admitted into Canada despite “the requisite papers.” 20 Cadieux, GAC interview, 27 June 1979. 21 LAC/MC/1/9, Cadieux to Laurent Beaudry, 8 November 1949.

Ottawa. The bureaucracy’s greasy pole was crowded enough; to reach the top while having to operate in a strange language seemed almost hopeless. Old hands like Jean Désy, Pierre Dupuy, and Georges Vanier (unlike the first two, a political appointment) sought refuge in the more congenial atmosphere of a foreign post – preferably in Europe, ideally in France. This career choice, understandable if not natural, was resented by some English-speaking colleagues. Hume

Wrong, a senior officer from Toronto who was as acerbic as he was brilliant, made clear to

Cadieux that such aspirations represented a dereliction of duty. Wrong’s particular bête noire was Dupuy, a dapper little lawyer from Montreal who had joined the DEA in 1922 and who until the war had served exclusively in Paris. One winter Wrong attempted to repatriate Dupuy, who had been forced to move to London after the fall of France. Recalled to headquarters for consultations, the unhappy man all but barricaded himself in his room at the Chateau Laurier for weeks. On the street Cadieux and others would chance upon Dupuy, scarf tightly wrapped around his neck and face, “parlant à voix basse et nous disant que le climat du Canada était trop dur pour un homme comme lui, habitué à la température plus douce de l’Europe.” A prolonged stay in Ottawa, warned Dupuy, would kill him. Faced with such strident protests Wrong gave up.22 Yet the meaning of the episode was not lost on Cadieux, who took an increasingly critical view of the DEA’s first generation of francophones.

Headquarters in Ottawa, while not as glamorous as an embassy abroad, was nonetheless the centre of debate and decision-making, the only place where a direct and sustained influence over government policy was possible. The DEA’s new French-speaking recruits – including Jean

Chapdelaine, Jules Léger, Paul Tremblay, Paul Beaulieu, and Cadieux himself – were determined to make their mark at home. War work in the department had created an array of new and interesting opportunities that had never existed for Désy, Dupuy, and Vanier. Rivals as much as friends, the new officers competed with each other and with their anglophone colleagues for

22 LAC/MC/12/11 – Journal intime, 29 May 1969.

22 the attention of their superiors. To Cadieux no issue mattered more than national unity. A self- described French-Canadian nationalist, but also an avowed federalist, he felt that he had no right to complain about Quebec’s lot if he were not prepared to go to Ottawa himself. There, refusing to act simply as a cog in a vast machine, he aimed to represent the province. He was convinced that French Canada, already chronically underrepresented in the civil service, could not afford to have its voice muted. Much earlier than has been recognized – indeed, from the very start of his career – Cadieux carved out a role for himself in the DEA as, in his own words, the “témoin, interprète, [and] avocat” of French Canadians.23

The effect of Canada’s war effort on public opinion in Quebec greatly preoccupied

Cadieux. He had left his gloomy boarding house for the third floor of a comfortable home on

Marlborough Avenue, in the old residential quarter of Sandy Hill, where he was reunited with

Paul Tremblay. Their living room became the site of lively discussions with Lorenzo Paré of l’Action Catholique, with Léopold Richer of Le Devoir, and with the maverick Jesuit François

Hertel – influential nationalists all. “Ces réunions,” Cadieux reflected, “nous permettaient de garder contact avec les réalités québécoises et d’établir de quelle façon il y avait lieu d’engager le débat avec nos partenaires de langue anglaise.”24 How was the war to be conducted? What attitude should be taken towards the ultra-catholic and collaborationist Vichy regime in France?

Was conscription inevitable? These and a host of other questions impinged on Quebec in complex ways. To Cadieux and Tremblay, writing in La Revue Dominicaine, Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 had forever shattered Canada’s “splendide indifférence” towards world problems. Whereas military conflict had once been the stumbling block to Canadian unity, it might now become “un des principaux facteurs de sa réalisation.”25

23 “M. Marcel Cadieux, ‘diplomate canadien,’” La Presse, 22 March 1962. 24 LAC/MC/42/10 – Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 6. 25 Marcel Cadieux and Paul Tremblay, “Le Canada et la guerre du Pacifique,” Revue Dominicaine 48, no. 1 (February 1942): 119.

The prediction was unduly optimistic. Ernest Lapointe had died in November 1941 and with him the government’s strongest voice from Quebec. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, to whose Presbyterian soul the province was unfathomable, selected as Lapointe’s replacement

Louis St. Laurent, a distinguished corporation lawyer from Quebec City. The choice proved to be an inspired one, but it did not go unnoticed that St. Laurent entered cabinet without pledging to resign from it if conscription were enacted. It was that very policy which the Conservative Party and a growing chorus of English Canadians now began to demand. The promises of 1939 and

1940, made during the Phoney War, were increasingly embarrassing to the King Government, and in April 1942 it held a national plebiscite asking to be released from them. While the rest of

Canada obligingly voted “yes,” Quebec decisively voted “non.” King took refuge in delay, but for some French Canadians the damage was done.

Cadieux and Tremblay were perturbed by the turn of events. To clarify their thoughts on the subject, and to make use of the tranquil hours of their night shifts in the East Block, they completed a study of “Quebec and the Conscription Issue.” Many factors, they argued, accounted for the hostility of French Canadians: their powerlessness over their economic destiny; their scepticism that Canada was in direct military danger; their ambivalence towards both Vichy

France and Free France; and their view that the Canadian Army was prejudiced against them. In particular, Cadieux and Tremblay blamed the myopia of the two national parties who after 1917 had refused to admit their blunders in implementing conscription, preferring instead to make rash and repeated promises never again to enact it. Having laid the foundation for Quebec’s opposition to compulsory military service, and having failed to disabuse citizens about the gravity of the war from the start, the politicians had now aroused French Canada’s ire with the plebiscite. The problem was largely psychological. Conscription, based on a potent mythology and linked to the divisive Ontario schools question, had become “a symbol of all things past

24 which should not have been done and of all things which in their suspicious moments minorities fear from racial majorities.” Cadieux and Tremblay did more than simply analyze nationalist grievances – they also offered solutions. Federal propaganda in Quebec, which had been mishandled from the start, stood to benefit from a closer collaboration with the provincial authorities. New senators from Quebec, chosen on merit rather than because of party loyalty, would counter the impression that the prime minister was now without close advisers from the province. Finally, a policy aimed at “putting an end” to the under-representation of French

Canadians in the federal civil service was badly needed.26

Cadieux and Tremblay’s study was neither particularly eloquent nor strikingly original.

What it was, however, was unapologetically honest, the kind of piece that junior officers rarely submit to their superiors, much less to the head of their department. But this is exactly what they did when they deposited a copy of it on Norman Robertson’s desk. A native of Vancouver and an economist by training, the under-secretary had no deep understanding of Quebec, but he grasped full well the importance of national unity to the prime minister. This is no doubt why, having read the memo, Robertson forwarded it to Mackenzie King. Cadieux and Tremblay, he informed him in a covering letter, were “typical of the best side of the younger generation in Quebec.”

Their study was “earnest and illuminating” and its several policy suggestions deserved attention.27 King read the memo in its entirety, liberally marking passages in the margin. The paper’s influence on him – if any – cannot be divined, but its authors must have been ecstatic that he had read it at all. Here was proof that the lowliest French-Canadian civil servants could be heard at the highest echelons of government.

Greatly encouraged, Cadieux and Tremblay decided to build on their original report, this time using the new science of polling. Dr. George Gallup’s pioneering techniques of survey

26 LAC/Fonds William Lyon Mackenzie King fonds (WLMK)/J4/358/3831 – Cadieux and Paul Tremblay to Norman Robertson, 6 May 1942. 27 LAC/WLMK/J4/358/3831 – Robertson to the Prime Minister, 6 June 1942.

25 sampling had come north in 1941 with the founding of the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion

(CIPO). Accompanied by Saul Rae, a junior officer in the under-secretary’s office who had worked closely with Gallup at Princeton University, Cadieux and Tremblay visited New Jersey for a weekend “postgraduate seminar” with Hadley Cantril.28 A social psychologist, Cantril had created Princeton’s Office of Public Opinion Research in 1940 and throughout the war would use its data as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s secret pollster and the White House’s first regular supplier of information on public trends.29 Their crash course on polling complete,

Cadieux and Tremblay spent the last two weeks of July 1942 in the field in Quebec. While replicating the Gallup Poll’s method of dividing respondents proportionally by income class, age group, and geographic area, the pair eschewed its rigid “yes” or “no” answer format in favour of long conversations aimed at eliciting “why.” The results, embodied in a hefty fifty-five page report, were a gloomy if predictable snapshot of the state of feeling in Quebec: there was cynicism that the war was fought not for ideals but for special interests; there was suspicion that

London was manipulating the Canadian war effort; and there was disbelief that, having grudgingly accepted every other wartime exigency, Quebec was now being asked to swallow the one policy it abhorred – conscription. The poll was somewhat amateurish in that whole regions had gone uncanvassed and the sample size of eighty-seven respondents was small. As the authors rightly pointed out, however, its findings nonetheless tallied closely with those of the most recent

Gallup survey of Quebec, one based on two thousand interviews.30 For the second time, Cadieux and Tremblay’s work received an unusual degree of attention in high places. Mackenzie King was first given a preliminary briefing of it followed by the full report, copies of which were also

28 LAC/Department of External Affairs (DEA)/2927/2798-40/1 – Robertson to Hadley Cantril, 24 July 1942; LAC/WLMK/J4/358/3831 – Robertson to the Prime Minister, 10 July 1942; LAC/DEA/5753/54-B(s)/1 – Robertson to the Prime Minister, 21 October 1942. 29 Adam J. Berinsky, In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 34; Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 (New York: Random House, 2013), 343. 30 LAC/DEA/5753/54-B(s)/1 – Cadieux, Saul F. Rae, and Tremblay, “Quebec and the Present War: A Study of Public Opinion.”

26 passed to Charles Vining and Philippe Brais, respectively chairman and vice-chairman of the newly constituted Wartime Information Board (WIB). Lester B. Pearson, the DEA’s representative on the WIB, was informed that the study’s results were of “extreme interest” and that, together with the Gallup Poll, they would provide a “starting point” for the board’s work.31

After only one year in Ottawa, and in spite of his perennial frustration with the English language, Cadieux was quickly becoming the DEA’s expert on Quebec. It was a role he coveted and when Tremblay was posted to Washington in early 1943, it was one he dominated. His weekend trips to Montreal were no longer simply flights from a unilingual environment – they were opportunities to take the popular pulse. His hometown, Cadieux reported after one visit, was in the midst of a kind of “Renaissance” that would have been unimaginable before the war.

In all of the arts, including literature, music, and theatre, the place was “teeming with activity.”

Both the catalyst for and the effect of this revival, Cadieux argued, was a growing nationalism.

Culture and politics were intertwined. Take, for example, Plateau Hall, an auditorium where twice a month eager crowds gathered to hear rousing speeches by the veteran nationalist Henri

Bourassa. The admission price was fifty cents a person, funds that were then donated to the Bloc

Populaire, a new political party in Quebec which favoured neutrality in the war. Another case of the mingling of the cultural and the political involved, though Cadieux did not say it, two former law classmates of his. At the last election of the Montreal St. Jean Baptiste Society Roger

Duhamel of Le Devoir had been elected President General, while Jean Drapeau, the self- proclaimed “candidat des conscrits” defeated in the federal by-election for Outremont in 1942, had been chosen Director General. The result was that the Bloc, with which they were both affiliated, now had “interesting contacts in every French-Canadian parish.”32 Cadieux’s analysis was read by senior officers and then forwarded to Mackenzie King. The cultural Renaissance in

31 LAC/DEA/5753/54-B(s)/1 – Robertson to the Prime Minister, 21 October 1942; LAC/DEA/2927/2798-40/1 – Rae to Lester B. Pearson, 11 September 1942. 32 LAC/DEA/2877/1989-40/1 – Cadieux to Thomas A. Stone, 2 December 1943.

Montreal was promising but, as Robertson warned the prime minister, it could “just as easily be diverted into narrowly racial channels.”33

Cadieux might feign detachment when interpreting Quebec to his superiors, but his strong opinions on the subject were rarely in doubt. One day in 1943 he presented his supervisor with a two-page excerpt from Le Devoir of a speech by the nationalist leader Paul Gouin. In his accompanying memo he conceded that the speech went too far, but he nevertheless defended its thesis that for French Canadians “collaboration” with the rest of the country was “only acceptable if compatible with self-respect and survival.” To Cadieux three goals were crucial:

“(a) economic emancipation of Quebec; (b) a proportionate share of influence at Ottawa; (c) recognition of the status of French Canadians outside Quebec on the same basis as that of Anglo-

Canadians in Quebec.” Should it be decided that (a) and (b) were unattainable within

Confederation, Cadieux predicted that (c) would be abandoned and “secession” contemplated. At the heart of the matter, once again, was conscription. If Ottawa chose to enforce the measure over Quebec’s opposition it would be taken as “conclusive proof” that (b) was impossible. The debate would then become whether “economic liberation” was best pursued independently or with the help of a federal government in which French Canadians “have lost nearly all confidence.”34 As it turned out, his sharp-eyed analysis, while unquestionably alarmist in 1942, foreshadowed the bitter political struggles in Quebec two decades later. The memo was read with interest but given no further circulation, perhaps because Gouin himself commanded little respect.

There could be an unseemly restlessness to Cadieux, a congenital disposition exacerbated by his feeling that Quebec was often misunderstood within the federal government. Once, for example, he had written a memo for the under-secretary that went unanswered for weeks.

33 LAC/WLMK/J4/275/2802 – Robertson to the Prime Minister, 5 December 1943. 34 LAC/DEA/2877/1989-40/1 – Cadieux to Stone, 1 May 1943.

Impatient, and his ego no doubt bruised, he told Robertson that if his work continued to be ignored he would return to Montreal and join the staff at Le Devoir, “where people will read what I write.” The head of the DEA urged him to reconsider, noting that delay was not always what it seemed. As it turned out, and unbeknownst to its author, the memo in question had been submitted to the prime minister. Cadieux later pointed to this episode to convince French

Canadians that they could have a say over federal policy that was not always obvious.35

Anxious as Cadieux was about Quebec, however, he tried not to let it jeopardize the position of advocacy that he was building for himself in Ottawa. As a result, he was increasingly sought out within the DEA for his awareness of the mood prevailing in French Canada and for his views on any policy that might affect it. His candour and wit were a refreshing departure from the staid prose of bureaucracy. When queried, for instance, about the plan of the Free

French delegation in Canada to appoint an army chaplain, Cadieux noted that it would offset the impression in Quebec that these Frenchmen were heirs to the godless Third Republic. But the crux of the matter, he hastened to add, was the choice of the chaplain himself. A shrewd one would refrain from criticizing French-Canadian views and would downplay his “democratic and

‘fighting’ convictions.” The chaplain’s most useful work, Cadieux opined, “would consist in being seen as often as possible and heard as little as possible except on innocuous subjects such as literature and philosophy.” When Gabriel Bonneau, the head of the Free French in Canada, was told of Cadieux’s assessment, he was not at all offended by its bluntness; on the contrary, he praised its good sense.36

In advising the DEA on French Canada, Cadieux tried to follow the golden mean. He rejected, on the one hand, an excessive nationalism which transformed Quebec’s demands into absolute imperatives, but he was just as critical of a “bonne ententisme” that subordinated the

35 Cadieux, GAC interview, 29 June 1979. 36 LAC/DEA/2793/712-Q-40/1 – Cadieux to Stone, 16 February 1943; LAC/DEA/2793/712-Q-40/1 – Stone to Robertson and Hume Wrong, 15 February 1943.

French-Canadian factor to some misplaced conception of the national interest.37 In truth, at least as a junior officer, Cadieux punished the second sin far more mercilessly than the first. A case in point was a radio programme in 1943 proposed by the fledgling “Union démocratique du Canada français” that was designed to further mutual understanding between English and French

Canadians. Faced with a tepid response from the WIB, its promoter, the noted Quebec journalist

Jean-Louis Gagnon, tried to enlist allies in the DEA. When Cadieux got wind of the project, he wasted no time ripping it to shreds. In the 1930s Gagnon had flirted with right-wing separatism and then with international socialism. He was now, Cadieux believed, either “a communist- sympathiser if not a communist altogether.” Was it wise, he asked, for the DEA to back a man whose ideas were alien to most French Canadians and anathema to their church? The members and policies of the “Union Démocratique,” he went on, clearly revealed that this organization was a front for the Liberal Party. To link the policy of national unity so blatantly to a single political organization would set a bad precedent. Above all, Cadieux argued, Gagnon’s

“superficial” and “ill-inspired” programme was based on two false premises: first, that French

Canadians were mistaken in their views about the war; and two, that acceptance of the majority viewpoint would somehow benefit them. It was pointless to stress in propaganda what some earnest but marginal anglophone had said in favour of national unity if the government itself were not fully prepared to consider the wishes of French Canadians, regardless of how vexing they might seem to Canada as a whole. Since the federal policies most despised in Quebec had reflected the views of the other provinces, one remedy lay in reducing the “war hysteria, religious prejudices, and racial intolerance” that prevailed there. The real task of federal propaganda, Cadieux concluded trenchantly, was not to prod French Canadians to make “endless sacrifices” but rather to persuade all Canadians that the essence of national unity was mutual

37 LAC/MC/42/10 – Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 5.

30 sacrifice.38

Cadieux was a vigilant watchman for Quebec, but he realized that it was just as much his duty to sound the alarm when decisions taken by his home province boded badly for the federal government. After all, the French-Canadian bureaucrat in Ottawa who simply defended nationalist positions risked being ignored unless he was able to make fine discriminations about both their legitimacy and impact on Canada as a whole. It was in this critical spirit that Cadieux studied the announcement in March 1943 by Oscar Drouin, leader of the nationalist wing in the

Godbout cabinet, that Quebec would add to its new office in New York by opening commercial agencies in South America, London, and Paris. The policy was not new – Quebec had operated posts abroad in the past only to have them closed by the Duplessis government – but Cadieux was aware that Drouin’s speech had “produced a certain impression” in the DEA. Though he was opposed to calling attention to the move, he urged that its implications not be missed. There were three scenarios, Cadieux warned, which might encourage a particularly nationalistic Quebec government to develop its commercial and tourist centres into something more. First, if the province were for any reason “politically isolated,” it would move to protect its foreign interests in the belief that the federal government could not do so objectively. Second, if the DEA limited itself to matters falling within federal jurisdiction, it was inevitable that one day the provinces would seek to profit directly from world experience. For example, did Canada’s foreign service have a responsibility to furnish provincial governments with information on education, or did it exist simply to serve the federal government? Finally, there was the issue of culture and

Quebec’s special interest in relations with France and Latin America. Should the DEA ignore this important aspect of foreign policy, the province might be emboldened to intervene in the cultural domain.39 Cadieux’s warning on the potential course of Canadian federalism and

38 LAC/DEA/5753/54-B(s)/1 – Cadieux to Robertson, 25 September 1943. 39 LAC/DEA/5753/54-C(s)/1 – Cadieux to Wrong, 19 May 1943.

31 international relations went unheeded but, as we now know, it was eerily prescient. In 1943, however, the memo and its startling prognosis were overshadowed by the more burning concerns of wartime.

If Cadieux seized every chance he got during the war to comment on Quebec, most of his time was still spent on the more routine tasks of a junior officer. In the summer of 1942, with his grasp of English improving, he was transferred to the Commonwealth and European Division. Its head was Lester B. Pearson, soon to be replaced by Hume Wrong, but Cadieux’s immediate supervisor was Thomas A. Stone, a colourful officer from Chatham, Ontario. “Tommy,” as he was known, had joined the DEA in 1927 only to resign from it in 1935 when he and his wife purchased Boone Hall, an antebellum plantation in South Carolina. When war was declared, however, he sold the property and returned to serve the Canadian government. Stone’s interest in communications – he had spent his first months back reorganizing the DEA’s code room to meet the increased wartime traffic – led him to oversee censorship and intelligence.40 Cadieux’s task under Stone was to distribute censorship reports, foreign press reviews, and transcripts of foreign radio broadcasts provided by the United States Federal Communications Division.41 Since May

1942, when the nebulous Canadian censorship system had been centralized under the

Department of National War Services, the DEA was receiving useful digests on a variety of subjects, including political conditions abroad, fifth column activity, and merchant shipping.

Cadieux dutifully routed these reports to the interested divisions in the department, but on one occasion he queried what was being hidden from Canadians. The press censors had blocked an article expressing outrage at the Soviet government’s execution in 1942 of socialist activists

Henryk Ehrlich and Victor Alter. Moscow could expect its wartime allies to stifle unjust

40 John Hilliker, Canada’s Department of External Affairs: The Early Years, 1909-1946 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 219; ibid., 268. 41 LAC/DEA/2814/1086-40/2 – Commonwealth and European Division [undated document from 1942 listing the assignment of duties within the division].

32 criticism, he argued, but when there was genuine doubt about Soviet actions there should be no whitewashing.42 Another DEA activity in which Cadieux was involved was the censorship of mail to prisoners of war in Canada. He recalled how the inspection of jars of jam sent from

Germany, whose sugar content was used to gauge the standard of living in that country, had led to the discovery of hidden messages.43 The means by which intercepts from POW mail were destroyed, an essential last step since this activity was banned under an international agreement, was somewhat primitive. Once, after a sudden draft had blown some documents up the chimney before they could be incinerated, junior officers were sent scurrying outside to retrieve the incriminating evidence.44

The work under Stone that most appealed to Cadieux was psychological warfare. During the Second World War, British and United States bombers scattered nearly six billion leaflets over occupied Europe, while both the Allies and Axis beamed radio programmes at each other to sow disunity and to weaken morale.45 The origins of the Canadian Psychological Warfare

Committee (PWC), as it was later called, owed much to Tommy Stone’s unfailing zeal and to his conviction that the country had a useful contribution to make in this field.46 In 1942 the DEA had begun to receive requests from the British Political Warfare Executive (PWE) for recorded messages, to be aired over the BBC, from German POWs and merchant seamen interned in

Canada. Upon demand, the American Office of Wartime Information (OWI) had also been supplied with material. Yet Stone was not satisfied: he believed that if the country were to play an active, albeit supplementary, part in the Allied psychological warfare campaign, then this ad

42 LAC/DEA/1919/724-J-39/3 – Cadieux to Stone, 5 May 1943. 43 Cadieux, GAC interview, 27 June 1979. 44 Hilliker, The Early Years, 268. 45 The six billion figure is drawn from Bernard Wasserstein, Barbarism and Civilization: A History of Europe in Our Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 339. 46 For a study of Stone’s contribution to psychological warfare, see Don Page, “Tommy Stone and Psychological Warfare in World War Two: Transforming a POW Liability into an Asset,” Journal of Canadian Studies 16, nos. 3- 4 (Fall-Winter 1981): 110-120. I do not discuss the important Canadian attempt to re-indoctrinate Nazi prisoners, since Cadieux seems to have had little to do with this aspect of psychological warfare.

33 hoc approach had to be replaced by a more systematic one. Such an effort, the Cabinet War

Committee was later told, would give Canada a say in the policies of its allies, a control over the dissemination of its own propaganda, and an improved position both during and after the war in a key area of world information.47 As a result, the PWC was created in June 1943 and Cadieux was appointed one of its two secretaries.

From its inception the PWC faced serious challenges. A small body made up of representatives from the DEA, the WIB, and the three service branches of the Department of

National Defence, it existed solely to provide coordination and so its authority was unclear.

Chronically short of funds, the committee was also hampered by the fact that until February 1945

Canada lacked the short-wave radio transmitters required for broadcasting to Europe. As a result, the PWC was at the mercy of both the American OWI and British PWE, the latter soon earning the reputation of being “hypercritical” of Canadian material. Moreover, because scripts and recordings sent from Ottawa could take up to ten days to arrive in London, intervening military events often rendered them obsolete. Finally, there was also the problem of gauging the peculiar mood of a listening audience living under the Nazi yoke three thousand miles away, not to mention finding WIB script writers skilled and imaginative enough to exploit that mood.48 While the obstacles facing the PWC were great, its members tackled their work with the enthusiasm of neophytes. The committee met weekly and, as its information secretary, Cadieux was tasked with preparing the agenda and circulating documents.49

Initially mundane, Cadieux’s contribution to the PWC became compelling when in

September 1943 he became a member of its sub-committee for psychological warfare directed at

France. It was felt that Canada, because of its historic ties to that country and because of its

47 LAC/DEA/3207/5353-40/1 – “Memorandum to the War Committee of the Cabinet: Canada’s Part in Political Warfare to Enemy and Enemy-Occupied Countries,” 11 October 1943. 48 LAC/DEA/3207/5353-40/2 – “Psychological Warfare,” 3 July 1946. My criticisms of the PWC are based on a close reading of this twenty-three page report. 49 LAC/Privy Council Office (PCO)/38/W-39-1 – Minutes of the Political Intelligence Committee, 20 June 1943.

34 obvious interest in promoting Anglo-French amity, had a unique part to play in the overall Allied effort. In helping to shape the Canadian message, Cadieux could not have asked for a more encouraging superior than Tommy Stone; a Francophile who had been educated in Paris, he consumed French culture with as much relish as he did French wine.50 Cadieux’s interest in the type of appeal to be made to France pre-dated the sub-committee’s formation and may even have led to it. Already he had reminded Stone of the notable French Canadians who had studied in their motherland and had derived from it lasting inspiration. They might be asked to pay tribute to the France they remembered before 1940, calling for the country’s imminent liberation and for a reversion to its “glorious traditions.” Cadieux had also felt that it was time to challenge the propaganda about Quebec that was emanating from Radio Vichy.51 Meeting twice to draw up a draft programme, the sub-committee on psychological warfare to France had five members, among them Major Georges Benoit, head of the WIB’s French-Canadian section, and Pierre

Dupuy, on temporary duty in Ottawa and eager to talk about a country he knew well. Various ideas were bandied about, including scripts on the pre-war links between Canada and France, special messages to French workers and farmers, and examples of cooperation between

Canadians of both language groups. In the programme designed for “Le Canada parle à la

France” there was also a heavy emphasis on Canada’s military, industrial, and financial contributions to the war effort.52 In late September the PWC approved and submitted the draft proposal to the Political Warfare Executive in London and then awaited its response.

The PWE and the French section of the BBC were not reticent in their criticism. More interesting, however, particularly for what it tells us about his early views on France and on its relationship to French Canada, was Cadieux’s frank assessment of the British response. He

50 On Stone and French wine see English, Shadow of Heaven, 150; On Stone and French culture see LAC/MC/6/3 – Cadieux to Jean Cimon, 6 February 1950. 51 LAC/DEA/3211/5353-R-40/1 – Cadieux to Stone, 30 August 1943. 52 LAC/DEA/3211/5353-R-40/1 – Minutes of the Sub-Committee on French Broadcasts, 13 September 1943; LAC/DEA/3211/5353-R-40/1 – Minutes of the Sub-Committee on French Broadcasts, 16 September 1943; LAC/DEA/3211/5353-R-40/1 – “Le Canada parle à la France,” 23 September 1943.

35 disagreed with their view that a national perspective should underpin all Canadian propaganda and that factual appeals were preferable to emotional ones. Canada was a united country, but unity implied diversity. If one of its constituent parts had a special relevance to France, then that tie must be played up: “At the very moment [that] France is receiving blows in her vitals, the survival of the French Canadian group must be a testimony of French tenacity and a symbol and should be used as such.” As for the factual approach, Cadieux agreed, but with a caveat. Were production and military statistics the only facts that mattered or were “spiritual facts” also worthy? Chief among these, he argued, was that French Canada was a “spiritual Province of

France” that derived from the mother country, their differences in politics and religion notwithstanding, a strong intellectual tradition. Of course, Cadieux was well aware of the objection that French Canada was “in communion with a certain France,” one that was not altogether representative. But he pointed out that Canada’s conservative French enclave would attract those very groups who had once backed the Vichy regime and who now needed to be reconverted to the Allied cause. Even republicans in France, Cadieux wrote, though not of the same “spiritual family” as French Canadians, had reason to rejoice at “the extension of the

French moral Empire,” particularly in Quebec.53

Cadieux’s grand references to “spiritual provinces” and “moral empires,” though dictated in part by the nature of propaganda, reveal that his view of France was highly idealized. It was also incomplete, based neither on travel nor on personal acquaintance with the French themselves, but rather on his profound admiration of their culture. Nor did Cadieux stop to ask whether all those warm sentiments which he and the PWC hoped to broadcast to French listeners were reciprocated, or whether the gulf of time and of distance had left that country cold. Above all, perhaps the BBC was right: after more than three years under Nazi oppression, it was hard

53 LAC/DEA/3211/5353-R-40/1 – Cadieux to Stone, Undated but around mid-December 1943. For the original British criticism see LAC/DEA/3211/5353-R-40/1 – “Copy of a note prepared by D’Arcy Gillie of the B.B.C. French Region,” 8 October 1943.

36 facts that France wanted and not sentimental appeals. Nevertheless, Cadieux’s intentions were good and so he spent much of his remaining time in Ottawa pondering with Stone how Canadian propaganda might help to foster a harmonious post-war relationship between France and its one- time allies.54 Cadieux’s tenure on the PWC also brought him closer to Major Benoit of the WIB, so much so that the latter asked him to draft a programme for Radio Canada on the place of

French Canada in the world of tomorrow. Cadieux focused on two themes: the unavoidable effect of global currents on French Canadians and the reality that their “avenir est au sein du grand Canada, par opposition à la plus petite patrie provinciale.”55 Once again, and not for the last time during the war, Cadieux was contributing to the subject that he cared most about:

French Canada and its relationship to the rest of the country.

Between his arrival in August 1941 and his first posting abroad in January 1944, Marcel

Cadieux brought French Canada to Ottawa with a vengeance. He was at all times a tireless defender of its interests and a passionate spokesman for its concerns. What is not as apparent, though no less true, is that Ottawa also brought English Canada to Cadieux. He had spent the first twenty-five years of his life in Montreal without ever really knowing – or needing to know – the English Canadians in his midst. Suddenly thrown together with them in the crowded halls and offices of the East Block, he could no longer avoid “les Anglo-Saxons.” They were a varied bunch, writes the historian Robert Bothwell, ranging from “Westmount dandies to rumpled prairie boys, characters and intellects to be savoured as well as studied.”56 Take, for example,

Alfred Pick, a Montrealer fastidious in both dress and appearance who had entered the DEA in

1940. To Cadieux he seemed the very embodiment of the Anglo-Saxon. Great was his surprise, then, to discover that Pick spoke perfect French and that his graduate thesis had been a comparison of the municipal administrations of Montreal and Paris. Meeting Pick years later in

54 See, for example, LAC/DEA/3211/5353-R-40/1 – Cadieux to Stone, 28 December 1943. 55 LAC/DEA/2877/1989-40/1 – Cadieux to Georges Benoit with enclosure, 4 October 1943. 56 Robert Bothwell, “Marcel Cadieux: The Ultimate Professional,” 210.

France, the scales fell from Cadieux’s eyes for good:

Un jour, à Paris je crois, il m’a dit qu’il n’aimait pas les hivers sans neige comme à Montréal. Et même il ne voyait pas à Paris l’équivalent de nos équipages décorés à Pâques de fleurs de papier comme à Montréal. J’ai été saisi. Il me semblait qu’il s’agissait là d’un secret réservé aux Canadiens-français. Or voilà qu’un WASP, je croyais, un véritable Anglo-Saxon, voyait son Canada comme moi-même à certains égards, alors que j’avais pensé être le seul témoin à Ottawa d’une série de valeurs liées au terroir québecquois et jamais, au grand jamais, compréhensibles au monde extérieur. J’ai pu voir que pour des centaines de milliers, un million peut-être d’anglophones, la patrie, le lieu de naissance, le ciel, les jeux de lumières, les sons, les images premières et les souvenirs durables sont liés au Québec des Canadiens-français. Les deux groupes séparés par l’église, l’école, ont néanmoins vécu dans le même pays, éprouvé les mêmes impressions durant la jeunesse, au cours de la vie.57

As the Cadieux-Pick relationship suggests, the DEA was to some extent a crucible in which ethnic differences, both real and imagined, were broken down and new bonds were forged. Over- educated, hailing from across the country, and admitted by merit to a department overseen by the prime minister himself, the new recruits were an elite. As Cadieux recalled, they were a self- assured, energetic, ambitious, and even arrogant band of brothers. It was surely this sense of kinship that led officers like Christopher Eberts, a Rhodes Scholar, to assist francophone officers in drafting letters in English.58 Their academic training also brought the denizens of the East

Block together in impromptu and stimulating conversations about current events and culture. To build relationships with his colleagues, and to play an active part in the collective discussion,

Cadieux tried his best to familiarize himself with books, articles, and ideas that reflected what he called the Anglo-Saxon “patrimoine.”59 After all, what good was it to have read Molière and

Hugo if one could not also discuss Shakespeare and Dickens? Of course, Cadieux’s embrace of

English Canada was far from complete. He still fled to Montreal every Saturday. Once a week, for no other reason than to be alone together, he and francophone civil servants from other departments met at Madame Burger’s café in Hull. And there was the drinking of tea, an English

57 LAC/MC/13/1 – Journal intime, 24 January 1972. 58 Cadieux, GAC interview, 29 June 1979. 59 Cadieux, “Débuts dans la carrière diplomatique,” 293.

38 custom he carefully avoided for fear of alarming his family.60 Yet the English Canadian, once a total stranger to him, had become known. Years later, Cadieux warmly recalled those first experiences of fellowship with the officer class of 1940-41, including lively, alcohol-infused summer nights spent down by the Rideau Tennis Club.61

Ottawa facilitated other discoveries as well, chief among these the mandarins of the

Canadian government. Growing up in Montreal, Cadieux’s heroes had been exclusively French

Canadian: Léopold Richer, Édouard Montpetit, and Lionel Groulx. In the national capital he found English Canadians who were equally dedicated and intelligent, including Arnold Heeney in the Privy Council Office, Lester B. Pearson, and Norman Robertson. “Ces hommes,” Cadieux reminisced, “m’ont fait connaître les dimensions morales et intellectuelles de l’autre partie du

Canada, pour moi un monde nouveau que je ne soupçonnais même pas.”62 There was also Hume

Wrong, the architect of the “functional principle,” a pioneering doctrine aimed at securing for

Canada a voice in the wartime alliance proportionate to its specific contribution in a given field.

Wrong’s industry impressed Cadieux and the admiration was mutual. As head of the European and Commonwealth Division Wrong was uniquely placed to observe Cadieux’s work, to which he occasionally added various special tasks. In January 1944, two weeks before he was posted to

London, Cadieux’s performance in the DEA was assessed. He was, according to Wrong’s confidential report, “a very promising young man” who was “growing intellectually” and who would “continue to grow.” But one feature stood out: “Particularly I like his attitude on French-

English relations in Canada. He is both a good Canadian and a good French Canadian, and his mind dwells constantly on means to improve the present situation. He produces schemes of his own from time to time which show originality and imagination.” Wrong conceded that Cadieux’s value to the department was still limited by the “incompleteness” of his grasp of English, but he

60 Cadieux, GAC interview, 29 June 1979. 61 LAC/MC/13/1 – Journal intime, 24 January 1972. 62 LAC/MC/22/1, Cadieux, “Allocution,” 11.

39 stressed that this weakness had greatly diminished, so much so that he was fit for service at any post and that he deserved to be promoted to second secretary within the year.63

Cadieux never forgot his first stage in Ottawa: it had been initially painful, frequently overwhelming, and at all times challenging. But the experience had also been rewarding. He had earned the respect of his superiors, established a rapport with his peers, and made a valuable contribution to the burning issue that had brought him to the federal government in the first place: national unity. Above all, the last two-and-a-half years in Ottawa had confirmed something which he had sensed as early as August 1941 and which he had tried to express to his father, unreconciled as ever to his departure, in a letter penned just six days after his arrival: “Je réalise aujourd’hui que l’instruction que vouz avez tenu à me faire acquérir aux prix de sacrifices que je comprends de plus en plus, me permet d’accéder à un monde cultivé, choisi, plein d’attraits pour moi. Je vous dois cette bonne fortune et je vous en remercie de tout coeur.”64 Very early on, Marcel Cadieux discerned that in the Department of External Affairs he had found his vocation. Adapting to Ottawa was simply the price he had to pay to seize hold of it.

II – London

Adaptation, of course, comes in many forms. Just when he had started to feel at ease in

Ottawa, Cadieux was posted in January 1944 to the Canadian High Commission in the United

Kingdom. There were no French Canadians on the staff of Canada House in London, a situation the DEA wished to improve.65 He had, until now, barely travelled outside of the country, let alone crossed the ocean. He found comfort in books, a small library of which he had shipped to

63 LAC/Civil Service Commission (CSC)/1986-87/104/3-6 (Marcel Cadieux Personnel File), Hume Wrong, “Report on Marcel Cadieux,” 13 January 1944. One of Cadieux’s imaginative and original schemes was for a national university, an idea that drew the interest and serious consideration of Legal Adviser John Read. See LAC/DEA/3261/6031-40/1 – Cadieux to John Read, 4 January 1944; LAC/DEA/3261/6031-40/1 – Read to Cadieux. 64 LAC/MC/5/13 – Cadieux to Roméo Cadieux, 27 August 1941. 65 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – excerpt from telegram 2237 to High Commissioner’s Office, 11 December 1943; LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6, excerpt from telegram 3282 from London, 29 December 1943.

England. He brought the Bible as well as certain works of Christian philosophy. He brought history, ranging from Skelton’s Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier to the first volume of the

Rowell-Sirois report. He brought literature, particularly French, including Pascal, Descartes,

Montesquieu, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Valéry. And, quite naturally, he brought books on

Quebec, among them such classics as Maria Chapdelaine and Trente arpents. Tucked away in his trunk was also that old standby: Cassell’s French-English dictionary.66 With these and other preparations made, Cadieux bid farewell to his family on a Monday evening in Montreal. “Nous

étions ému,” he recalled, but they tried not to be sentimental.67

The next day, at Dorval airport, he listened to an airman describe the limited safety features of the B-24 Liberator, including the unsolicited warning that, in the event of major trouble, passengers would not survive more than fifteen minutes in the frozen waters of the

Atlantic. After only one hour in the air, the plane, a tired-looking machine, turned around and returned to Montreal due to an engine malfunction. That evening, with Cadieux back under the family roof, the ritual began again, though this time the goodbyes “furent un peu moins touchants.”68 After long waits at the airport on Wednesday and Thursday, he was told that the flight could still not be made. Each day he had to take leave of his friends only to do it again the next. “J’avais vraiment hâte de partir,” he remembered.69 At last, on Friday, the departure took place. Between Montreal and Labrador he surveyed the rough and inhospitable terrain below, what in 1534 Jacques Cartier had called “the land that God gave to Cain.” At Goose Bay, a staging point for bombers and fighters bound for Europe and one of the busiest airports in the world at the time, the view changed again: “J’avais quitté Montréal dans une atmosphère de paix;

66 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – List of Articles in trunk, Undated but probably mid-January 1944. 67 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 13. 68 Ibid., 13-14. 69 Ibid., 15.

41 déjà le décor changeait et les engins de guerre faisaient leur apparition.”70 On the next lap, from

Labrador to Scotland, passengers stretched out on the floor, their faces covered by oxygen masks. Sleepless, Cadieux could either watch them, the lamp on the ceiling, or “une étoile qui oscillait à la fenêtre.”71 After what felt like an eternity he landed in Prestwick and was taken to

Glasgow, where he began the long train ride to London. Try as he might to take in the passing landscape, he drifted off to sleep. He did not wake up until night had fallen. The train had stopped on the edge of London. The city was blacked out. There were German bombers overhead.72

Nothing could have prepared Cadieux for the Nazi attacks on London in 1944. Since the dark days of the Blitz in 1940-41, the tide of the war had changed dramatically: in the east, the

Nazis were in retreat before the Red Army; in Italy, a stout German defence was slowly being ground down; and in England, Allied forces were massing for the largest amphibious invasion in history. Seeking both a propaganda victory and retaliation for the bombing of German cities, the

Luftwaffe reappeared in the London sky in January 1944.73 The first attacks, sporadic and poorly executed, did not impress Cadieux, but that changed on the night of 18 February, when high explosive and incendiary bombs rained down in the largest assault on London since 1941. Such raids were rare. The wail of the air raid siren and the pounding thud of the anti-aircraft guns produced the odd sleepless night, but on the whole “la vie était normale,” even if the secret fear of being buried under the rubble “nous mordillait le coeur.”74 One week after D-Day, becoming desperate, the Nazis launched at London the first of their “secret” weapons: the V-1 flying bomb, a jet-powered pilotless aircraft. The “doodlebugs,” as they were nicknamed, came unpredictably,

70 Ibid. 71 Ibid., 16. 72 Ibid., 17-18. 73 This series of night raids over Britain, which began in January and ended in May 1944, was known as Operation Steinbock. See Horst Boog, Gerhard Krebs, and Detlef Vogel, The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia 1943-1944/5, trans. Derry Cook-Radmore et al, vol. 7 of Germany and the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 415-20. 74 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 25-26.

42 day or night. Work at Canada House was constantly being interrupted and entire mornings could be wasted moving between one’s desk and the shelter in the cellar. Furniture was arranged as a shield from shattering windows, with the result that many meetings in Cadieux’s office were held on the floor.75 What made the V-1 so unnerving was the sound: its steady whine grew louder and louder until suddenly, its engine cutting out, there was an eerie silence as it plunged to the earth. “No enemy was risking his life up there,” wrote Evelyn Waugh, “it was as impersonal as a plague, as though the city was infested with enormous, venomous insects.”76 On one occasion, panic so gripped Cadieux that he took off running. The dreadful noise overhead only increased. Helpless, he stopped and accepted his fate: “La tête enfoncée entre les épaules, le corps crispé, j’attendais l’explosion.”77 By early September, when launching sites in northern

France were overrun, 2,350 V-1s had fallen on London, killing 5,000 people and injuring 15,000 more.78 Nor was Hitler’s campaign of terror over: the V-2 rocket, the world’s first long-range ballistic missile, was now deployed from Holland. Forty-five feet long, carrying a one-ton warhead, and travelling at three thousand miles per hour, its impact literally shook the city. As

Cadieux noted, “vous sentiez soudain une oscillation du sol alors même que vous n’entendiez pas toujours la détonation.”79 For seven months they brought death and destruction: 518 struck

London, killing 2,742 people.80 Despite the power of the V-2s, Cadieux feared them less than the

V-1s. Travelling at supersonic speeds, the rockets arrived without warning and therefore seemed less terrifying.

In reading Premières Armes, Cadieux’s memoir of his first years abroad, one is struck by his vivid chapter on “Les Bombes.” It is not, as two of his later critics would allege, the smug account of a diplomat courageously venturing forth to England under bombardment; on the

75 Ibid., 30. 76 Philip Ziegler, London at War 1939-1945 (Toronto: Alfred Knopf, 1995), 291. 77 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 31-32. 78 Francis Sheppard, London: A History (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1998), 338. 79 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 34. 80 Sheppard, London, 338.

43 contrary, the dominant impression conveyed in these pages is one of paralyzing fear.81 Take, for example, the following evocative passage:

Une nuit je m’éveille. Il est deux heures du matin. L’alerte a été donnée. Les canons des environs font rage. La maison, à chaque salve, vibre. Quand les détonations s’apaisent, j’entends le grondement plein, précipité, terrible des engins ennemis. … J’ai peur. Vous savez ce que c’est que d’avoir peur? Non pas en imagination, mais physiquement? Vous avez la gorge serrée et une main vous saisit le cœur. Par moments, vous tremblez légèrement par nervosité. Vous avez beau vous dire que vous n’avez pas vraiment peur, vous voulez vous contrôler par amour-propre mais la carcasse n’obéit plus.

Cadieux may have been fearful and fragile, conditions aggravated by his natural nervousness, but he was refreshingly honest in admitting it. He was also generous in his praise of Londoners who, at least outwardly, handled the German attacks more stoically than he. He recalled how buses and taxis continued on their way as if nothing had happened and how unflappable shop owners swept glass into the gutter as calmly as if their windows had been smashed by some youngster.82

He saw both sides of the social spectrum. In the tube stations he witnessed the poorest and most vulnerable huddled along the walls and stretched out on the floor right up to the platform. “Il régnait dans ces locaux une odeur épaisse, écœurante,” Cadieux noted. He wondered how the shelterers ever slept through the racket of the passing trains.83 By contrast, in the luxury of

London’s gentlemen’s clubs, he recalled entering reading rooms on tiptoe, during air raids no less, as “des bons bourgeois anglais, poil blanc, figure écarlate, bouche ouverte et mains jointes sur la bedaine, faisaient la sieste.” It was then that Cadieux realized the futility of the Nazi terror campaign: the spirit of the British people as he saw it was indomitable.84 To the contemporary historian dissecting what has been called “the myth of the Blitz” – or, for our purposes, that of the “Baby Blitz” of 1944 – the picture drawn by Cadieux seems too rosy.85 The English were

81 For the criticism of Cadieux see University of Toronto Archives (UTA)/Fonds Robert Bothwell (RB)/B87- 0006/010 – Interview with Ivan Head, Ottawa, 6 August 1987. According to Head, Pierre Trudeau remembered Cadieux’s accounts of his wartime posting to London and found them absurd. 82 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 32. 83 Ibid., 27. 84 Ibid., 55-56. 85 See Angus Calder, The Myth of the Blitz (London: Jonathan Cape, 1991).

44 never totally united, there was always conflict among them, and there were less admirable sides to the home front such as looting and profiteering. The public mood in 1944 was also markedly different from that which had prevailed in 1940-41. The curious ebullience of yesteryear had given way to a more sombre outlook: there was war weariness, there were frayed nerves, and there was less willingness to “take it” for much longer.86 That said, despite its superficialities,

Cadieux’s account reflects a fundamental fact: the morale of Londoners was tested once more in

1944 and ultimately it did not break.

More than the bombs, V-1s, and V-2s, the issue of greatest concern to Cadieux in London was the acute housing shortage, a perennial difficulty. In Greater London during the war,

116,000 houses were destroyed, another 288,000 required major repairs, and one million more needed some repair.87 Lodging was costly, it was scarce, and the competition for it was fierce in a city of over eight million, including refugees from the continent and foreign military personnel.

Even before his arrival, Cadieux had thought anxiously about the situation awaiting him. He had asked Stone to cable George Ignatieff, with whom he was about to trade places, to see if he could take over his apartment or room. Impossible, Ignatieff replied: he was staying with his brother and his family. The only assurance that he could give his colleague in Ottawa was that initially he would be provided with temporary accommodation.88

Cadieux’s apprehension about housing proved fully justified: in just one year in London, he moved no fewer than seven times. His first residence was the luxurious Park Lane Hotel, with its distinctive Art Deco exterior. It was also located on Piccadilly, a street renowned for the wartime sex trade. Great was his surprise when he was not only accosted by prostitutes but, even

86 Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000), 748-49. 87 Lindsey German and John Rees, A People’s History of London (London: Verso, 2012), 208. 88 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6, Stone to Ignatieff, 5 January 1944, telegram 27; LAC/LAC/CSC/1986- 87/104/3-6, Ignatieff to Stone, 6 January 1944, telegram 48.

45 more startlingly, enticed by them in French.89 In any case, the Canadian government could not afford to keep Cadieux at this hotel indefinitely, and so he was given fifteen days to find more permanent quarters. Lost in the sprawling English capital, he hired housing agencies, studied the newspapers, and made hopeless trips in all directions. The rooms and houses that he inspected were dark, dank, and dreary; they were invariably situated in bad neighborhoods or close to railway lines and factories, not to mention obscenely priced. The secretary of Canada House found him a room, but it was on the outskirts of London, it was cramped, and it was equipped with a little gas heater that devoured shillings. Alone in this miserable abode, enveloped in the darkness of the blackout, Cadieux pondered his choice of career.90 He moved to Queen’s Gate, in

South Kensington, but he did not stay long. Seeking financial relief, as well as companionship, he joined several naval officers in a tiny house on Hamilton Terrace in north-west London. He learned from them of raids on the French coast and of the obstacles awaiting any Allied invasion.

On Sunday evenings, the group would pool their ration coupons and enjoy a more elaborate dinner. The conviviality of the occasion was often interrupted by the jamming of the radio, an ill omen that portended an air raid alert.91 With the arrival of the V-1s after D-Day, Cadieux sought refuge in the country. First he tried the area north of London, but the rich were already well ensconced in their “funk holes” and there was no space. Taking his chances south of the city, he settled for a cottage “perdu dans les champs” in Sussex, near Crawley. Its owner was a wizened and toothless old lady with twelve cats. His room was clean and the nights were tranquil but the two hours spent on the daily commute by train to and from London were trying, so in the fall he returned to take up residence in a Chelsea boarding house.92 There his windows refused to shut properly and the blowing of his curtains in the wind at night presaged the neck pain he

89 LAC/MC/42/10, Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 7. 90 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 62-63. 91 LAC/MC/42/10 – Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 7-8. 92 Ibid., 9-10; Cadieux, Premières Armes, 65.

46 experienced upon waking in the morning. When a colleague about to be married offered him his modern apartment room, Cadieux eagerly bought new linens, a major expense in wartime, only to learn subsequently that his friend was merely a subtenant and that the real owner was returning.93 The young diplomat finally ended up in an apartment building near Regent’s Park.

“Une vaste conciergerie d’un mauvais goût atroce, malodorante,” he recalled, but one built from reinforced concrete, with central heating, a dining hall, and even a ballroom. It seemed like “le grand luxe,” and so he turned a blind eye to the maid’s penchant for his Canadian whiskey.94

If there were comic elements to Cadieux’s search for housing in London in 1944, it was dark comedy mixed with pathos. “J’avais dépensé une petite fortune pour me loger,” he recalled,

“le plus souvent de façon misérable.”95 To save money he dispensed with breakfast and yet, even with his practising such drastic economies, the last days of the month could be tight. Nor did his inability to cook help. His last address had a kitchenette, but the best culinary effort that he could muster was soup from Lipton sachets.96 He was at the mercy of British cuisine, unimaginative at the best of times and deplorable under a system of rationing. The “universelle sauce brune,” the

“inévitables choux de Bruxelles,” and the “mélancolique flan” could be avoided but only at great cost.97 Wartime controls limited the price of a meal to five shillings, but the better restaurants ingeniously devised ways to increase the bill. As Cadieux wrote, “En entrant dans ces grands restaurants, le pauvre troisième secrétaire, que j’étais, éprouvait toujours la secrète inquiétude de ne pouvoir payer la note.”98 He was rescued by the Churchill Club and its two-shilling meals, by

Mrs. Massey and her canteen for Canadian officers, and, when he was especially famished but low on funds, by a rarely frequented restaurant that served horse meat.99

93 LAC/MC/42/10 – Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 10. 94 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 69. 95 Ibid., 70. 96 LAC/MC/42/10 – Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 10. 97 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 50. 98 Ibid., 58. 99 Ibid., 53-54; ibid., 56-57.

If Cadieux’s financial situation improved over time – or, more precisely, if painful experience taught him to budget more effectively – his standard of living in the first year of his first posting abroad had shaken him. Colleagues in Ottawa noticed. After visiting England in

June, Georges Benoit informed Hume Wrong that Cadieux was occupying a single room with a naval officer, that he avoided hospitality for fear of being unable to reciprocate it, and that he was “miserable.”100 The source of the problem was his total monthly income, about sixty-one pounds, and particularly that part of it provided by his so-called living allowance: set in 1927, it had not been revised to meet the radically changed conditions of London in 1944.101 Disgusted,

Cadieux had written in March to W.D. Matthews, the DEA’s administrative officer, to propose what seemed like an obvious reform: that the salaries and allowances of officers posted to a foreign country be tied to the cost of living there and that they be altered periodically in response to fluctuations. “But of course, External being a policy making department,” Cadieux ended sarcastically, “such details are probably too too shocking for the refined gentlemen who are engrossed with shaping the destiny of the world.” Above his name he cordially signed off with the words “Sans rancune,” but there were certainly hard feelings.102 Then again, as Cadieux told

Wrong in November 1944, “loyalty to the Service has been, on more than one occasion, my only incentive to carry on.”103

What made Cadieux’s frustrations with accommodation so draining was that they hampered his effort to carve out a role for himself in Canada House. Built in the Greek Revival style, the former gentleman’s club was located in the centre of London at Trafalgar Square. It was part of an archipelago of Canadian buildings clustered around Nelson’s Column, including

Canadian banks, Canadian transport companies, and, during the war, canteens, clubs, and hotels

100 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Wrong to W.D. Matthews, 16 June 1944. 101 Ibid.; LAC/MC/2/6 – Cadieux to Guy Beaudry, 2 August 1949. 102 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Cadieux to W.D. Matthews, 18 March 1944. 103 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Cadieux to Wrong, 28 November 1944. Cadieux pointed out to Wrong that George Igantieff, his predecessor at Canada House, had been receiving the salary and allowances of an “acting Second Secretary.”

48 of all kinds for Canadian soldiers.104 The world of Canada House felt agreeably familiar, but

Cadieux was confused about his place in it all the same. He soon realized that his work back home in the East Block had not prepared him for his duties abroad. Nor could he expect much in the way of training from High Commissioner Vincent Massey. The two men were almost complete opposites: one was the son of a Montreal postman, while the other was a Toronto millionaire; one had clawed his way into the DEA by competitive examination, while the other owed his position to his wealth and to his services to the Liberal Party. Massey reveled in the social side of diplomacy: ceremony, formal attire, and elaborate dinner parties with illustrious guests. As a humble third secretary, Cadieux assisted his senior colleagues with the comparative drudgery of writing reports back to Ottawa. While Massey inhabited an enormous and ornate office, what had been the Union Club’s dining room, Cadieux toiled away in a hovel just above the entrance to Canada House.105

The High Commissioner was eager that Cadieux write dispatches on political subjects but, being unfamiliar with England and not knowing where to start, the latter delayed. Instead, he chose to serve as a liaison between the Psychological Warfare Committee in Ottawa and the

Political Warfare Executive in London. Into what dark hole did Canadian scripts and recordings vanish once they reached England? Cadieux was determined to find out. Each time that material from Canada was sent over, he obtained an interview with the relevant experts at Bush House, the headquarters of the BBC European service. The response was discouraging. On one occasion, for instance, he was told that of ten Canadian recordings, only two had been used. The majority of them suffered from a variety of flaws: uninspiring radio personalities, material that seemed crudely propagandistic, too historical, or overly sentimental, and a choice of topics best left to

104 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 43; Hilliker, The Early Years, 105. 105 I do not wish to imply that the Cadieux-Massey relationship was in any way antagonistic; rather, their respective positions in the Canada House hierarchy as well as their very different background and lifestyles simply ensured that it was never close. This interpretation is borne out by an examination of Massey’s diary from 1944, which refers only sparingly to Cadieux. See UTA/Fonds Massey family (MF)/B1987-0082/312 – diary for 1944.

49 the BBC itself.106 After listening to a Canadian recording in German on the anti-seasickness pill as a “secret weapon,” for example, an expert bluntly informed Cadieux that the average soldier of the Wehrmacht would find its premise absurd. Humour, the English tersely reminded their

Canadian understudies, should be used sparingly since it was hard to convey through the heavy radio jamming on the continent.107 A talk on Joan of Arc was also dismissed because the historical parallel was thorny, with the Nazi Radio Paris having already exploited it.108 But when one recording, which was otherwise well received, was dismissed for being too much addressed to a Canadian audience, Cadieux speculated to Tommy Stone that the BBC was “showing its hand” by rejecting discs for the “flimsiest of reasons.”109 Yet if the “Voice of Canada” was being smothered, most of Cadieux’s letters from London show that this was because Canadian submissions were clearly not up to snuff. Attending the weekly meeting of the BBC’s French

Region, Cadieux marvelled at the wealth of intelligence available on the situation in France, providing British propagandists with opportunities that their Canadian counterparts could only dream of. “At the moment,” Cadieux conceded to Stone, “I take the rather gloomy view as to our prospects as front line psychological warriors.”110

Frustrating as Cadieux’s liaison work was, it still served two useful purposes: first, it ensured that the PWC’s script writers were no longer operating in the dark as to the standards and requirements of the BBC; second, and more importantly, the criticism that he relayed back to

Canada provided valuable training for the coming day when the CBC International Service would take to the airwaves.111 The work was also rewarding for its own sake. To Cadieux, Bush

House was one of the most stimulating intellectual centres in all of London. He particularly

106 LAC/DEA/3207/5353-A-40/2 – Minutes of the Psychological Warfare Sub-Committee on Scripts and Recordings, 10 May 1944. 107 LAC/DEA/3208/5353-C-40/1 – Cadieux to Stone, 18 February 1944. 108 LAC/DEA/3208/5353-C-40/2 – Cadieux to George Glazebrook, 2 June 1944. 109 LAC/DEA/3208/5353-C-40/1 – Cadieux to Stone, 22 May 1944. 110 LAC/DEA/3211/5353-R-40/2 – Cadieux to Stone, 18 February 1944. 111 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 82.

50 admired the daily radio programme of the Free French, each transmission of which opened in the same way: “Ici Londres! Les Français parlent aux Français.”112 Cadieux may also have saved the American Office of Wartime Information from embarrassment after it ordered millions of matchbooks with Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms inscribed on the inside. Before they could be delivered to the United States Air Force for dispersal over France, Cadieux told Stone that an

“inquisitive fellow,” who was almost certainly Cadieux himself, having studied the French translation of the Four Freedoms, perceptively observed that full “liberté Corporelle” was perhaps in violation of certain features of the French Criminal Code. Delivery of the matchbooks was quickly aborted.113 Vincent Massey was less impressed by his work. The High

Commissioner believed – correctly – that the young diplomat had not been sent to Canada House to spend his time on psychological warfare but simply to assist his senior colleague, Charles

Ritchie, with political reporting. Cadieux tried to convince Massey otherwise, going so far as to submit what he called a “magnum opus” on the role of the PWC. “The trouble with

Psychological Warfare,” he quipped to Stone, “is that you have to wage your battles against your own people most of the time.”114 As it turned out, Stone, who had been alarmed by the BBC’s critical reception of Canadian material, moved to London in late May and with characteristic energy set up shop in Bush House. By June, then, Cadieux was released from liaison work and was expected to focus most of his attention on writing political reports.115

The dispatches Cadieux was asked to produce were on domestic reconstruction in Britain.

The Second World War, much more than the first, was a total war: armies were mobilized but so too were entire civilian populations. No expense – in human life, in production, or in controls of all kinds – was spared in the campaign to defeat the enemy; as the bombing of London

112 Ibid., 83. 113 LAC/DEA/3211/5353-R-40/2 – Cadieux to Stone, 14 February 1944. 114 LAC/DEA/3207/5353-40/2 – Cadieux to Stone with enclosure, 26 April 1944. 115 LAC/DEA/3211/5353-AB-40/1 – Wrong to Robertson, 7 May 1944, telegram 1069; Page, “Tommy Stone and Psychological Warfare,” 118.

51 demonstrated, the military front and the home front were intertwined as never before. But if the

British people, like their prime minister, Winston Churchill, poured their “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” into the war effort, they did so because they sensed that their future – a radically different post-war society – was as much at stake as their present. The unprecedented degree of state intervention in wartime offered an array of new and exciting opportunities for the peace. The

Rubicon had been crossed and a return to the misery of the Great Depression was now unacceptable. After all, the 1942 Beveridge Report, with its proposals for full employment and for universal social security, had called for nothing less than the banishment of five “Giant

Evils”: Want, Ignorance, Squalor, Idleness, and Disease. The study was an instant hit.

Londoners, wrote one columnist, queued around the block “to buy this heavy two-shilling slab of involved economics as though it were unrationed manna dropped from some heaven where the old bogey of financial want didn’t exist.”116 The report bred utopianism and, once the Allies gained the upper hand in the war, impatience. Bureaucrats in Whitehall took note and began preparing for the reconstruction.

As Cadieux recalled, London in 1944 was a fascinating “intellectual laboratory.”117 Post- war schemes of all kinds were being bandied about, but on what was he to begin reporting? He knew from public opinion polls, not to mention from bitter personal experience, that the issue of utmost importance to Londoners was housing, and so in March, while juggling his liaison work for the PWC, he began producing his first dispatches. Each one focused on a single aspect of the housing problem, including the number of houses required, their location, their ownership, their permanent or temporary status, their construction by either private industry or by the government, and the role of town and country planning.118 His reports were thorough, sometimes

116 Ziegler, London at War, 266. 117 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Marcel Cadieux, “Personal Memoirs,” 3. 118 LAC/DEA/2868/1843-40/2 – Charles Ritchie to Secretary of State for External Affairs (SSEA) with enclosure, 11 March 1944, dispatch A.118; LAC/DEA/2868/1843-40/2 –Ritchie to SSEA with enclosure, 11 April 1944;

52 running almost ten pages in length. He never forgot the “profonde joie intellectuelle” that he experienced when, having reflected for a long time on the question of land use and compensation, he discovered a fine analysis of the subject in the Uthwatt Report of 1942.119 At least one other person in Britain shared his joy. Asking Campbell Moodie, a colleague at Canada

House, for Cadieux’s name, Lord Uthwatt commented, “You watch that Marcel Cadieux, he is first-class. He is one of the few people who have really read my report.”120 Of course, Cadieux’s own reports were also read, not only by the DEA, but also by the Department of Finance and by its deputy, Clifford Clark, who was preparing legislation for Canada’s own housing programme.121 This was an apprenticeship in the art of writing a dispatch, and Cadieux immersed himself in his sources. He studied the role of the press, he followed the cut-and-thrust of parliamentary debate, and he took note of every shift in public opinion. He learned to seek out information directly from bureaucrats and, if a given question were under political consideration, to ask Vincent Massey to glean what he could from the politicians. Having assembled all of this raw material, Cadieux assessed its implications, drew conclusions, and then dispatched his findings to Ottawa. His reports on housing in England taught him a valuable career lesson: how to analyze a problem for the purposes of the foreign service. Having devised “une méthode de travail,” the rest was simply application.122

Apply himself Cadieux certainly did. By the summer he had moved beyond the housing problem and was delving into a host of other reconstruction issues. His reports back to Canada were widely circulated within the federal administration where, as he recalled years later, “a

dispatch A.185; LAC/DEA/2868/1843-40/2 – Vincent Massey to SSEA with enclosure, 1 May 1944, dispatch A.229; LAC/DEA/2868/1843-40/2 – Massey to SSEA with enclosure, 12 May 1944, dispatch A.263; LAC/DEA/2868/1843-40/3 – Massey to SSEA, 9 August 1944, dispatch A.485; LAC/DEA/2868/1843-40/4 – Cadieux to SSEA, 4 October 1944, dispatch A.592. See also Cadieux, Premières Armes, 85-87. 119 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 86. 120 LAC/MC/6/2 – Campbell Moodie to Cadieux, 23 March 1950. 121 LAC/DEA/2868/1843-40/2 – W. Clifford Clark to Robertson, 3 April 1944. The documents on DEA file 1843-40 reveal that Cadieux’s reports on housing were consistently referred to the Department of Finance. 122 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 87-88.

53 team of young political leaders were looking beyond the horizon and sharing British concerns as to the shape of the world after the war.”123 As in England, the impetus for change in Canada came initially from the left. A Gallup poll in September 1943 had placed the socialist

Cooperative Commonwealth Federation ahead of the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives with 29 percent, 28 percent, and 28 percent respectively. This was uncharted territory and some within the Liberal Party feared being eclipsed. Others, such as the energetic Montreal businessman and lawyer Brooke Claxton, who was parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, grasped the nettle and urged the course of reform on its cautious leader. In this atmosphere of soul searching, Cadieux’s dispatches proved timely. Planners in Ottawa were particularly interested in British schemes for social insurance and for a National Health Service. The archival record shows that Cadieux’s reports on these two subjects were routinely referred to Finance, to

Arnold Heeney in the Privy Council Office, to the new departments of Reconstruction and

National Health and Welfare, and sometimes to Claxton himself, who had become minister of the second department.124 The dispatches were all rigorously factual, but the odd one betrayed

Cadieux’s admiration for the English way of problem-solving. The country, he opined, sensed that the post-war period would be filled with serious challenges but, he went on, “in true British fashion they are facing this prospect calmly and with their usual self-reliance and ingenuity.”125

Reconstruction, he noted in another report, demanded massive spending but, if successful,

Britain “will have shown that in a democracy, social security and freedom, personal and

123 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Cadieux, “Personal Memoirs,” 4. 124 See the marginal comments denoting circulation on, among other examples, LAC/DEA/2868/1843-40/3 – Cadieux to SSEA, 27 September 1944, dispatch A.569; LAC/DEA/2868/1843-40/3 – Frederic Hudd to SSEA, 29 September 1944, dispatch A.582; LAC/DEA/2868/1843-40/4 – Massey to SSEA, 17 November 1944, dispatch A.659. It should be noted that Cadieux rarely signed off on these dispatches, that duty being reserved for Massey or for senior officers like Hudd or Ritchie. That said, Cadieux’s authorship of them can strongly be inferred for two reasons: reporting on British reconstruction was his only major responsibility at Canada House and, second, he kept a copy for his own files of almost every report that he wrote from London. See LAC/MC/7/13; LAC/MC/7/14; LAC/MC/7/15. 125 LAC/DEA/2868/1843-40/2 – Massey to SSEA, 3 June 1944, dispatch A.320; LAC/MC/7/14 – 3 June 1944, dispatch A.320.

54 political, can be reconciled,” with the result that many European countries, even those within the

Soviet orbit, might adopt it as a “social and political model.”126 That said, in one of his last reports from London, Cadieux pointed out that there was widespread frustration with the slow pace of reform. He noted, however, that it was too early to predict whether Churchill’s

Conservative Party would ultimately pay a price at the polls for the public’s impatience.127

Prolific as he was, there was more to Cadieux’s work than political reporting. For example, he served as the Canadian observer to the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education which, since 1942, had been meeting in London to plan for the reconstruction of Europe’s post- war education systems. As it slowly developed into something more universal, namely the

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) founded in 1946, both Cadieux and Vincent Massey, who shared a deep interest in culture, urged full participation on their government. Ottawa was sympathetic but the constitutional implications – education, of course, being under provincial control – had to be weighed. Not impressed, Cadieux bluntly informed Massey that the DEA was neglecting cultural policy, a key tool that could promote

Canadian influence abroad and bolster existing political and economic relationships with other countries.128 The door of Cadieux’s office was also open to every Canadian in Britain who was in need of official help. He met former Nazi prisoners seeking repatriation to Canada, he met soldiers with their “petites histoires de coeur,” and, one day, he met a curious French Canadian, demobilized for health reasons, who complained that the police were causing him all sorts of trouble. He operated a brothel, it was true, but were his rooms not clean and were his competitors not free to do as they pleased?129

126 LAC/DEA/2868/1843-40/4 – Massey to SSEA, 9 November 1944, dispatch A.648; LAC/MC/7/14 – 9 November 1944, dispatch A.648. 127 LAC/DEA/2868/1834-40/4 – Massey to SSEA, 6 December 1944, dispatch A.695; LAC/MC/7/14 – 6 December 1944, dispatch A.695. 128 See files on LAC/DEA/3233/5582-40/1 and LAC/DEA/3233/5582-40/2; LAC/MC/7/14 – Cadieux to Massey, 4 August 1944. 129 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 89.

The best antidote to the anxieties which prey upon a restless mind is work. Cadieux’s small office in Canada House sheltered his “inquiétudes,” his “rêves,” and his “labeurs.” It was his refuge, “l’unique élément de stabilité,” where, if only for a time, he forgot about the bombs and about the problems that he was experiencing in feeding and housing himself. When at night, with his curtains drawn and with only the narrow glow of his lamp to light his desk, he prepared his dispatches, life seemed transformed: “Pendant quelques heures,” he noted, “je vivais loin de

Londres et de son agitation.”130 His work attracted the attention of many admirers, not the least of whom was Massey. In a secret report, the High Commissioner praised Cadieux for his

“intelligence, resourcefulness and initiative,” adding that he was “much impressed” by his “wide interests … enquiring mind, and good judgment.”131 From Canada, Hume Wrong wrote to tell

Cadieux of how appreciatively his colleagues in London had spoken about him during their visits to Ottawa. He also told the young Montrealer that his reports clearly showed his progress in

English, so much so that “no one could tell now that it was not your mother tongue.”132

Although Cadieux excelled at his work in Canada House, he was self-conscious about being its only French Canadian. It could hardly be otherwise. The attitudes and habits of his senior colleagues had made the High Commission into a virtual bastion of Englishness. Vincent

Massey, writes one observer, “was almost a caricature of the Canadian anglophile, a man who made even the British élite feel unspeakably colonial.”133 A graduate of Oxford’s Balliol

College, he delighted in royal pageantry, in the romance of Britain’s past, and in the empire on which the sun never set. The urbane Charles Ritchie, a native of Halifax, was a more critical anglophile but he could easily have passed for an Englishman on account of his impeccable

English accent, one acquired at a preparatory school in the country. Of course, Frederick Hudd,

130 Ibid., 45-46. 131 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Massey, “Secret: Mr Marcel Cadieux,” 15 June 1944. 132 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Wrong to Cadieux, 3 November 1944. 133 J.L. Granatstein, “The Anglocentrism of Canadian Diplomacy,” in Canadian Culture: International Dimensions, ed. Andrew Fenton Cooper (Waterloo: Centre on Foreign Policy and Federalism, 1985), 28.

56 the senior trade commissioner, was the real thing: an Englishman in the employ of the Canadian government. In such an environment, Marcel Cadieux, with his French name and his conspicuous French-Canadian accent, painfully stood out. Years later he told an assistant that he had been regarded as something of a curiosity in Canada House. He would overhear staff in the hall outside his office informing skeptical visitors that there was a French Canadian on the premises. There would follow a knock at his door. “People would come in,” Cadieux recounted.

“I was like a little monkey. I would tip my hat, they’d smile, and then they’d leave.”134 The interest of his spectators was benign, but the experience was unsettling all the same.

Yet even in Canada House, located in the heart of the great British capital, Cadieux stayed true to himself and to his French-Canadian heritage. He found it strange, for example, that no statue of the Marquis de Montcalm accompanied the bronze one of General Wolfe outside the

High Commissioner’s door. He decorated the walls of his office with photographs of Quebec, remaining defiantly unrepentant when Mrs. Massey eyed them with what he took to be “an air of keen suspicion.”135 He continued to seek out and to rejoice in the company of other “Canayens.”

His first morning in London, a Sunday, starved and lost in Picadilly, he recalled overhearing the distinctively Québécois accent of two officers nearby: “J’te dis que c’est par icitte,” one said to the other. Cadieux rushed towards them for salvation. They directed him to Westminster

Cathedral to save his soul and to Lyon’s Corner House to save his stomach.136 Soon after his arrival, wanting nothing less than to discuss “le sort de l’univers et l’avenir de la Race,” Cadieux sought out Adélard Dugré, a prominent Quebec Jesuit living in the outskirts of London. His novel La campagne canadienne (1925), which extolled rural life over the chaos of the cities, was a classic of the terroir literary school. Awaiting Dugré in a dark and bombed-out monastery,

Cadieux knew that he was safe when a door opened and he spied a cassock and copies of Le

134 Confidential source, interview with author. 135 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6, Cadieux, “Personal Memoirs,” 2. 136 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 19.

Devoir.137 He also took an interest in the French-Canadian soldiers stationed in Britain. After visiting a bomber group in Yorkshire, he informed Vincent Massey that members of his minority group were upset with the discrimination they faced within the RCAF. Surely men willing to risk death deserved better.138 Finally, he did his best to follow all events back home that affected

Quebec. In June 1944 the Liberal senator T.D. Bouchard, a fervent anti-cleric, made headlines in

Canada with a speech damning French-Canadian nationalism which criticized the church for encouraging separatist ideas in the schools and raised the spectre of a secret Order of Jacques

Cartier dedicated to a sovereign and corporative Quebec. This was too much for Cadieux. In a memo to Massey he vigorously denounced Bouchard’s speech as irresponsible. The undeserved attention it had received proved only one thing: “the extent of the ignorance in the rest of Canada about the real state of affairs in Quebec.”139

While Cadieux’s loyalty to French Canada was not in doubt, his time in London forced him to broaden his horizons. Admittedly he had been somewhat parochial in Ottawa. His colleagues had found the problems of a troubled world absorbing, but his own gaze had remained fixed on Quebec and on its relationship to the rest of the country. His intense preoccupation with domestic issues had made him a rather curious member of a department dedicated, after all, to external affairs. His stay in England, however, began to change Cadieux. Distance and separation from Canada and Quebec forced him to place federal-provincial problems in perspective. He could hardly keep abreast of events at home and toe the nationalist line when Le Devoir arrived in London weeks late. By contrast, his proximity to the European theatre of war forced him to consider the great international questions of the day. Those uniquely Canadian problems that had once seemed to “combler l’univers” had not lost their urgency, but they were now subsumed

137 See Chapter “Le Père D…” in Cadieux, Premières Armes, 21-24; LAC/MC/6/2 – Cadieux to Adélard Dugré, 7 July 1949. 138 LAC/MC/7/13 – Cadieux to Massey, 25 May 1944. 139 LAC/MC/7/13 – Cadieux to Massey, 7 July 1944.

58 within a much larger framework. What would be the fate of French Canadians, Cadieux asked himself, if peace did not reign over the post-war world or if harmony did not govern relations among the great powers? What kind of organization was required to maintain international balance, he wondered, and what position was to be assigned to Germany? “Tout en m’efforçant de rester bien Canadien, bien Canadien français,” he reminisced, “je me rendais compte de mes responsabilités comme membre de la communauté universelle.”140 Cadieux’s first year outside of

Canada was already helping him to see the world with fresh eyes.

His intellectual exploration of a new country was also broadening. A diplomat’s first posting is uniquely memorable. Not yet sure of his craft, free from the tasks entrusted to more senior colleagues, and often transplanted to surroundings that are alluringly mysterious, the young diplomat is forced to immerse himself into a new world. This was particularly true of

Cadieux, who had travelled so little before 1944. He knew French Canadians, he was becoming acquainted with English Canadians, but the British themselves were largely unknown to him.

Inspired by an intense curiosity, he spent his free time reading and travelling about the country.

With the systematic and orderly approach so typical of his Cartesian mind, Cadieux’s voyages of discovery were divided into phases. First, to acquire a sense of the country’s landscape, he travelled extensively. His time in Sussex, for example, with its charming inns and old manor houses, introduced him to a rich pastoral tradition. There were also weekend visits to the coast and to the medieval universities of Cambridge and Oxford. But there was more to a country’s physiognomy than could be glimpsed from such trips. The work of English painters and sculptors, for instance, could be just as instructive. The second stage involved moving beyond the merely picturesque features of the country to an exploration of what Cadieux called its

“traditions spirituelles.” His companion here was history: political history, the social history of

G.M. Trevelyan, and the constitutional history of Frederic William Maitland. He read with his

140 LAC/MC/42/10 – Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 12.

59 professional duties always in mind: “déméler les grandes lignes, les axes que suivront les mesures actuellement discutés.” The third and final phase aimed to discern the “orientation” of

British life, for answers to which Cadieux turned to both literature and philosophy. George

Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, for instance, seemed to exert as marked an influence on the nation as did geography and history. They and a host of other seminal thinkers merited careful study, but this part of Cadieux’s intellectual exploration of England was only just beginning.

Admittedly there would come a time when contact with the country’s political leaders would have to be established, but not right away: “Mais ce moment doit être longuement et soigneusement préparé par des années peut-être de lectures, de voyages, de refléxions, d’études consciencieuses.”141

It is easy today to dismiss as old fashioned Cadieux’s search for what he called the

British soul. Such an interpretation risks overlooking just how ambitious his programme of study was. Prompted by no one, he plunged into the history and culture, broadly conceived, of the

British people. No instrument of learning was ignored; every scrap of evidence was cherished.

His surprising comment about potentially needing years of preparation before interacting with the political leaders of a given country must be seen in this context. For Cadieux, a diplomat’s culture and general knowledge, both of which required constant nourishment, were crucial parts of his apparatus. The vision, with its impracticalities and its challenges, was that of an idealist, but this makes it no less attractive.

In November 1944 Cadieux wrote to Hume Wrong and asked to remain in London for one or two years more. As he told his former superior, he was discovering how to analyze a foreign country; were he to leave it now, he would be abandoning an “interesting experiment.”

His studies of British domestic policy had been illuminating and he was eager to move on to the country’s foreign policy. Conceding that his knowledge of Britain was “still sketchy and rather

141 LAC/Fonds Paul Tremblay (PT)/4/2 – Cadieux to Paul and Gertrude Tremblay, 4 September 1944.

60 bookish,” he hoped to deepen his understanding: “I have now more than ever the opportunity, and feel the urge, to meet people. This is a broadening experience which may also increase my usefulness to the Department.”142 Cadieux’s request was granted by the under-secretary, but it was not to be. Chargé d’Affaires to the Allied Governments in London Tommy Stone fell ill and had to be replaced by Pierre Dupuy. The latter’s departure from Brussels would leave the

Canadian ambassador there, W.F.A. Turgeon, short-staffed, and so Cadieux was summoned to

Belgium. Given just one week’s notice in late January 1945, it was for him “la catastrophe.” He had finally found decent accommodation, he was engrossed in his work, and he seemed on the cusp of understanding England and the English people. Now he was being dispatched to a country that appeared to be of minor importance and where the material conditions would no doubt be worse than in London. Put bluntly, he had to start all over again. As he later learned, being uprooted was simply part and parcel of the career.143

Before learning of his transfer to Brussels, Cadieux spent Christmas in Paris, which had been liberated in late August and where he had friends at the newly established Canadian embassy. All his life he had sensed that there was an intimate connection between “le moi et la réalité spirituelle de la mère-patrie.” Growing up, he had pored over books of French architecture and literature. His Paris was populated by fictional characters, all of them “transparents, fraternels et chers.” When this city fell to the Germans on 14 June 1940, it felt to him like “une amputation.” Horrified, he had watched newsreels of Hitler touring its deserted streets in the early hours of the morning. The nostalgic hit song “The Last Time I Saw Paris” and the iconic photograph in Life magazine of a French citizen reduced to tears by the humiliation of his country had both deeply affected him. As Cadieux surveyed France from his plane in December

1944, its bomb-scarred landscape seemed almost lunar. As for Paris itself, “la ville est

142 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Cadieux to Wrong, 9 November 1944. 143 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 91.

61 silencieuse et grelotte dans ses pierres”: there were constant power outages, no heating, and a palpable concern for those of its citizens still detained beyond the Rhine. The setting for

Cadieux’s visit was perhaps inauspicious, but he was thoroughly charmed by what he saw. The

Place de la Concorde, the Louvre, the Tuileries, sites that had only been known to him in books, suddenly became real. There was a homogeneity, a “harmonie d’inspiration” to French civilization that was enchanting and which caused him to reflect on the extent to which Canada was subject to the Anglo-Saxon influence. As he explored Paris’ fabled haunts, he could see why the city had so captivated its admirers. With its music, its painting, and its theatre, the French capital was an invitation to self-fulfilment, a monument to the art of living. “Pour beaucoup,”

Cadieux noted rhapsodically, “Paris a aussi le charme irrésistible d’un mystère qui se dévoile progressivement et qui pourtant toujours se dérobe et incite ainsi à de nouvelles explorations.”144

These impressions of liberated Paris may seem romanticized and exaggerated, but they were trademark Cadieux. He was a passionate man whose excitement often overflowed into his prose. All of his life he had admired French civilization from afar: up close, it enthralled him even more. But his brief sojourn in France in 1944, followed by at least two subsequent visits before 1947, also led to another discovery, this one more surprising: the French themselves were perhaps not the long-lost spiritual kin that he had imagined them to be. He was struck by the contrast between French Canadians “et ces Français au verbe facile, à l’esprit mordant, au scepticisme amer, à la politique si complexe.” When French Canadians met their English-

Canadian counterparts in Paris, they found more common ground with them than with all the inhabitants of that venerable city combined. Together the Canadian expatriates yearned for “les mêmes neiges ensoleillées, les mêmes tonalités, les mêmes paysages piqués de leur clocher à flèche sémillante.” French Canadians saw in their compatriots, Cadieux went on, “plus de points de contact et d’entente, plus de façons communes d’envisager la vie et les choses que chez ces

144 Marcel Cadieux, “Découverte de Paris,” La nouvelle revue canadienne 1, no. 1 (February-March 1951): 67-72.

Français qui, la veille encore, semblaient les aînés dans la maison ancestrale.”145 These passages recall, although they were not inspired by, the encounter in Paris between Cadieux and A.J. Pick already discussed. In both cases the lesson was the same: there was more that united English and

French Canadians than divided them, though it sometimes took being an ocean and a continent away from Canada to realize it.

III – Brussels

When Marcel Cadieux arrived in Belgium in early February 1945, the scourge of war and occupation was only just lifting from the country. The Battle of the Bulge – fought in the cold, the snow, and the fog of the Ardennes forest – proved to be Nazi Germany’s last gasp. Coal and other supplies in Brussels were still scarce. Cadieux entered the Canadian embassy in the middle of the afternoon only to find it unheated and deserted. Next he tried the ambassador’s private quarters nearby. Seated there, facing one another, were W.F.A. Turgeon and Pierre Dupuy. The shutters were closed and they were wearing coats and scarves. “Il faisait un froid de loup,”

Cadieux recounted, “et la conversation n’avait pas l’air d’aller bien fort.”146 To his dismay, his arrival was greeted with consternation since his superiors had nowhere to house him. He was at the mercy of the Canadian Army. The military attaché was consulted followed by the commandant. The latter tried to wash his hands of the matter: Cadieux was a civilian and therefore it was up to the civilian authorities to look after him. The debate lasted for half an hour until it was decided that this persistent newcomer would, for one night only, be put up at Le

Palace, a hotel which had been requisitioned by the military. For several weeks Cadieux had to negotiate daily just to keep this roof over his head. “Jamais je me suis senti dans une situation aussi précaire,” he later admitted.147 Knowing nothing and nobody in Brussels, he spent his

145 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 203. 146 LAC/MC/42/10 – Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 13-14 147 Ibid.

63 evenings alone, in bed with his curtains drawn, reading a history of Belgium. His sleep was sometimes interrupted by V-2s. While the majority were being launched at Antwerp, a key

Allied port that the First Canadian Army had been instrumental in opening, the Nazis spared neither Liège nor Brussels.148

During his two years in the Belgian capital, Cadieux moved only five times, an annoyance to be sure but still an improvement over his situation in London. After a rocky start, his relations with the Canadian Army became friendlier. He was indebted to them for his next three rooms, at least two of which were in requisitioned houses. One of them, large and luxurious, had been home during the war to a Luftwaffe general. It featured a garden, a garage, three living rooms, five bedrooms, and two libraries. As Cadieux fondly reminisced, “Nous

étions installés comme des princes.”149 But the fuel shortage in the country resulted in certain predictable discomforts. A fellow officer recalled hearing Cadieux later speak of “cold Brussels houses and damp sheets which could only be conquered with cognac.”150 At the end of the war the army withdrew from Belgium and Cadieux had to move again. He ended up living with an old doctor, his sister, and his niece, a family that had known Frederic Hudd of Canada House during the First World War and who, faithful to that friendship, now offered his junior colleague their third floor, accommodation which included a magnificent view of the Bois de la Cambre.

“Jamais locataire ne fut si bien traité,” Cadieux gratefully acknowledged. Knowing his weakness for sweets, he was often provided with a chocolate mousse, a Belgian specialty, when he returned at night. From this family Cadieux learned what life had been like under the Nazis and what issues currently troubled the country. His interlocutors were no less intrigued by him. They exhibited a curious fascination with Grey Owl and Cadieux had great trouble convincing them

148 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 131. 149 Ibid., 135. 150 LAC/MC/7/12 – Arthur Menzies to Cadieux, 23 March 1975.

64 that Indians, beavers, and bears did not in fact roam Canada’s streets.151

While Cadieux’s housing situation improved in Belgium, the cost-of-living problem in

Brussels was even more acute than it had been in London. Alarmed, he protested to Wrong one month after his arrival that he could not remain in the country more than another three weeks, adding brusquely that there were three solutions: a more generous allowance, an expense account, “or, horresco referens, a promotion.”152 He also took his case to the ambassador who, seeing the justice of it, wrote to the under-secretary. Cadieux’s monthly income, Turgeon informed Robertson, was $285. When the cost of housing was deducted from it, he had barely enough money to pay for “one good meal a day.” The problem was the ridiculous value of the

Belgian franc: one Canadian dollar fetched only forty of them and they bought practically nothing.153 Cadieux expressed his frustration to W.D. Matthews in the DEA. While he had been granted the local rank of Second Secretary, and hence a modest increase in allowance, he noted that he had only enough to subsist. “I can well understand your concern over our spending so much good Canadian dough,” he wrote. “It makes me mad to pay … $5.- to $7.- for a poor dinner, but we have no choice and even for the money we spend I can assure you that we get very little satisfaction.”154 Thanks to Wrong’s prompt intervention, his allowance was soon raised from $104 to $145.

Cadieux’s worries eased, but only for a time. In the summer of 1945 Turgeon reported that Cadieux had been eager to spend his vacation in Canada, a request the ambassador supported due to the fact that his health was suffering from overwork, but that Cadieux had abandoned the idea because the “exorbitant” cost of living had prevented him from setting aside any money to

151 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 137-38; LAC/MC/42/10 – Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 17. 152 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Cadieux to Wrong, 1 March 1945. 153 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – W.F.A. Turgeon to Robertson, 2 March 1945. 154 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Cadieux to Matthews, 16 March 1945.

65 finance the trip.155 In January 1946 Turgeon wrote to Robertson with the news that the standard of living of staff at the embassy was worsening. Using Cadieux as an example, he noted that while his monthly income of $325 was perhaps sufficient in Ottawa, at home he was not expected to rub shoulders with high society and to maintain through his “way of life … the prestige of a Canadian embassy in a foreign country.” Surely it was not in Canada’s best interests for its diplomats to be in a “conscious state of constraint and consequent inferiority” with respect to the people with whom they were expected to have dealings. Moreover, there was an unfair

“discrimination” between the allowances paid to personnel in Paris and to those in Brussels. The irony, Turgeon opined, was that “compulsory social activity” was actually heavier in Belgium.

After all, it was a kingdom, its aristocracy was active, and the country’s recovery was well ahead of every other in Europe. In both its frankness and forcefulness, Turgeon’s prose was suspiciously similar to that of Cadieux. The letter’s final line expressed the hope that those in authority back home grasped that “a Canadian Embassy cannot be conducted as a second-class mission in respect of other embassies in the same capital nor in respect of other Canadian embassies.”156 Whoever the real author of the missive was, it achieved several of its goals: in

February 1946 Cadieux became a full-fledged Second Secretary, a promotion that brought a salary increase from $2,770 to $3,300 and larger allowances. This mark of recognition was overdue, with Wrong having recommended it more than two years before. Needless to say, there were no more letters from Brussels about Cadieux’s financial predicament.

Along with the vexing question of the cost of living in Belgium, the other issue that preoccupied Cadieux was administration. Before the war, Canada had been briefly represented in the country by a legation; the legation became an embassy in 1945 and much work was needed to get it up to snuff. New premises had to be located and purchased. The chancery and the

155 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Turgeon to SSEA, 10 August 1945, telegram 113. 156 LAC/LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Turgeon to Robertson, 11 January 1946.

66 ambassador’s residence required furnishing. Servants needed hiring. Servants needed replacing.

Electrical appliances broke and needed repair. There were countless niggling chores to complete, tasks that were inevitably delegated to junior officers. The embassy’s material welfare was a constant source of concern for Cadieux. With coal and other supplies still rationed in Belgium, he and his colleagues lived largely off the army. The experience was a tedious but necessary introduction to that most unglamorous aspect of diplomatic life: the daily administration of a foreign mission. Each morning Cadieux began his work by distributing “les vivres.” He learned that buildings required different types of coal and that an injudiciously portioned shoulder of beef could lead to endless squabbling. It was only in Brussels that he realized how fortunate

Canada House was to have a team of locally engaged clerical staff that seemed to have been there since time immemorial. In Belgium, by contrast, he had to devote many precious hours to organizing the embassy before being able to get down to its real work.157

What Cadieux would have considered the real work of a second secretary in Brussels was nothing if not diverse. There were visits of Canadian officials and dignitaries to prepare for.

There were ceremonies, invariably held in Belgium’s coldest churches, to attend. There were

Belgian bureaucrats to meet and from whom to extract information. There were reports of every kind to write for Ottawa. There was embassy mail to read and to answer, newspaper editorials to study, magazines to skim, and parliamentary debates to digest. And, every day, there were visitors to the embassy seeking either official information or assistance. Cadieux met all kinds of people, including Belgian students eager to pursue their studies overseas, workers nervously debating a family move to Canada, and the restless wives and fiancées of returned Canadian soldiers. The reputation of the army in Belgium was good, but Belgians still sought embassy redress for unpaid liquor bills and questionable romantic commitments. On one occasion, however, it was a soldier who invoked Cadieux’s help. He was absent without leave, having been

157 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 157-58.

67 refused permission to marry a penniless Belgian woman who was soon to be the mother of his child. Surely, he pleaded, his duty to this young woman trumped what he owed to the military.

“Avec un zèle de néophyte, le zèle dont parle Talleyrand,” Cadieux telephoned Canadian Army headquarters to denounce the scandalous treatment that had been meted out to his visitor and to threaten the ambassador’s personal intervention if the matter were not settled right away.

Intimidated, the officer on the other end pledged that the soldier would be reinstated and that permission to marry would be granted him. Well satisfied Cadieux put down the phone, only to have it ring moments later. The Canadian Army’s original position was reaffirmed: the soldier in question already had a wife and two children in England.158

Many visitors streamed through the embassy but only one of them, a Belgian Catholic priest whom Cadieux later referred to as the most extraordinary man he had ever met, left a lifelong impression. It was the summer of 1945 and the full horror of the Holocaust had become known to the world. One day a certain Léon Leloir arrived at the embassy. Cadieux recalled being struck at once by his appearance: “L’allure sombre, l’œil perçant, la mâchoire volontaire, la tête rasée donnent une impression d’énergie et de dynamisme.” He wore civilian clothes, but around his neck was a Roman collar. Suddenly, without warning or introduction, he began to recite lines of poetry. Reading Cadieux’s thoughts, Leloir assured him that he was not mad; rather, he had just been released from the concentration camp at Buchenwald and, to avoid losing his mind over what he had seen there, he now spoke in verse. He was a member of the White

Fathers of Africa and before the war he had founded its missionary journal Grands Lacs, which

Cadieux knew. He had served as a chaplain to the Maquis of the Ardennes and, while crossing the Meuse River in 1944, he had been apprehended by the Nazis and sent to Buchenwald. Leloir explained to Cadieux how at the concentration camp he had not only had to contend with the

Nazi SS but also, among the prisoners themselves, with a brutal communist leadership that had

158 Ibid., 161-63.

68 exercised the power of life and death over each inmate. Virulently anti-religious, it had tried to prevent Leloir from celebrating Mass and from offering Holy Communion. The Communists had monopolized the safest and most rewarding jobs in the camp, such as food supply and mail delivery, and had assigned the most dangerous work to their political enemies, that is, those whom they had not already liquidated. Visiting Cadieux on another occasion, Leloir remarked that the secretary at his side was armed: “Les communistes ne me laisseront pas dévoiler leurs manoeuvres dans le camp. Je serai bientôt éliminé.” He died in a car accident that same year.

Calling his demise “mystérieux,” Cadieux hinted that the priest had been assassinated.159 While it seems plausible, there is no proof for such an assertion.

That Cadieux’s imagination may have run wild does not change the fact that Leloir’s account of his wartime ordeal was likely true. As the preface to a confidential United States

Army report on Buchenwald, written in April 1945 but only declassified in 1972, states, “[This] is the story of wheels within wheels . . . [of] how the prisoners themselves organized a deadly terror within the Nazi terror.”160 Leloir’s experience hardened Cadieux’s antipathy to communism. While his essay on the priest was not published until 1948, by which time the

Allied alliance with the Soviet Union had crumbled under the weight of mutual suspicion and the

Cold War had begun, it is worth reiterating that the encounter on which it was based occurred in

June or July 1945. As Cadieux noted with contempt, this was still the era of “collaboration” with the communist ally, of “les beaux principes” outlined in the preamble to the United Nations

Charter.161 In fact, Cadieux’s anti-communism, a trait which had been fostered in Quebec during the 1930s but which had lain largely dormant throughout the war, had been awakened even before his encounter with Leloir. Soon after his arrival in Brussels, prisoners from the east had

159 Ménalque (Cadieux), “Le Père Leloir,” Revue dominicaine 54, no. 2 (July-August 1948): 41-44; See as well the chapter “Le Père Leloir” in Cadieux, Premières Armes, 139-44. 160 Warwick Digital Library, Egon W. Fleck and Edward A. Tenenbaum, “Buchenwald: A Preliminary Report,” 24 April 1945, 1; See as well Mark Weber, “Buchenwald: Legend and Reality,” The Journal of Historical Review 7, no. 4 (Winter 1986-87): 405-17. 161 Ménalque, “Le Père Leloir,” 42.

69 flooded into the city by train and by a convoy of aircraft overhead. Some of the new arrivals claimed Canadian citizenship and told Cadieux the most incredible tales of the Red Army’s orgy of rape and pillage as it had “liberated” Eastern Europe and advanced on Berlin. It is estimated today that two million German women were raped by Soviet soldiers, with perhaps 130,000 victims in the capital alone. Evidence at the time for what was taking place was fragmentary, but it was clear that something terrible was underway: “Une sorte de crépuscule frangé de lueurs d’incendie semblait couvrir l’Est de l’Europe,” Cadieux reminisced. He added, “Une nouvelle

ère sinistre s’annonçait: les valeurs, les procédés que l’Europe acceptait depuis des siècles sans discuter, tout était remis en cause ou simplement ignoré.”162

While Cadieux kept a wary eye on Eastern Europe, his focus remained on Belgium. As was the case in London, the work that he most relished was political reporting. Also, as in

London, he received little formal training from the ambassador. William Ferdinand Alphonse

Turgeon, a native of New Brunswick, had moved to Saskatchewan as a young man in 1903 and opened a law practice there in Prince Albert. He had entered politics with the Liberal Party and gone on to serve as provincial Attorney General from 1907 to 1921, acquiring a reputation as a defender of francophone rights. In 1921 he had been named to Saskatchewan’s Court of Appeal, where he rose to Chief Justice before accepting a diplomatic appointment to Argentina in 1941.

Turgeon’s career was distinguished. As Cadieux mischievously noted many years later, however, his services to the state had included using his electoral machine to ensure that the federal constituency of Prince Albert, which just so happened to be Mackenzie King’s own riding, remained a safe Liberal seat.163 As a political appointment – one who was wise, affable, and gracious but sixty-seven-years old in 1945 – Turgeon could not guide and oversee Cadieux’s work the same way a professional diplomat might have. Nor was there anyone at the Brussels

162 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 97-98. 163 LAC/DEA/9006/20-1-5-BREEC/1 – Marcel Cadieux to SSEA with enclosure of “Discours devant les membres du Cercle Royal Gaulois,” 5 November 1975, dispatch 1733.

70 embassy comparable to Charles Ritchie in stature.

Fortunately Cadieux was in no need of a mentor. Post-occupation Belgium was plagued by numerous problems and he was eager to report on the most salient. In the evening, his briefcase stuffed with newspaper clippings, periodicals, and documents of all kinds, he returned home to write his dispatches.164 He devoted special attention to the royal question which so divided Belgian public opinion after the liberation. As the King of Belgium and the commander of its army, Leopold III had chosen to surrender to Nazi Germany in May 1940. More problematically, and unlike the Queen of the Netherlands and the King of Norway, he had refused to seek exile in London with his ministers. By remaining in Belgium, under Nazi guard at Laeken castle, Leopold III was open to criticism. Unable to serve as a symbol of resistance for

Belgians, the ominously silent King seemed to give tacit support to Hitler’s domination of

Europe. His opponents pointed to his unfortunate trip in November 1940 to der Fuehrer’s mountain lair at Berchtesgaden and to the King’s often tactless and undemocratic disregard of parliament in the 1930s. Following the liberation and the war’s end, the Liberal, Socialist, and

Communist parties demanded the abdication of the King, now resident in Switzerland, while the

Catholic party supported his return. The royal question bedeviled Belgium in the early post-war period. As Cadieux attested in his reports, it undermined coalitions, dominated election campaigns, and prevented the formation of governments.165

The tricky legal and moral problem of defining treasonable collaboration during the Nazi occupation also preoccupied Cadieux. The enemy’s insidious influence had penetrated to the very core of the country; bureaucrats, businessmen, academics, and ordinary citizens had often had no choice but to cooperate with their Nazi overlords. The geography in Belgium was not

164 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 163; LAC/MC/7/4 – Cadieux to SSEA, 7 October 1975, dispatch 1496. 165 See, among other Canadian dispatches on the Belgian royal question, LAC/DEA/3287/7039-40/1 – Turgeon to SSEA, 2 August 1945, dispatch 441; LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – Turgeon to SSEA, 15 January 1946, dispatch 41; LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – Cadieux to SSEA, 30 July 1946, dispatch 433; LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 –Cadieux to SSEA, 6 August 1946, dispatch 449.

71 conducive to armed resistance. Exiled Belgians had urged their countrymen to resist, but this was easier said two hundred miles away than done from underneath the Nazi heel. Cases of clear and enthusiastic assistance to the Germans could be punished, but most were complex and contradictory. For example, a factory might have produced goods for the Nazis simply to prevent them from commandeering it or from deporting its workers east. The Belgian criminal code had been amended in 1943 to facilitate the prosecution of collaborators, but there was now a debate over whether it should be made retroactive, an idea repugnant to the country’s legal profession.

Jails in Belgium were packed with real and alleged traitors. In March 1945 it was estimated that around 100,000 cases were under consideration and that as many as 500,000 Belgians, out of a population of eight million, were under suspicion. Collaboration was a bitterly political issue: the right-wing parties naturally called for a sensible and restrained “épuration,” while their left-wing opponents just as naturally demanded a mercilessly vigorous one. Nor were the partisans and patriots guiltless: immediately after the liberation, some had raped and murdered collaborators and other people inimical to them. The Canadian embassy could report in late 1946 that the question of treason was much less heated, but Cadieux never forgot the strange welcome that he received in one Belgian village.166 The Canadian Red Cross had made a donation of clothes to it and he had been invited by one of its prominent citizens to attend a ceremony of thanks. Upon his arrival at the village, however, he found it nearly deserted, with only the event’s organizers there to greet him. Upon returning to the embassy, he learned that during the war they had run a factory in the area that had operated at full blast for the Nazis. The villagers, while no doubt grateful for Canada’s beneficence, had refused to attend an event organized by collaborators. As

Cadieux noted, the punishment could have been worse: in some Belgian cities it was common

166 See, among other Canadian dispatches on the issue of collaboration in Belgium, LAC/DEA/3287/7039-40/1 – Turgeon to SSEA, 26 March 1945, dispatch 160; LAC/DEA/3287/7039-40/1 – Turgeon to SSEA, 12 April 1945, dispatch 194; LAC/DEA/3287/7039-40/1 – E. D’Arcy McGreer to SSEA, 3 May 1945, dispatch 226; LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – McGreer to SSEA, 4 November 1946, dispatch 606.

72 practice to throw traitors into the canals.167

Along with the royal question and the collaboration problem, the ethnic tension between

Belgium’s Dutch speaking Flemish and its French-speaking Walloon populations both intrigued

Cadieux and opened his eyes. As he later recalled, “J’ai pu me rendre compte que les Canadiens français ne sont pas le seul peuple au monde aux prises avec des problèmes d’ajustement au sein d’une communauté étatique plus vaste.”168 He discovered that, much like Canada’s, the history of Belgium since the nineteenth century had been plagued by disputes over religion, education, and language. Also, as in Canada, the war had only accentuated these divisions. In Belgium’s case, however, the main source of friction was not the prosecution of the war effort but rather the presence on Belgian territory of an enemy occupier. The Nazis had pursued a policy of divide and rule by blatantly favouring the Germanic Flemish over the Walloons. Whereas before the war it had been the Flemish movement that had dominated the political landscape, by 1939 winning protections for its language and tacit approval for its view that the administration of

Belgium should be a shared enterprise, by 1945 it was the Walloon movement that was making headlines. This group was motivated by many factors: its discriminatory treatment by the Nazis; its weakening demographic position and its fear of a Flemish intrusion into its provinces; its crumbling economic base as banks and businesses departed Wallonia for Brussels and Flanders; and its concern that its distinct culture could not flourish within Belgium’s unitary state.169

The Canadian embassy in Belgium closely monitored the troubled Walloon-Flemish relationship, including one of its strangest and most disturbing features: alleged interference by

France. In May 1945, for example, it reported on “La Wallonie Libre,” a movement reputedly

167 See the chapter “Distribution de vêtements,” in Cadieux, Premières Armes, 123-27. 168 LAC/MC/42/10 – Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 18. 169 See, among other Canadian dispatches on the Belgian racial question, LAC/DEA/3287/7039-40/1 – McGreer to SSEA, 2 May 1945, dispatch 231; LAC/DEA/3287/7039-40/1 – Turgeon to SSEA, 24 July 1945, dispatch 421; LAC/DEA/3287/7039-40/1 – Turgeon to SSEA, 14 August 1945, dispatch 475; LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – Turgeon to SSEA, 8 January 1946, dispatch 18; LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – McGreer to SSEA, 6 November 1946, dispatch 615.

73 encouraged and financed in part by the French.170 In August 1945 – citing, among other sources,

Léon Leloir, a British Intelligence Officer, and a Belgian Foreign Affairs official – it reported on

“persistent rumours” that the French embassy in Brussels and its “agents” were stirring up anti- royalist sentiment. The French, the Canadian report speculated, were clumsily making trouble in

Belgium despite the fact that no prominent Belgian individual or group shared their alleged aim, the eventual annexation of Wallonia, and that France’s prestige had not yet recovered from its humiliating defeat in June 1940.171 In March 1946, the Canadian embassy reported news of a curious “Quebec-Wallonie” separatist organization, one whose communiqué, written in a style eerily similar to that of French Ambassador to Belgium Raymond Brugère, called for a rapprochement between these two parts of the “French cultural empire.”172 Asked by the DEA to comment on this dispatch from Brussels, the embassy in Paris noted that reliable information was scarce, but that Brugère seemed to be envisioning his mandate in Belgium very broadly and that the British Foreign Office had been “quite alarmed” to receive similar reports about his meddlesome activities. There was conflicting evidence, however, over whether Brugère had the blessing of the Quai d’Orsay or whether he was acting as a lone wolf.173 Cadieux was almost certainly the embassy officer who first drew Canadian attention to France’s peculiar conduct in

Belgium. Nor did he ever forget it. Many years later, in the 1960s, he vividly recalled observing

French interference in Belgium’s ethnic problems.174

While Cadieux’s reports from London had focused on reconstruction, a narrow but amorphous subject, those from Brussels exhibited greater breadth. His tenure at Canada House had provided him with valuable training in the art of writing dispatches, but it had not been easy

170 LAC/DEA/3287/7039-40/1 – McGreer to SSEA, 8 May 1945, dispatch 238. 171 LAC/DEA/3287/7039-40/1 – McGreer to SSEA, 16 August 1945, dispatch 484. 172 LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – Turgeon to SSEA, 1 March 1946, dispatch 108. 173 LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – Georges P. Vanier to SSEA, 4 June 1946, dispatch 554. 174 LAC/Fonds Jules Léger (JL)/1/12 – Cadieux to Jules Léger, 23 November 1964. As Cadieux wrote, “durant mon séjour en Belgique, j’avais été à même de constater que les services français stimulaient les séparatistes wallons lorsqu’ils voulaient exercer des pressions sur le Gouvernement belge, et que les mêmes services français avaient provoqué la création depuis la Belgique d’un mouvement séparatiste Québec-Wallonie.”

74 to make use of his new learning, acquired through travel and wide reading, when the senior

Charles Ritchie wrote most of the general reports on Britain and on its foreign policy. Cadieux’s posting to Brussels was liberating. Of course, being small and understaffed, the newly opened embassy had more than its fair share of routine and administrative, tasks that provided an invaluable initiation into the many functions of a foreign mission but ones that also drained time and energy from the more stimulating activity of political reporting. On the other hand, the size of the post and its comparative insignificance relative to those in London, Paris, and Washington, gave its occupants more freedom. An enterprising young officer like Cadieux could decide on what subjects to report and be adventuresome in his selection.

This exciting opportunity was facilitated by the aversion of his senior colleague, Chargé d’Affaires E. Darcy McGreer, to writing reports. One day, having invited Cadieux to join him for a drink, he gently critiqued the French Canadian’s mania for penning dispatches. Headquarters, argued McGreer, was not accustomed to receiving information from the embassy and Cadieux was only whetting its appetite. But what would happen, the sermon went on, if he became swamped with other work and were incapable of producing more dispatches? Ottawa, unaware of the new demands on his time, would notice the drop in output at once and find fault with him.

The implication was that a benign neglect of one’s duties was superior to industry. With the zeal and arrogance of youth, Cadieux dismissed such advice as typical of the foreign service’s older officers, whom he viewed as “croulants et paresseux.”175 No doubt eager that the DEA know just who in Brussels was writing what he later estimated at “99.9%” of all the embassy’s dispatches, and motivated by the related and not inconsequential aim of attracting the favourable notice of

175 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 15 February 1964. McGreer, Cadieux wrote, certainly “n’avait pas inventé le travail.”

75 his superiors, he often appended his typed initials, “MC,” just below where either McGreer or

Turgeon signed off on his work.176

Such bouts of egotism were forgivable. Absorbed in what he called the “Belgian experiment,” Cadieux was impatient to interpret it to the Canadian government. This foreign land, a country which from London had appeared trivial and unimportant, now fascinated him.

His keen interest can partly be explained by the fact that he saw in Belgium a microcosm of

Europe. After six long years of war, the exhausted continent was bankrupt and lay smouldering in ruins. What, if anything, would rise from its ashes? Having spent over one year in Brussels,

Cadieux decided in March 1946 that the time was right to summarize the Belgian mood, particularly since the fate of that nation likely typified what prevailed elsewhere in Europe.

His thesis was that Belgium, like Europe generally, was deeply concerned about its future. The sources for this anxiety were many. Globally, the rivalry between the Great Powers seemed to presage future conflicts, ones as unavoidable as ever for Belgians. There was uneasiness over the eventual position of Europe’s enfant terrible: Germany. Financial worry was also rife. The industrial and scientific power of the “new world” had sown doubt among

Europeans over how they could compete and make a living. The patterns, the stability, indeed the very permanence of the past had all been destroyed. Belgians were conscious that Europe was no longer in the “vanguard of progress,” lacking as it did the “intellectual capital” that had once ensured its pre-eminence in the world. “[F]ellow students rather than teachers,” its countries now looked to North America for their political, social, and economic models. The expression the

“old country” had ceased to be an apt description for a continent through which the winds of change now blew relentlessly. Those winds, moreover, were foreign. The price of United States assistance, one that Belgium was prepared to pay to speed its post-war recovery and to better the

176 LAC/PT/4/3 – Cadieux to Paul and Gertrude Tremblay, 28 March 1947. For one example, among many, of Cadieux appending his initials to dispatches see LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – McGreer to SSEA, 6 November 1946, dispatch 616. The practice, which Cadieux followed inconsistently, seems to have begun in January 1946.

76 lives of its citizens, was the loss of “material and … spiritual independence.” An invasion was underway of American films, songs, books, and cars, to say nothing of American ideals and methods. As in the past, Belgium was allying itself with nearby states; unlike in the past, it was also tying itself to Washington as a “long-term insurance” against Moscow. The Soviet Union, however, would not give up without a fight. The prospect of this tug-of-war was profoundly worrying to Belgians. The war-weary European continent was now an ideological battleground where humanism and totalitarianism vied for supremacy. Cadieux’s dispatch, rather gloomy to this point, ended more hopefully. Communism’s appeal in Belgium was limited in that its supporters were seen as “alien-financed, alien-sponsored, and alien-controlled.” That said, having rejected one extreme, Belgium also rejected the other: classical liberalism. The country’s political parties were now in universal agreement that a basic level of subsistence had to be guaranteed each citizen. To achieve this aim, it was clear that the hoary axioms of free enterprise might require adjustment and that a degree of government control over the individual would have to be countenanced. Thus, while the country was susceptible to foreign influences more than ever before, there was also underway a “tightening of the bonds between the citizens as members of the community.” Should Belgium escape from its present impasse, the paper concluded, it would likely become one of Canada’s “great allies” rather than one of its “potential enemies.”177

This six-page dispatch on the Belgian mood was the finest of Cadieux’s young career. To be sure, it was overdrawn in parts: Belgium, after all, had not totally succumbed to the American behemoth; nor was it easy to imagine a situation, short of an almost impossible Communist coup, in which the country would become a foe to Canada. These reservations aside, the report was an elegant and convincing diagnosis of the malaise gnawing at the European soul. Exceptionally, in sending the essay on to Ottawa, the ambassador gave Cadieux full credit for it, the obvious

177 LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – Turgeon to SSEA with enclosure of Cadieux’s “Memorandum,” 27 March 1946, dispatch 167.

77 caveat being that it expressed a purely personal opinion. At headquarters it was labelled a “first- class dispatch” and work consistent with what had come to be expected from its author. The embassies in Amsterdam and Paris were sent copies of the report and, at the request of the under- secretary himself, so too were Canadian missions in Athens, Berlin, Dublin, London, and

Oslo.178 The surest way for a junior diplomat abroad to make a name for himself at home is with his pen, and Marcel Cadieux was doing just that.

For this young diplomat, research, reflection, and writing made his profession an honourable one. But these activities best flourished outside of Canada. In Ottawa the work of an officer assigned to one of the geographic or technical divisions in the DEA and charged with a specific file could be monotonous. Abroad, however, especially in one of the less specialized missions, the same officer’s work was richly various. Cadieux perfected in Belgium the intellectual approach to a foreign country that he had tested in England. Refusing to be tethered to his embassy desk, he immersed himself in the daily life of the Belgian people. His sources ranged from the printed word to what he called “le spectacle de la rue,” that is, an almost infinite number of opportunities to witness authentic Belgian existence. Even the snippets of conversation that he overheard could be revealing in their own way. He took in culture of every kind, including art exhibitions, festivals, and processions. The country being small he crisscrossed it numerous times, visiting, among other sites, De Panne, its North Sea coast still littered with German mines, trenches, and bunkers; Bruges, a medieval city of canals and narrow cobblestone streets; and Binche, home to the famous carnival and its curious clown-like Gilles.

But Cadieux was no mere tourist. Everything that he experienced outside of the embassy added to his understanding of the Belgian mentality and enriched the reports that he wrote.

In late October 1946, as he neared the end of his posting, having spent almost two years

178 LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – J.S. [likely John Starnes] to Escott Reid, undated; LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – Robertson to Turgeon, 17 April 1946; LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – J.S. to Mrs. Consenzo, 26 April 1946.

78 in Belgium, Cadieux attempted to define that very mentality. As we have seen, he had already captured the mood of the country, noting how it generally reflected that of Europe, but now he tried to seize the essence of the Belgian character. Cadieux, who was not naïve, recognized the pitfalls of such a project: with some exaggeration, he noted that it was rarely attempted until after a “lifetime of experience” among a given people; he also readily admitted that what might be true in general would always be subject to individual qualification. Nevertheless, he defended his observations on the grounds that they were based on a close reading of Belgium’s history, on travel through “practically every area of the country,” and on the statements Belgians “very freely make about themselves and accept as accurate descriptions of their own character.”179

At the heart of the Belgian character, Cadieux believed, was a love of material things.

How else to explain those lavish meals whose several courses could extend over three hours?

The displays in shop windows were stuffed with victuals and libations of all kinds. There were telling examples from history of the average Belgian’s loyalty to his belly. Foreign troops besieging Liège had once entered the city unchallenged; unfortunately, the attack had occurred at dinner time, when the would-be defenders were all at home, peacefully enjoying their evening meals. With attachment to material comforts came acquisitiveness. It was estimated that there were more new cars in Brussels than in all of France. As Cadieux noted, much of Belgium’s foreign credit had gone to the purchase of food and luxury goods. The Belgians, unlike the

French and the British, would never have tolerated a strict policy of austerity. A second national trait, closely tied to the first, was Belgian individualism. Among other things, Belgians had a reputation as smugglers and tax evaders. Their well-entrenched black market was symptomatic of the fact that the average Belgian brooked no interference with his or her private interests.

Take, for example, the embassy driver whom Cadieux suspected of earning four salaries: first,

179 LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – McGreer to SSEA, 28 October 1946, dispatch 599. This dispatch was later translated almost verbatim into French and included as the chapter “Le Belge” in Cadieux, Premières Armes, 145- 55.

79 the official one paid to him by the embassy; second, the commission he pocketed from the stores where he purchased supplies for the embassy; third, the amount he charged the embassy on top of what he had actually paid for the items; and fourth, the financial advantages of driving the embassy car into the country, where goods were cheaper, and then returning to Brussels to sell what he had bought at a profit. Then there was the case of repairs done to the Cathedral at

Tournai. A call for proposals had gone out at controlled prices but no offers had been received.

The same request was made once more, this time with no mention of official prices, and the repairs were completed. The root of this attitude was partly historical. With their country having changed hands so often, Belgians had only been able to survive by drawing the line between their own interests and those of the state. That was all well and good, Cadieux noted, but it certainly made the job of Belgium’s government more challenging. The other Belgian trait that struck him was its love of ceremony. Many cities seemed to have their own tradition. In Bruges there was the Procession of the Holy Blood, a mystery play acted out through its winding streets.

In Veurne there was the Procession of the Penitents, with hooded figures solemnly carrying crosses to and fro. And, of course, there was Binche, where the exotically costumed Gilles danced and threw oranges at spectators. The Belgians, Cadieux noted, had inherited their love of public spectacle from the Middle Ages. Indicative of the country’s taste for rejoicing were the widespread Kermesses, or festivals, in the summer, evoking scenes worthy of the Flemish

Renaissance painter Brueghel.180

If Belgians relished celebration, Cadieux was quick to add that they were also industrious. Much of the country had been reclaimed from the sea, a painstaking process that had taken centuries. It was also estimated that over 650 battles had been fought on Belgian soil. And yet, as the eminent national historian Henri Pirenne argued, the country was always the fastest to recover from war or from occupation. The faith of Belgian people in the “good things of life,”

180 LAC/DEA/3748/7039-40/2 – McGreer to SSEA, 28 October 1946, dispatch 599.

Cadieux surmised, prompted them to rebuild with an enviable resolve: “There is, from this point of view, something very healthy in the Belgian attitude; they are not cynical or blase [sic].” He stressed, however, that Belgium’s cities were not intellectually stimulating, at least compared to

London and Paris, and that public discussion there rarely revolved around ideas. Seated in a

Belgian restaurant, for example, Cadieux had eavesdropped on two conversations: the first was about the salaries of stenographers, while the second was about the qualities of Citroëns and

Fords. Needless to say, there was no counterpart in Brussels to Paris’ bookstalls. Neither Belgian literature nor theatre impressed Cadieux, but he praised its music and painting. Flemish artists like Rubens and Ensor had a flair for colour, while the Walloons, former forest dwellers, were known for their song and dance. Unlike the French, the English, and the Russians, the Belgians were not nationalists and therefore “easy to get along with and rather unassuming when discussing national or international problems.” On the other hand, their singular focus on their own interests often produced an “egotistical attitude” towards government authority. This “love of freedom” was reflected in Belgium’s tradition of local autonomy, proof for which was found in the notable architecture of city halls in Ghent, Bruges, and Brussels. In both world wars, the burgomaster had been held up as a symbol of defiance to the invader. Cadieux ended his sketch on the Belgian mentality by noting that if it were somewhat dark, this was not the final impression left on visitors to Belgium; rather, the Belgians themselves were cheerful, if somewhat “overconcerned with the material comforts and joys of life.” For all their defects, they were to be admired for the alacrity with which they were rebuilding their lives.181

To today’s reader, swamped by instant around-the-clock news from across the globe,

Cadieux’s dispatch on the Belgian national character, sent by diplomatic pouch no less, may seem somewhat quaint, and perhaps even pointless. One must recall, however, that it was written in 1946, a period when reports on Belgium, and a host of other minor countries, were rare in

181 Ibid.

Canadian newspapers. Simply put, the essay filled a void. Consider, as well, that its author was operating within a rich tradition of dispatches on national character, one as old as the diplomatic profession itself. This was a form of travel literature, a venerable if somewhat controversial literary genre, except that the target audience was the government rather than a general reading public. Also, the observations found in such diplomatic dispatches were based on a prolonged stay on foreign soil rather than the fleeting impressions of a tourist. Of course, the danger of writing a dispatch on national character, much like writing a travelogue, is that it merely reflects a glib essentialism. Yet, as we have seen, Cadieux’s work was meticulously researched, carefully thought out, and convincingly illustrated. Moreover, his stated goal was not to present the

Belgian character as immutable but simply as he had found it in the early post-war years. Though he did not explicitly say it, Cadieux’s approach to a foreign posting makes clear that he believed that the duties of a diplomat should encompass more than the traditional ones of promoting trade, safeguarding national interests, and analyzing often ephemeral political events and issues; rather, what was truly important, what influenced everything else that he did, was to approach the host country with an open mind and to immerse himself in its culture. Discovering this national ethos was crucial, he argued, for it formed the “substratum” on which rested every facet of a country’s activity.182 In short, Cadieux’s view of diplomacy was holistic, one likely influenced by his classical humanist education which, whatever its defects, inculcated in its students the ideal of the well-rounded mind and a curiosity about first principles.

Before being recalled to Canada in March 1947 Cadieux made two trips, the first of which was to Germany. He remembered how in 1945 prisoners who had been traumatized in the

Nazi camps arrived in Belgium with “un teint de cauchemar et des yeux fous.” News and rumours had spread of the Red Army’s conduct during its advance on Berlin. Soldiers returning from the former Reich had often carried with them the spoils of war, including gold picture

182 Ibid.

82 frames, watches, and cameras. From Cadieux’s vantage point, Germany had seemed “un vaste chaos, une zone obscure toute imprégnée de haine et de violence.” Its borders, within which

Allied armies had exercised only a limited control, had been closed like a “couvercle sur une marmite en pleine ébullition.” Bitter accounts had been settled; as Cadieux wrote, “les jours de colère” had arrived.183

In August 1946, with passions there having cooled somewhat, Cadieux decided to see

Germany for himself. He saw Cologne, where nothing could have prepared him for “la scène de désolation indicible” left by Allied bombers, one that put London’s suffering at the hands of the

Luftwaffe in perspective. He saw other parts of the Rhineland, where a sea of chimney stacks gave him a sense of its industrial power and the reason why neighbouring states had tried so hard to contain it. And he saw Berlin, pulverized by air raids and by the Red Army. In some of its neighborhoods all that remained standing, as far as the eye could see, were sections of walls. He saw and entered Hitler’s chancery, where Soviet soldiers were busy tearing down the panelling and casting it into trucks and where a crouched German, using a chisel and hammer, was extracting pieces from a mosaic to trade for a cigarette. He saw and climbed Berlin’s Victory

Column, a monument erected to mark the Prussian wars of unification on the top of which a

French flag now flew. He saw many other things in Germany, but his overwhelming impression was one “de grandeur, de beauté, et de misère.” One sight in particular, in medieval Heidleberg, haunted him. There a young German, “songeur et triste,” had surveyed his city from the terrace of its castle. Ruins lay here and there and the streets swarmed with American soldiers. Cadieux could almost read his mind: “Tant d’efforts, un si magnifique héritage compromise par la défaite.

Et comment surmonter les difficultés et préparer l’avenir? Je voyais dans ce jeune homme l’image de son pays, partagé entre les regrets et l’inquiétude.”184

183 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 98. 184 This paragraph is based on the chapter “Allemagne” in ibid., 183-89.

In late August 1946, shortly after his return from Germany, Cadieux was summoned to

France. The Canadian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, which had already been meeting for one month, was understaffed and in need of additional officers. The conference’s purpose was not to draft peace treaties for Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland, but to give the twenty-one countries that had fought the Axis a chance to comment on those that had been drawn up by the Big Four: the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France. The division of

Europe into East and West was, for the first time, strikingly demonstrated for the entire world to see, a spectacle for which Cadieux had a front-row seat. The Soviet and eastern European delegations voted and spoke as a bloc, tactics that only drew the western delegations, under the leadership of the United States, closer together. The media on hand was legion and it hung on every word, on every change in tone, and on every argument with the result that both sides strained to score propaganda points and to impress their own citizens. The spotlight focused on the dour Vyacheslav Molotov and on the vituperative Andrei Vyshinsky, Foreign Minister and

Vice Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union respectively, and who together proved maddeningly rigid, tireless, and inscrutable.185

According to Brooke Claxton, the head of the Canadian delegation when Mackenzie

King was absent, the Paris Peace Conference was one of the “worst” and “most pointless” conferences ever held. For three interminable months all it did was debate and suggest revisions to the draft treaties, modifications that the Big Four could ultimately veto. The conference’s organization, being left to the French, was “appallingly inefficient,” its procedure allowing for a near unlimited obstructionism in debates about “pointless points of order.” The conference,

Claxton trenchantly remarked, was “calculated to produce the minimum amount of result and the

185 My characterization of Vyshinsky and Molotov is drawn from an eye witness account published in 1967. See Norman Bentwich, “The Paris Peace Conference July-October 1946, Part One: The Scene” History Today 17, no. 11 (November 1967): 729.

84 maximum amount of frustration.”186 His frustration, however, did not extend to his own delegation, which he praised for its dedication and for its ability to work day and night, no small feat when Canada had little direct stake in the issues being discussed. As for Cadieux, Claxton, an English Montrealer, remembered him as a “first-class worker from our Embassy in

Brussels.”187 The most tedious feature of the conference was its endless balloting – literally thousands of votes were cast – as every aspect of the draft treaties had to be pronounced upon.

One evening, United States Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, who was from South Carolina, was chairing a meeting on procedural matters to which Cadieux had been sent to represent

Canada. The session was hardly momentous and he had been given a chart indicating whether he should vote “YES” or “NO” on a given sub-amendment to a given paragraph. When it was

Canada’s turn to vote, Cadieux, deviating slightly from script, announced his country’s position by answering “OUI!” Byrnes was flabbergasted. Then, as the wheels in his mind began to turn, he shook his head as if to say, “Well, after all, yes, I remember Canada is a bilingual country; this must be a fellow from Quebec, a fellow who is trying to make a point.”188

Since his arrival in the Department of External Affairs, Marcel Cadieux had been making his presence known. But the man who returned to Canada from Brussels in March 1947 was not the same one who had come to Ottawa in August 1941. Loyalty to French Canada was still the force that drove him, but it was no longer the only one. Prolonged work and travel abroad, marked by his immersion in British, Belgian, and European culture, had been a broadening experience, one that compelled him to place the concerns of his much smaller patrie – Quebec – in perspective. He had seen the world and it filled him with wonder. His lengthy dispatches on the character of the Belgian people and on the state of their nation were a testament to his

186 LAC/Fonds Brooke Claxton (BC)/253/16 – Brooke Claxton, “Conference Wind up” from unpublished memoir, 757A-57B. 187 LAC/BC/253/14 – Claxton, “Peace at Paris,” from unpublished memoir, 695. 188 Confidential interview.

85 maturation as a foreign service officer. Whereas once he had wanted to do nothing more than to interpret the mood of Quebec and the mentality of Quebeckers, he was now engaged in something more profound and arguably more rewarding: the discovery of the “other,” that is, a foreign people. Paradoxically, being at a distance from Canada had strengthened his Canadian nationalism. As Cadieux learned, the diplomat, through the very act of ruminating on the characteristics of the foreign people he lived among was, consciously or not, led to study his own national features and their difference from those of other nationals. After three years in Europe, he was struck by the feeling there among Canadians, from diplomats to soldiers, that there was truly something unique about them. Paris might delight them, the rich culture and history of

European civilization might impress them, but in their hearts they remained faithful to a set of core beliefs and values that embodied the Canadian experience and that united them. Exactly what defined this inchoate national sentiment, they seemed only vaguely aware. Such uncertainty did not trouble Cadieux – far from it. After all, Canada was a comparatively young country; its identity would develop slowly over time. Until the day it did, was there “un spectacle plus passionnant que celui d’un peuple penché sur lui-même et cherchant à discerner ses traits essentiels?”189

189 Cadieux, Premières Armes, 203-4; Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 16-17.

Chapter Two The Making of a Diplomat and a Cold Warrior: 1947-1955

Marcel Cadieux’s time abroad had strengthened his Canadian nationalism, but his return to Canada in March 1947 was disappointing. As he wrote to Paul Tremblay, who was serving in

Chile at the time, he was dismayed to find in Ottawa the same group of French Canadians that he had left behind three years ago. On occasion he attended gatherings of the Alliance française, as he had back then, but his social life now seemed “éculé, moche, déguelasse.” The crux of the problem was that, while there was much to admire about Canada, from its abundance to the humility of its people, he could not help but feel that, compared to the intellectual stimulation of

Europe, life back home was materialistic, narrow, and somnolent. For example, whereas before his departure in 1944 he had often eaten at the Chateau Laurier cafeteria, he now felt disgusted by the prospect of taking a meal in that “machine à manger.” Observing its interminable queue, he speculated that those already seated gorged themselves at top speed to make room for the next wave of voracious eaters. Even the servers armed with their long spoons who slopped vegetables into his plate annoyed him.1 Put simply, it was not Ottawa that had changed but Cadieux himself.

He found himself yearning for distant lands. His reintegration into Canada, like that of many other recently returned diplomats, proved slow and difficult.

I – Headquarters

Nor did Cadieux’s work in the Department of External Affairs, initially at least, provide him with much solace. For one thing, the atmosphere of the East Block was different: its halls were now filled with new recruits who were mostly young and unsettlingly “pleins de zèle.”2 It was the dawn of a new era, one symbolized by the fact that in 1945 the DEA had been given a full-time minister of its own, the grandfatherly but quick-witted Louis St. Laurent. For the first

1 LAC/PT/4/2 –Cadieux to Paul and Gertrude Tremblay, 28 March 1947. 2 Ibid.

86 87 few months Cadieux was assigned to the First Political Division and made responsible for

UNESCO, a task he found loathsome since, education falling under provincial jurisdiction, the federal government had provided neither the funds nor the machinery to enable Canada to play its part in the international organization.3 His duties lacked both the variety and interest of those which he had performed in London and in Brussels, causing him to become dissatisfied. He was also irked to discover that he was poorer in Ottawa than he had been in Europe. For one thing, he was now paying income tax on his salary of $3,900 and the country was in the throes of an acute post-war inflation. Abroad, a diplomat could request increased allowances to offset the costs of, inter alia, food, clothes, and housing; at home, a civil servant had to make do. Deeply unhappy, he advised Tremblay to stay far away from that “trou infect,” otherwise known as Ottawa, and from that “noeud d’intrigues” that was the DEA.4 There was a glimmer of hope in July 1947 when Cadieux was transferred to the United States desk, whose affairs he termed “very concrete and most interesting.” Barely one month later, however, he was moved again, this time to the under-secretary’s office.5 Its occupant was no longer Norman Robertson but the affable and very ambitious Lester B. Pearson. As Pearson’s executive assistant Cadieux knew that the position was prestigious, but he found the job, which consisted largely of screening incoming and outgoing material, hopelessly dull. Nor did he enjoy having to stay late at the office when the

House of Commons was in session. “Je comprends un peu pourquoi monsieur Pearson choisit des célibataires pour surveiller sa porte et son téléphone,” Cadieux grumbled.6

Yet work in Pearson’s office was not completely devoid of interest. Because responsibility in the DEA for atomic energy policy was concentrated there, Cadieux became secretary to the interdepartmental advisory panel on the subject. The unparalleled destructive

3 Ibid.; LAC/MC/5/15 – Cadieux to D’Arcy and Kitty McGreer, 31 July 1947; LAC/MC/5/16 – Cadieux to T.L.M. Carter, 8 January 1948. 4 LAC/PT/4/2 – Cadieux to Paul and Gertrude Tremblay, 28 March 1947. 5 LAC/MC/5/15 – Cadieux to D’Arcy and Kitty McGreer, 31 July 1947. 6 LAC/MC/5/15 – Cadieux to Paul and Gertrude Tremblay, 29 January 1948.

88 power of nuclear weapons had been demonstrated in August 1945 when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hastening Japan’s surrender. With the nuclear genie now out of the bottle, an attempt had to be made to put it back. The first resolution of the first-ever session of the United Nations General Assembly, held in London in January

1946, established a commission to study proposals for limiting the production of atomic energy to peaceful uses and for destroying all existing atomic weapons. The United Nations Atomic

Energy Commission (UNAEC) was composed of all serving members on the UN Security

Council and Canada, which during the war had furnished the Allied bomb project with refined uranium and hosted a British-run atomic laboratory in Montreal.7 When UNAEC convened in

New York in June 1946, Canadian diplomats took an eager interest in its discussions. Their hopes were soon dashed. The United States, which had a nuclear monopoly, and the Soviet

Union, whose leader was determined to break it, presented irreconcilable – and unrealistic – plans for protecting the world. While Canadian delegates did their best to reconcile the two superpowers, UNAEC finally collapsed in May 1948.8

Watching events in New York unfold from Ottawa in the fall of 1947, the secretary to the

Advisory Panel on Atomic Energy analyzed what it all meant for Canada in a memo addressed to

Lester B. Pearson, Arnold Heeney (the chairman of the panel), and General Andrew

McNaughton (the head of the delegation to UNAEC). If, as seemed likely, the international control of atomic energy was impossible, Marcel Cadieux felt strongly that the atomic armament race made it imperative for Canada to explore “alternative plans.” He helpfully spelled them out:

…an alliance for all practical purposes, in regard to the development of atomic energy, between the states which are the hard core of the Western bloc and which would bear the brunt of a war against the U.S.S.R. … If the U.S.S.R. were to attack the United States, we would be involved in any case and our chance of survival would depend partly on a good

7 On Canada’s atomic energy program see Robert Bothwell, Eldorado: Canada’s National Uranium Company (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984); Bothwell, Nucleus: The History of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988). 8 On Canada and UNAEC see Albert Legault and Michel Fortmann, A Diplomacy of Hope: Canada and Disarmament, 1945-1988 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 57-65.

dispersal of the nuclear fuel, also partly on our ability to out-produce the U.S.S.R. and to launch quick and powerful retaliatory attacks. … Unless there is agreement between the U.S.S.R. and the United States on the control of atomic energy, our advantage lies in assisting the United States by all the means in our power to maintain their advance in the atomic race and to make sure, even at greater apparent or even real risks to ourselves that we are on the winning side. The stronger our position, the less chance there is of a Soviet attack, it seems.9

This memo, written in Cadieux’s usual straightforward manner, was somewhat extreme. For instance, it seemed to envisage the Canadian production of atomic bombs, an idea that C.D.

Howe, the minister in charge of the nuclear program, had dismissed in December 1945. In any case, at least according to Arnold Heeney, Canada was not yet in a position to consider

Cadieux’s master plan since the country was a very junior partner in the “atomic secret,” one forced to await further developments both in UNAEC and in the Washington-London relationship.10 While Heeney was right, the fact remains that in October 1947 Cadieux had anticipated what would become, by the end of the decade, the main feature of Canada’s nuclear policy until 1965: to sell to the United States, at a reasonable profit of course, all the uranium it needed to maintain its lead in the arms race. Yet Cadieux’s prophetic powers should not be overstated. The logic of continental geography, of a prior and successful wartime arrangement, and of a steadily deteriorating international climate had, since 1945, been pushing Canada towards the kind of atomic “alliance” that he was now urging. In short, what Cadieux proposed was arguably less striking than the hurry he was in to propose it.

Cadieux’s impatience stemmed largely from his anti-communism, which in turn derived from his Quebec Catholic faith but which only truly developed in this period – and not without just cause. “Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach,” remarked Stalin as the Red Army swept across Eastern Europe in the spring of 1945.11 Over the next few years the

9 LAC/DEA/5773/201(s)/2.2 – Cadieux to Lester B. Pearson, Arnold Heeney, and General Andrew McNaughton, 21 October 1947. For a more thorough examination of this Cadieux memo see Brian Buckley, Canada’s Early Nuclear Policy: Fate, Chance, and Character (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 69-71. 10 LAC/DEA/5773/201(s)/2.2 – Heeney to Cadieux, 30 October 1947. 11 Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962), 114.

90 weak flicker of national independence in the region was extinguished as, one by one, its countries became communist. In a speech in Fulton, Missouri in March 1946 former British

Prime Minister Winston Churchill painted a bleak picture of events: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”12 The previous month, from Moscow, the American diplomat George F. Kennan had sent a “long telegram” home to Washington arguing that henceforth Soviet pressure would have to “be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of shifting geographical and political points.”13 This view formed the basis of the Truman Doctrine announced in March 1947 which promised that the United States would resist communism wherever it posed a threat. One such area was Western Europe, whose devastated national economies provided fertile ground for a utopian ideology. Consequently, in July of that same year, the Marshall Plan was born. The

Soviet Union was briefly tempted by American beneficence, which would ultimately total more than thirteen billion dollars, but eventually it reacted by tightening its grip over its satellites. By mid-1947 the battle lines between East and West had been clearly drawn.

As this cursory account of the opening salvos of the Cold War implies, Canadian diplomats were predisposed to take a dim view of Moscow’s intentions. Indeed, as the international situation worsened, on account of everything from Igor Gouzenko’s revelations of

Soviet espionage to squabbling over the future of Germany, anti-communism typically became their default position. Yet Marcel Cadieux still stood out in the DEA for the intensity of his hatred and his suspicion of all things communist. Take, for example, his reply to a major study in

August 1947 by Escott Reid, an assistant under-secretary brimming with ideas, on the possibility

12 Geoffrey Best, Churchill: A Study in Greatness (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), 278. 13 For an analysis of Kennan’s “Long Telegram” see John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York: The Penguin Press, 2011), 215-222.

91 of war between the United States and the Soviet Union.14 Reid’s lengthy paper was circulated within the department, both at home and abroad, eliciting a mixed response. Not surprisingly, the closer an officer was to Moscow, the darker his assessment of Soviet policy.15 But there was also an ethnic and religious factor at play, for among those canvassed the francophones, Roman

Catholics all, were especially critical of the Kremlin.16 True to form, Cadieux strongly disagreed with Reid’s central argument that both the United States and the Soviet Union had expansionist designs. As the Quebecker saw it, “the U.S.S.R. alone is an expanding power,” one whose bellicose policies had left the United States no choice but to enlarge its own defence zone. This was the real source of the conflict and Cadieux extensively revised this section of Reid’s memo to reflect it. As well, where Reid’s analysis of the implications for Canadian policy dealt solely with the United States, Cadieux made suggestions for how to handle the Soviet Union, whose diplomats he denounced as “spies, agitators, [and] saboteurs.” When communists tried to embarrass Canada, for example, he wanted the country to respond in kind. He recommended bolstering the Canadian intelligence network. He was also eager that ways be explored of countering Moscow’s devious habit of trying to manipulate public opinion in democratic countries. “The U.S.S.R. is waging war against us in all but a military sense,” Cadieux bluntly declared.17

Nor did he discount the possibility of a shooting war with the Soviet Union. In 1948

Cadieux’s staunch anti-communism fused with his continuing interest in and knowledge of

Quebec, prompting him to warn the DEA on several occasions that French-Canadian nationalists

14 For Reid’s paper see LAC/DEA/5750/52-F(s)/1 – Escott Reid, “The United States and the Soviet Union: A Study of the Possibility of War and Some of the Implications for Canadian Policy,” 30 August 1947. For conflicting historiographical interpretations of the piece see Don Page and Don Munton, “Canadian Images of the Cold War, 1946-47,” International Journal 32, no. 3 (Summer 1977): 577-604; David J. Bercuson, “‘A People So Ruthless as the Soviets’: Canadian Images of the Cold War and the Soviet Union, 1946-1950,” in David Davie, ed., Canada and the Soviet Experiment (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 1994), 89-103. 15 Robert Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion: Canada and the World, 1945-1984 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 61. 16 Page and Munton, “Images of the Cold War,” 601-602. 17 LAC/DEA/5750/52-F(s)/1 – Cadieux to J.M. Teakles, 17 October 1947.

92 in that province were calling for a policy of neutrality in the event of armed conflict with

Moscow. As he saw it, their arguments were naïve, impractical, and, in some cases, dishonest.

Given Canada’s strategic position between the two superpowers, it was absurd to pretend that the country might blissfully sit on the fence – in war or in peace. That said, neutrality was being presented as a viable option not only by journalists like Paul Sauriol and Léopold Richer, whose views were often extreme, but also by more thoughtful commentators like André Laurendeau, who Cadieux argued had the ear of non-nationalists. Unless the neutralist thesis were quickly and decisively refuted by the federal government, he feared that it would “find its way to the colleges and distort the mind of another generation of intellectuals in Quebec.”18 Impressed by these repeated warnings, Escott Reid obtained approval from Lester B. Pearson, who had left the civil service to become Secretary of State for External Affairs in September, to draft a speech in

French for Louis St. Laurent, who was poised to become the country’s twelfth prime minister.

Cadieux went one better and wrote two. The first exposed the infeasibility of neutrality, while the second attacked the idea that modern war was so destructive that Canada had a moral obligation to stand apart from any future one.19 For reasons that are unclear, St. Laurent apparently gave neither speech.

By late 1948 Cadieux was restless. The Soviet Union’s blockade of Berlin, which had begun in June and which the Western allies would ultimately thwart by resupplying the city by air for nearly a year, dramatized the threat posed by Moscow’s foreign policy. Against this backdrop, ongoing negotiations to found the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) acquired new urgency. Unimpressed, Le Devoir and other nationalist newspapers grew more vociferous in their campaign for neutrality. As his official duties in the DEA multiplied, the time

18 LAC/DEA/5753/54-B(s)/1 – Cadieux to Acting Under-Secretary, 27 September 1948. See as well LAC/DEA/5753/54-B(s)/1 – Cadieux to Pearson, Escott Reid, Gordon Crean, and Saul Rae, 19 March 1948; LAC/DEA/5753/54-B(s)/1 – Cadieux to Reid, 22 March 1948. 19 LAC/DEA/5753/54-B(s)/1 – Cadieux to Acting Under-Secretary, 28 October 1948; LAC/DEA/5753/54-B(s)/1; Cadieux to Acting Under-Secretary, 11 November 1948.

Cadieux could devote to studying the mood in Quebec decreased. Indeed, he had only reported on the subject to begin with because he had suspected – correctly – that no one else in the department was doing so.20 In one of his last memos about French-Canadian neutralist sentiment, written in December 1948, he warned Escott Reid that a speech by Louis St. Laurent in Quebec would no longer suffice. Other cabinet ministers needed to speak out as well. Above all,

Members of Parliament from the province should be so well informed about the international situation that they could both educate their constituents and silence their critics. “I am at a loss to understand,” wrote an exasperated Cadieux, “why the Government will not take the trouble of delivering the two or three [S]unday punches which would settle this silly nationalist propaganda.”21 By April 1949 the point was moot. Along with eleven other countries, Canada signed the North Atlantic Treaty, Article 5 of which stipulated that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”

Neutrality, in other words, was impossible. In hindsight, Cadieux may have been too eager to engage the government in a fight with French-Canadian nationalists, especially with a federal election in the offing. Nevertheless, and not for the last time in his career, he was disturbed by

Ottawa’s reluctance to make its case directly to the Quebec people. In so doing, the federal government was abandoning the field to a small but vocal group of nationalists in the media who, notwithstanding the untenable nature of their own case, were free to try and mould public opinion as they saw fit.

In January 1949 Cadieux was given more pressing matters to worry about than Quebec nationalist support for neutrality when, in a major promotion, he was named head of the DEA’s

Personnel Division. He had been transferred to that division in late April 1948 to assist T.W.L.

MacDermot, its head at the time and an English Montrealer with whom he quickly forged an

20 LAC/DEA/5753/54-B(s)/1 – Cadieux to Acting Under-Secretary, 4 November 1948. 21 LAC/DEA/5753/54-B(s)/1 – Cadieux to Acting Under-Secretary, 7 December 1948.

94 excellent working relationship. When his superior was tapped to oversee European Division eight months later, Cadieux succeeded him as Personnel Officer, a job he would keep until

September 1951. Good administration interested him, not least because it had become vital to a rapidly expanding department. In 1939, for example, the total staff of the DEA had numbered

174, thirty-three of whom had been officers; by mid-1948 this figure was 1,055, 190 of whom were officers. Moreover, whereas in 1939 there had been only seven Canadian missions abroad, by 1949 there were forty-four.22 In the early post-war period, the years of the most pronounced growth in the DEA’s ballooning establishment, it became clear that administrative policies and structures that had existed before 1945 – when they had existed at all – were now unsatisfactory.

This realization led to the creation of Personnel Division in 1947. It was also the main factor behind the selection in 1949 of Arnold Heeney as under-secretary. While his predecessors – O.D.

Skelton, Norman Robertson, and Lester B. Pearson – had all given short shrift to administration, preferring instead the more congenial task of formulating policy for their political masters,

Heeney arrived from the Privy Council Office, which he had reorganized during the war, with a mandate to bring the departmental machine up to speed.23 His presence lent instant credibility and importance to Cadieux’s own work as Personnel Officer.

Yet there was more to this position than simply administration. As first a member and then head of Personnel Division between 1948 and 1951, Cadieux was invariably led to reflect on and to formulate the philosophy that underpinned a career in the Department of External

Affairs. This was no mere academic exercise; rather, as Cadieux well understood, a young organization like the DEA, whose modern expansion had begun only ten years before, was not

22 House of Commons Standing Committee on External Affairs, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence, 22 November 1949, 54; ibid., 58; House of Commons Standing Committee on External Affairs, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence, 26 May 1948, 89. 23 On Heeney’s important contribution to the improved administration of the DEA see John Hilliker and Donald Barry, Canada’s Department of External Affairs: Coming of Age, 1946-1968 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 44-86; Francine McKenzie, “A.D.P. Heeney: The Orderly Undersecretary,” in Architects and Innovators, 155-161; Heeney, The Things That Are Caesar’s, 96-103.

“l’héritier d’une longue tradition” in the same way that, for example, the British Foreign Office was. “Tout y est nouveau,” he wrote, a fact which not only explained the zeal of some members of the department but also “le caractère improvisé parfois de ses méthodes et de son organisation.”24 That said, Cadieux firmly believed that certain guiding principles already fundamental to the DEA could bear repeating.

The first of these was the democratic ethos that imbued it. The Canadian foreign service was not, as was sometimes the case with those of older nations, the preserve of wealthy families; on the contrary, the doors of the East Block were open to talented individuals from across the country and from every social class.25 Since the days of O.D. Skelton, the department’s under- secretary from 1925 to 1941, admission to and promotion within the DEA had increasingly been based on one overriding factor: merit. This criterion deeply resonated with Cadieux, the working-class son of a postman. Admittedly, it also meant that he viewed somewhat prejudicially all those, particularly French Canadians, who came from easier circumstances than his own. Some years later, for instance, when interrogating André Couvrette, a new recruit to the department from the wealthy enclave of Outremont, Cadieux delighted in turning the tables on him. “D’où venez-vous?” he asked Couvrette. “De Montréal,” the young man replied. “Oui oui!, mais d’où, à Montréal?” pursued Cadieux. Couvrette then said, “d’Outremont,” a word that provoked the following mischievous retort: “Ah, on ne vous en voudra pas! Moi, voyez-vous, je viens d’Ahuntsic!”26 Cadieux had his little joke – that the junior officer’s respectable background would not be held against him – while also making clear that his own blue-collar origins were nothing to be ashamed of. Although he sometimes got carried away in his attachment to this ideal, Cadieux took genuine pride in the fact that “un esprit démocratique du meilleur aloi”

24 Marcel Cadieux, Le Ministère des Affaires Extérieures : Conseils aux étudiants qui se destinent à la carrière (Montreal: Éditions Variétés, 1949), 15. 25 Ibid., 22-23. 26 André Couvrette, interview with the author, Ottawa, 26 July 2012. See as well Couvrette’s memoirs, Il n’y a plus d’étranger (1995), which have been published on the internet at http://www.plusdetranger.blogspot.ca.

96 reigned in the Department of External Affairs.27

The second principle at the heart of the DEA was the total devotion of its officers to public duty. As civil servants they toiled in anonymity and were linked to no political party.

What then motivated them? Certainly not money. The starting salary in the department was

$2,880. “Le métier assure une bien modeste aisance,” Cadieux wrote, “mais non l’opulence, non le luxe que l’imagination populaire associe souvent à la diplomatie.” He had no doubt that many of his colleagues could have doubled their earnings by joining a private company or by striking out on their own. Nothing less than “amour de leur travail” and “dévouement à la chose publique” kept them in Ottawa. This ethic of hard work and self-denial, Cadieux felt, was one of the department’s most admirable qualities.28 Indeed, from this perspective, entering the DEA was not unlike entering a monastic order. The neo-gothic East Block, with its “couloirs sombres,” its

“ogives,” and the “son des cloches” from the nearby Peace Tower for Cadieux evoked “le monastère.”29 Nor was it an accident that in his private correspondence he sometimes referred, albeit humorously, to his colleagues as “Brother” or “Frère” so-and-so. If Cadieux’s idea of the

Canadian diplomat was in part monastic, it also had certain military overtones: “Le soldat obéit.

Il va où on lui dit d’aller, revient quand on le lui demande et ne connaît d’autre patrie que son poste.” The same ideal applied to diplomats who loyally went where they were posted, forsaking family and friends to serve their country. No sooner had they established themselves abroad than, as Cadieux had learned firsthand in late 1944, they were often forced to move again. “A ce point de vue,” he wrote, “la vie du diplomate, qui parait bien facile, comporte une austérité, un renoncement, des sacrifices dont le grand public ne s’avise pas toujours.”30 Yet for Cadieux the very dignity and importance of the work to be performed in the nation’s capital trumped all the

27 Cadieux, Le Ministère des Affaires Extérieures, 22. 28 Ibid., 24. 29 Ibid., 33. 30 Ibid., 91-92.

97 hardships that a career in the DEA imposed:

Et puis, chez certains fonctionnaires, à Ottawa, il existe une sorte de mystique. De jeunes intellectuels, venus de diverses parties du pays, se consacrent au service des intérêts supérieurs de l’État. Ils n’attendent pas de rémunération autre que la satisfaction d’aider à l’avancement, au progrès du pays. La conception du grand commis de l’État renaît, qui propose un idéal de vie austère certes, mais digne et profondément respectable. Ces jeunes fonctionnaires affirment par leur travail qu’il y a autre chose dans la vie que l’argent et la publicité…31

To today’s reader, Cadieux’s portrait of the selfless and self-effacing civil servant may seem so idealistic as to be, at best, naïve or, at worst, insincere. It was in fact neither. Instead, it accurately reflected the ethos of a generation of mandarins who believed that lifelong public service was the highest vocation imaginable. Through their dedication and scrupulous political neutrality, they came to embody nothing less than the permanent interests of the Canadian state.

Not surprisingly, given their high ideals, purists like Cadieux sometimes viewed politicians, and especially political ambition, with mistrust and even resentment. Take, for example, the case of

Lester B. Pearson, who in 1948 resigned as DEA under-secretary to join the Liberal government.

In an offhand but revealing comment in his private diary, one which he started in 1951 but which he would not resume until 1964, Cadieux wrote, “Pearson n’a guère souci de la tradition et de l’esprit de la boutique dont il s’est servi tant qu’il a pu pour se hisser où il est.”32 The charge, while exaggerated, was not without merit. Moreover, it captured just how exacting Cadieux’s code of conduct was.

The third principle fundamental to the DEA for Cadieux was its robust Canadian nationalism. This was no surprise. From its modest origins in 1909, when it had been housed above a barber shop on Bank Street, the department had represented “l’expression d’une pensée

31 Ibid., 96-97. 32 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 7 May 1951. Arthur Andrew, who joined the DEA in 1947, recalled that junior officers viewed Pearson’s move as “something between desertion and a display of bad taste,” while “the more practical-minded” fretted that it would confirm the impression “that External … was little more than a branch of the Liberal Party.” See Arthur Andrew, The Rise and Fall of a Middle Power: Canadian Diplomacy from King to Mulroney (Toronto: James Lorimer and Co., 1993), 45.

98 nationale.”33 But it was not until the interwar, war, and early post-war periods that Canada truly came of age on the world stage by signing international agreements in its own name, by expanding its network of diplomatic missions, and by carving out an independent global role for itself. If Canada’s diplomats were the instruments of their country’s gradual evolution towards full sovereignty, Cadieux knew that their job had only just begun. While the Statute of

Westminster had given a legal basis to the concept of Canadian nationhood in 1931, what about its “contenu spirituel,” that is, just what did it mean to be Canadian?34 This was no abstract consideration for Cadieux; rather, it had practical implications since it governed, among other things, how Canadian diplomats lived abroad. If they were faithful to their national traditions, for example, they would adopt a modest lifestyle and have no use for either lackeys or limousines.

Their dinner table would be “accueillante, généreuse, mais sobre.” Of course, as Cadieux recognized, what was Canadian was not inherently better than what was foreign. The task of

Canada’s diplomatic corps was not to thump its chest but to discern what was uniquely Canadian and whether or not it could pass muster when compared to “ce que l’étranger offre de mieux.” In so doing, Canadian diplomats could play a crucial part in the fashioning of that most elusive of features: a distinct “personalité nationale.”35 Indeed, more than other federal civil servants, the idea of “Canada” was always on the minds of its representatives abroad. Their mission was not simply to defend and to promote the national interest but to analyze how a complex and ever- changing world impinged on Canada and how Canada affected it in turn. To succeed in this endeavour, however, they needed a deep understanding of and tolerance for the “réalité

Canadienne” that they were tasked with representing. Put another way, they had to rise above such barriers as race, class, and religion – “s’abstraire de leurs origines particulières,” in

33 Marcel Cadieux, Premières Armes (Ottawa: Le Cercle du livre de France, 1951), 206. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., 205-206.

Cadieux’s words – and to place their work in its national context.36 Of course, this approach made them staunch proponents of national unity, a principle which Louis St. Laurent had described as the foundation of Canada’s foreign policy in his influential Gray Lecture at the

University of Toronto in 1947. In sum, to Cadieux, Canadian diplomats were the instruments, the symbols, and the defenders of what was best about the young Canadian nation.

Not only did Cadieux use Personnel Division as a pulpit to preach the virtues of a career in the Department of External Affairs but, in his second major contribution to its work, he also studied and helped to shape the DEA’s policies in such key areas as recruitment, training, postings, allowances, the role of women, specialization, the place of outsiders, and the relationship between headquarters and posts abroad. Because the DEA’s practices in these various fields had often been either inadequate, erratic, or non-existent, Cadieux was eager to impose some order on them. In the process he came to learn much more about his profession and to develop firm views of his own on it.

The type of officer that the DEA recruited was a question over which Cadieux had a large say. Naturally drawn to the subject, he undertook in 1949 a study of the “essential qualifications” of a diplomat by consulting the classic literature on the profession and the rating forms used in the department, and by analyzing the career of successful officers in each of its first five grades.

When studying the classic authorities on diplomacy, Cadieux noted the emphasis, particularly by

Jules Cambon and Harold Nicolson, not on technical ability but rather on such moral attributes as

“truthfulness,” “precision,” “patience,” “modesty,” “loyalty,” “flexibility,” “good judgment,” and “integrity.” There was also a view, dating from the profession’s modern origins in the

Renaissance, that diplomats should be polymaths with a wide knowledge of a variety of fields.

Of course, it was just as important that they be able to express themselves clearly and precisely.

These traditional qualities were reflected in the three rating forms used by the DEA to assess

36 Cadieux, Le Ministère des Affaires Extérieures, 19.

100 both candidates taking its examinations and officers being considered for promotion. Those who succeeded, for instance, demonstrated an understanding of Canadian and international affairs, training in an academic discipline, sound judgment, good writing, an attractive personality, and, in order to get promoted, a history of efficiency. An analysis of the careers of five of the DEA’s most accomplished officers added little to this picture except that – and this was crucial –in every case but one the individual in question had pursued post-graduate studies. By way of explanation, Cadieux argued that knowledge itself was less valuable than the outcome of academic training, that is, an objective mind able both to master a complex subject and to distill it.37 Not surprisingly, the DEA’s ideal recruit in these years was the intellectual. Nor did Cadieux apologize for this. The point was not, as he insisted elsewhere, that “only academic people have brains” but rather that “their type of brains is better adapted to the main purposes of this

Department.”38 Indeed, the Canadian foreign service had long boasted an enviable reputation for intellectual brilliance, something Cadieux recognized at the time and celebrated throughout his career:

Les membres de l’équipe supérieure du Ministère se conduisaient souvent comme s’ils avaient encore été membres de la communauté académique. D’une certaine façon, le Ministère constituait une sorte de mandarinat. Les titres académiques étaient tenus en haute estime … Il s’agissait … de donner à la fonction publique un caractère scientifique et même d’établir des rapports étroits entre la politique et le monde académique. … Envisagée dans cette optique, une carrière de fonctionnaire prend une allure quasi magistrale, un caractère de dignité qu’elle n’a pas autrement.39

Far from being disparaged, as it sometimes was, the intellectual atmosphere which reigned in the

Department of External Affairs, Cadieux believed, was greatly to be admired.

If it were academic minds that the DEA continued to want in the early post-war period, then improvements were needed to the pipeline that supplied promising students to the East

37 LAC/DEA/683/156-J-3/1 –Cadieux, “Definition of a Foreign Service Officer,” undated but likely summer 1949. Cadieux also gave a talk to students at the Université de Montréal based on the cited study. See LAC/DEA/685/156- AB/2 – “Lecture given at the University of Montreal by Mr. Marcel Cadieux,” 12 November 1949. 38 LAC/DEA/685/156-AB/2 – Cadieux to Herb Moran, 12 July 1949. 39 TCA/Fonds George Ignatieff (GI)/8/4/8-3 – Cadieux to George Ignatieff (including undated and unpublished essay “L’édifice de l’Est: un état d’esprit”), 6 November 1972.

101

Block. In 1948 Terry MacDermot asked Cadieux to study ways of ensuring that recruits to the department were of the highest calibre. Instead of recommending that the DEA increase the difficulty of its already challenging entrance examination, Cadieux urged it to undertake an aggressive recruitment and promotional campaign in Canada’s universities. Among his suggestions were that Civil Service Commission notices announcing the DEA’s annual competition be better publicized on campuses, that more material from the department be sent to professors and administrators willing to advise students interested in it, and that current officers visit post-secondary institutions to speak about a career like theirs.40 These recommendations, which were accepted by Cadieux’s superiors, ensured that the DEA’s recruitment efforts engaged more directly the university world.

New recruits required training and, here again, Cadieux had innovative ideas. With Terry

MacDermot he devised a more formal system of “on-the-job” instruction in the DEA, one that was long overdue. In the past it had sometimes been assumed that new arrivals were qualified from the start; in the future they would be regarded as liabilities. Under the new scheme, junior officers would serve successively in three different departmental units, beginning with three months in either the Consular or Administrative Divisions and followed by six months each in a political and a functional one. As they progressed, they would ideally gain confidence and an appreciation for the work and organization of the DEA. They were also expected to attend the

“University of the East Block,” an annual series of lectures on the department first begun in

1944.41 The system had its flaws. Chief among them was that the onus for supervising and guiding probationary officers was on Heads of Division, overworked and often irascible

40 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 18; LAC/DEA/685/156-AB/2 – Cadieux to MacDermot, 12 July 1948. 41 LAC/DEA/687/158-J –MacDermot to Heads of Divisions, 18 August 1948. This memo was drafted by Cadieux, as can be gleaned from a note that he submitted to MacDermot in late 1948 detailing what had been accomplished since his transfer to Personnel Division in April. See LAC/DEA/679/136-P – Cadieux to MacDermot, 27 November 1948. For a more extensive treatment of the new training scheme see Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 18-19; Greg Donaghy, “‘A Sad, General Decline?,’: The Canadian Diplomat in the 20th Century,” in Canada Among Nations 2008: 100 Years of Canadian Foreign Policy, eds. Robert Bothwell and Jean Daudelin (Montreal and Kingston : McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009), 46-47.

102 characters who disliked having constantly to renew the education process as fresh-faced pupils came and went. Though he recognized this drawback, Cadieux noted that the new scheme had two main advantages: it diversified the experience newcomers received and it ensured that recommendations for their retention (or dismissal) were based on confidential assessments made by several senior officers instead of just one.42

Nor was this emphasis on improved training confined to headquarters. After all, it was abroad, on their first posting, that civil servants became diplomats. No doubt recalling his own confusion upon arriving in London, Cadieux drafted a circular for Heads of Mission on ways to ease the transition of their young charges. Little was to be expected of them at first since their most pressing concerns were to find accommodation and to acquaint themselves with the work and personalities at their post. The new secretaries might usefully be assigned administrative duties of a kind whose importance was often overlooked. Ultimately, however, their prospects in the foreign service depended on their ability to analyze and to report on political or economic problems, a skill that either the Head of Mission or a senior officer could help them to acquire.

There was of course more to life abroad than desk work. New arrivals were encouraged to meet their counterparts in the diplomatic corps and to forge links with local officials. Criticizing the tendency of some officers to remain ensconced in national capitals, Cadieux recommended that junior ones travel within the countries to which they were assigned with a view to exploring their particular genius. As for representational work, Heads of Mission were asked to continue their common practice of inviting younger personnel to receptions where they could meet people and develop social skills.43 In the end, the quality of training new officers received would depend entirely on the effort their supervisors put in it. Whereas Personnel Division could guarantee a

42 Cadieux, Le Ministère des Affaires Extérieures, 36. 43 LAC/DEA/687/158-J – Circular dispatch Admin. No. 42, 1 November 1948. For an earlier draft of this dispatch, establishing Cadieux’s authorship of it, see LAC/DEA/687/156-J – Cadieux, “Draft,” 11 September 1948. See as well Cadieux’s November 1948 note cited above on what he had accomplished in Personnel Division.

103 basic level of commitment from Heads of Division in the East Block, there was no one abroad to keep an eye on Heads of Mission.

In addition to devising a more systematic training program for new recruits, Cadieux was also tasked in 1948 with drafting a set of regulations for the posting of officers abroad.

Henceforth a posting was to last a minimum of three-and-a-half years, except in the case of certain difficult or unhealthy missions – including Moscow, New Delhi, and Rio de Janeiro – where it was not to exceed two-and-a-half years. Officers were not to remain outside of Canada for more than seven years without returning for a spell at headquarters.44 In practice, such lengthy stints abroad were becoming increasingly rare. As Cadieux explained in 1950, the recent trend towards more frequent repatriations was based on two main considerations: “efficiency” and “fairness.” It was not uncommon, he wrote, for “misunderstandings” to develop in foreign services between staff in the field and staff at headquarters. A steady rotation ensured that officers serving abroad were aware of the “policies, personalities and practices” at home, while those in Ottawa had some experience of the challenges of life in the field. As for fairness,

Cadieux knew that service abroad, notwithstanding its discomforts, was seen as more attractive than service at home. In an organization whose members were divided evenly between Canada and the world, however, it was almost a mathematical law that when officers remained at missions abroad for another tour of duty, they forced their colleagues at headquarters to delay their own postings by an equivalent amount of time. Arrangements in the future would be more equitable, with staff ideally spending half of their careers in Ottawa.45

As Personnel Officer, Cadieux also explored ways of limiting gossip and speculation about postings which, when allowed to run rampant, caused “restlessness” in the DEA. To this

44 LAC/DEA/686/158-B/2 – Circular dispatch Admin No. 44, 5 November 1948. For earlier drafts by Cadieux of this circular see LAC/DEA/686/158-D/1 – Cadieux, “Postings,” 21 May 1948; LAC/DEA/687/158-J – Cadieux, “Postings,” 14 June 1948. 45 LAC/DEA/2489/18-2 – Circular document No. B.48, 8 May 1950. This dispatch, which had been written by Cadieux, was never sent. Nevertheless, it accurately reflected the general policy and approach that he followed as Personnel Officer.

104 end, he and Herb Moran, the assistant under-secretary in charge of administration, tried to ensure that decisions regarding transfers were made by as few people as possible and that they were announced well in advance. This policy of maximum notice had its drawbacks. Once officers learned that they were being transferred they had an unfortunate habit, or so Cadieux believed, of losing interest in their current work.46 In any case, when submitting recommendations on where in the world to post officers, the Personnel Officer had to consider many factors, including the individual’s age, language training, previous experience, personality, health, and, of course, private wishes. While DEA employees were invited to list their preferred destinations on a personal record card (another administrative innovation from this period), they were warned that the demands of the service always came first. The result could be disgruntlement. Not one to be intimidated, Cadieux adopted a rough sense of humour when handling complainers. “I hope you realize that this posting has a theological implication,” he informed one. “Oh?” replied the startled officer. Solemnly, Cadieux intoned, “You are being posted into limbo!”47

Cadieux also studied the allowances paid to officer and support staff abroad. The system of relating allowances to the cost of living in a given country had come a long way since his painful years in England and Belgium, but even an improved index could not hide the fact that there was still inadequate or no provision at all for a great many expenses. In a cogent memo written in 1950 Cadieux exposed the holes in the allowance structure and, in a typically frank conclusion, put his finger squarely on the problem:

Our Service is young and many of our employees are attracted to it or devoted to it because it is a challenge. But too often officials in Ottawa take the view that a posting abroad is a favour and that, in view of the benefits or advantages which are supposed to accrue to them as a result of their posting, the employees should be prepared to absorb eventual or accidental expenses of the kind I have mentioned. The truth of the matter is that a good many postings are far from attractive and, on the whole, the few attractive

46 LAC/DEA/2489/18-2 – Cadieux to Moran, 21 May 1949; LAC/DEA/676/61 – Cadieux to Moran, 12 January 1951. 47 James C. Langley, interview with the author, Ottawa, 30 November 2012. Langley joined the DEA in 1950 and was assigned to Personnel Division after completing his training. He worked closely with Cadieux until the latter left Ottawa in the fall of 1951.

105

posts barely make up for the chance of being sent to posts which are of little or no interest. It follows, therefore, that employees should not be expected to be out of pocket, in any way, if they are sent abroad to serve the country.48

The task of increasing and improving allowances, and getting them accepted by Treasury Board, fell to the capable John Starnes, the head of the Establishments and Organization Division and a colleague with whom Cadieux worked closely in these years. Their efforts bore fruit in August

1951 when approval was granted for a tropical clothing allowance, higher limits on interest-free loans, educational allowances for the children of administrative personnel, and a bonus for clerical staff serving at hardship posts.49 These changes boosted service morale, but it is doubtful that they would have satisfied Cadieux. A few months earlier he had disagreed with Starnes’ proposed tactic of stressing to the Treasury Board that the new allowance system proposed would defray only a portion of the costs faced by DEA staff abroad. “If soldiers on sentry duty were to discover that they have to purchase their guns,” Cadieux wrote in a striking analogy, “it may well be that to protect their lives these soldiers would go into debt to purchase the guns, but

I have a feeling that once this system became known, we might find it very difficult to recruit many soldiers.”50 While it was perhaps unrealistic of Cadieux to seek full compensation, his attitude reflected just how strongly he had come to identify with foreign service officers.

The DEA’s position on women, who until 1947 had been barred from its officer class, was another question that Cadieux considered. In 1948 he recommended that only a “very small number” of them be admitted to the department since their likely marriage would lead to “early vacancies” in the service and since they could not be sent to every mission as easily as men nor function as effectively there as men.51 As if to illustrate the point, when Margaret Meagher, one of ten women officers serving in the DEA, returned from Mexico in 1949 Cadieux asked her

48 LAC/DEA/676/45/1 – Cadieux, “Remuneration of Employees Serving Abroad,” 2 February 1950. 49 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 64-65. 50 LAC/DEA/676/45/1 – Cadieux to John Starnes, 29 May 1951. In particular, Cadieux had in mind the purchase of a car. Despite the fact that a vehicle was “indispensable” to the work of diplomats in certain foreign countries, they were often forced into debt to purchase one. As Cadieux saw it, this was “morally wrong.” 51 LAC/DEA/682/156-J/1 – Cadieux to Personnel Officer, 28 May 1948.

106 about the experience. She answered that she had had trouble calling on officials there without those Latin American gentlemen thinking that there was more to the encounter than just “official business.” As a result, Meagher suggested that it was better to post women officers to democratic countries in places like Western Europe.52 As for Cadieux’s personal attitude towards women in the DEA, it must be said that he viewed and wrote about the Canadian diplomat in distinctly masculine terms. He was, simply put, a product of his time. This is no doubt why he focused his attention instead on the role of the wife in the foreign service. The social aspect of diplomacy in his view was so vital to the profession that she was “véritablement une associée” of her husband, performing valuable work in her own right. Since the diplomatic couple represented Canada abroad, Cadieux also had no compunction advising male officers to marry Canadians rather than foreigners.53

The debate over the extent of specialization in the Canadian foreign service, one which had been intermittent and inconclusive, also attracted Cadieux’s attention. Since the days of O.D.

Skelton the DEA had preferred well-educated generalists and, from the point of view of its

Personnel Officer, rightly so. The department was a small outfit, making its need for experts much less acute than in larger organizations. Many of Canada’s posts abroad were run by a Head of Mission and a lone Secretary, the scope and variety of the duties performed by such a skeleton staff clearly militating against any opportunity to specialize. As well, the practice of rotating officers between headquarters and foreign countries disrupted continuity and made the acquisition of technical expertise more difficult. This system, Cadieux believed, was nevertheless superior to a non-rotational one in which experts at home and officers abroad lacked first-hand knowledge of each other’s work.

52 LAC/MC/11/13 – Cadieux to A.T. Hardy, 27 April 1976. 53 Cadieux, Le Ministère des Affaires Extérieures, 95. For Cadieux’s position on women, as well as for the latter’s place in the DEA more generally, see Margaret K. Weiers, Envoys Extraordinary: Women of the Canadian Foreign Service (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1995); Claire Turenne Sjolander, “Margaret Meagher and the Role of Women in the Foreign Service: Groundbreaking or Housekeeping?,” in Architects and Innovators, 223-236. Sjolander usefully reminds readers that “the Canadian foreign service was not atypical in its hiring practices.” See ibid., 228.

107

Despite his conviction that generalists were better suited to the DEA than specialists,

Cadieux conceded the department’s need for a handful of experts. To this end, he distinguished between “functional” and “regional” ones. Since new officers typically entered the DEA with training in law, economics, or public administration, the first group did not require a special recruitment policy. That said, when they reached the middle or highest positions in the Legal

Division, to give just one example, their exposure to its complex problems needed to be more prolonged. Cadieux recommended that a stint in the same field be five to ten years, but not longer. After all, officers who aspired to become ambassadors, assistant under-secretaries, or even under-secretary had to have a wide range of experience, not a limited one. As for “regional” specialists, they were of obvious use to the DEA in “non-western” countries like China, India, and the Soviet Union, where it could take years not only to learn the local language but to appreciate the “culture,” the “civilization,” and the “institutions.” Provided that the DEA could foresee its need for such area experts, Cadieux suggested that officers be trained within the department rather than specially recruited from outside of it. The reason, once again, was that versatility and flexibility were preferable to narrow expertise. Moreover, too great a number of specialists in the service risked complicating its system of promotion by merit, since a generalist and an expert defied easy comparison. While Cadieux provided the DEA with a possible framework for the specialization of some of its officers, he also maintained that the generalist- specialist dichotomy was in some ways misleading. As he put it, “the diplomat as such is a specialist.” The ability to negotiate, to prepare reports, and to run a mission, for example, were all skills that needed to be learned. Undue emphasis on narrow specialization, he felt, was “both unwarranted and contrary to the general character of the profession.”54

54 LAC/DEA/2490/161-1-B/1 – Cadieux, “Specialization of Foreign Service Officers,” 16 March 1951; see as well LAC/DEA/2490/161-1-B/1 – Cadieux to Moran, 9 November 1950.

108

Cadieux’s strong opinions on the nature of the ideal diplomat also led him to take a sceptical view of the role outsiders could play in the Canadian foreign service. For instance, when asked by Herb Moran to consider the DEA’s reputation among businessmen and the wider public – one that was allegedly disparaged or non-existent – the Personnel Officer maintained that a policy of appointing as top officers individuals who had distinguished themselves in private life was inadvisable except in very rare cases. Civil servants laboured in anonymity, accepting “a very modest role for a small salary” in the hope of one day occupying the bureaucracy’s most powerful positions. It would be unjust to deny them this advancement simply because a businessman commanded more public support than they did. Cadieux was also concerned that an influx of business experts would weaken the character of the foreign service.

Perhaps the DEA had placed too much of a premium on intellectual knowledge in the past, but it had also earned an impressive reputation for the “brilliance” of its guiding lights, for embodying a “school of thought,” and for serving as a testament to the contribution that “academic minds” could make to the country. An increased focus on “efficiency,” “regulations,” and “good public relations,” Cadieux worried, should not eclipse the “older tradition and purpose.” Above all, he was adamant that civil servants and businessmen were fundamentally different in their outlook.

Whereas the latter pursued financial gain and focused on material things, the former recognized that not every worthwhile interest could be measured in “dollars and cents.” While an entire country and the world at large were the concern of the foreign service, private business typically dealt in “isolated transactions.” Lastly, there was the problem of bureaucratic red tape which, despite the important purpose that it served, frustrated outsiders accustomed to getting things done more quickly.55 There was something admittedly unfair about Cadieux’s characterization of businessmen, one which no doubt elicited vigorous disapproval from Herb Moran. Nevertheless, the Personnel Officer’s views captured well the feeling of a generation of mandarins in Ottawa

55 LAC/DEA/685/156-AB/2 – Cadieux to Moran, 12 July 1949.

109 that corporate ideals were not only alien but corrupting to the nobler aspirations of the public service.

Herb Moran’s critical response to Cadieux’s memo reflected a degree of tension between two very different men. Moran had business experience – he had been associated with the Bell

Telephone Company in Toronto – and during the war he had risen to the rank of Acting

Brigadier in the Canadian Army on account of his administrative ability. His rapid ascension in the DEA, which he had entered in 1946 and one of whose assistant under-secretaries he had become in 1949, owed much to his close relationship with Lester B. Pearson, to his drive, and to his belief that he could bring a practical business approach to a department known for taking an excessively academic one. As Cadieux recalled, Moran had a clear and penetrating mind, he made decisions quickly, and he understood the mentality of Treasury Board officials, to whom he gave the impression that he could keep the “rêveurs” and the “intellectuels” of the DEA in check. He also had, again according to Cadieux, an almost pathological desire to control the administrative operations of the department that was reminiscent of Agnes McCloskey’s own regime in the past. While Cadieux recognized Moran’s strengths, and while he generally worked well with him, he still found his senior colleague, who could often be seen chomping on a cigar with his legs propped up on his desk, a curious fixture in the foreign service. This was because, in Cadieux’s words, Moran had “aucun goût, aucune culture, aucune manière, aucune délicatesse.” He had no Latin and he took no interest in such things as art, music, literature, and history. “Je ne connais personne à son niveau,” Cadieux recorded in his diary, “qui soit aussi borné au point de vue culturel.” Moran, he concluded, had neither the “envergure” nor the

“subtilité” needed to become under-secretary.56 While Cadieux was too quick to dismiss Moran’s career prospects, both in Ottawa and abroad, his comments reveal his discomfort at the presence and role in the Canadian foreign service of officers who were not intellectually inclined.

56 These comments about Moran are drawn entirely from LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 7 May 1951.

110

Needless to say, as Personnel Officer, he put a premium on recruits who had culture, breadth, and subtlety.

While much of Cadieux’s work in Personnel Division focused on the type of officer that the DEA required, he also tried to strengthen the links, which he considered altogether too loose, between headquarters and missions. Taking up an idea originally proposed by John Starnes, he argued in 1948 that the time had come to establish a corps of inspectors who would visit posts abroad and ensure greater uniformity among them, improved coordination with Ottawa, and better overall efficiency. As Cadieux saw it, two or three senior officers might inspect the security arrangements of missions, their accounting procedures, the suitability of their Chancery and residence, the size of their establishments, the morale and management of their personnel, the manner in which their officers spent their allowances, and, although this would have to be determined in advance from Ottawa, the volume and quality of their political reporting.57 While several ad hoc inspection visits had already been made by different members of the DEA, what

Cadieux had in mind was more systematic and thorough. It was also premature. The DEA had neither the senior officers to spare nor the necessary experience to implement a full-fledged inspection policy. For now an informal approach would have to prevail whereby officers travelling abroad for other reasons could be asked to study and to comment on the organization of specific missions. Since the word “inspection” had an ominous ring to it, these visitors would instead be called “liaison officers” whose role was neither to judge nor to bully but quite simply to assist.58

The DEA did not institute a formal Inspection Service until 1956, but Cadieux forged ahead nonetheless. As Personnel Officer he required an in-depth knowledge of Canada’s

57 LAC/DEA/686/158-D/1 – Cadieux to MacDermot, 2 June 1948; LAC/DEA/686/158-D/1 – Cadieux, “Draft Memorandum for the Personnel and Planning Board: Establishment of a Corps of Inspectors,” 14 June 1948. 58 LAC/DEA/686/158-D/2 – Cadieux, “Memorandum to the Personnel and Planning Board: Periodic Visits to Canadian Missions Abroad by Liaison Officers.” Material here is also based on a confidential interview.

111 missions abroad and so in 1950 he undertook a lengthy tour of posts in Paris, Brussels, Warsaw,

Prague, Bonn, and Rome. He had visited Mexico City in June as part of a larger liaison team, but his trip to Europe two months later was made alone. Upon returning from the continent, he was less critical of the missions themselves than of the “rigidity” and “slowness” of Treasury Board, whose pernicious influence over the DEA’s foreign operations he condemned. From Cadieux’s point of view, it was both absurd and inefficient to force a small office like the legation in Poland to spend so much of its time preparing meticulous reports on everything that it did as if it were located in Windsor, Ontario. The Treasury Board’s narrow insistence on “standard regulations” had also caused hardship in Warsaw and Bonn, where staff were poorly housed and where

“quick and imaginative, if unusual, solutions” were better suited to circumstances on the ground.

Finally, its refusal or delaying to increase the salaries of local employees meant that posts had trouble hiring and keeping the clerical help they needed to function.59 In short, Cadieux’s inspection tour of the DEA’s European posts contributed to his growing conviction that the mania of the control agencies in Ottawa for scrutinizing every dollar spent not only undermined the work of the foreign service but was out of place.

While the Treasury Board bore the brunt of Cadieux’s criticisms, the missions he inspected did not escape censure. The embassy in Paris, which had a reputation for being inefficient and quarrelsome, was a case in point. On the one hand, Cadieux was surprised to find its morale good, something he attributed to improved living conditions in post-war France, where

DEA employees no longer went hungry or froze in their icy apartments. On the other hand, the post was not yet a “productive” or “useful” one from the point of view of the service. In particular, Cadieux singled out its English-speaking officers for their unwillingness to learn the local language, to socialize outside of their small circle, and to immerse themselves in French life. Such a narrow view of the diplomat’s role, and the type of political reporting that it bred,

59 DEA 4386/11694-40/1 – Cadieux to Heeney, 18 October 1950.

112 might suffice in the United States and in the countries of the British Commonwealth, where there was a shared language and where Canada’s general relations with them ensured that its representatives usually received all the information that they needed, but in nations like France more effort and imagination were required if developments were to be understood and interpreted back to headquarters. No doubt drawing on his own experiences abroad, Cadieux wrote that the conscientious diplomat “must combine the industry of the scholar, the flair of the newspaperman, the engaging manner of the ward politician, [and] the alertness of the pawnshop owner.” The DEA needed officers who did more, he noted sardonically, than drink Canadian

Club whiskey, avoid the local population, and merely relay back to Ottawa news reported to them by their American and British counterparts.60 Cadieux’s inspection of the Paris embassy also confirmed his opinion of General Georges Vanier as an ambassador. While in some ways he was an excellent one, administration and political reporting were not his strong suits. He also devoted too much attention to matters of protocol, and he had an unfortunate habit of interfering with the work of his subordinates by treating them as his “personal assistants.” Although

Vanier’s retention of a staff of forty-nine seemed somewhat profligate, Cadieux was reluctant to reduce it in part because it accomplished so much for Quebec, though none of this work was discernible in Ottawa. The alternative, he warned, was a provincial office in Paris, one that would be a potential “source of embarrassment” for Canada in its relations with France.61

Cadieux’s incisive analyses of the embassy in Paris demonstrated just how much a properly organized Inspection Service might accomplish.

If Cadieux’s first contribution in Personnel Division was to explain the philosophy behind a career in the DEA and his second to implement a host of new personnel policies therein, his third lay in a vigorous campaign to attract French Canadians to the East Block and to make it

60 LAC/DEA/4092/11336-14-40/1 – Cadieux to Moran, 23 October 1950. 61 LAC/DEA/4092/11336-14-40/1 – Stuart D. Hemsley to Cadieux, 3 February 1951; LAC/DEA/4092/11336-14- 40/1 – Cadieux to USSEA, 6 February 1951; LAC/DEA/4092/11336-14-40/1 – USSEA to SSEA, 6 February 1951.

113 a more welcoming home for them. His ethnic group comprised, as it had since Confederation, roughly one-third of Canada’s population but in the early post-war period it accounted for a mere

13 percent of the federal civil service. While the DEA boasted the most bilingual department in

Ottawa, a legacy bequeathed by O.D. Skelton to his successors as under-secretary, it had room to improve. In 1949, for example, 20 percent of all its officers were French Canadian, but this figure masked their uneven distribution throughout its ranks: 9 out of 31 at the Head of Mission level, 10 out of 54 between FSO Grades 4 and 7, and 26 out of 138 between FSO Grades 1 and 3.

Of the 114 officers recruited between 1945 and 1949, only 17 (about 15 percent) were of French ethnicity.62 At the top, then, the DEA had a sizable but older group of French Canadians – including some, like Victor Doré, Henri Laureys, and W.F.A. Turgeon, who were not career men

– but at the bottom they were being swamped. Cadieux was alarmed. As Personnel Officer, he grasped that the DEA’s recruits today were its leaders tomorrow and that, unless decisive steps were taken to redress the ethnic balance, the most powerful positions at headquarters would remain in English-Canadian hands for years to come.

Between 1948 and 1951 Cadieux worked tirelessly to raise the profile of the DEA in

French Canada and to build interest there in la carrière. With these goals in mind, he published three short books: Le Ministère des Affaires Extérieures (1949), Premières Armes (1951), and

Embruns (1951). The first of these was essentially a manual on the DEA, a mostly dry but informative work for students from Quebec for whom the federal civil service was shrouded in mystery and upon whom Cadieux wished to impress that more was needed to succeed in the profession than simply having “le goût du voyage” and a knowledge of “quelques biographies romancées de Talleyrand.”63 Premières Armes, of course, was his entertaining and often evocative account of his postings to London and to Brussels. As Personnel Officer he had

62 LAC/DEA/687/158-E/1 – Cadieux to Moran, 23 February 1949; LAC/DEA/685/156-M/1 – Roger Bougie to Cadieux, 9 August 1949. 63 LAC/MC/6/1 – Cadieux to Father Antonin Lamarche, 16 June 1950.

114 travelled across Canada and to a number of its missions, journeys which he described in

Embruns. These three books, which were widely and well reviewed in the French-Canadian press, brought Cadieux, hitherto a relatively unknown civil servant, a certain celebrity in Quebec and marked the start of his public reputation as one of French Canada’s few luminaries in the national bureaucracy. The publicity was no doubt gratifying, but his aim all along had been a more selfless one: to attract French-Canadian students to a life in the foreign service. Indeed,

Cadieux had gone to great lengths just to get his books into print. Because the venture was not likely to be particularly lucrative, he had promised his dubious publishers three things: that he would forego any royalties from the sale of his books; that he would personally purchase at least one or two hundred copies of each one, at market price no less; and that he would prevail upon the federal and provincial governments to order a substantial number as well.64 Such terms were rather humiliating, but Cadieux obviously felt that the ultimate goal was worth it.

In addition to waging a one-man recruitment campaign in French Canada, Cadieux ensured that the DEA itself had a more visible role there. In 1948, for example, eager to establish a rapport between the department and universities in Quebec, he accompanied the Civil Service

Commission team sent out to various campuses to promote opportunities in the bureaucracy. As well, as part of the expanded publicity scheme that he had proposed to Terry MacDermot, he ensured that key francophone academics were issued letters in which they were asked to publicize the DEA’s entrance competition to talented students.65 In 1949 Cadieux went one step further and recommended that the French-language universities of Ottawa, Montreal, and Laval be invited to send to the DEA professors who, after seeing the department in action and meeting with its senior officers, would be better qualified to explain to their pupils the work that it

64 LAC/MC/6/9 – Cadieux to Turgeon, 25 October 1951. 65 LAC/DEA/683/156-AB/1 – Cadieux to MacDermot, 22 November 1948. For letters to French-Canadian academics see LAC/DEA/685/156-AB/1. Among those contacted were Maximilien Caron of the Université de Montréal, Father G. Forcier of the University of Ottawa, Father G.H. Lévesque of Université Laval, Esdras Minville of the Université de Montréal, and Brother Stanislas of the École Supérieure de Commerce de Québec. All of them held prominent positions at their respective institutions.

115 performed. That same year, recognizing that his compatriots often lacked the training and background needed for admission to the department, Cadieux and two French-Canadian colleagues began giving twelve hours of annual lectures at the Université de Montréal on

“diplomatic technique” and on three historical studies that were essential reading for aspiring foreign service officers in the country: John Bartlett Brebner’s North Atlantic Triangle (1945),

H. Gordon Skilling’s Canadian Representation Abroad (1945), and A.R.M. Lower’s Colony to

Nation (1946). That there were no equivalent books in French is indicative of the uphill battle the

DEA faced in Quebec. As if to underscore the point, Senator L.M. Gouin, acting dean of the

Université de Montréal’s faculty of social sciences, leaned heavily on Cadieux for advice on how to adapt the curriculum to better assist students contemplating a diplomatic career.66

Not content merely to encourage French Canadians to apply to the DEA, its Personnel

Officer insisted that they be at less of a disadvantage when writing its entrance examination, parts of which he changed to reflect their distinct cultural heritage. In 1949, in what was likely a first for the federal civil service, the English and French versions of the DEA’s test were not identical. For instance, whereas anglophones were asked to answer questions about a speech on politics and history by the British Liberal John Morley, francophones were given an extract on

Christian personalism, the movement associated with French-Catholic philosophers Jacques

Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier which since the 1930s had been influential among Quebec intellectuals. Similarly, another question required candidates to “discuss H.G. Wells and

Rudyard Kipling or Mauriac and Sartre as [being] representative of English or French thought.”67

66LAC/DEA/685/156-M/1 – Léon Mayrand (drafted by Cadieux) to USSEA, 25 May 1949; LAC/DEA/683/156-J- 1/1 – Cadieux, “Foreign Service Officers Competition – General Arrangements and Procedures,” 1949, 18-19; LAC/DEA/2489/156-M/2 – Cadieux, “Cours de technique diplomatique,” 3 March 1950; LAC/DEA/2489/156-M/2 – L.M. Gouin to Cadieux, 16 January 1950; LAC/DEA/2489/156-M/2 – Cadieux to Jules Léger, 8 February 1951; LAC/DEA/685/156-M/1 – Cadieux to Gouin, 21 September 1949; LAC/DEA/2489/156-M/2 – Gouin to Mayrand and Cadieux, 24 January 1950; LAC/DEA/2489/156-M/2 – Cadieux to Gouin, 2 February 1950. 67 See and compare copies of the French and English exam in LAC/DEA/683/156-J-1/1 – Cadieux, “Foreign Service Officers Competition – General Arrangements and Procedures,” 1949. Note, in particular, the difference in the

116

Nor did the DEA’s oral examination boards escape Cadieux’s critical eye. After spending a few days on them in the spring of 1948, he recommended that francophone students from Quebec not be cross-examined on their knowledge of current international affairs for two reasons: first, he knew of no such course in the French-language universities; second, students there were trained to focus more on “theories” and “principles” than on “details.” It was better to query French-

Canadian candidates on the “morality of war as an instrument of policy,” Cadieux suggested, than to ask them to hold forth on Britain’s position on Palestine.68 After all, bright and industrious recruits could acquire the needed training in international affairs during their early years on the job.

For those French Canadians who did succeed on the entrance examination, Cadieux worked hard to ease their transition to life in the DEA. For many of these newcomers the unilingualism of the East Block was trying, its organization and methods of work mysterious, and the quirks of its senior members off-putting. Recalling his own sense of isolation in 1941 and Laurent Beaudry’s key role in alleviating it, Cadieux made a point of initially assigning francophone recruits to more experienced French-speaking officers who understood their anguish and who could guide them. He also recognized that Ottawa was an “ordeal” for francophones who abandoned their “intellectual and spiritual home in Quebec,” cut themselves off from their friends, and moved to a city that was culturally barren. He himself had found the change from

Ottawa to London less dramatic than the one from Montreal to Ottawa. There was no easy solution to the problem, but Cadieux explored with the Civil Service Commissioner and the office of the Solicitor General the possibility of founding in the nation’s capital a “cercle universitaire.”69 To assist French-Canadian recruits with drafting reports and other documents in

multiple choice questions asked. For example, whereas question twenty-four on the English exam asked candidates about Victorian poetry, the same question on the French exam focused on Balzac. See as well ibid., 6-7. 68 LAC/DEA/685/156-J-4/1 – Cadieux to MacDermot, 19 April 1948. 69 LAC/DEA/687/158-J/1 – Cadieux to Acting Under-secretary, 22 January 1949.

117

English – a language that had caused him no small grief – he convinced the department to organize classes for them in advanced diction and composition. Bilingualism, however, was a two-way street. Also at his suggestion, junior francophone officers offered French lessons to their anglophone colleagues, including weekly luncheon study groups that were open to their wives. Because there was no money for such schemes in late 1940s Ottawa, books were borrowed from the French embassy.70 Cadieux also waged a quiet but determined campaign to adjust the ratings given to French Canadians by English-Canadian superiors who refused to make any allowance for their different mentality. As the Personnel Officer saw it, a fair promotion system could not be based on the fallacy that the two ethnic groups were exactly alike.71

In the policies governing postings for junior as well as for senior officers, Cadieux tried to make the DEA reflect Canada’s dual heritage. When a Head of Mission was English-speaking, for example, the second-in-command ideally should be French-speaking and vice versa, a bold idea but one that was never formally adopted due to the shortage of French Canadians in the service and due to the reluctance on the part of all concerned to avoid anything that smacked of a quota system. He also gave serious thought to whether it was not more desirable, from the perspective of the department, to post francophones to London instead of Paris and to the

Commonwealth instead of Europe.72 Nor did Cadieux hesitate to alert his superiors when

Canada’s francophone representation in some part of the world was deficient. Thus in March

1951 he informed Herb Moran that there was not a single bilingual officer west of San Francisco,

70 Ibid.; LAC/DEA/687/158-J/1 – SSEA to Canadian Ambassador to Italy, 3 February 1949; LAC/DEA/674/28/1 – Cadieux to MacDermot, 20 October 1948; LAC/DEA/686/158-D/2 – Minutes of the 23rd Meeting of the Personnel and Planning Board, 10 February 1949; LAC/DEA/679-136-P/1 – Cadieux to MacDermot, 27 November 1948; LAC/DEA/674/28/1 – “Ouvrages reçus de l’ambassade de France pour les fins des cours français,” 1949 [undated but likely October]. One problem with the French classes was that attendance at them tended to flag as the course went on. As a remedy Cadieux had suggested that it be made mandatory for all those who had registered to take them, but Moran rejected the idea. See LAC/DEA/675/28/1 – Cadieux to Bruce M. Williams, 17 September 1951. 71 Confidential interview. 72 Cadieux’s suggestion that missions abroad be headed by a bilingual team had actually been included in drafts of his memo on posting regulations but, by the time the dispatch was sent out in final form, it had been removed. See LAC/DEA/686/158-D/1 – Cadieux, “Postings,” 21 May 1948; LAC/DEA/686/158-D/1 – “Postings,” Cadieux, 7 September 1948; LAC/DEA/686/158-B/2 – Circular dispatch Admin No. 44, 5 November 1948. This information is also based on a confidential interview.

118 adding that there was perhaps merit in “re-establishing the balance” by naming a francophone as

Head of Mission in East Asia. As for positions at headquarters, in June of the same year he recognized that the proportion of French-Canadian Heads of Division was about to be greatly reduced and recommended countermeasures.73 In the end, as Cadieux warned his successor as

Personnel Officer, the best of his compatriots would avoid Ottawa if they believed that French-

Canadian civil servants were less likely than English-Canadian ones to succeed there, that the plum appointments in the foreign service and in the bureaucracy as a whole went to non-career people, and that real influence within the federal administration was impossible.74 It was incumbent upon the DEA to prove such impressions wrong.

In his wide-ranging and innovative attempts to draw French Canadians to the East Block and to retain them, Marcel Cadieux was well ahead of his time. Two decades before bilingualism became the law in the government of Canada, he was both a shining example and staunch defender of the fact that the federal civil service belonged as much to French Canadians as it did to English Canadians. Writing to a fellow officer from Quebec in 1950 he noted, “… personne ne pourrait rien changer au fait que les Canadiens-français représentent plus du tiers de la population dans ce pays et qu’il sera impossible de faire de la bonne politique tant que la justice

élémentaire de leur assurer une représentation équitable dans le Service civil n’aura pas été satisfaite.” As he added, “Nous sommes loin d’avoir notre part.”75 Indeed, this sad reality must have been one of Cadieux’s great disappointments. Despite his heroic efforts, the proportion of francophone officers in the department increased with agonizing slowness, from 20.3 percent in

1950, to 22.5 percent in 1955, to 22.8 percent in 1960.76 For most French Canadians the obstacles inherent in a career in the federal administration – chief among them the dominance of

73 LAC/DEA/676/47/1 – Cadieux to Moran, 27 March 1951; LAC/DEA/676/47/1 – Cadieux to Moran, 12 June 1951. 74 LAC/DEA/683/156-J-1/1 – Cadieux, “Foreign Service Officers Competition – General Arrangements and Procedures,” 1949, 20-21. 75 LAC/MC/6/1 – Cadieux to Guy Beaudry, 1 June 1950. 76 See annexed table in LAC/PT/7/58, APO to Tremblay, 29 May 1970.

119 the English language – still bulked too large to justify even a leap of faith. The DEA was left in the discouraging position of being the most forward-looking department in Ottawa, but one with little progress to show for it.

Although French Canadians were a scarce asset in the DEA, Cadieux refused to coddle them. If, as we have seen, he made use of the velvet glove, he ruled with an equally well- practised iron hand. What French Canadians lacked in quantity they would have to make up in quality. He demanded not just that they meet expectations but that they surpass them; he insisted that they not merely be the equals of their English-Canadian colleagues but their betters.

Anglophone recruits, provided they were competent, might escape Cadieux’s notice but their francophone counterparts had no such luck. The Personnel Officer’s scrutiny was unrelenting and often uncomfortable. In Ottawa an underachieving French-Canadian officer could expect to be summoned to his office for a stern reprimand driven home by two emerging Cadieux trademarks: a raised voice and the pounding of his fist on the desk.

Even when posted abroad to some distant country, francophones of Cadieux’s rank and below still did not escape his reach. He sent them letters in which he liberally dispensed praise or criticism, as the case warranted. In one missive, for example, he congratulated Jean-Louis

Delisle, an officer serving in Brazil, for his “travail magnifique” at the embassy only to scold him a few months later for complaining about being denied more than one month’s vacation: “… nous sommes tous ici extrêmement affligés du malheur qui t’arrive … La conviction générale au

Ministère est qu’il y a quelque chose d’immoral à prendre plus de trois semaines de congé.”77 As

Personnel Officer, and therefore a key member of the DEA’s Promotions Board and of its Rating

Sub-Committee, Cadieux had full access to the confidential reports prepared by Heads of

Division and Heads of Mission on their subordinates. As a result, he knew the strengths, foibles,

77 LAC/MC/5/17 – Cadieux to Jean-Louis Delisle, 9 February 1949; LAC/MC/5/17 – Cadieux to Delisle, 13 May 1949.

120 and weaknesses of individual French Canadians in the service better than they did. Though he took no pleasure in doing it, he felt that it was his duty to warn them when their poor performance threatened their advancement, or worse yet their careers. For instance, he informed

Marcel Blais, a junior officer serving in Czechoslovakia, of the unfortunate impression in the department that he lacked “une ambition dévorante” and advised him to devote more of his

“dynamisme bien connu” to his work.78 Aggressive or narrow French-Canadian nationalists in the DEA were also identified by Cadieux and firmly invited to see matters more objectively. He had been infuriated by one officer who, while editing the DEA’s French bulletin, had substituted the words “sirop d’érable” for “stores vénitiens” (venetian blinds) in an article discussing potential Canadian exports to South America. This ill-advised and silly intervention on behalf of the Quebec maple syrup industry was discovered and traced to the culprit.79 Hoping to broaden this young man’s horizons, Cadieux posted him to France. Shortly after his arrival there, however, the maple-syrup advocate began fretting about the number of English Canadians on the staff and about the translation of official letters. Furious, Cadieux wrote him a sulphurous note:

Tu ne représentes pas à Paris la Province de Québec, mais tout le Canada. Tâche donc une bonne fois de quitter l’Université de Montréal, l’esprit du Quartier Latin. Je n’ai pas l’intention de te donner des avertissements de ce genre tous les trois mois. En fait, celui- ci sera le dernier. Tu n’es plus un écolier qu’il faut corriger avec une patience infinie. Ta carrière est entre tes mains. Comme ami, comme Chef du Personnel, deux fois en trois mois je t’ai dit : ‘Fais attention – tu es en train de risquer ta carrière.’ Je renonce à faire avantage.80

Whether they heeded such advice or not, some French-Canadian nationalists in the DEA must have been rattled by its brutal delivery. No pangs of guilt were felt by the Personnel Officer, who subscribed to the dictum that it was better to be feared than loved.

Yet Marcel Cadieux’s attitude towards French-Canadian nationalism was complex. While he might seethe at the inappropriate ways in which it was sometimes expressed, he maintained

78 LAC/MC/2/8 – Cadieux to Marcel Blais, 16 January 1951. 79 LAC/MC/2/7 – Cadieux to Georges P. Vanier, 25 November 1949. 80 LAC/MC/2/7 – Cadieux to Anonymous, 25 November 1949.

121 that it had a vital role to play in Ottawa. After all, he had come to the capital nearly a decade ago to give Quebec a stronger voice in the counsels of the nation. When in 1951 Maurice Pope,

Canada’s ambassador to Belgium and the son of the DEA’s first under-secretary, suggested to him that the entrance age to the department be lowered from twenty-three to twenty-one – a change designed to attract French-Canadian applicants fresh from classical college, that is, before their views on the rest of Canada could be moulded in Quebec’s nationalistic university environment – Cadieux balked. In two long letters to Pope he argued that nationalists, far from being troublemakers, could be assets to both their ethnic group and their country.

Notwithstanding the offhand remark above about his alma mater, he believed that universities in

Quebec were the “cerveau” of the French-Canadian community, the site where its youth gained an appreciation for the “grands intérêts” and “grands courants de pensée” that lay at the heart of their “petite nation.” Having acquired this essential training, those former students who joined the federal administration had a responsibility to put it to good use. As Cadieux opined, “nos compatriotes de langue anglaise,” not from any ill will but often simply out of “inconscience” or

“ignorance,” were prone to overlook French-Canadian interests. It was the mission of civil servants raised and educated in Quebec, and therefore thoroughly familiar with its mood, to ensure that government policy emanating from Ottawa was truly national. In this way bad policies could be nipped in the bud, thereby preventing the kind of bitterly divisive public debates that were destructive of Canadian unity.81

As Cadieux stressed to Maurice Pope, it was crucial that the federal government recruit only those francophones who were “les plus conscients, les plus articulés, les plus représentatifs” of their group. He lamented Ottawa’s habit, which he decried as a “véritable vilénie,” of appointing to top positions those who were French Canadians in name only. Bereft of all “sens national,” these individuals had severed all ties with French Canada long ago. They were, in

81 LAC/MC/6/7 – Cadieux to Maurice Pope, 17 April 1951; LAC/MC/6/7 – Cadieux to Pope, 16 May 1951.

122

Cadieux’s harsh phrase, “des anglo-Canadiens manqués,” that is, would-be English Canadians who commanded neither respect nor authority in Quebec, particularly in times of crisis. Officials in the East Block often spoke to him in glowing terms about French Canadians who specialized in political economy, who spoke French with an anglophone accent, and who had “aucune culture générale,” that is, who were narrow experts. With his usual bluntness, Cadieux pointed out to them that what they liked most about these francophones was that they seemed like anglophones. Did they ever stop to think, however, whether a French Canadian so similar to themselves was the “image fidèle” of the province and of the ethnic group that he was supposed to represent?82 In short, Cadieux was adamant that the civil service in general, and the DEA in particular, had infinitely more to gain from hiring and favouring nationalistic French Canadians over those self-loathing ones who masqueraded as English Canadians.

Of course, as Cadieux well knew, French-Canadian nationalists varied in outlook and in temperament. In his 1949 handbook on the DEA he warned the most fanatical of them to steer clear of Ottawa. In their unthinking elevation of ethnic interests above national and international ones, these extremists had no place in an administration tasked with governing an entire country.

After all, the French-Canadian component of a problem was only one element in a complex equation and not always the most important one at that. Narrow nationalists, Cadieux cautioned, would discover that in the Canadian capital they had no choice but to collaborate “à des politiques de compromis,” an approach that would inevitably violate their most cherished

82 LAC/MC/6/7 – Cadieux to Maurice Pope, 17 April 1951; LAC/MC/6/7 – Cadieux to Pope, 16 May 1951. In the first volume of his official history of the DEA, the historian John Hilliker writes that “there seemed to be a requirement [in the department] to adapt to English-Canadian expectations: it was Cadieux’s feeling that the acceptable French Canadian was one who had been to Oxford, spoke English with an accent, and watched baseball games on Saturday afternoon.” See Hilliker, The Early Years, 259. Only the first and third statements attributed to Cadieux are correct. As for the second statement, Cadieux himself spoke accented English and yet he defiantly regarded himself as a French-Canadian fixture in the DEA. This is why he told Pope that the French Canadians his anglophone colleagues most admired were not ones who spoke English with an accent but rather the ones who spoke French with an accent. In other words, they had either been corrupted or they had never been true French Canadians and so they spoke their mother tongue much as an English Canadian would speak French.

123 principles.83 As he implied, Canadians of all backgrounds, not just French, had interests and aspirations of their own. Moreover, in a country as vast and as diverse as Canada, surely there had to be some sense of higher purpose that inspired its disparate regions and proud ethnic groups to face the future together. In the early post-war period Cadieux and mandarins like him – heirs to the original vision in the 1930s and in wartime of men like O.D. Skelton, Graham

Towers, and Clifford Clark – were keenly aware that the instrument of this common destiny could be the federal government. For Canadian independence to have any meaning and for the young country to develop robustly, it was necessary, to paraphrase the title of a later memoir by one of Cadieux’s contemporaries, to see Canada whole.84 For Cadieux, Canadian and French-

Canadian nationalism were not mutually exclusive. Without denying “quoi que ce soit d’essentiel,” those of his fellow Quebeckers who joined him in Ottawa could “accéder à une réalité canadienne qui déborde tout ce qu’il peut y avoir de légitime dans le patrimoine.”85 If

Wilfrid Laurier’s prediction that the twentieth century belonged to Canada were ever to come true, Marcel Cadieux wanted French Canadians by his side who were as proud of their country as they were of their heritage.

While Cadieux tried to recruit a new generation of French Canadians to the East Block, moulding them as he saw fit, he remained deeply critical of the DEA’s older francophones who, being senior to him, were largely beyond his control. We have already discussed his reservations about Georges Vanier’s style as ambassador to France. He was even more scathing in his assessments of Pierre Dupuy and Jean Désy, both of whom refused to serve at headquarters and put their personal interests ahead of those of the service. In 1951, for example, Dupuy had agreed to become ambassador to Yugoslavia. He had barely set foot in Belgrade, however, before he was on a plane bound for Canada to protest the living conditions in the communist country and

83 Cadieux, Le Ministère des Affaires Extérieures, 104-105. 84 J.W. Pickersgill, Seeing Canada Whole: A Memoir (Markham: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1994). 85 LAC/MC/6/7 – Cadieux to Pope, 17 April 1951.

124 to complain that the post was not interesting enough. Upon arriving in Ottawa, and perhaps not entirely by accident, Dupuy caught the flu and spent most of his time laid up in a hotel room.

While he managed to see the prime minister, the minister, and the under-secretary, none of them was pleased with his change of heart, to say nothing of his threat to resign if he were forced to leave his current post at The Hague.86 Then there was that “arrant individualist” Jean Désy who, in Cadieux’s view, promoted himself both tirelessly and shamelessly in the hope of one day becoming ambassador to France. Désy’s drive was impressive but, in a vivid analogy, Cadieux compared it to that of those “renaissance adventurers, bursting with energy, straining every nerve to realize their ambitions, ultimately loyal only to themselves and serving no man and no cause except to the extent of their own personal advantage.” For Cadieux, Désy’s egotism had its roots not simply in his ambitions, but in the fact that he had begun his career in External Affairs at a time when its various missions functioned as a kind of “planetary system,” that is, with each outpost following its own sphere and maintaining only a tenuous link to the others and to headquarters. Consequently, in his present position as ambassador to Italy, Désy used his embassy as a “personal publicity machine” rather than as a conduit for communicating Italian political issues to Ottawa. Since Désy devoted so much of his time to keeping the French-

Canadian press apprised of his work, he preferred to make public speeches rather than to pen secret dispatches. As Cadieux noted amusingly, when Désy received a collection of paintings from the National Gallery the ambassador made sure that the caption under the newspaper photo showing him with the foreign minister was not “Mr. Desy inaugurates exhibition of Canadian paintings” but rather “Mr. Desy entertains distinguished guests who admire his collection of

Canadian paintings.”87 Such comments are a good example of Cadieux’s wicked satire. The selfishness and the peculiarities of the DEA’s senior French Canadians infuriated him, but also

86 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 2 February 1951. 87 LAC/Fonds Escott Meredith Reid (ER)/10/4 – Cadieux to Heeney, 30 November 1949.

125 proved occasionally entertaining.

Marcel Cadieux’s fourth major contribution as Personnel Officer was to recommend, and help to complete, a comprehensive review of the establishment of the Department of External

Affairs. Its rapid post-war expansion had occurred with the full support of the Civil Service

Commission (CSC) and the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS). When the DEA hired twenty- eight new officers in 1945, twenty-three in 1946, thirty-two in 1947 and eighteen in 1948, the control agencies hardly batted an eye. In 1949, against the backdrop of wider efforts to reduce the size of the civil service, their approach changed. Early in the year, for the first time ever, the

DEA was summoned before the Treasury Board to defend its financial estimates, an obligation that would have been unthinkable during most of William Lyon Mackenzie King’s miserly tenure as minister. The estimates were eventually approved, but the experience was a sign of things to come. When in June the department requested twenty-two new officer positions, the

CSC and the TBS were reluctant to sanction the increase. The DEA maintained, as it had since the end of the war, that its work continued to grow apace and that it was understaffed, but its pleas now elicited scepticism. “I am somewhat concerned at the comments you make on under- staffing,” wrote Treasury Board Secretary R.B. Bryce to Herb Moran, “as we had not derived a general impression that either your offices abroad or the Department at home was [sic] currently short of staff – at least not by comparison with other Departments.”88 The foreign service’s period of easy and automatic expansion had ended.

The DEA was suddenly confronted with control agencies that were no longer willing to rubberstamp its requests for new personnel. From their point of view, the loosely monitored and rapid post-war growth of the department, both in the number of additional positions that it had

88 LAC/DEA/686/158/3 – R.B. Bryce to Moran, 21 June 1949. The statistics on the number of total annual recruits between 1945 and 1948 are drawn from LAC/DEA/685/156-M/1 –Bougie to Cadieux, 9 August 1949. On the DEA being summoned before the Treasury Board to defend its estimates see LAC/DEA/4092/11336-14-40/1 – Circular dispatch Admin No. 10, 8 March 1949.

126 been granted and in the reclassification of many of those it already possessed, was no longer sustainable. Moreover, unless checked, its recent and abnormally high rate of promotion spelled trouble. The DEA was a young organization – over half its officers in 1949 were between twenty-seven and thirty-five-years old – and so it was imperative that its recruitment, promotion, and posting policies be carried out within some clearly defined framework. A fixed and stable establishment of positions by number and by rank was a feature of every other respectable department in Ottawa. Why should the DEA be an exception? As its Personnel Officer, Cadieux recognized that attitudes towards the department were changing. In June 1949 he recommended to Herb Moran that an “Establishment Board” be set up within the DEA to conduct a careful study of its staff requirements at home and abroad.89 The proposal was eagerly supported by the

CSC and the TBS, who saw it as proof that the department was finally falling into line.

While Herb Moran chaired the meetings of the Establishment Board, its driving force was

Cadieux. He wanted the process to be an education as much for the DEA as for its critics, whom he sought to convince that the department’s requests for more resources were reasonable. To this end, the control agencies were invited to be represented on it; the CSC accepted the offer, but the

TBS declined it for lack of staff. The task of the board was monumental: to examine each position in the DEA, both officer and administrative, in every division at home and in every mission abroad. Heads of Division and Heads of Mission were asked to comment on the organization of their units, on their personnel needs, on the responsibilities of their subordinates

89 LAC/DEA/6291/11336-40/1 – Cadieux to Moran, 14 June 1949; Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 59. These authors, in their otherwise admirable history of the DEA, place the Establishment Board entirely in the context of the department’s own desire to deploy its staff more efficiently than in the past, when “personnel were frequently allocated according to the persuasive talents of senior officers.” Although this was a related factor in the board’s creation, it was secondary to the larger issue of overcoming the growing resistance of the control agencies to new DEA requests for more personnel, a crucial link that Hilliker and Barry miss. My interpretation is borne out by Herb Moran’s comments on the rationale behind the Establishment Board at the Heads of Divisions meeting of 24 June 1949. See LAC/DEA/3814/8508-40/3, Heads of Divisions Meeting, 24 June 1949. For background on the DEA’s recruitment and promotion practises in the early post-war period before the Establishment Board, see LAC/DEA/688/169/1 – Circular dispatch Admin No. 49, 23 July 1952. Material in this paragraph is also based on a confidential interview.

127 and on whether their rank reflected their duties. The Establishment Board had less trouble surveying the DEA’s staff requirements in the East Block, where Heads of Division were at its beck and call, than it did studying the deployment of its personnel around the world. As Cadieux noted, precise knowledge of the conditions prevailing in the country’s far-flung posts was sorely lacking.

To compensate for this deficiency the board invited Heads of Mission visiting Ottawa to meet with it to discuss their needs. The idea of inspection tours abroad was also related to its work and so in 1950 Cadieux visited a number of the DEA’s offices outside of Canada. Every mission presented its own set of problems. In Brazil, for example, the challenges of both language and climate made it essential that two officers be assigned to Rio de Janeiro instead of just one. In Prague, as elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain, it was decided that the second-in- command had to be senior enough to deal with the Foreign Office in a uniquely oppressive environment. The Establishment Board recommended that a First Secretary be posted to Mexico in part because of the importance of rank in Latin American countries, the higher designation being likely to open more doors in the local bureaucracy. Missions were grouped into small, medium, or large based on the size of their officer complement, a division which then made it possible to attempt to standardize the number and the classification of clerical personnel assigned to each post. For instance, whereas the embassy in Cuba, which was overseen by an ambassador and a single officer, got by with just two clerks, three stenographers, and a messenger, Canada

House in London, which was home to a high commissioner and ten officers, required an establishment of more than ninety, making it the largest mission in the service.90

90 These comments on the work of the Establishment Board are drawn entirely from a close reading of the agenda, minutes, and memos related to its meetings found on LAC/DEA/6291/11336-1-40/1.1; LAC/DEA/6291/11336-1- 40/1.2; DEA 6627/11336-1-40/2; DEA 6627/11336-1-40/3.1; DEA 6627/11336-1-40/3.2; LAC/DEA/6628/11336-1- A-40/1; LAC/DEA/6628/11336-1-B-40/1; LAC/DEA/6628/11336-1-B-40/1.2.

128

The Establishment Board submitted two reports to the control agencies in the first half of

1951. The first outlined the suggested officer strength of the DEA, while the second detailed its proposed administrative complement. Their recommendations were eventually approved with minor revisions, paving the way for departmental authorization in August 1951 to hire more officers and in early 1952 to hire more support staff. These welcome developments no doubt came not a moment too soon for Cadieux, who had been concerned about how the uncertainty around recruitment and particularly promotion policies might affect morale in the foreign service. In any case, the surveys of the Establishment Board, appraisals which had taken almost two years to complete on account of their comprehensiveness, were landmark achievements in which Cadieux and his colleagues could take justifiable pride: for the first time in its history the

DEA had a recognized establishment, thereby ensuring its personnel policies a more solid foundation than ever before. They would ideally remain as such, since the plan was to reactivate the Establishment Board to conduct periodic reviews.91 Above all, the exercise convinced the

Civil Service Commission and the Treasury Board Secretariat that the DEA intended to play by the same rules as other departments in Ottawa.

While the work of the Establishment Board had a salutary effect on the control agencies, its influence on Marcel Cadieux was more complex. For the first time in his career, he realized just how hard it was for the DEA to define and to justify its personnel requirements. Unlike older countries whose foreign services had evolved slowly, that of Canada had in a few years become

“a large and complicated machine.” It was therefore unreasonable at this early stage to expect the

DEA to offer a meticulous defence of its establishment in places like Paris and Washington.

Moreover, the department often dealt in the realm of intangibles. “Good will” and “prestige” defied precise measurement, but it was undoubtedly in Canada’s interest to benefit from them

91 LAC/DEA/4093/11336-19-40/1 – Circular dispatch Admin No. 45; LAC/DEA/688/169/1, Circular dispatch Admin No. 49, 23 July 1952.

129 abroad. That said, they were also assets that required time and resources to create. Then there was the need for flexibility. The activities of a post in a young organization were bound to change from one Head of Mission to another, rendering it unwise to make binding decisions about its establishment prematurely. Similarly, world events had a habit of upsetting even the best-laid plans and of forcing the foreign service to shift both its focus and its personnel to meet new needs.92

In Cadieux’s view, it was simple enough to gauge the “irreductible minimum” of work required of each mission and then to provide it with the staff to perform it. The department’s true calling, however, was to advise the government on its foreign policy. To do this, it was essential that its officers have time and energy to study the conditions prevailing in the countries and in the international organizations to which they were assigned. “The need for this knowledge,” which formed the foundation on which Canadian policy towards the rest of the world was based, stemmed from the country’s “national independence.” The possession of information, assembled and analyzed by trained professionals, was critical if Canada wanted to act like “an adult and free nation.” As Cadieux saw it, a foreign service was roughly analogous to a king: “It looks very expensive and it is perhaps very expensive but its services for being indirect and spiritual in nature are no less real and indispensable.” Activities like “reading,” “travelling,” and “meeting people” were not “luxuries” in the DEA but “essentials,” basics that could only be pursued by its officers, however, if the volume of administrative work at a mission did not monopolize all of their attention. Because the DEA was still young it had only an elementary structure for its

“minimum routine operations,” and not what it required to make its most important and lasting contributions: “We do not know yet exactly all that can be done and a great number of the things that can be done can only be discovered as a result of experience. It will take a full generation at least before we can train and develop the people who can really bring to bear on any problem or

92 LAC/DEA/6291/11336-1-40/1.2 – Cadieux to Moran, 17 May 1950.

130 policy the results of adequate experience.” From Cadieux’s point of view, when stating its personnel needs it was imperative that the DEA stress the complexity of its work, the need to allow scope for the unforeseen and the undefinable, and the value of “flexibility and experimentation.”93

By January 1951, as the studies of the Establishment Board neared their completion,

Cadieux was starting to have serious doubts about whether the control agencies could ever truly grasp the role and the importance of a foreign service, and hence supply it with adequate resources. He had detected, within government and outside it, “a certain amount of skepticism as to the importance of the work of this Department and, as a consequence, too much criticism concerning the size of our establishment both as a whole, as well as in particular countries.” In a remarkable memo addressed to Herb Moran he identified the problem and then proposed a radical solution. Both the existence and operations of the DEA, Cadieux argued, were harder to defend than those of many other federal departments. First, it was still relatively new and so it lacked the institutional confidence of the older, more established ministries. It was unfair to expect the DEA to do everything that it should be doing, not to mention justify all that it was doing, when precisely what it was capable of doing remained unclear. There was a “natural process” to its expansion that could not be rushed. As Cadieux wryly observed, “Paris was not made in one day; a baby is not produced in one month; a foreign service is not developed in 10 years.” Second, unlike other departments whose benefits to taxpayers were more tangible and who therefore could rely on public support for their activities, the DEA’s main clientele was more exclusive: the cabinet. It was those hand-picked members of parliament who most relied on its counsel and who would feel most acutely its inability to give it. Third, the value of the DEA’s guidance could not be measured materially but only in terms of the issues at stake: “The difference between the cost of good and bad advice in external matters, compared to the total

93 Ibid.

131 budget of the country, is negligible. The consequences, however, of inferior advice are calamitous. They affect the safety, the unity, the prosperity of the country.” These three considerations, Cadieux felt, placed the DEA in a very different position vis-à-vis other government departments.94

His unshakeable belief in the DEA’s unique position in the federal bureaucracy led him to suggest a bold reform: that its requests for both new missions and additional officers be submitted directly to cabinet, “the main users of our services,” and that the control agencies be bypassed completely. The officials of the Civil Service Commission and of the Treasury Board

Secretariat, Cadieux insisted, would forever be “ignorant,” even “prejudiced” when judging the

DEA’s work. After all, their frame of reference was merely Ottawa; they had neither the background nor the competence to assess the activities of a department so engaged in the world beyond Canada’s borders. A wharf, a toll-bridge, or a post office would always be more attractive propositions to Treasury Board officials than an embassy. Whereas the first three schemes promised “tangible and immediate” results, the last merely offered “immaterial and long-range” ones. In Cadieux’s proposal, once cabinet agreed to a new embassy, it would then be asked to pronounce upon the DEA’s recommended officer establishment there. The second decision followed logically from the first and, like the first, it was one the control agencies had no business making. The DEA might argue, for example, that the Kashmir problem had major ramifications for the Commonwealth and that, as a result, Canada required Counsellors in both

India and Pakistan. It was a “preposterous” comment on the DEA’s current predicament that the

CSC and the TBS could block this recommendation simply because they felt that the department already employed too many F.S.O. 4’s or F.S.O. 5’s. Under Cadieux’s plan, the authority of the control agencies over the foreign service would have been limited to discussing with it the necessary support staff abroad. In the end, he stressed, the DEA’s personnel situation would only

94 LAC/DEA/6627/11336-1-40/2 – Cadieux to Moran, 24 January 1951.

132 improve if both its minister and the prime minister took a “strong personal interest” in its needs and ensured that they were met. Nothing less than the morale of the service was at stake so long as officials from other agencies were able to hold the department to ransom. This was unjust since, in Cadieux’s defiantly partisan view, a foreign service officer was the most prized asset in all of Ottawa:

And I am not sure that it is a good idea to continue to emphasize that our officers are civil servants like any others. Their responsibilities, the appointments awaiting them if they are successful, their varied experience, the care with which they are selected, indicate that they are not ordinary civil servants. There is no advantage in cheapening the currency: a good diplomat is the highest and rarest product of a civil service. This is why, everywhere, civil servants aspire to become diplomats. And we are making another mistake if we encourage the belief both among our officers and in the civil service that in Canada, unlike most other countries, diplomats are not in a special, more eminent, more honourable position.95

This passage captures just how strongly, as a result of his time in Personnel Division, Cadieux had come to identify with the diplomatic profession. While he was justifiably proud of the

DEA’s contribution to the country, he conveniently ignored that other departments, like Finance and Justice, enjoyed a comparable prestige in Ottawa’s bureaucratic nexus.96 Indeed, his elitist view that diplomats were the “highest and rarest” members of the civil service lent credibility to the charge, sometimes levelled by other officials, that the DEA was an ivory tower.

Of course, as the historian Robert Bothwell writes, External Affairs “was not a world by itself, or unto itself, however much some of its inhabitants might have wished it,” a fact that explains why Cadieux’s striking proposal for bypassing the control agencies never got off the ground.97 Whereas some countries had established their foreign services as separate institutional regimes, Canada’s had been placed within the framework of the civil service and therefore was bound by its rules and regulations. Not surprisingly, Herb Moran vigorously disagreed with

Cadieux’s plan, arguing that it exaggerated the DEA’s troubles with the Treasury Board and that

95 Ibid. 96 Robert Bothwell, “Marcel Cadieux: The Ultimate Professional,” 209. 97 Ibid.

133 its solution amounted to the department being given a blank cheque. Escott Reid, no stranger to radical ideas, was more receptive, but even he expressed reservations: “There is so much in this I agree with but I think it goes too far in both analysis and recommendations.”98 These criticisms were merited. Nevertheless, with his typical bluntness, Cadieux had exposed the practical difficulties associated with fitting the DEA, about half of whose 1,311 employees in 1951 served abroad, into an administrative system designed for domestic departments. Moreover, his argument that the Secretary of State for External Affairs and the Prime Minister needed to take a strong personal interest in the DEA’s personnel situation was well taken. Reid agreed, noting, in a phrase often used by Cadieux himself, that this duo represented the “heavy artillery” that the

DEA could invoke when Civil Service Commission and Treasury Board officials proved uncooperative. Above all, Cadieux’s long memo reflected a legitimate concern about whether, as

Canada’s young foreign service struggled to find its feet, it would be granted the resources it needed to do its work, constantly growing as it was in volume and complexity. As he had shown with the Establishment Board, Cadieux, not for the last time in his career, could recognize and satisfy the demands of the control agencies. Admittedly, however, there was always something grudging in his acceptance of their dominion, as if he could not believe that a handful of key officials had the power to frustrate the ability of the DEA to play its vital role.

The completion of a departmental establishment was Cadieux’s last major contribution as

Personnel Officer. In July 1951 it was decided that he would be posted to Paris as one of three

Canadians attending the inaugural course of the NATO Defence College that fall. Such an attractive assignment, in France no less, was interpreted by Cadieux as a reward for his lengthy tour of duty in the administrative trenches. He had certainly impressed his superiors. As Arnold

Heeney declared in late September at the weekly Heads of Divisions meeting, Cadieux “had made a great contribution to the development of the Canadian Foreign Service through his rare

98 See marginalia on LAC/DEA/6627/11336-1-40/2 – Cadieux to Moran, 24 January 1951.

134 combination of intelligence, industry and devotion.”99 Nor had his work gone unnoticed outside of the department. In the opinion of Charles H. Bland, the chairman of the Civil Service

Commission, he had become “one of the best Personnel Officers in the Government Service.”100

From a personal standpoint, Cadieux benefited significantly from his stint in Personnel Division.

Indeed, for the first time in his career, he had been forced to think long and hard about how the

DEA should be organized, about the place of francophones in it, and, above all, about the nature and the function of a diplomat. The views that he developed on the profession in this period exerted a lasting influence on him.

Yet by mid-1951, after more than three years in Personnel Division, Cadieux was eager to return to political work. He had kept a watchful eye on the international situation, one which had been marked by such troubling events as the explosion of the Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb in 1949, the fall of China to Mao Zedong’s communists in the same year, and the outbreak of hostilities in Korea in 1950. As Personnel Officer, however, the closest that Cadieux had come to the front lines of the Cold War had been a two-week visit to Warsaw and Prague in September

1950 during his inspection tour of Canadian posts in Europe. This glimpse of what lay behind the

Iron Curtain, which strengthened his anti-communism one year before his posting to the NATO

Defence College, merits special attention. That Cadieux was reading George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) at the time suggests that he did not travel to Eastern Europe as an impartial observer, and yet how could he? From the moment he arrived in Warsaw the oppressiveness of his surroundings was palpable. The corridors of the Bristol Hotel, where the

Canadian legation had a set of offices on the third floor, were dark, windowless, and foul- smelling. On each level there was a tough-looking matron who studied his every move. Behind her, on the wall, hung a poster depicting a Korean soldier bayonetting a covetous Uncle Sam.

99 LAC/DEA/4249/8508-40/5 – Heads of Divisions meeting, 24 September 1951. 100 LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Charles H. Bland to Heeney, 18 September 1951.

135

None of this was surprising for, as Cadieux noted, the Bristol Hotel was a “communist H.Q.” and a known centre for the secret police – in other words, not an ideal place for a diplomatic mission.101 As he wrote to a friend, “Nos moindres allées et venues, nos déplacements à l’intérieur de l’hôtel, nos conversations, nos gestes sont épiés avec une malveillance insultante.”102 The mood outside the building was no better. The Poles Cadieux passed on the street seemed tense, anxious, and sad. Attending Mass on Sunday, he admired the courage of the congregation, some of whom were weeping openly, for practising their faith in defiance of a regime so virulently opposed to it. While that regime had done an impressive job of restoring

Warsaw’s historic sites and erecting workers’ blocks, when he strayed from the city’s main streets he discovered a chaotic wasteland of ruins, one that no amount of new construction could hide. There was also the military, a menacing group who inspired terror. In a vivid passage

Cadieux recalled being awakened one night by the “chants et le claquement rythmique des bottes des soldats”:

Des voix graves résonnaient dans la rue. Et, lorsqu’elles se taisaient, le martellement des talons sur la chaussée avait une sonorité élastique qui remplissait la ville. Cette activité organisée, cette force disciplinée dans le noir avait quelque chose de terrifiant. Vous trembliez à la pensée que cette puissance pourrait se tourner, fondre sur vous, vous broyer… L’écho prolongeait la terreur qu’inspiraient hier encore les évolutions nocturnes des S.S.103

Far from achieving liberation in 1945, the Polish people had outlasted one totalitarian government only to witness its replacement by another. For one week Cadieux shared its anguish.

His experience of Prague was just as disquieting. A city of hills on the Vltava River, the

Czech capital was picturesque, featuring cobblestone streets, archways, and gabled houses. But the political atmosphere ruined everything: “La ville est éteinte. Elle est sans éclat, sans lustre,

101 LAC/Fonds Lester B. Pearson (LBP)/ N1/2 – Cadieux to Moran, 16 September 1950. See as well Cadieux, Embruns, 77-78. 102 LAC/MC/2/8 – Cadieux to W. Goffinet, 25 November 1950. 103 Cadieux, Embruns, 92-93. The material preceding this note is also drawn from the chapter “La sirène de Varsovie” in Embruns.

136 comme rongée par une maladie qui suce sa vitalité.”104 Like the Poles, the Czechs appeared distraught and had a hunted look about them.105 The communist menace was omnipresent. At first Cadieux made light of the police, but he soon realized that their sinister and ubiquitous presence was designed to make people feel constantly watched. As he noted, “Bientôt, j’étais obsédé par cette surveillance: j’avais le ‘complexe’ désiré: je voyais la police partout. Même à l’église, je me sentais épié. Je me demandais même si la messe n’était pas célébrée par un prêtre apostat.”106 He was relieved finally to leave Czechoslovakia for West Germany. At least there he could count on, rather than fear, the local authorities. Moreover, the mood was altogether different: the streets were full of traffic, the people were insouciant and well clothed, and the very air seemed lighter.107 Unsurprisingly, Cadieux’s depressing two weeks behind the Iron

Curtain strengthened his belief that the spread of communism had to be stopped.

II – NATO

The collective defence of Western Europe from Soviet expansion was of course what the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization was all about. While Marcel Cadieux’s assignment to its

Defence College in the fall of 1951 suited his strong ideological predisposition, it also marked his first extended stay in France. He had last visited the country in August 1950 and, as improbable as this may seem, he had found it even more enchanting than in the mid-1940s. As he had written after his return in 1950, in words that seem richly ironic today, “J’aime la France d’un amour profond. … quand je pense à la France, je me sens remué d’une tendresse que je ne ressens pour aucun pays.”108 Just as he had first noted in 1944, however, he found that the French and the French Canadians were not particularly alike, either in their language or in their mentality:

104 Ibid., 98. 105 LAC/MC/2/8 – Cadieux to W. Goffinet, 25 November 1950. 106 Ibid., 99-100. For more on Cadieux’s impressions of Prague see the chapter “Hradcany” in Embruns. 107 LAC/MC/2/8 – Cadieux to W. Goffinet, 25 November 1950. 108 Cadieux, Embruns, 61-62.

137

Avant d’aller en France, j’aurais cru que la langue eût suffi à motiver la sympathie que j’éprouve pour elle. D’avance, j’étais ému à l’idée de retrouver là-bas le parler hérité des ancêtres. Mais le vocabulaire, le rythme, l’esprit de la langue ne sont pas identiques dans les days [sic] pays. Si nous comprenons les Français, nous sommes vraiment différents d’eux: notre destin, depuis bientôt deux siècles a bifurqué. Nous n’évoluons pas dans le même univers de sentiments, de préoccupations, d’idées.109

Far from allowing this realization to dampen his mood, Cadieux savoured every moment he spent in France. Indeed, the chapter he devoted to it in Embruns verged on the rhapsodic. He recognized that other European nations could rival French architecture, French theatre, and

French art, but he maintained that France was unique in the “état d’âme qu’elle inspire,” one composed “d’une sorte d’équilibre, d’harmonie, de contentement et de paix.” No other country in the world produced such blissfulness. It was only in France, Cadieux mused, that you suddenly felt that the minute just elapsed was perfection itself, and experienced a pang of regret that there was nothing you could do to prevent it from slipping away. All that remained was the memory of its being one of those “rares moments de grâce dans votre vie,” one of those “moments qui assaisonnent l’existence.”110 Needless to say, Cadieux was ecstatic to find himself posted to a country he loved so deeply. That said, upon his arrival in Paris in 1951, he expressed sympathy for the multitude of young French who were trying to eke out an existence in that costly and crowded metropolis. As he wrote to a colleague, perhaps the defining feature of the City of Light was not its beauty after all but the Darwinian struggle among millions of its inhabitants for “an inadequate supply of space, food and warmth.” He concluded glumly, “Inevitably, the weaker ones are crushed in the ‘mêlée.’”111 He would not be one of them, having been lucky enough to secure in the 17th arrondissement a large and modern apartment facing Sainte-Odile, a Roman

Catholic church with a distinctive seventy-two-meter bell tower. The only drawback to his new living quarters was that he was quickly introduced to “la dictature des conciergeries.” Indeed, as

109 Ibid., 62. 110 Ibid., 63-64. 111 LAC/MC/6/9 – Cadieux to Bruce Williams, 13 October 1951.

138 luck would have it, his first concierge was “le cerbère farouche et exigeant dont parlent les auteurs français,” a beast to which he gradually became accustomed.112

Having found a place to live in Paris, Cadieux could devote all of his attention to the inaugural course of the NATO Defence College (NDC). The NDC, which exists to this day and whose importance has largely been overlooked by historians, had been the idea of Supreme

Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1951 the college was a unique and ambitious experiment in bringing together Army, Navy, Air, and civilian personnel from

NATO’s member countries and in getting them to develop a common appreciation for the organization’s aims and objectives, for the problems raised by its defence of the North Atlantic area, and for the various characteristics of its founding states. Above all, the NDC sought to foster among its multinational students a spirit of harmony and cooperation, two traits which, after all, were at the heart of NATO. The contacts made and the friendships formed between the college’s students, it was hoped, would prove invaluable to them throughout their careers.113

The NDC was housed in the Artillery Wing of the renowned École militaire, which had been founded in 1750 by Louis XV and which stood opposite the Eiffel Tower at the southern end of the Champ de Mars. The old building had seen better days, but Cadieux observed that the walls of NATO’s enclave within it had been freshly painted, that new green steel furniture had been brought in, and that all of the necessary equipment was in place. Such advance preparations represented a small miracle for the French government, one that he attributed to the intervention of Vice-Admiral André Georges Lemonnier, who was both the Defence College’s Commandant and the Naval Deputy to SACEUR.114 The six-month NDC course had three components. The first was a daily lecture series on the political, economic, and military aspects of NATO,

112 LAC/MC/42/10, Marcel Cadieux, “Trente residences.” 113 LAC/DEA/6550/10548-G-40/1, Chiefs of Staff Secretariat, “NATO Defence College,” 6 September 1951. For more on the NDC see Derek C. Arnould, “The NATO Defense College,” Canadian Defence Quarterly 19 (August 1989): 33-39. 114 LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6, Cadieux to Evan Gill, 26 December 1951.

139 featuring some of the most eminent figures from the organization itself and from its fourteen member states. For example, Cadieux and his colleagues heard American diplomat George F.

Kennan’s talk on the subject of “Russia and World Communism,” British Admiral Louis

Mountbatten’s definition of “The Role of [the] Navy in Modern Warfare,” British Field Marshal

Bernard Law Montgomery’s analysis of the “Military Strength of NATO To-day,” and former

Belgian Prime Minister Paul Henri Spaak’s views on “European Union.” There were also lectures on the position of each country within NATO. For instance, diplomat Theodore Achilles spoke for the United States, Conservative Party politician Anthony Nutting for the United

Kingdom, and economist Jan Tinbergen for Holland. The prominence of many of the speakers on the NDC program greatly impressed Cadieux, who regretted that Canada had not selected its own lecturers with the same care as other countries.115 As for the talks themselves, he observed early on that a recurring problem was defence against an attack in Europe by the numerically superior Soviet army. According to Cadieux, there was an elephant in the room: “I have the impression that the americain [sic] rely to a very large extent on the tactical use of atomic weapons. They are never really explicit on the point and I cannot help but feel that we are being explained a difficult game without being told all the rules.”116 This ambiguity in NATO’s defensive strategy would not officially be clarified until 1954 when, urged on by American

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the alliance acknowledged a greater reliance on nuclear – as opposed to conventional – weapons.

The second component of the course was committee work. The NDC’s approximately fifty students were divided into nine groups, each of which was given a separate classroom and instructor. In addition to discussing the points raised in the morning lectures, the committees

115 LAC/MC/2/10, “List of Lectures Delivered at NATO Defense College November- December 1951,” undated; LAC/MC/2/10, “List of Lectures in January, February, and March 1952,” undated; LAC/MC/2/10, “Lectures Schedule – NATO Defense College May 1952,” undated; LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6, Cadieux to Evan Gill, 26 December 1951. Among the Canadians chosen to speak were Ernest Côté and Air Commodore Martin Costello. 116 LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6, Cadieux to Evan Gill, 26 December 1951.

140 were tasked with studying six specific course problems, including the “Reinforcement of

Western Europe to meet a threat of aggression,” the “Military potential of [the] Soviet Bloc and

NATO,” and “A Localised Conflict involving a non-NATO country.”117 The goal of these exercises was to teach group members of varying nationalities and backgrounds to work effectively together. In Cadieux’s committee, for example, there was an Italian Army colonel, a

Norwegian Air Force lieutenant colonel, an American Navy captain, and a French Air Force colonel. As he noted, the experience provided useful training in overcoming language barriers and in interacting with people of different working habits and attitudes. For example, while it was possible to get the French and Italian soldiers to pull their weight in committee, the tactics used with them were definitely not the same as those needed when dealing with an American or an Englishman. In addition to encouraging inter-allied understanding, the mixed group system also underlined the fact that the work of military and diplomatic personnel often intersected in important ways.118

The third and final component of the NDC course was field study. For two weeks at the end of April 1952 its students were taken on what Cadieux called “a magnificent trip” across the

European continent: “We travelled along the Northern plain of Italy right up to Gorizia, back to

Austria through the Brenner Pass, across Germany where we visited air and land installations and attended army manoeuvres. From Hamburg we went by train to Copenhagen and then back to Paris by air.” Although Cadieux admitted that the tour had not taught him much that was new, it demonstrated many of the problems that the NDC had studied in Paris. Only two things had not gone as planned. First, in Italy, the usually subtle Italians had frequently and very unsubtly referred to their boundary dispute with Yugoslavia, tactless conduct that had exasperated the non-Italians in the course. Second, at Münsingen, in southern Germany, Cadieux witnessed very

117 LAC/MC/2/10, “Problems Studied by the Members – First Course,” undated. 118 LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6, Cadieux to Evan Gill, 26 December 1951; LAC/MC/2/11, Cadieux to Gill, 6 June 1952.

141 little of the French Army’s manoeuvres on account of the rain that day, leading him to joke that for a similar experience, you had only to “fill a bath tub, put your best shoes on, stand in it with your eyes closed, and ask one of your friends to shoot periodically a cap pistol in the next room.”119 These two annoyances aside, the field trip marked a fitting end to the NDC’s first-ever course. Travel together, Cadieux noted, produced yet closer bonds among its multinational faculty and student body. If NATO’s founders had sought strength through unity, its Defence

College taught its disciples that unity was based on mutual understanding.

As his course at the NDC progressed over the winter, Cadieux was forced to contemplate his next diplomatic assignment. There had been a tacit understanding with Herb Moran and

Arnold Heeney that at the end of his seven months in Paris he would be posted to the Canadian embassy in Washington. He liked the idea, seeing it as both an exciting opportunity and a sign of the confidence his superiors had in him. Such an appointment seemed in Heeney’s gift. Indeed, the under-secretary believed that he also had an understanding of his own, this one with Lester B.

Pearson, that upon completion of his duties in Ottawa he would succeed Hume Wrong as ambassador to the United States. Of course, as Cadieux well knew, no posting in the foreign service is ever etched in stone. Thus, in late 1951 and early 1952 he had been sounded out by

Jules Léger, his friend and an assistant under-secretary, and Evan Gill, his successor as Personnel

Officer, on his interest in replacing Ben Rogers as chargé d’affaires of the Canadian Legation in

Czechoslovakia. Initially concerned about conditions in Prague, Cadieux told Gill that, as long as the DEA felt that his limited knowledge of Central Europe and communism was not too great a handicap, he was “most certainly interested in the appointment,” his first as a Head of

Mission.120 While attending class at the NDC in early 1952, Cadieux began preparing for his work behind the Iron Curtain. He later quipped to Moran that if the RCMP had made a list of the

119 LAC/MC/6/10, Cadieux to J.B.C. Watkins, 1 May 1952. 120 LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6, Cadieux to Gill, 12 January 1952.

142 books strewn about his Paris apartment at that time he would have been in serious trouble, since all of them dealt with Marxism, Leninism, and Stalinism.121 In mid-March, however, his plans changed again. The North Atlantic Council, NATO’s political governing body, was about to become permanent, with headquarters in Paris. Its first Canadian Permanent Representative was a disgruntled Arnold Heeney. Nevertheless, he needed a senior political adviser, ideally one who was fluently bilingual. He had formed a high opinion of Cadieux who conveniently was already in Paris and immersed in alliance affairs at the NDC. Plans for posting him to Czechoslovakia were quickly jettisoned. Instead, in June, Cadieux joined the Canadian Permanent Delegation to the North Atlantic Council, marking the start of two more years in the French capital.

The unexpected news that he would be remaining in Paris prompted Cadieux to search for a new apartment, the lease on his old one being set to expire. He found what he was looking for on the rue de Lisbonne in the quartier de l’Europe (in the 8th arrondissement), whose picturesqueness made up for the “férocité léonine” of his new concierge.122 When his posting to

NATO was extended for a year in 1953 – the assumption, up until that point, had been that he was still destined for Washington – Cadieux moved again, this time to the rue de Courcelles, near Place Pereire and Parc Monceau. It was here, as he fondly recalled, that he discovered the charm and unique character of yet another Parisian neighbourhood:

Peu à peu, je m’installais dans l’état d’esprit du Parisien qui, dit-on, à tort je crois, ne connaît rien, non seulement des pays étrangers ou même des villes voisines, mais surtout des arrondissements avoisinants. J’ai fini par avoir ‘mon’ libraire, ‘mes’ restaurants, ‘mes’ antiquaires, ‘mes’ promenades. Et vraiment, comme les vieux parisiens, je ne quittais mon quartier avec regret.123

Before leaving France in July 1954 Cadieux changed address one last time, moving to an apartment in the vicinity of the Bois de Boulogne. All things considered, his nearly three years in

Paris were arguably the happiest of his career. On weekends he toured the French capital; on

121 LAC/MC/6/10, Cadieux to Moran, 22 March 1952. 122 LAC/MC/42/10 – Cadieux, “Trente résidences,” 24. 123 Ibid., 24-25.

143 holidays he travelled the country, gaining an appreciation for the “incomparable richesse,” the

“personalité,” and “l’extrême variété spirituelle” of its many regions.124 Nor did he savour the delights of France by himself. For three straight winters his parents came to live with him, thereby recreating some semblance of the family life that he had left behind in 1941. Finally, it was in Paris that Cadieux first saw his future wife, a French-Canadian employee of the

International Civil Aviation Organization named Anita Comtois. As he told her companion at the time, Department of Finance official Denis Hudon, never had he seen a woman “aussi jolie, aussi

élégante, l’air si intelligent et éveillé.”125 For many reasons, then, when Cadieux thought of

France, there were for a long time only happy associations.

There were also good memories where Cadieux’s work on the Canadian Permanent

Delegation to the North Atlantic Council was concerned. Significantly, his direct experience of

NATO came at a time when Canada’s military contribution to it was never greater. With the

Korean War providing the initial impetus, the country’s armed forces tripled, from 40,000 in

1950 to about 120,000 by the mid-1950s. The nearly $2 billion devoted to defence items in the

1952-53 budget year represented 45 percent of total federal spending, up dramatically from 12 percent in 1948-49.126 Most of these funds were not earmarked for Korea, where both sides had dug in along the 38th parallel, but for NATO. After all, the Cold War’s center of gravity was in

Europe; it was there that the alliance had to rearm. Meeting in Lisbon in February 1952 its members set ambitious – and unrealistic – conventional force goals. Although the cost ultimately proved too onerous, particularly for Western Europeans still recovering from the war, Canada still demonstrated its commitment to the cause. In the aftermath of the Lisbon conference, for example, defence spending accounted for 8.8 percent of the country’s gross national product,

124 Ibid., 26. 125 I am grateful to François and René Cadieux for sharing this excerpt from their father’s diary, dated 19 July 1955. 126 Robert Bothwell, The Big Chill: Canada and the Cold War (Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 1998), 40; David J. Bercuson, “Canada, NATO, and Rearmament, 1950-1954: Why Canada Made a Difference (But Not for Very Long),” in Making a Difference? Canada’s Foreign Policy in a Changing World Order, edited by John English and Norman Hillmer (Toronto: Lester Publishing Limited, 1992), 104.

144 placing it fourth in NATO after the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.127 The

Canadian contribution was also qualitatively important. The brigade group Canada sent to

Europe was, in the words of one expert, “well equipped, well motivated and well led.”128 The

RCAF air division being established on the continent was of even greater military importance since it would soon represent one fifth of NATO’s fighter strength. Clearly, Canada was pulling more than its weight in the alliance. Finally, as Cadieux later recalled, NATO itself during these years was dynamic: “This was creation. Things were moving on all fronts. There was faith in the

Organization. Member countries were willing to contribute. The mood was confident, creative.”129 Given that Cadieux was already well disposed towards NATO on account of his firm anti-communism, it comes as no surprise that his direct experience of that organization between 1952 and 1954 left a lasting positive impression.

While the general atmosphere at NATO exerted a greater influence on Cadieux than the specific duties he performed for the Canadian delegation, these may briefly be summarized. As the third most senior member on its staff – after Arnold Heeney and Wynne Plumptre – he advised and reported on all political issues relating to the alliance, including political discussions in the North Atlantic Council (NAC), the movement towards European integration, and the ill- fated European Defence Community.130 His main focus was political consultation within NATO, a fledging concept because of the reluctance of the United States, the United Kingdom, and

France to be tied down by their smaller partners and of the difficulties inherent in reconciling the views of fourteen independent nations. From the start Canada had believed that NATO had to be

127 Bercuson, “Canada, NATO, and Rearmament, 1950-1954,” 102. 128 Bothwell, The Big Chill, 41. See as well Isabel Campbell, Unlikely Diplomats: The Canadian Brigade in Germany, 1951-64 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013). 129 LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Cadieux, “Personal Memoirs” (Speech to the University of Manitoba 11-12 March 1980), 5. 130 For Cadieux’s duties see LAC/DEA/8437/11336-71-40/2.1 – “Report on the first six months of the Canadian Delegation to the North Atlantic Council and the OEEC,” 16 October 1952; LAC/DEA/8437/11336-71-40/2.2 – “Officer establishment of Canadian Permanent Delegation to the North Atlantic Council and the OEEC,” 26 August 1953.

145 more than simply a military alliance – hence its campaign for the inclusion of Article 2 on peaceful cooperation in the organization’s founding charter in 1949 – and so the Canadians gently urged their allies to foster a “habit of consultation.” To this end, the country sponsored a resolution on the subject at the NATO ministerial meeting in April 1954.

Yet change was slow in coming. Already in June 1953, in a dispatch no doubt penned by

Cadieux, Arnold Heeney had examined for headquarters “certain fundamental limitations upon the extent and nature of political discussions in the Council.” The “unwritten law” of NATO was that it could not function unless Washington, London, and probably Paris were in basic agreement. When the international situation was stable the Big Three could permit consultation within the NAC without first conferring among themselves since the issues at stake were of secondary importance and thus unlikely to be divisive. On the other hand, when serious problems arose on the world stage, such as a major shift in the policy of the Soviet Union, it was clear that the Council was ill-suited to a frank and productive discussion, “the forum [being] too wide; the security risk too great.” Instead, there would have to be a series of bilateral consultations among the Big Three; after a tripartite approach had emerged, and only then, would “the stage … [be] set for wider Council deliberation.” Such a procedure, were it to become commonplace, was not necessarily disadvantageous to Canada, or so Heeney and Cadieux argued, since the country’s good contacts in both Washington and London allowed it to secure valuable information and, when necessary, to convey its position on a given issue. In other words, the Council was “not indispensable” to Ottawa. As the authors of the dispatch concluded, the NAC “should not attempt to discuss all basic and major policy problems; it may well have to deal with these problems only when such a degree of unanimity has been reached through other methods of consultation that it will merely record general agreements which have been reached elsewhere.”

Such a scheme would be “quite acceptable” so long as the Big Three conceded the need for

146

“prior and bilateral” discussions with their junior partners and were willing to allow “less vital issues” to be brought before the Council. Of course, as Heeney and Cadieux admitted, this solution, which struck them as the only “practical” one to the thorny problem of political consultation, would not be as attractive to other NATO countries “whose contacts are less satisfactory than our own.”131 This dispatch, written just four years after the founding of the alliance, accurately predicted that the NAC could never become a forum for genuine political consultation and correctly presaged the enduring importance of bilateralism. That said, it overrated the willingness of NATO’s most powerful members to engage bilaterally with its weakest ones and underrated the North Atlantic Council’s potential usefulness as a forum for the exchange of views and information before major policy decisions were taken in key national capitals. While political consultation within NATO would never meet the lofty hopes of its advocates, in 1953 it still had plenty of room to improve.

The great political and military issue facing NATO was, of course, discerning the intentions of the Soviet Union, an enigmatic foe to say the least. Years later Cadieux credited his three years at the organization for strengthening his anti-communism.132 This was hardly surprising, given that the very raison d’être of the alliance was to deter communist aggression. In fact, that aggression seemed more fearful than it really was when one considers that NATO estimates of the Red Army’s military strength during the first half of the 1950s consistently inflated the threat posed by its alleged 175 combat-ready divisions. As the historian Vojtech

Mastny observes, “These Soviet hordes were supposedly poised to attack simultaneously in northern, western, and southern Europe, against the British Isles, North Africa, the Middle East,

131 LAC/DEA/4886/50115-J-40/4 – Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council and OEEC to SSEA, 23 June 1953, dispatch 2013. 132 LAC/MC/13/6 – Journal intime, 8 January 1974. As Cadieux wrote, “Quand je suis allé au Vietnam, je sortais du Collège de la Défense de l’OTAN et de trois années de service au sein de la délégation du Canada auprès du Conseil de l’OTAN. Avec la délégation, avec le Gouvernement, avec le pays dans son ensemble j’avais certaines opinions au sujet de la meilleure façon de faire face au péril communiste.” Note that he spent only slightly more than two years with the Canadian Permanent Delegation, not three.

147 the Far East, and even North America – while leaving reserves for defending the homeland!”133

In the political sphere, where Cadieux’s special responsibility on the Canadian Permanent

Delegation was exercised, suspicion of the Kremlin was just as deeply ingrained. Even after

Stalin’s death in March 1953, as Moscow’s new collective leadership professed its willingness to explore a thaw in the Cold War, NATO remained sceptical of this so-called “peace offensive.”

That scepticism was expressed in the reports of the NATO Working Group on Trends of

Soviet Policy. As Canada’s representative on this body, Cadieux was engaged in the West’s assessment of the changing regime in the Kremlin. His own contribution to the group, whose task it was to study and to revise a draft paper prepared by a handful of experts on the Soviet

Union, was limited by the fact that, unlike many of his counterparts on the committee, he was not a specialist in communism.134 That said, the tenor of the reports could not have failed to impress him, particularly since it reflected his own deep mistrust of Moscow. While the December 1953 paper, for example, noted that the transition from autocracy to collective rule had been achieved and admitted that the Soviet government was focused on improving standards of living and on addressing the crisis in the countryside, it also stressed that “there has been no change in basic ideology or in the totalitarian structure of Soviet life” and that “Soviet preparedness for war is being maintained at a high level.” In fact, despite its stated desire to negotiate with the West, the

Soviet government remained as uncompromising as ever on such key issues as the future of

Germany, its hold on Eastern Europe, its support for subversive movements around the globe, and atomic weapons. Instead, the report argued, its leaders “still aim at dividing the North

Atlantic Powers, and in the long run at the overthrow of democratic governments.” Moreover, in three crucial respects, the Soviet Union had not changed at all since Stalin’s death. First, it

133 Vojtech Mastny, “Did NATO Win the Cold War? Looking over the Wall,” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 3 (May-June 1999): 176-89. 134 LAC/DEA/4886/50115-J-40/5 – Permanent Representative to SSEA, 16 November 1953, letter 3689. Despite Cadieux’s difficulties he was certainly not ineffective in the group. As the DEA’s European Division argued, “our representative has been reasonably successful in gaining acceptance of the suggestions he put forward.” See LAC/DEA/4886/50115-J-40/5 – European Division to C.S.A. Ritchie, 26 November 1953.

148 remained a “formidable military and industrial Power.” Second, “Marxist-Leninist ideology” was still the “guiding creed” of its leaders who continued to believe in “the Communist Society,” in the “inevitable struggle” with the capitalist world, and thus in the impossibility of any “genuine and lasting settlement” between the two camps. Third, the “totalitarian structure” of the Russian state endured “unaltered,” with the party maintaining its “monopoly of control over the minds and activities of all Soviet citizens.”135 In the aftermath of the Berlin conference in early 1954, which had broken down over the problem of European security and the issue of Germany and

Austria, the Working Group’s report in April of that year echoed this pessimistic analysis.

Indeed, Moscow’s talk of reducing international tension increasingly seemed to represent less a desire to confront the “real causes” of that tension than a ploy “to lull the West into a relaxed position.”136 The task of NATO, then, was clear: to keep its powder dry until the day that the

Soviet Union was no longer a threat. This was the central lesson of the North Atlantic Treaty

Organization and Marcel Cadieux learned it well during his two years at its headquarters.

By the end of that time Cadieux’s prospects in the Canadian foreign service seemed brighter than ever. In Paris, as in every other posting of his thirteen-year career, he had thoroughly impressed his superiors, who extolled his virtues in confidential reports for Ottawa.

To Arnold Heeney, for example, Cadieux was “energetic and spirited, of independent yet modest mind and of exceptional moral worth.” Heeney was certain that a “high future” awaited his junior colleague, though he worried that he might “overstrain” his rather “uncertain health.” This caveat aside, he stressed that “it is difficult not to praise this officer somewhat extravagantly.”

Dana Wilgress, who had replaced Heeney as Permanent Representative in June 1953, echoed these sentiments in his own report, lauding Cadieux as a “deep thinker” possessed of “excellent”

135 North Atlantic Treaty Organization Archives (NATO)/C-M (53) 164 – Working Group on Trends of Soviet Policy, “Reports on Trends of Soviet Policy – April to December, 1953.” I wish to thank Alice Bothwell for providing me with copies of this report, as well as the one from 1954 below, from the NATO archives in Brussels. 136 NATO/C-M (54) 33 – Working Group, “Report on Trends and Implications of Soviet Policy – December 1953 to April 1954.” For more on the working group see Evanthis Hatzivassilio, “Images of the Adversary: NATO Assessments of the Soviet Union, 1953-1964,” Journal of Cold War Studies 11, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 89-116.

149 judgement. Nor had the quality of Cadieux’s work gone unnoticed in the East Block. In particular, his political reporting, a skill which he had first honed in London and in Brussels during the 1940s, was regarded by the European and Defence Liaison (1) Divisions, the main recipients of the telegrams and dispatches produced by Canada’s NATO delegation, as being “of the highest order.”137 Considered one of the DEA’s outstanding diplomats, Cadieux had been promoted from Foreign Service Officer Grade 5 to Grade 6 in October 1953. Four months later he was informed by Evan Gill, the Personnel Officer, that it was “reasonably safe to assume” that in about two years he would succeed Jean Chapdelaine, a friend and a fellow Montrealer, as assistant under-secretary, a sure sign of the department’s faith in him. In the meantime, however, the DEA wanted Cadieux to broaden his experience in the field.138 Initially offered a choice between Poland and a post in the Middle East, he delayed making a decision until a third option presented itself – Japan. After revisiting his favourite places in Paris one last time, Cadieux returned to Canada in July 1954. On the day of his departure he experienced “un moment d’angoisse assez désagréable”: “Je suis bien installé, j’aime mon travail, la vie à Paris, j’ai de bons amis. Il me faut encore tout quitter pour faire de nouveau un saut dans l’inconnu.”139 This potent cocktail of regret for the past and fear of the future was not new to Cadieux – he had first tasted it in 1944 upon learning of his transfer from England to Belgium – but it remained as bitter as ever.

In Ottawa, Cadieux returned to a DEA “en ébullition.”140 The Geneva Agreements had just been signed and Canada had been chosen, along with communist Poland and neutral India, to supervise the peace in Indochina. As Cadieux recalled, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, at which

Viet Minh forces had achieved a dramatic victory over the French in May 1954, had had “des

137 LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Heeney, “DEA Officer Rating Report – Cadieux, M.,” undated; LAC/CSC/1986- 87/104/3-6 – Dana Wilgress, “DEA Officer Rating Report – Cadieux, M.,” undated; LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – K.J. Burbridge to R.A. MacKay, 26 June 1954. 138 LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – Gill to Cadieux, 3 February 1954. 139 LAC/MC/12/8 – Cadieux, “Six mois à Hanoi” (unpublished manuscript), 1. 140 Ibid., 2.

150 répercussions terribles” in France: “Je me souviens qu’à Paris, la ville en a ressenti comme un choc. Les inconnus se parlent dans la rue, les gens se rendent à l’Etoile, se cherchent pour affirmer leur solidarité dans la grande épreuve qui secoue le pays.”141 The Geneva Agreements of July 1954 had mandated a ceasefire in the three countries of Indochina – Laos, Cambodia, and

Vietnam. This last country was to be temporarily divided along the 17th parallel pending nation- wide elections in 1956. Each side was to withdraw its military forces from the other’s zone, no military equipment was to be shipped into the region, and refugees were to be free to move where they pleased. As members of the International Commission for Supervision and Control

(hereafter ICC), it was the task of Poland, India, and Canada to monitor these dispositions. Such an obligation had been both unexpected and unwanted in Ottawa, which had agreed to it reluctantly, knowing the challenges it posed. Still destined for Japan, Cadieux was advised not to stray too far from Montreal, where he was spending his leave, lest there be a change in his posting. This was sound advice. In August Cadieux learned that he was no longer heading to

Tokyo but rather to Hanoi, where he would serve as chief political adviser to the Canadian commissioner on the ICC. The reasons for his selection are unclear, but it was likely based on three factors: his exemplary performance in the DEA to date, his relative seniority in that department and the fact that at thirty-nine-years old he was still a bachelor (making him easier to post to an exotic locale than a married officer), and his bilingualism. Whatever the rationale, one thing was clear: the next chapter of Marcel Cadieux’s career would unfold in Vietnam.

III – Vietnam

To Cadieux, as to most Canadians in 1954, Asia was a distant and unfamiliar part of the world. Notwithstanding the Korean War, the region remained “inquiétant, troublant, mystérieux.” Unsure what to expect from it, Cadieux fell back on such racial stereotypes as

141 Ibid., 128.

151 jungles, thatched huts, and inscrutable faces.142 By background, by training, and by outlook he was fundamentally Eurocentric; with few exceptions so too was his department, from its minister, Lester B. Pearson, down to the majority of its officers. As Cadieux prepared to travel, in his words, to the “antipodes,” two events conspired to further shake his confidence. First, a doctor at the Department of National Health and Welfare diagnosed him with pre-diabetes severe enough to declare him unfit for posting to Vietnam. Suddenly concerned about both his prospects in the foreign service and the optics of declining an unpleasant assignment after having spent the last three years in Paris, Cadieux consulted a specialist in Montreal. He was told that, while his condition was indeed serious, he could proceed to Asia so long as he took the necessary precautions and pills. Then, just days before Cadieux’s departure, his mother suffered a stroke which left her temporarily paralyzed. Watching his parents from the window of his plane at

Dorval airport, an emotional Cadieux felt “triste,” “menacé,” and fearful that he might never return.143

His itinerary no doubt reinforced such negative thoughts. From Montreal he flew to

London, from London to Rome, from Rome to Beirut, from Beirut to Bahrain, from Bahrain to

Karachi, from Karachi to New Delhi, from New Delhi to Calcutta, from Calcutta to Saigon, and finally from Saigon to Hanoi, where the ICC was headquartered. The farther Cadieux got from

Europe, the more exotic and oppressively hot his surroundings became. In Bahrain, for instance, it was as if the air were coming out of an oven. By Calcutta he was completely disoriented.

Everywhere he looked there was “congestion,” “pauvreté,” and “décrépitude,” a “spectacle de misère” like nothing he had ever seen before. The sights, smells, and sounds of the Indian city were all unsettling. From his hotel room, for example, he overheard “des cris aigus, une musique

142 Ibid., 3. 143 Ibid., 4-6. Cadieux proceeded to Vietnam without medical clearance from the Department of National Health and Welfare, something which earned the DEA a stern reprimand from its Civil Service Health Division. See LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – E.L. Davey to L.A.D. Stephens, 21 October 1954.

152

étrange, monotone” that reminded him of “la flûte des charmeurs de serpents.” More reassuring was Cadieux’s first impression of Saigon, whose layout and architecture felt familiar to him because they reflected “le génie français.” He observed, however, that the great mass of humanity swarming over Catinat Avenue, a main thoroughfare, seemed like an exodus from a crushed anthill. When Cadieux stepped off the plane in Hanoi he was greeted by a torrential downpour the likes of which he had never seen. It was the start of a six-month stretch in North

Vietnam that he would never forget.144

Much like Saigon, Hanoi was modern and unmistakably French. The colonial capital’s light-coloured stucco buildings, for instance, both charmed and impressed Cadieux, who remarked, “La France a donné à ce coin perdu une physionomie claire et équilibrée.” Having expected pagoda architecture, he was surprised to discover “un décor de banlieue parisienne chic.”145 Hanoi’s train station, its opera house, its apartment blocks, and its many book stores and terrace cafés all testified to nearly seventy-five years of French rule and influence. “Pour un moment encore, la vie d’antan continuera,” wrote Cadieux with a tinge of regret, “mais l’on sent que tout l’édifice est menacé et que bientôt, demain, l’âme française qui l’anime va se retirer.”146

Indeed, there was a palpable sense of tension and nervousness in the air as the official transfer of

Hanoi from France to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN), scheduled for 10 October

1954, approached. The signs of the French evacuation were manifest: soldiers were leaving the city in increasing numbers; shops were being closed; goods were being loaded onto trucks; the sky was filled with arriving and departing planes. One week before the handover an evening curfew was imposed. Two days before the handover, residents were told to stay in their homes.

Hanoi’s streets, whose frenetic activity and infernal racket had disrupted Cadieux’s sleep since

144 Cadieux, “Six mois à Hanoi,” 8-16. 145 Ibid., 17. 146 Ibid., 17; ibid., 21. Cadieux’s comments on Hanoi’s French allure were certainly not unique. As the historian Patricia M. Pelley writes, “Echoing the attitudes of other colonial powers, French scholars and administrators admired the way that the city came to reflect the urban aesthetics of modern France.” See Pelley, Postcolonial Vietnam: New Histories of the National Past (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 220.

153

August, were now deserted and silent. Everyone except the rats, who insouciantly rummaged through the uncollected garbage, seemed to be awaiting the Viet Minh.147

On the morning of Hanoi’s transfer, Cadieux recalled that the sky was grey and that a light rain fell intermittently. Yet no sooner had the French disappeared than crowds flooded into the streets to greet the People’s Army. The city was suddenly resplendent in gold and crimson as

Viet Minh flags and banners appeared – seemingly out of nowhere – on almost every building.

“Une telle floraison,” noted a suspicious Cadieux, “suppose quelques préparatifs.” As ICC personnel traversed Hanoi in their white vehicles they were cheered on by the crowds. When

Cadieux focused his attention on a single, random demonstrator, however, he observed that “le sourire disparaît, les traits se figent, les applaudissements cessent.” If the citizens of Hanoi seemed unquestionably joyous on the day of the handover, Cadieux noticed that they did not stray far from their homes and that they were not “exubérants.” As for the Canadians, the communist takeover had left them feeling distinctly uneasy: “Les Français, nos alliés, nos amis, sont partis. Même comme membres neutres de la Commission, nous sommes un peu inquiets de nous trouver maintenant entre les mains du nouveau régime que nous ne connaissons pas et qui a combattu la France si tenacement, si cruellement.”148

Almost overnight the atmosphere in Hanoi changed. Restaurants and cafés were shuttered. Bamboo arches bearing inscriptions and slogans were erected. Loudspeakers emitting propaganda were installed. Soldiers drilled in plain sight. Party meetings were organized. “Alors que les observateurs attendent des Viet Minh l’affirmation du caractère régional de leur mouvement,” Cadieux wrote, “ils ne peuvent que reconnaître l’aspect standardisé du communisme de partout.” Indeed, when additional units of the People’s Army entered Hanoi a

147 Cadieux, Six Mois à Hanoi, 20-21; ibid., 30. 148 Ibid., 33-36. In a dispatch almost certainly written by Cadieux, given how closely its paragraphs five and eight mirror his account in the cited manuscript, the Canadian delegation to the ICC vividly described the Communist takeover of Hanoi. See LAC/DEA/4629/50052-A-40/4 – Canadian Commissioner to the ICC to SSEA, dispatch 93, 11 October 1954.

154 few days later it was obvious that their trucks and much of their military equipment were Soviet- made.149 While the Viet Minh did their best to make a favourable impression on ICC personnel, their armed presence in the city was troubling. To give just one example, sentries, with their fingers on the triggers of submachine guns, nervously eyed all passers-by. The result, Cadieux reflected, was “une impression de tension, de danger imminent, que les circonstances ne semblent pas toujours justifier.”150 Put simply, a siege mentality was everywhere present.

As the mood in Hanoi worsened, the work of the ICC became more complicated and the debates within it more acrimonious. While Article 14(d) of the Geneva Agreements clearly stipulated that there be freedom of movement between North and South Vietnam for three hundred days, it proved unenforceable. Briefly as Acting Commissioner of the Canadian delegation and then as deputy to Commissioner Sherwood Lett, Cadieux watched in horror as the

DRVN did all it could to prevent the population from migrating south of the seventeenth parallel.

He noted, for example, how the communists resisted publicizing the rights afforded to citizens by the Geneva Agreements, this despite clear instructions from the ICC to do so in the press, over the radio, and by hand bill.151 In particular, three early events convinced Cadieux that freedom of movement in North Vietnam was a sham. The first was the case of Le Tan Ly, an escaped prisoner of war who, accompanied by a member of the French Liaison Mission, approached the

ICC in mid-October seeking protection and safe passage to South Vietnam. The Indian and

Polish delegates proposed that he be handed over to the Viet Minh for investigation, a preposterous idea that Cadieux had already warned was “against humanity.” A compromise was eventually reached whereby escapees would be placed in the custody of the local police, pending the aforementioned investigation, but that the commission would have the final say over their

149 Cadieux, Six mois à Hanoi, 39-40. 150 Ibid., 42. 151 Ibid., 44. See as well LAC/DEA/50052-A-40/2 – Canadian Commissioner to the ICC to SSEA, telegram 35, 31 August 1954.

155 fate. A few days later, however, Colonel Ha Van Lau of the DRVN announced to all concerned that Le Tan Ly had confessed that his original tale had been a lie and that he now wanted nothing more than to remain in North Vietnam. As Cadieux recalled, “Un revirement si soudain, un enthousiasme si marqué pour un régime qu’il désirait fuir l’avant-veille, nous semblent bien suspects.” Yet when the ICC questioned Le Tan Ly in person he stood by his new story, forcing the mistrustful Cadieux to drop the case.152 His suspicions proved justified. One month later he learned that Le Tan Ly had escaped to the French zone and recounted there how, once in the clutches of the communists, his only hope for salvation had been to switch sides. Freed for having helped the DRVN, he had fled North Vietnam at the first opportunity.153 To Cadieux, the case of Le Tan Ly exemplified the fear that the Viet Minh inspired.

The second disquieting event for Cadieux was the visit of an ICC mobile team to Nam

Dinh, a maritime province with a large Catholic population, one that was allegedly being prevented from leaving. Once on site, however, the ICC’s investigators were mobbed by crowds protesting French atrocities. The team returned to Hanoi with around two thousand petitions, most of which demanded compensation from France for war damages or which denounced its forced evacuation of family members south.154 In his report to Ottawa, dated 19 October 1954,

Cadieux was compelled to admit that seemingly no one in Nam Dinh wished to go south. While conceding that there were good reasons why this likely reflected the genuine desire of the population, he also raised the possibility of Viet Minh interference. For example, the mobile team had been delayed several days – by its Polish member, though he did not say this – and so

152 Cadieux, Six mois à Hanoi, 46-48. The Cadieux line that handing Le Tan Ly over to Viet Minh would be “against humanity” is taken from Douglas A. Ross, In the Interests of Peace: Canada and Vietnam 1954-1973 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 108. For more on the case of Le Tan Ly see LAC/DEA/4629/50052-A-40/4 – Cadieux to SSEA, dispatch 104, 15 October 1954; LAC/DEA/4629/50052-A-40/4 – Cadieux to SSEA, dispatch 129, 22 October 1954. At the ICC meeting of 14 October 1954, at which Le Tan Ly’s fate was discussed, Cadieux had pressed for the establishment of commission asylum camps but he was overruled. See Cadieux, Six mois à Hanoi, 47; Ross, In the Interests of Peace, 108. 153 Cadieux, Six mois à Hanoi, 48. 154 Ibid., 51-53.

156 the communists had had more than enough time to influence the locals and to “remove or neutralise” any opponents. Moreover, having witnessed the Viet Minh’s propaganda machine at work in Hanoi, Cadieux had no doubt that the residents of Nam Dinh could easily have been forced to put on “a convincing show … either through threats of violence or reprisal, or

[through] a large sprinkling of Vietnamese soldiers and police in the various crowds which beset the team during its visit, [or] merely through the training which they [the Viet Minh] had already successfully instilled in the peoples of that region.”155 Unfortunately, there was no definitive evidence of communist chicanery. By November, however, Cadieux was sure that something underhanded had happened at Nam Dinh. As he informed Sherwood Lett, while nobody in the area had expressed the slightest interest in moving to the mobile team, the thousands of refugees who had flooded into the port city of Haiphong during the same period, including many from

Nam Dinh, had spoken of deliberate attempts by the DRVN to impede their departure.156 In short, the facts did not add up; it took little imagination to guess why.

The third event which dramatized for Cadieux “la technique” and “la mauvaise foi communiste … dans toute sa brutalité” was the ICC investigation in early November of Phat

Diem, a Catholic stronghold where a reported ten thousand people wished to go south. Upon its arrival there, however, an ICC team was once again surrounded by “une foule hurlante, frénétique” protesting France’s wrongs. No contact could be made with the Catholic population, many of whom had taken refuge in the cathedral and whose supplies were running low.

According to Cadieux numerous priests and religious had also been arrested and the DRVN had cordoned off the area to prevent nearby villagers from reaching ICC personnel. After protracted discussions in Hanoi, the commission decided to split its team in two so that it could both collect petitions and pursue the original goal of the mission. More problems developed. The Catholics in

155 LAC/DEA/4629/50052-A-40/4 – Cadieux to SSEA, dispatch 109, 19 October 1954. These tentative conclusions were later phrased with absolute certainty. See Cadieux, Six mois a Hanoi, 52-53. 156 LAC/DEA/3070/5 – Cadieux to Canadian Commissioner, 11 November 1954.

157 the cathedral, whose strength lay in their numbers, refused to venture out individually to seek exit permits from the authorities. The authorities, for their part, made it known that those not from Phat Diem would have to return to their respective villages, while those from Phat Diem would still have to visit offices set up elsewhere. To complete the picture, the communists on the spot angrily dismissed the whole affair as a plot by Catholic priests to embarrass the government.

Under Canadian pressure, the ICC roused itself to dispatch a group of senior political advisers to

Phat Diem to assess the situation further. What they found, Cadieux later wrote, could not be hidden: “…qu’il existe vraiment une concentration de plusieurs milliers de personnes, que les vivres sont insuffisants, que les facilités pour délivrer les visas et pour l’évacuation sont totalement inadéquates.” Under the close supervision of the ICC, the DRVN was grudgingly forced to transport nearly eight thousand people from Phat Diem to Haiphong, where French and

American vessels were providing evacuation south. Snatching a propaganda victory from the jaws of defeat, the Viet Minh brazenly declared that the nationalist government in Saigon could learn a thing or two about honouring the Geneva Agreements from its own example at Phat

Diem.157

In the end, an estimated 850,000 residents of North Vietnam fled to South Vietnam. Of these, about 600,000 were Catholic, prompting Cadieux to remark that, to abandon their homes and to risk their lives, either their “foi” must have been “tenace” or “la terreur bien pressante.”158

Their courage filled him with admiration. Yet how many more of his co-religionists might have escaped had it not been for the ruthlessness and the intimidation of the communist government?

While the bad faith of the Viet Minh was to be expected, nothing could have prepared Cadieux for the inability of the ICC to redress it. In August 1954 Lester B. Pearson had issued clear instructions to the Canadian delegation to approach the commission’s affairs with “objectivity,

157 Cadieux, Six mois à Hanoi, 56-59. 158 Ibid., 49.

158 impartiality and fairness.”159 But what if Canada’s two partners in Indochina, India and Poland, were not prepared to be as honourable? The result would be frustration, paralysis, and disillusionment. Indeed, both the Indian and Polish tactics which Cadieux witnessed during the first six months of the ICC’s existence, and the inevitable Canadian response to them, set the tone on the commission for years to come.

Prior to his arrival in Vietnam, Cadieux had assumed that the influence of Western civilization on India and that country’s membership in the Commonwealth of Nations would have ensured a productive working relationship with its diplomats on the ICC. He was quickly disabused of such notions. While he noticed that the Indians wrote with Parker pens, drank whiskey, bought their clothes at the best London tailors, and often spoke impeccable English, the similarities ended there. Indeed, there was a fundamental difference of opinion between them and the Canadians over the concept of neutrality. In the West this stance was associated with countries like Sweden and Switzerland and implied, in Cadieux’s words, “une certaine impartialité, un détachement, un refus d’engagement de part et d’autre, un sens scrupuleux d’objectivité.” From India’s point of view, however, there was never any contradiction between its neutrality in the Cold War and its eager participation in some of its most charged debates, especially when such involvement furthered its national interests. Hostile towards France and suspicious of the United States, the Indians on the ICC made no secret of their sympathy for the

Viet Minh, whom they regarded less as communists than as well-meaning nationalists, albeit ones who were “novices dans l’art du gouvernement.”160 While such an interpretation was repugnant to Cadieux, he grasped the rationale behind it: if, as seemed likely at the time, Ho Chi

Minh was poised to reunite the two Vietnams, whether in elections scheduled for 1956 or by military conquest at some future date, it was in India’s regional interest to maintain good

159 Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 197. 160 Cadieux, Six mois à Hanoi, 68-71.

159 relations with the DRVN leadership.

The Indian attitude was understandable, but its effect on the functioning of the ICC was disastrous. While the chairman, M.J. Desai, was not actually turning a blind eye to North

Vietnamese breaches of the Geneva Agreements, neither was he in a particular hurry either to investigate or to condemn them. When forced to do so, he muddied the waters by subjecting

South Vietnam to the same treatment. Above all, instead of approaching its role on the ICC as that of a judge determined to examine the evidence fairly and objectively, the Indian delegation opportunistically sought a middle ground between the respective positions of the Polish and the

Canadian delegations. As Cadieux shrewdly observed, far from bringing the two sides closer together, the Indian strategy pushed them farther apart, encouraging them to exaggerate their case lest they find themselves outmanoeuvred.161 In his final assessment of Indian personnel on the ICC, whom he otherwise viewed as quite competent, Cadieux was scathing: “Ils manifestent en particulier à l’égard des Viet Minh une tolérance frisant la complicité et, dans leurs réticences, ils font preuve d’un détachement excessif à l’endroit du devoir de la Commission de rendre un compte exact et complet.” As he added somewhat self-righteously, “Leur attitude ne cadre certes pas avec les conceptions occidentales de l’objectivité.”162 To the argument that Cadieux was unfairly judging the Indians by western standards, it need only be said that he was the first of many Canadian diplomats on the ICC who did likewise. In fact, from the mid-1950s to the late

1960s, no issue did more to poison Indo-Canadian relations than the DEA’s vexing experience of

Indian “neutrality” in Indochina.

If the Indians proved maddeningly unpredictable, the Poles on the ICC were infuriatingly consistent. In Cadieux’s judgement, they were nothing less than the “avocats,” the “complices” and the “conseillers” of the Viet Minh. While the Polish delegation usually adopted a moderate

161 Ibid., 74. 162 Ibid., 78.

160 tone, eschewing abusive language, it was supremely loyal to the communist cause. Its commissioner, Przemyslaw Ogrodzinski, a Jewish lawyer who had lived in France, was “un adversaire redoutable” who argued with “tenacité” and “subtilité.” As Cadieux observed, when the Poles dealt with investigations in North Vietnam their tactics were always the same: “retarder le départ des équipes,” “paralyser leur action,” “émasculer les rapports,” and “contester le résultat des enquêtes.” At the same time, the Poles shamelessly supported any and all accusations against the South Vietnamese government and never missed a chance to propagandize. When confronted, they were masters of the slow retreat. Faced with an unfavourable decision by the

ICC, for example, Ogrodzinski would debate until he had secured concessions from his Indian and Canadian counterparts. Then, on one commission sub-committee or another, a subordinate of his would throw the whole matter into doubt, thereby causing more delays. Meanwhile, as

Cadieux well knew, “les communistes locaux ne restent pas inactifs,” that is, they were changing circumstances on the ground to suit their ends.163 Early on, the Poles also exploited the fact that one of their own, a Madame Ciechanowska, directed the ICC’s Petitions Section. It soon became apparent that “Madame Pets,” as the Canadian delegation nicknamed her, favoured some petitions over others. Indeed, those that were critical of the Viet Minh had a habit of disappearing. The situation became so serious that the Canadians began advising against such petitions being submitted for fear that its signatories would be harmed.164 Although such instances were rare according to Cadieux, the Poles were sometimes too clever for their own good. At Phat Diem, for example, the Indian ICC representative had asked a group of Catholics

163 Ibid., 85-87. 164 Ibid., 90-91. For more on the curious case of Madame Ciechanowska see LAC/DEA/4630/50052-A-40/8 – Lett to SSEA, letter 37, 21 January 1955. The Canadian delegation reported that Ciechanowska was more elegant and cultured than the average Pole on the ICC. For instance, she had had a piano placed in her hotel room and she could often be heard playing it for hours on end. More interestingly, her worried look suggested to the Canadians that she was fully aware that her actions on the commission were dishonest. For this reason, Lett and his staff were intrigued to learn from Klaus Goldschlag, who was serving in New Delhi at the time, that Ciechanowska had perhaps been deemed “unreliable” at some point by the Soviet authorities and that it was possible that she had been placed in the Petitions Section “to work her way back and to prove her devotion to the cause.”

161 assembled within the cathedral to raise their hands if they had had nothing to eat. Everyone did.

Back in Hanoi, the Polish delegate, who had also been present, expressed his outrage in terms vividly recalled by Cadieux: “Or, d’après lui, ayant l’expérience des camps de concentration, les gens vraiment affamés n’ont pas même la force de lever le bras! Il ne pouvait donc s’agir que d’une manœuvre de propagande!”165 Unlike the Indians, the Poles were badly dressed and rather unhygienic. As with the Indians, however, Canadian opportunities for socializing with the Poles were few.166 In short, the three delegations met on the commission where, in Cadieux’s words, the Canadians fought to “secouer l’apathie des Indiens et empêcher les Polonais de transformer la Commission en annexe de la machine propagande Viet Minh.”167

It was partly because the Indians were such unreliable partners, and the Poles such fanatical ones, that Cadieux particularly regretted Canadian Commissioner Sherwood Lett’s inability to hold his own with them on the ICC. A distinguished lawyer and a former army officer, Lett often proved that he had neither the “intelligence rapide” nor the “sens de la manoeuvre” the job required. A future chief justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, he took a legalistic approach to his duties on the commission, one that Cadieux felt left him vulnerable to both Indian and Polish machinations. He was also, in the unsparing assessment of his deputy, “un novice dans la diplomatie.” For example, when the Apostolic Delegate to

Indochina offered the Canadian delegation detailed accounts of the tactics used by the Viet Minh to impede population movements, Lett asked him whether this material could not be placed before the commission. Taken aback, the Vatican’s envoy replied that it was confidential. Should its existence ever become known to the communists, he explained, its authors would be put at risk. The result, much to Cadieux’s consternation, was that Lett refused even to read the documents. The Canadian commissioner was also prejudiced against the French. “A son avis,”

165 Cadieux, Six mois à Hanoi, 88. 166 Ibid., 91; ibid., 89. 167 Ibid., 90.

162 remarked an incredulous Cadieux, “les renseignements que peuvent nous communiquer les services français n’ont aucune valeur, et les Français ne cherchent qu’à nous empoisonner l’esprit contre nos collègues Polonais!” Similarly, Lett took a restrictive view of the delegation’s handling of journalists and of allied diplomatic missions, insisting that it keep its distance from both. While it can be argued that the Canadian commissioner was simply following Lester B.

Pearson’s orders to be objective, impartial, and fair, he still lacked, in Cadieux’s judgment,

“l’esprit fertile,” that is, some imagination in executing his duties. Despite painstaking and often frustrating attempts to prepare him for its daily meetings, Cadieux could only watch as Lett became flustered when his Indian or Polish counterparts improvised or advanced unforeseen arguments. Critical though he was of his superior’s performance in Vietnam, Cadieux could not help but admire his “grande sincérité,” his “droiture inconstatable,” and his “dévouement infini à la tâche.” Lett’s efforts to convey a sense of Canadian impartiality on the ICC were laudable as well, though they were exploited by the very two groups which they were meant to impress – the

Poles and the Indians.168

The impotence of the ICC disturbed Cadieux largely because it was in stark contrast to the unshakeable resolve of the Viet Minh government. During his six months in Hanoi he had had the opportunity to meet and to observe its leaders, whom he viewed as competent but

“fanatiques” and “déterminés.” First there was Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese president who assiduously cultivated an avuncular image, dressed plainly, and sported sandals. As Cadieux noted, however, everything that “l’oncle Ho” did was designed with “le souci de sa propagande personelle” in mind: he made dramatic entrances; at receptions he went from table to table, toasting guests; he enjoyed being photographed in the presence of women; and he made no secret

168 Ibid., 140-146. Cadieux, of course, was fully aware that the French often tried to influence the Canadian delegation. Still, as he argued to headquarters in October 1954, he felt “that they may be of assistance in interpreting current developments in the Commission.” See LAC/DEA/9691/50052-A-40/4 – Cadieux to SSEA, dispatch no. 100, 15 October 1954. For a different view of Lett in Vietnam see Reginald H. Roy, Sherwood Lett: His Life and Times (Vancouver: UBC Alumni Association, 1991, 133-56.

163 of his linguistic talents. At one dinner, for example, Cadieux overhead him speaking French,

English, Russian, and Chinese. Then there was Pham Van Dong, the sickly minister of foreign affairs “au visage simiesque … [qui] rit facilement, écoute soigneusement et parle rarement.”

But when he gave a speech it was always passionately pro-communist and virulently anti-

American. “Alors que Ho semble se soucier de relations extérieures et de la popularité du régime,” concluded Cadieux, “Pham s’applique, semble-t-il, à en dégager l’allure idéologique.”

Finally there was Vo Nguyen Giap, the famous general and hero of Dien Bien Phu. As Cadieux observed, while he was short and his head was “ronde comme une bille,” he exuded a youthful vigour that no doubt made him “l’organisateur, l’administrateur de l’équipe.”169

As Defence Minister, Giap was also responsible for North Vietnam’s implementation of the Geneva Agreements. It was in this context that he and Cadieux had a difficult conversation at a cocktail party in early January 1955. Aware that the Canadian had privately expressed his misgivings to Colonel Ha Van Lau about freedom of movement in North Vietnam, Giap asked him whether he had heard the news from Ba Lang. The ICC’s mobile team having just arrived at this village in the Than Hoa province, though not before being delayed by the Poles and the Viet

Minh, Cadieux replied that he had not. The Catholics, the general informed him, had assaulted his soldiers. What were his troops doing there in the first place? asked Cadieux. They were stationed in the area, Giap answered, adding that the DRVN had made it clear that all those who wished to leave North Vietnam could do so but that the Catholics had to stop their

“agissements.” To this Cadieux pointed out that, in fact, it seemed as if people in North Vietnam were not being allowed to move and he wondered if there were some misunderstanding about their rights. The Catholics were free to go, reiterated Giap, but their propaganda to the effect that atomic bombs would be dropped on the north or that Christ himself had gone south was unacceptable. When questions of principle were at stake, Cadieux replied, his co-religionists

169 Cadieux, Six mois à Hanoi, 104-05.

164 were uncompromising and there was bound to be trouble between them and certain regimes. It was understandable, he went on, that Catholics who wished to leave might be reluctant to seek permission from a government with whom they were at odds. To Cadieux’s argument that it was a matter of conscience, Giap countered that for the DRVN it was a political issue. By the end of their talk, Cadieux could tell that the general was “manifestement vexé.” The next night, however, when they met again, Giap told him, “Je ferai tous les efforts pour régler ces incidents comme vous le désirez.”170

A few days later Cadieux was surprised to be asked by Jacques de Reynier, the representative of the Red Cross in North Vietnam, about what had transpired between him and

Giap. The conversation having been private, Cadieux did not divulge its contents. De Reynier then told him that, during his discussions with the North Vietnamese vice-ministers of Health and Foreign Affairs, they had become agitated upon learning that some of the Red Cross’s supplies had come from Canada. In fact, they had refused to accept them on the grounds that

Canada’s delegation on the ICC was not impartial. In particular, they claimed, its deputy commissioner had charged the Viet Minh with failing to live up to their obligations and had publicly called General Giap a liar. This turn of events deeply troubled Cadieux who, with his inherent suspicion of communist methods, feared for his own safety. Lest anything should happen to him, he drafted a memo for Lett in which he meticulously detailed his conversation with Giap. “Et je prends la résolution ferme,” recalled Cadieux, “de ne plus discuter même privément avec les Viet Minh, même lorsqu’ils argumentent contre toute évidence.” Even then he was far from reassured: “Il est quand même unique dans mon expérience qu’un membre du

Cabinet mente effrontément et dénature ensuite le sens d’une conversation.” That said, as sinister

170 The account of this conversation is based on ibid., 105-07; LAC/MC/39/4 – Cadieux, “Memorandum for the Commissioner: Conversation with General Giap,” 14 January 1955. Note that there are slight discrepancies between the two accounts. For example, in Six mois à Hanoi Cadieux tells Giap that he is unaware of events at Ba Lang whereas in his memo for Lett he indicates that he had heard of them.

165 as he found the Viet Minh leadership, Cadieux believed that having made it feel watched forced it to relax its grip, if only slightly, and to allow some individuals to flee who might otherwise have been detained in North Vietnam.171

Nevertheless, Cadieux resented how the communists, while proclaiming their respect for the Geneva Agreements, manipulated the Canadian delegation and made a mockery of the ICC’s work. Expected to take part in the social life of Hanoi’s diplomatic community, the Canadians sometimes found themselves in attendance at some rather dubious events, including one celebrating the fifth anniversary of Soviet recognition of the DRVN at which they were actually requested to make a speech.172 As they saw it, they were often props used to stage communist propaganda. On another occasion, for example, commission members were invited by the Viet

Minh to tour Hanoi’s university. Once there, however, it became clear that the purpose of the event was to highlight how the French had removed all of the scientific equipment and how classes were now open to everyone instead of a privileged few. The ICC’s presence, in other words, was exploited to lend legitimacy to the communist attack on the former colonial overlord.173 Moreover, without ever directly clashing with the Canadians, the Viet Minh had ways of making their lives miserable. For instance, they ordered their servants to spy on them and they ensured that the Canadian villa was not only inadequately supplied with such things as liquor glasses but that its broken water heater was left unrepaired for weeks on end. “Pouvons- nous nous plaindre sans avoir l’air ridicule?” asked Cadieux. He added, “Les orientaux sont maîtres dans l’art d’humilier et de jouer subtilement ceux qu’ils n’aiment pas.”174 This racial stereotype aside, his complaints were valid.

Yet it was the Viet Minh’s ability to cheat the ICC’s investigative system that most

171 Cadieux, Six mois à Hanoi, 108; LAC/MC/39/4 – Cadieux, “Memorandum for the Commissioner: Conversation with General Giap,” 14 January 1955. 172 Cadieux, Six mois à Hanoi, 108-09. 173 Ibid., 116. 174 Ibid., 117.

166 enraged Cadieux. He understood that incidents like the case of Le Tan Ly, as at Nam Dinh and at

Phat Diem, were not isolated occurrences but rather part of a larger communist campaign to obstruct, confuse, and neutralize the commission’s efforts to “supervise” and to “control.” When forced to justify the difficulties experienced by the ICC’s teams, the DRVN had no shortage of excuses, including the natural conditions in the country, lack of understanding by officials on the spot, and translation problems.175 Moreover, the ICC was helpless to prevent the introduction into North Vietnam – and into South Vietnam, for that matter – of military equipment. While fixed teams might guard various points along the Chinese border, such as at Lao Cai or at Lang

Song, there were alternate routes into the country.176 Indeed, how was the commission supposed to supervise a regime which, as it had proven in its war against France, knew the lay of its own land better than anyone else?

Above all, there was the human tragedy of Viet Minh rule, one which Cadieux felt almost powerless to mitigate. While working at his desk one Sunday, he heard a great commotion in the hall outside. A Vietnamese man claiming to be a refugee had come into the Canadian headquarters, seeking protection and transportation south while maintaining that he was in grave danger. Despite the desire of Viet Minh soldiers to take him away, the Canadians marched the alleged refugee to the ICC secretariat to make a declaration. Only after he had done so was he placed in the custody of the local police. When the Canadian delegation inquired about him several days later, the Viet Minh Liaison Mission initially ignored the question before offering this response when pressed again: the individual concerned was a madman who, because he posed no threat, had been allowed to wander freely in Hanoi. In other words, he had just randomly shown up on the Canadian doorstep, his initial claim rendered meaningless. On another occasion a family presented a petition alleging that some of their relatives had been

175 Ibid., 122. 176 Ibid., 80.

167 arrested upon leaving a cathedral and not been heard from since. When the Viet Minh were asked for an explanation, they simply replied that the police had no knowledge of the situation.

Such “answers” exasperated Cadieux: “Comment contester ces dires et pousser l’enquête. Le mensonge, le cynisme ne peuvent être plus flagrants. Les Viet Minh se moquent bien de la

Commission!” A final, striking example of this kind of mockery took place in the vicinity of

Haiphong. A group of refugees had tried and failed to disarm Viet Minh sentries at a guard post, leading to deaths, injuries, and the taking of prisoners. Those among the migrants who managed to reach the French zone presented a petition which the IC investigated. The result, as Cadieux recounted, was laughable:

Il est à peine croyable que durant leur entrevue avec les représentants de la Commission, les prisonniers ont déclaré qu’ils avaient voulu s’en aller par suite de fausses représentations de la propagande française. Depuis qu’ils sont en prison, ils ont eu l’occasion d’étudier le régime Viet Minh, ils en comprennent maintenant la vérité et ils ne veulent plus partir. Même, ils supplient la Commission de ne rien faire qui puisse amener leur élargissement avant qu’ils puissent terminer le cours d’éducation politique qu’ils ont commencé.

Caught red-handed, the Viet Minh had no equal when it came to extricating themselves.177 It was bad enough that the ICC’s powers were weak and imprecise, but the DRVN seemed to take a perverse pleasure in flouting them.

Partly because he was so critical of the Viet Minh, Cadieux eyed warily the mission that

Jean Sainteny established for France in Hanoi in August 1954. While the Canadian deputy commissioner had dealings with its members, he was unimpressed by their views. For example, at first they argued that the Viet Minh were not firmly in the communist camp and that the West might use economic aid as a tool to pry them away from it. The only problem, Sainteny’s people added, was that any hope for such a rapprochement was being frustrated by Washington’s intransigence. When it became clear that the Viet Minh were definitely linked to the communist bloc, the Sainteny mission advanced a new argument. It was possible, some of its officials

177 Ibid., 112-14.

168 suggested, that the failure of the proposal for a European Defence Community might lead to a shift in Cold War alliances and, in turn, closer relations not only between France and the Soviet

Union but between France and the entire communist world, including North Vietnam. As for

Sainteny himself, Cadieux remembered him being “très élégant, réservé, taciturne,” having the appearance of an English businessman. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War he had been the failed architect of collaboration with Ho Chi Minh and it now seemed, or so

Cadieux believed, that he wanted to show “à tout prix” that his policy was still valid. As for his staff, Cadieux dismissed them as “de purs idéalistes qui agitent de grandes idées” with what struck him as “une belle inconscience et un manque inquiétant du sens des réalités.”178

Despite his hatred of the Viet Minh, Cadieux expressed a grudging admiration for them.

After all, virtually alone, they had defied France and won the right to govern their own country – or at least half of it. Their great misfortune, as he saw it, was that they were wedded to an ideology that denied them the very liberty for which they had fought so dearly. By definition, he believed, communism led not only to a loss of national independence but also to a “dictature militaire intérieure avec les contrôles, les pressions qu’elle implique.” It was largely because of their Marxist convictions that the Viet Minh could not tolerate religious freedom, thereby prompting a mass exodus to South Vietnam which in turn only made the prospective reunification of the country more difficult. The result, as Cadieux witnessed for six months, was truly an incongruous sight: on the one hand, the DRVN publicly upheld and defended the

Geneva Agreements mainly because they promised nation-wide elections in 1956, elections that the Viet Minh and most observers still felt they could win; on the other hand, it surreptitiously did everything it could to ensure that the agency created by the Geneva Agreements, the ICC, was never able to assess the real state of affairs in North Vietnam. To Cadieux, the bad faith of

178 Ibid., 131-33. Cadieux did concede that the Sainteny mission accomplished an important consular role in North Vietnam.

169 the Viet Minh was more than a local phenomenon; rather, it was typical of communist governments everywhere, though this was his first direct and prolonged experience of it. As he put it, “En somme, au Vietnam, le communisme nous montre sa face haineuse, luisante de méchanceté.” The Vietnamese experience, he concluded, clearly demonstrated “de quelle façon les communistes respectent leurs engagements et dans quel esprit ils conçoivent le gouvernement.”179

Of course, as Cadieux well knew, the State of Vietnam (SOV) was hardly exemplary. Its inexperienced and restless army had all too often eagerly turned its automatic weapons on opponents and demonstrators alike. That said, he refused to accept the Polish and Viet Minh claim that a veritable “régime de terreur” existed in South Vietnam. For one thing, he suspected that in many cases communist agents were inciting the population against the government in

Saigon, though hard evidence of such subversion was difficult of access.180 While he did not pretend to know the nationalists well, Cadieux could plainly see that they were conflicted about the Geneva Agreements, to which they had not been signatories. In theory, they wanted the ICC to do everything that it could to facilitate the departure of Catholics from North Vietnam. In practice, however, they kept their distance from the commission for fear that too great a recognition of its authority would imply a tacit acceptance of the election process. By delaying the departure of the ICC’s mobile teams or by being otherwise uncooperative in its investigations, the SOV, as Cadieux told Minister of Foreign Affairs Tran Van Do, made it harder for the Canadians to protest when the Viet Minh did the same. The tragic part, of course, was that the situation was much direr in the north, where the slightest delay could make a critical difference in the success of a mission.181

179 Ibid., 121-22. 180 Ibid., 96-98. 181 Ibid., 123-24.

170

The sympathy of the nationalists for the Canadians was clear, but a good rapport between them could not be established. Shortly after the arrival of Sherwood Lett in Vietnam, Cadieux accompanied him on a courtesy visit to Ngo Dinh Diem, the fervently Catholic and anti- communist prime minister of the SOV and soon-to-be president of the new Vietnamese republic.

“Je ne me souviens pas d’avoir assisté à une entrevue plus pénible,” recalled Cadieux. For long stretches of the conversation Diem said nothing whatsoever. When he did speak it was only to point out that, if the communists dared to permit real freedom of movement in the north, there would be a flood of people south, including not just Catholics but Buddhists as well. But when his Canadian interlocutors stressed the need for cooperation from both North and South Vietnam in implementing the Geneva Agreements, Diem’s face hardened and he fell silent. Only once during his meeting with Lett and Cadieux did the South Vietnamese leader become excited. That rare moment occurred when he told Cadieux that in a very short time the Canadian Redemptorist priests had achieved a remarkable success in Indochina, so much so that it was possible to speak of a “miracle missionnaire.”182 Cadieux’s other impression of Diem, though it was formed at a distance, was his reluctance to be cast as a stooge of Uncle Sam. The Canadian diplomat worried that the United States did not seem to grasp the South Vietnamese leader’s state of mind.183

While this was perhaps true, it must be said that Diem would prove adept at getting what he wanted from the Americans. He was no puppet, although the amount of assistance that he was able to secure from Washington invariably created such an image.

Despite the ICC’s difficulties with the South Vietnamese government, Cadieux was adamant that at least once a month the commission visit Saigon in order to escape “l’atmosphère

étoufante” of Hanoi and to avoid appearing partial to the regime there. Cadieux had also hoped

182 Ibid., 124. For the Canadian delegation’s account of his meeting with Diem see LAC/DEA/4630/50052-A-40/5 – Lett to SSEA, dispatch no. 202, 23 November 1954. 183 LAC/MC/37/9 – Cadieux, “A Canadian Looks at the USA” (Speech to the National Defence College, Kingston, Ontario, 3 March 1980), 4.

171 that in the south the chairman of the ICC, M.J. Desai, would be forced to take tough questions from a free press, but the plan failed: the journalists were either not inquisitive enough or the

Indian proved adept at deflecting their queries through evasion and equivocation.184 This disappointment aside, Cadieux was relieved to rediscover in the South Vietnamese capital “la vie normale,” if only briefly. There were luxury boutiques on Catinat Avenue, for example, and

“quelle douceur” it was to sip a fine wine by the water at the Pointe de Blagueurs Café. And yet, even as he savoured the good life, he could not shake the sense of foreboding that Saigon’s radically different atmosphere provoked in him:

La ville donne une impression factice d’abondance de vie qui séduit à l’arrivée du Nord. A la réflexion, il est facile de s’aviser cependant que cette facilité, ces lumières, ce luxe, fournissent la preuve du danger mortel qui menace le Sud. Au Nord, tous les sacrifices sont exigés, tous les efforts sont tendus pour assurer la victoire ultime. Au Sud, par contraste, chacun poursuit ses projets personnels. Si, un jour, il faut en venir à la lutte, il est fatal que le régime le plus austère mais le plus discipliné aura de grands avantages.185

This observation was more prophetic than Cadieux could ever have known. As well, his six months in North Vietnam had ensured that, when open war finally erupted between Hanoi and

Saigon, he would feel a profound sympathy not only for the second regime but also for American efforts – both indirect and direct – to bolster it. These sentiments were not unique to Cadieux.

Indeed, they would come to be shared by the vast majority of Canadian diplomats who had the unhappy experience of serving on the ICC.

In February 1955 Cadieux left North Vietnam for Canada. Originally supposed to last two years, his tour of duty in Southeast Asia was cut short because his health, already

“precarious” upon his arrival in Hanoi in September, had suffered under the “strain of [the] last few months” and because “particular ailments affected by hot weather” – chief among them his diabetes – made it “desirable that he should be replaced before the return of the hot season.”186

184 Cadieux, Six mois à Hanoi, 125. 185 Ibid., 125-26. 186 LAC/DEA/12130-B-40/1.2 – Canadian Commissioner to SSEA, tel. 5, 3 January 1955.

172

Thus marked the end of eight formative years in the career of Marcel Cadieux, taking him from the Personnel desk in the Department of External Affairs to the front lines of the Cold War. In the process two hitherto fundamental aspects of his identity had become more prominent. The first was his professional identification as a foreign service officer. Far from an afterthought,

Cadieux’s administrative work in the DEA between 1948 and 1951 had left him with definite views on the nature, the dignity, and above all the unique place of the diplomat in the federal civil service. The British Consul General in Hanoi, Geoffrey Baker, captured well what drove

Cadieux in a dispatch for the Foreign Office: “He wishes to see Canada endowed with a first- class diplomatic service. The qualities of the good diplomat are in his view analogous to those of the creative artist, and as valuable and as rare.”187 If Cadieux was in effect a “creative artist,” he was also a fervent anti-communist. This was the second aspect of his identity to gel in this period. Though, as he would later note, he rejected the reckless and demagogic Red-baiting of

Senator Joseph McCarthy and his followers in the United States, his Quebec Roman Catholic opposition to communism was hardened in these years by his trip behind the Iron Curtain, by his almost three-year association with NATO, and above all by his traumatic six months in Vietnam.

In short, he had become a Cold Warrior and a Cold Warrior he would remain until the day he died. Finally, it was not in Europe, the epicenter of the Cold War, but rather in Southeast Asia, its distant perimeter, that “pour la première fois” Cadieux felt that “la diplomatie canadienne prenait un rôle actif et assumait des tâches d’une certaine importance pour le compte de ses

Alliés de l’Occident.”188 Despite his fragile health, he had poured everything he had into the work of the Canadian delegation to the ICC, proving, once again, his fidelity to the profession he loved and his loyalty to the cause he cherished. In the words of Saul Rae, his replacement in

187 United Kingdom National Archives (UKNA)/Foreign Office files (FO)/371/117159, Geoffrey Baker to F.S. Tomlinson, 22 February 1955. 188 Cadieux, Six mois à Hanoi, 158.

173

Hanoi, “Marcel was the first of the Mohicans, and no comments from me is [sic] necessary about the effort he put into this mission, and the contribution he made.”189

189 LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6 – “Excerpt from personal & confidential letter from Saul Rae, Hanoi to L. Stephens,” 11 July 1955. Cadieux’s value to the Canadian delegation to the ICC was made clear in an early letter from Lett to Pearson: “…I am fortunate indeed in having Cadieux, Crépault and Ballachey. You told me they were of your best and I can thoroughly subscribe to that, particularly in the case of Cadieux. To lose him at this stage through a breakdown in health or for any other reason would be most serious and indeed endanger the Canadian contribution to the work of the Viet Nam Commission. I question the wisdom of our contribution being so greatly dependent upon the health of one or two men, particularly in this part of the world.” LAC/DEA/4630/50052-A-40/6 – Lett to Pearson, 2 December 1954.

Chapter Three Climbing the External Affairs Ladder: 1955-1963

It has been said that, at age thirty-nine, Marcel Cadieux arrived in Vietnam with dark hair only to leave it with white.1 He had seen communism in action and it scarred him for life. His health being poor, he spent the next month convalescing in Montreal. Just as he had done upon returning to Canada from Belgium in 1947, he sent Paul Tremblay, with whom he had stayed in

Paris on his return from Hanoi, an irascible letter in which he vented his frustration with his situation back home. In 1947 his complaints had focused largely on life in Ottawa after Europe, whereas now his criticisms were focused on the DEA. No sooner had Cadieux arrived in Canada than he went to Ottawa for a debriefing on the work of the ICC. As he told Tremblay, Hanoi was the least of the DEA’s worries and what thought was given to Indochina was over the long term.

This no doubt explained why, in his view, the delegation to the commission was never sent instructions and why the courier service worked so badly. “Comme d’habitude,” he wrote, “nos experts ont la tête dans les nuages.” Turning to his next assignment, Cadieux informed Tremblay that he would become head of either the United Nations or the Defence Liaison (1) Division.

Betraying an ambitious side, Cadieux noted that he would not be the automatic replacement if

Jean Chapdelaine, who was currently an assistant under-secretary, went abroad. Now that the

DEA, for the first time in his history, had a French-Canadian under-secretary in Jules Léger,

Cadieux explained to Tremblay, a share of the assistant positions could not be reserved for francophones. Assuming that Chapdelaine would be replaced by an anglophone, Cadieux believed that, when the next assistant under-secretary left, the DEA would judge that post solely on merit since it would need to envisage a successor for Léger. “Vous voyez,” Cadieux observed,

1 François and René Cadieux, interview with the author, Montreal, 22 May 2012. See also Ryan Touhey, Conflicting Visions: Canada and India in the Cold War World, 1946-1976 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015), 95.

174 175

“le Ministère ne change pas.”2 But the department and his role in it would change. Indeed, over the next five years he would go from head of the UN Division to legal adviser and assistant under-secretary to deputy under-secretary. His performance in all these functions ensured that, by 1963, he was the most likely candidate to become the DEA’s next under-secretary.

I – UN Division

In some ways Cadieux was an odd choice to be head of the department’s UN Division and its contingent of eight officers. Despite the fact that, since its founding at San Francisco in

1945, the international organization had been at the heart of Canadian foreign policy, Cadieux had little experience of its work. Given his time at NATO, he may have found overseeing defence matters in the DL (1) Division more congenial. Unlike his work as Personnel Officer, however, his new position allowed him to comment frankly on the great international questions facing Canada. For example, when Escott Reid, Canadian High Commissioner to India, promoted relations between India and the West in a dispatch from New Delhi, an incredulous

Cadieux, using arguments lifted almost verbatim from his manuscript Six mois à Hanoi, savaged the notion.3

He also took an interest in the thoughtful memos written at this time by Robert Ford, the head of the European Division. Ford could speak Russian, a fact that in the DEA made him unusual but not unique. His two tours of duty in Moscow had given him a deep appreciation for life and politics behind the Iron Curtain. Since the death of Stalin in 1953, the Kremlin’s collective leadership had talked of a “peaceful co-existence” with the West and pursued a softer line in Europe. While Ford was cautiously optimistic about the possibilities this shift in policy might create, Cadieux only reluctantly conceded that the Soviet Union, to court the neutral

2 LAC/PT/4/4 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 22 March 1955. 3 LAC/DEA/7127/9126-40/8 – Cadieux to file, 27 June 1955. For a more extensive and critical analysis of Cadieux’s views on India, see Touhey, Conflicting Visions, 95-96.

176 nations and to strengthen its own interests, might be more cooperative at the UN. “While the

Western powers will have to be alert to any new moves by the Soviets in the United Nations and be prepared to respond in a positive and co-ordinated fashion,” Cadieux argued, “they should be prepared also to expose the limitations of the Soviet gestures and in particular the equivocal and dangerous nature of their initiatives whenever this may be warranted.” A case in point was the most recent Soviet disarmament proposals. They might have been attractive had the Soviets not continued to reject the inspection mechanism insisted upon by the West.4

Cadieux felt that Ford underestimated the possibility that Soviet leaders might revert to

Stalinism and that one of them might re-establish a personal dictatorship. “The Russian national character and the traditions of the regime offer dangerous opportunities,” he wrote. “The democracies cannot so easily alter their course and while they should be careful not to discourage a milder Soviet approach, they should be on their guard against the danger of a switch.” The West need not offer concessions to the Soviets: “[It was] in a good bargaining position and under no compulsion to take any greater chances as regards security to speed up the changes in Soviet tactics.”5 Cadieux insisted that the danger not only remained fundamentally the same but loomed larger and was more complex than ever. As a result, the western response needed to be expanded in all directions and not, as Ford’s analysis seemed to suggest, shifted.6

When the Soviet Union at one point dared to suggest that the Cold War was over, Cadieux stressed that the communists seemed to think that the Cold War was over simply because they had gone “from vituperation to smiles”:

While this may be a necessary first step in terminating the cold war, we would be naïve to believe that this change in manners could, by itself, end the cold war. The cold war is a product of the Soviet Government’s unco-operative international behaviour and as such, it cannot, in my opinion, be terminated by mere declarations. This can be accomplished only by a sincere effort on their part to accept the moral obligations of states in their relations with other States as set out in the Charter of the United Nations, namely, “to

4 LAC/DEA/6463/5475-FA-40-40/1 – Cadieux to European Division, 23 June 1955. 5 LAC/DEA/4937/50128-40/2 – Cadieux to R.A.D. Ford, 8 September 1955. 6 LAC/DEA/4938/50128-40/4 – Cadieux to Ford, 5 January 1956.

177

practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours.” … The Soviet Government has as yet not shown that it is willing to accept this obligation; and in fact, the basic philosophy of the Soviet system is antithetical to their acceptance of it since it envisages the destruction of capitalist systems throughout the world.7

Cadieux continued to hold the Russians solely responsible for the Cold War. In his view, one which ultimately was proved right, it would last as long as the Soviet system itself. A hardened cold warrior, he believed that a strong stand was now more important than ever:

The Soviets seem to assume that they can kick us whenever this suits their purpose and that co-operation is theirs for the asking anytime they merely refrain from applying the ugliest holds. While we are precluded by our principles from retaliation, I am wondering whether some show of reluctance on our part to respond to their present overtures might not possibly discourage the Russians from reverting to their earlier tough line. If they know that co-operation and confidence are rather fragile plants, slow in developing and easily crushed, this might provide an additional inducement for them not to give up their present time as easily as in the past. … I realize that it is essential not to be discouraging, but it should be possible to hit on the adequate kind of encouragement and gradual and seemingly reluctant forgiveness for past sins.8

As a colleague of later years remarked of Cadieux, “A Cartesian of the best school,” he knew that you had to be “confident, logical, and unwavering” in approaching the Soviets and that, in negotiations, you had to stand your ground until they surrendered some of their own.9

The Soviet Union was not Cadieux’s only concern. Though the USSR was a key member of the UN, it was nevertheless one of sixty. But sixty, by 1955, was too few. Japan, Portugal,

Spain, Libya, Ceylon, and Cambodia, among others, remained excluded. Their exclusion was really political, an outgrowth of the Cold War, but it took the form of legal squabbling over the interpretation of Article 4 of the UN Charter, which stipulates that membership in the organization is open to all “peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgement of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.” As the tenth anniversary of the UN approached, there were growing calls, particularly from the smaller nations, to make the organization more universal. While Lester

7 LAC/DEA/6951/5475-DS-33-40/2.2 – Cadieux to John W. Holmes, 6 April 1956. 8 Ibid. 9 Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, York University (YUA)/Fonds J.L. Granatstein (JLG)/ 1989-036- 010/149 – Robert Bothwell interview with Bill Hooper, Ottawa, 21 April 1988.

178

Pearson and Canadian officials, including Cadieux, were sympathetic to the idea, they preferred to see the “Big Three,” that is, the United States, Britain, and France, take the lead. Thus, when

Paul Martin, the minister of health and the chairman of the Canadian delegation to the tenth session of the UN General Assembly that fall, suggested tabling a resolution recommending the admission of seventeen applicants, the DEA reacted cautiously. In a memo drafted by Cadieux,

Léger advised Pearson against the idea on the grounds that it risked embarrassing Canada’s allies and was unlikely to succeed.10 Nevertheless, the Canadian delegation to the UN, with Cadieux as its chief of staff shuttling back and forth between New York and Ottawa, engaged in informal discussions on the membership question with various countries. While these talks revealed a clear desire for progress on the issue, the Big Three were disinclined to do anything about it. The cause of universality seemed lost for another year.

At this point Martin, both a genuine internationalist and an ambitious politician, took the initiative. His role in what followed has been well documented and need only be summarized here.11 In late October, despite the misgivings of the DEA, Martin shared with certain delegations a draft Canadian resolution urging the Security Council to reconsider the applications of all countries that had been previously rejected for membership in the UN. Subsequently instructed by the department to stand pat, he secretly leaked the text of the resolution to journalist Peter Stursberg, who then made it public. “I am sure you share our view,” the DEA cabled the delegation in New York in a message originating with Cadieux and the UN Division,

“that this is a most unfortunate development.”12 Yet Martin’s ploy worked. Failing action by the

Big Three, he sought and received permission to forge ahead with his initiative. He and his

10 LAC/DEA/6944/5475-CR/40/9 – Jules Léger to Lester B. Pearson, 16 September 1955. 11 For Martin’s role see Greg Donaghy and Donald Barry, “Our Man from Windsor: Paul Martin and the New Members Question, 1955,” in Paul Martin & Canadian Diplomacy, edited by Ryan Touhey (Waterloo: Centre on Foreign Policy and Federalism, 2001), 3-20; Greg Donaghy, Grit: The Life and Politics of Paul Martin Sr. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015), 140-145. 12 LAC/DEA/6944/5475-CR-40/9.2 – SSEA to the Canadian delegation to the General Assembly in New York, 2 November 1955.

179 officials enlisted no fewer than twenty-seven co-sponsors for his resolution, which was subsequently tabled. When it was debated in the assembly in December, it passed resoundingly.

Bowing to the vote, the Security Council recommended the admission of Albania, Austria,

Bulgaria, Cambodia, Ceylon, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Libya, Nepal,

Portugal, Romania, and Spain to the UN. That same day the enlarged General Assembly gave

Martin a standing ovation for his crucial part in its expansion.13

While Martin deserved the praise, his decision to leak the Canadian resolution had been rather unscrupulous. One wonders how many DEA officials who later learned of the tactic in

Stursberg’s book Agreement in Principle (1961) felt deceived.14 There was also the fact that

Martin was somewhat unsubtle in exploiting his triumph. A few months later, for example, his office sent the UN Division an article for the Varsity Graduate, the former alumni magazine of the University of Toronto, Martin’s alma mater, on the resolution of the new members issue. The opening lines of the article called the story of the negotiations “one of the most fascinating” and

“one of the most important” in the history of the UN. In case the reader had missed the point, the words “historic” and “momentous” were also used. The mood of the General Assembly following the vote in the Security Council was described in this way: “Everyone seemed to sense the fact that we had reached and passed a turning point not only in the history of the organization itself but in mankind’s long search for peace and security.” These references did not escape the notice of Cadieux, who marked them all in disgust.15 Little did he know that he would be seeing a lot more of Martin.

Having been involved in the negotiations preceding the UN’s admission of the new members, Cadieux elucidated its significance for John Holmes, the assistant under-secretary

13 Donaghy and Barry, “Our Man from Windsor,” 9-17; Donaghy, Grit, 141-44. 14 Peter Stursberg, Agreement in Principle (Toronto: Longmans, 1961). 15 See Cadieux’s marginilia on LAC/DEA/5475-CR/40/13 – Paul Martin, “Towards a More Representative United Nations: An Account of Negotiations on the Membership Question [for publication in the Varsity Graduate June 1955].”

180 responsible for UN matters. The support that the Canadian resolution had received, Cadieux argued, showed a clear acceptance of the view that the legal and constitutional method of dealing with the membership question was bankrupt and that a political compromise had been necessary to break the deadlock. As he correctly predicted, “This new approach is I think significant and will no doubt influence the decisions of the Assembly in many fields.” While some former imperial powers seemed intent on weakening the voice of the new members, Cadieux believed that the future of the UN would be decided by its majority, including the recent admittees, and that the most sensible course was to trust their “political wisdom.” There had been plenty of handwringing about the loss of western influence in the new UN, but Cadieux was not unduly disturbed by the prospect. As long as voting was based on representation rather than population, the West was safe. In his view, it retained a clear intellectual and material advantage over the rest of the world: “United Nations discussion[s] are really dominated by ideas and principles and I am still confident that Western civilization can do more than [merely] hold its own both within and without the United Nations when the problem is one of intellectual creativeness.” In short,

Cadieux felt that the enlarged UN presented the West with a challenge but also with great opportunities.16

If Cadieux was feeling upbeat after his return from the UN, part of his reason for being so was personal. He was engaged to be married. His fiancée was Anita Comtois, whom it will be recalled he had first seen in Paris. Twelve years younger than Cadieux, Anita was one of fourteen children of the Quebec City businessman Jean Comtois. Adventuresome and cosmopolitan, especially given the restrictive gender roles and limited opportunities for women at the time, Anita had left the ICAO in Paris and joined the DEA in Ottawa as a stenographer in the expectation of being sent abroad. Seeing her again upon his return from Vietnam in early

1955, Cadieux was smitten: “Pour moi elle a l’allure de la vraie canadienne française dans ce que

16 LAC/DEA/6944/5475-CR-40/12 – Cadieux to Holmes, 3 January 1956.

181 la race a gardé de gentillesse et de grâce: une sorte de pétillement et de finesse qui évoque le sourire de l’ange de Reims, la limpidité et la clarté des fables de La Fontaine.” Winning the heart of this angel was not easy, a younger, handsomer colleague having already proposed to her.

“Comme elle voulait briser avec l’Autre graduellement,” the canny Cadieux had recorded, “je lui ai représenté que ce serait plus cruel pour lui et quasi intolérable pour moi.” In mid-August the

DEA had complicated matters by offering Anita a chance to work in Turkey, a country she was eager to explore. Marshalling his considerable powers of persuasion, Cadieux convinced her to decline the offer and to marry him instead. When she agreed, he saw the hand of God in her decision: “Merci mon Dieu d’avoir touché son coeur: je reconnais la marque de votre intervention.” As the long-time bachelor revealingly added in another diary entry, “J’en ai marre d’être seul.”17

The UN session in New York must have been particularly pleasant for Cadieux since his fiancée assisted the Canadian delegation as a stenographer, handling Martin’s French-language correspondence.18 The couple got married in Quebec City in mid-January 1956 and drove down to Florida for their honeymoon. From Daytona Beach, Anita sent Holmes a happy note about how the colonial cities of Williamsburg and Charleston had thrilled both her and Cadieux.

Describing her contented husband, she wrote, “Il se prélasse avec plaisir et il goûte beaucoup les aventures du voyage. Comme compagnon il est des plus intéressants.”19 Anita and Marcel were clearly enjoying married life.

Cadieux found returning to the DEA difficult. As he told Tremblay, he often dreamed of his excursions in Paris and vicinity. Despite the interest of his work, he could not help but feel that he was marking time in Canada: “L’aventure pour nous c’est l’étranger. A Ottawa il n’y a

17 Cadieux’s comments on Anita Comtois are drawn from excerpts from his diary in this period which, as previously noted, François and René Cadieux were kind enough to share with me. 18 LAC/Fonds Paul Joseph Martin (PM)/13/1 – Martin to Anita Comtois. 19 Trinity College Archives (TCA)/Fonds John W. Holmes (JH)/16/67/3 – Anita Cadieux to Holmes, 6 February 1956.

182 rien à voir, rien à faire sauf travailler, travailler à un rythme de plus en plus accéléré qui ne donne pas le temps de réfléchir.” Noting how foreign policy was often made simply to satisfy the minister’s need for publicity, Cadieux complained, “Avec les années, j’ai idée qu’il faut travailler de plus en plus fort, de plus en plus vite, de façon de moins en moins satisfaisante.” He certainly worked hard in 1956, immersing himself in the ongoing disarmament negotiations between the West and the Soviet Union and in such questions as Canada’s stance on colonial issues in the UN, including its position on self-determination. While there are unfortunately no reports assessing Cadieux’s performance as head of the UN Division, we do have the recollections of Earl Drake, a junior officer (and future ambassador) who served under him.

Whereas Drake had found the previous officer in charge of UN affairs so unlikeable that he had seriously considered resigning from the DEA after just six months, his new boss gave him good grounds for staying:

[The former head of the UN Division] was replaced by Marcel Cadieux, a dynamic French Canadian with a razor-sharp mind and restless energy that would later carry him to the top positions in the department. He wanted ideas and action. He would not tolerate sloppy thinking or writing but he was too impatient to worry over endless redrafts for the sake of stylistic niceties. He was economical with words and with time. He encouraged new ideas and fresh approaches if they were likely to be effective. Yet he also looked for a moral and philosophical underpinning to both the means and the end of whatever was proposed. Working for him was stimulating and persuaded me not to consider resigning until I had spent longer in my new department.20

Nor had Cadieux’s performance gone unnoticed in high places. In November 1956, against the backdrop of the Red Army’s crushing of the Hungarian revolution and occupation of Hungary and Lester Pearson’s success in helping to create a United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to defuse the Suez Crisis, Cadieux was named acting legal adviser of and assistant under-secretary in the DEA. In assuming his new duties on 1 December 1956 he replaced Max Wershof, who was made permanent representative to the European office of the UN in Geneva. While there had been other worthy successors to Wershof, what likely had given Cadieux the edge over them was

20 Earl G. Drake, A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants: Memoirs of a Prairie Diplomat (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 17-18.

183 his decision a few months earlier to teach a course in public international law at the University of

Ottawa. As legal adviser, Cadieux was now one of four assistant under-secretaries on “Killers’

Row,” so named because it was the corridor in the East Block where supposedly bright ideas originating from elsewhere in the DEA died.21 Some months later his annual salary reached a comfortable $12,500. The extra income was appreciated since, in August 1957, Anita gave birth to François Cadieux. In just over a year and a half Cadieux had become a professor, a legal adviser, an assistant under-secretary, a husband, and a father.

II – Legal Adviser and Assistant Under-Secretary under a New Government

“N’ayant pas pratiqué le droit depuis mon entrée au ministère,” Cadieux confided in a colleague shortly after his promotion as legal adviser, “le nouveau poste n’est pas à m’inspirer quelques inquiétudes.”22 As we know, he had abandoned his fledgling legal practice in 1941 to join the DEA. Now, fifteen years later, he was the top adviser of the department – and by extension the Canadian government – on international law. He had studied the subject in the

1930s but was no expert in it. This is why his course at the University of Ottawa was so important. While a generalist at heart, Cadieux, as he had told a friend prior to assuming his new teaching duties, also relished the opportunity to specialize in an area to which he could make a meaningful contribution:

Je me rends compte qu’au cours des 15 dernières années j’ai regretté avoir perdu contact avec le droit et n’avoir pas essayé d’acquérir une compétence dans un domaine particulier. Le Ministère, en nous déplaçant de pays en pays et en nous confiant des responsabilités extrêmement variées, nous expose à une sorte de dispersion qui peut être dangereuse et débilitante à bien des égards. Souvent, n’ayant pas d’objectif précis nous consacrons à des lectures frivoles et à des passe-temps inutiles des moments qui nous permettraient, à la longue, d’être en mesure d’apporter une contribution utile dans un domaine donné. Je crois bien que les avantages seraient équivalents si l’on s’appliquait à lire Marcel Proust, par exemple, en littérature, ou à étudier une période donnée de l’histoire. Il est certain qu’au point de vue professionnel le droit international comporte des avantages tout à fait spéciaux.23

21 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 49. 22 LAC/MC/2/12 – Cadieux to Charles P. Hébert, 6 December 1956. 23 LAC/MC/35/14 – Cadieux to Roger Chaput, 19 July 1956.

184

In short, by preparing lectures and familiarizing himself with the most recent literature on international law, Cadieux the generalist became Cadieux the specialist. His third-year course at the University of Ottawa, an institution run by the Oblate fathers, was mandatory for all third- year students and made up of thirty hours of lectures.24 The first five provided an overview of the origin, history, and sources of international law. The next eight classes dealt with those affected by its dictates, including nations, international organizations, and individuals. Ten subsequent lessons were devoted to peaceful relations between countries and to such important legal concepts as state succession, recognition, the fundamental rights and duties of states, state responsibility, and territorial jurisdiction. Three more lectures focused on the peaceful settlement of disputes, arbitration, and disarmament. War was the subject of two classes and neutrality one.

The last lecture was devoted to the basic principles of international law in light of the rest of the course.25

By 1957 Cadieux was not simply a professor but also a practitioner of international law.26

His university course and his new responsibilities in the DEA complemented and reinforced each other. How did he see the position of legal adviser? He recognized that the subtle combination of legal and political factors that typified its work called for someone who was both a lawyer and diplomat. “The function of the Legal Adviser to the Department of External Affairs,” in

Cadieux’s own words, “might be defined in general terms as attempting to ensure that Canada’s role in international affairs is conducted in accordance with generally accepted legal principles, practices and processes.” The legal adviser’s main job was to supply divisions in the DEA or other departments with legal advice, to supervise the drafting of treaties and agreements affecting

24 R. St. J. Macdonald, “An Historical Introduction to the Teaching of International Law in Canada: Part II,” The Canadian Yearbook of International Law (1975): 269-270. 25 LAC/MC/35/14 – Cadieux to Chaput, 19 July 1956. 26 This dichotomy between professor and practitioner in Cadieux’s career was stressed by a professor at France’s University of Poitiers, which in 1966 awarded Cadieux an honourary doctorate. See “Marcel Cadieux reçoit un doctorat honorifique,” Le Soleil, 21 November 1966.

185

Canada, and to provide guidance on, if not personally to conduct, Canadian cases before international courts and tribunals. Though Cadieux did not say so explicitly, it also meant ensuring that that the DEA maintain its primary responsibility for international law vis-à-vis rival departments, particularly Justice.27

The most important question facing the legal adviser, however, was the basic nature of his work. “Should he strive to maintain a strictly legal approach, and thereby run the risk of all purists, of having his advice ignored,” Cadieux asked, “or should he tailor his advice so closely to the political pressures of the moment as to run the risk of debasing his profession?” To

Cadieux, the answer lay in the difference between the lex lata and the lex ferenda, that is, the law as it was and the law as it should be. In short, the role of the legal adviser was governed by the state of international law itself. As Cadieux declared, “If the rule of law can exist at the national level, it is because the social system has become established; if the rule of law has not yet been achieved at the international level, it is because the social system within which it must operate is still in a process of evolution.” Unlike domestic law, international law is dependent on the consent of states. There is thus a significant political dimension to the field, one Cadieux felt no one in his position could ignore. “The more the Legal Adviser makes himself acceptable as a policy adviser,” he argued, “the more opportunity he has to ensure that sound legal principles are taken into account in the decision-making process.” In this way, the legal adviser would be promoting the development of the rule of law among nations. “Let us beware of being legalistic,”

Cadieux warned, “of forgetting that law is not logic, and that diplomacy – like politics – is the art of the possible.”28 It was an eminently sensible approach.

As legal adviser, Cadieux also consolidated his role as father figure to French Canadians in the DEA, the Legal Division, which the legal adviser naturally oversaw, having always been

27 Marcel Cadieux, “An Inside View,” in Legal Advisers and Foreign Affairs, edited by H.C.L. Merillat (New York: Oceana Publications, 1964), 34-37. 28 Ibid., 38-40.

186 instrumental in attracting officers from Quebec. Since most of them were lawyers, they found a niche in the DEA where they could improve their English and familiarize themselves with the workings of the bureaucracy. They could also meet and work with English Canadians. As

Cadieux recalled years later, when bilingualism and biculturalism were all the rage, the Legal

Division had been an “interesting laboratory” for these projects: “Officers with different legal and cultural backgrounds had opportunities to work together in a close fashion: they learned a great deal about each other and about our country in [the] process. Such a team, made up of civil and common law trained officers, was a typical expression of the Department then and of what the Public Service now is trying to achieve on a broader scale.”29 It is clear that in the 1950s the

Legal Division, whose staff of about eight rotational officers and two permanent solicitors handled everything from the legal aspects of defence and political questions to questions arising from treaties and claims, was a microcosm of what Cadieux wanted to see in the civil service as a whole.

While Cadieux was appointed legal adviser under the Liberals, most of his time in that position would be spent under the Progressive Conservatives. A fiery orator with a unique sense of destiny, Conservative leader John G. Diefenbaker, a populist politician and lawyer from

Saskatchewan, stormed the campaign trail.30 “It’s time for a Diefenbaker Government,” his campaign proclaimed. To the surprise of everyone, not least the Liberals, Canadians agreed.

With the support of Ontario, the Progressive Conservatives won 112 seats compared to 105 for the governing party. St. Laurent gracefully retired. At a Liberal leadership convention in January

1958, Pearson, who was basking in the glow of the Nobel Peace Prize that he had been awarded for his part in the formation of UNEF, easily bested Martin. Triumph was followed by humiliation, as Diefenbaker called a snap election on 31 March 1958, winning 208 seats out of

29 LAC/MC/9/10 – Cadieux to R. St. J. Macdonald, 18 February 1972. 30 The best study of Diefenbaker remains Denis Smith, Rogue Tory: The Life and Legend of John G. Diefenbaker (Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1995).

187

265 in the House of Commons. With the new government here to stay, Pearson was condemned to soldier on as leader of the official opposition.

For over two decades the policies of the bureaucracy had been those of the government and the policies of the government those of the bureaucracy. It was thus no small wonder that

Diefenbaker was suspicious of the mandarins whom he had inherited from the Liberal Party. The mandarins, for their part, were naturally worried about his plans for both them and the country.

Nowhere was this mutual wariness more apparent than in the relationship between Diefenbaker and the DEA. After all, this was the department that Pearson had headed, first as under-secretary and then as minister. The East Block was full of his many friends, prompting Diefenbaker to refer to its denizens as “Pearsonalities.” When the government changed, the new legal adviser learned from Eugène Thérrien, a Montreal lawyer who was well connected in Quebec

Conservative circles, that Diefenbaker was hostile to him personally and that his job might be in danger.31 This claim should be weighed carefully since it is by no means clear how Cadieux could have run afoul of Diefenbaker. He was much less close to Pearson than other officials in the DEA, none of whom was dismissed. While he had published three books promoting the department, it is doubtful that Diefenbaker had taken offence to, let alone even known about, them. Nevertheless, Cadieux, who had a nervous streak, took the alleged threat so seriously that he discussed it with the University of Ottawa’s chaplain, who in turn consulted his superiors.

Citing the civil service’s need for capable French Canadians, the chaplain urged Cadieux not to resign. If, however, he felt that he had no other choice, the chaplain assured him of a full-time job at the university. This news gave Cadieux the confidence he needed to deal with the new government.32

Its first minister of external affairs was Sidney Smith, who had been the president of the

31 Confidential interview. 32 Ibid.

188

University of Toronto since 1945. Amiable and an expert at bringing people together, the sixty- year-old Smith was nevertheless out of his depth as SSEA, having little knowledge of the wider world or of international diplomacy. In Cadieux’s view, Smith was exhausted by the time he joined the DEA and his confidence was undermined at his first press conference when, after he innocently expressed agreement with Pearson’s handling of the Suez Crisis, Diefenbaker publicly rebuked him in typically brutal fashion. When in late 1958 Smith became the first

Canadian minister of external affairs to tour Latin America, Cadieux, who was at the time the assistant under-secretary responsible for the American Division, accompanied him. The task demanded great vigilance since he had to ensure that Smith did not make commitments that the government could not keep. As a result, he was forced to keep press conferences short and to set reporters straight afterwards on exactly what had been said to them. Appearing anxious not to embarrass himself in front of his officials, Smith tried to exclude them from his conversations with ministers.33

By 1959 Smith was showing signs of growing into his role, but in March of that year he died of a heart attack. For the next three months Diefenbaker kept the external affairs portfolio for himself. Dealing with him was an exercise in frustration, since he had a vexing habit of sitting on business, always waiting for something to turn up. While Diefenbaker basked in the publicity that accompanied meeting and greeting the great, from Churchill to de Gaulle to

Eisenhower, he had less taste for actually making the tough decisions that foreign policy often required and so his default position was to postpone. Unfortunately, as he found between 1958 and 1963, while he might put off decisions, he could not postpone events.34

33 Ibid. 34 Part of the problem was that, when he had acted decisively in external affairs, the result had been far from rewarding. In July 1957, for example, Diefenbaker had proposed diverting 15 percent of Canadian imports from the United States to Britain, an impractical idea that went nowhere. Then, in February 1959, he canceled the Avro Arrow project. While it was the right decision insofar as the supersonic interceptor jet aircraft was so advanced that its cost was spiralling out of control, it put 14,000 A.V. Roe employees in Malton, Ontario on the unemployment line. The fallout was so great that Diefenbaker was hesitant thereafter to make major or controversial decisions,

189

With his appointment of Howard Green to replace Smith as SSEA, Diefenbaker’s indecisiveness grew. A long-time federal Conservative politician from British Columbia, Green was characterized by a folksy honesty that gave him public appeal. By 1959 he professed strong anti-nuclear views at a time when the Canadian government was committed to equipping the

RCAF in Europe and surface-to-air missiles (BOMARCs) at home with nuclear warheads.35

Green was reinforced in his anti-nuclear convictions by Norman Robertson, who in late 1958 had left his post as Canadian ambassador to the United States to become under-secretary for the second time in his career.36 Universally respected in Ottawa, Robertson lent great credibility to the anti-nuclear cause, which appealed to both sides of the ideological spectrum. He and Green were opposed by the pro-nuclear Douglas Harkness, a lieutenant colonel in the Second World

War who in 1960 became minister of national defence. It is highly unlikely that Cadieux shared

Green and Robertson’s views on the nuclear issue. As we have seen, since the start of the Cold

War he had considered nuclear weapons an unavoidable necessity of that conflict and a crucial element in the western alliance against the Soviet Union. While this state of affairs was perhaps to be regretted, there was no escaping the military facts of life.

What did Cadieux think of Green? In some ways the new minister was an example of what Cadieux saw as the Diefenbaker government’s ignorance of and amateurishness in foreign affairs. For example, Green, whose international experience was largely confined to his time in the trenches during the Great War, thought that francophone delegates to the UN would speak frankly to Cadieux and Paul Tremblay, who in 1961 became the head of the Canadian mission in

particularly in defence matters. On the trade diversion proposal and what followed see Tim Rooth, “Britain, Europe, and Diefenbaker’s Trade Diversion Proposals, 1957-58,” in Canada and the End of Empire, edited by Philip Alfred Buckner (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005), 117-132. On the cancellation of the Arrow see Peter Stursberg, Diefenbaker: Leadership Gained, 1956-1962 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 119-123.

35 On Green and disarmament see Eric Bergbusch and Michael D. Stevenson, “Howard Green, Public Opinion and the Politics of Disarmament,” in Architects and Innovators: Building the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909-2009, edited by Greg Donaghy and Kim Richard Nossal (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009), 191-206. 36 On Robertson see Granatstein, A Man of Influence.

190

New York, simply because the two officials spoke French. When, on another occasion, the ambassador of France brought two French politicians, including one from Chartres, to meet with

Green, it soon became clear that Green knew nothing of that city’s famous gothic cathedral. The

SSEA recovered well, however, by telling the Frenchmen that his experience of France had been strictly as a soldier. He then proceeded to give them an impressive explanation of the Canadian policy on disarmament. Despite his limitations, Green was respected by Cadieux and the DEA.

He was hardworking and earnest. The effort he gave to his speeches at the UN, in particular, were a testament to his integrity.37 Over the next few years he and Cadieux would develop a good rapport, one that lasted into Green’s retirement.38

While it was impossible to achieve the same kind of relationship with Diefenbaker,

Cadieux did play a key role in two events dear to the former’s anglophilic heart: the royal visits of Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth II to Canada in the summers of 1958 and 1959, respectively. As the assistant under-secretary in charge of Protocol Division, Cadieux was the

DEA’s point man for the visits, to facilitate which he mobilized a sizeable portion of the department’s resources. He was impressed with Diefenbaker’s handling of a member of the princess’ advance party who requested that she be driven around in a Rolls-Royce and who suggested that, as a gift, the Canadian government present her with a fur coat whose pelts would be made up in London. For all his initial fears, Cadieux got along well with Diefenbaker, who he noted had a sense of humour and political acumen. For instance, he persuaded the prime minister to let him handle invitations to the Queen to attend local events during her tour of Canada. While

37 Confidential interview. 38 When in the early 1970s Arnold Heeney released his memoirs, ones that were critical of Green, Cadieux wrote the following to Green: “I wish to assure you that I and a lot of my colleagues in the service will not agree with Arnold’s judgement of your role as [SSEA]. You had coordination problems with party leadership which have to be recognized. And your policy concerning nuclear energy among others has been endorsed by the whole country. I may add that Norman Robertson and many of the best officers in the service had great admiration for your moral stature and your vigorous contribution to our external relations. The service will also always remember your personal generosity and kindness to so many us. You have worked hard, well and long for our country and history will not, I believe, confirm Arnold’s judgement[.]” See LAC/MC/13/4 – Cadieux to Green, 29 January 1973.

191

Diefenbaker would retain control over where her Royal Highness went and whom she saw,

Cadieux would protect him by informing the prospective hosts of the result of their requests.

While the planning for Princess Margaret’s visit had been difficult because of the Treasury

Board’s quibbling over the provision of such things as liquor and bottled water, Cadieux insisted that its officials simply supply him with what he needed. To his delight, Diefenbaker agreed. As a result, the Queen’s tour was much easier to plan than that of the Princess.39

It is a token of the trust in which he was held by his superiors that Cadieux was made vice-chairman of the Canadian delegations to the 1958 and 1960 Geneva conferences on the law of the sea. Since the nineteenth century, the principle of both the freedom of the seas and a narrow territorial sea had been recognized in international law. In his seminal Mare Liberum

(1609), Hugo Grotius argued that the sea was international territory but that states could lay claim to that part of it adjacent to their coasts over which they could exercise effective control.

Partly as a result of the so-called “cannon-shot rule,” which posited that a nation’s sovereignty over the sea extended as far as its cannons on land could fire, this limit was originally thought to be three miles. By 1930, however, international consensus on the breadth of the territorial sea was breaking down. At the League of Nations Conference on Codification that year, one held at

The Hague and called to settle certain outstanding issues in international law, no agreement emerged on the limit of coastal jurisdiction. One of the first tasks of the UN’s International Law

Commission (ILC), which had been established in 1947 to promote the progressive development and codification of international law, was to draw up a number of draft articles on the law of the sea. After eight years of work, it produced seventy-three of them with commentaries. While the commission declined to make a specific recommendation on the controversial issue of the breadth of the territorial sea, it did maintain that an extension beyond twelve miles was contrary

39 Confidential interview.

192 to international law.40

Bounded by three oceans and boasting the longest coastline in the world, Canada followed developments in the law of the sea closely. On the recommendation of a cabinet committee, the St. Laurent government decided in March 1956 to inform the American, British, and French governments that it would call at the UN for the extension of the territorial sea to twelve miles and for the adoption of the straight baseline system, which differs from the traditional baseline system in that it is measured across water rather than along the coast and thus favours countries with indented coastlines, to measure it.41 However, as a result of pressure from

Britain and the United States, both of which were concerned about the security implications of abandoning the three-mile limit, Ottawa revised its policy. In December 1956, in the UN’s Sixth

Committee, which deals with legal issues, Canada advanced the novel concept of a fishery zone.

Recognizing that an extension of the territorial sea to twelve miles posed problems for the freedom of air and sea navigation, Canada recommended a zone of nine miles, contiguous to the three-mile territorial sea, in which the coastal state would have the exclusive right to fish.42 This proposal reflected the pressure being brought to bear on Ottawa by communities on both the east and west coasts of Canada, which was the sixth largest fishing nation in the world. Agreeing with the policy of the previous regime, the Diefenbaker government was determined to push for it at the UN-sponsored conference on the law of the sea slated to begin in February 1958 at Geneva.

The three most important people on the seven-man Canadian delegation were its chairman, George Drew, the Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, and its two vice-chairmen, Gordon Robertson, the deputy minister of the Department of Mines and Natural

Resources, and Marcel Cadieux. Old colleagues from the DEA, which they had both joined in

40 For the ILC’s draft articles and commentary on the law of the sea see Arthur Watts, The International Law Commission 1949-1988, Volume One: The Treaties, Part 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 31-107. 41 Documents on Canadian External Relations (DCER) 1957-1958, Part 1, Volume 24, edited by Michael D. Stevenson (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 2003), 91-92. On the straight baseline system see Yoshifumi Tanaka, The International Law of the Sea , 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 47. 42 DCER 1957-1958, Part 1, 92-93.

193

1941, Cadieux and Robertson would alternate as vice-chairman by attending the first and second half of the conference, respectively. The three men, as the biographical sketches the American embassy in Ottawa prepared for its delegation make clear, were very different personalities. A former premier of Ontario (1943-48) and leader of the federal Progressive Conservative party

(1948-56), Drew, who was described as stiff and unbending, though personally honest, was known to be politically unscrupulous. A Rhodes Scholar from Saskatchewan, Robertson was said to be widely respected by his colleagues for being unemotional, prudent, considerate, and funny

(he was also thought to be a ruthless administrator and somewhat of a careerist). The American sketch of Cadieux, however, was even more revealing: “He is intense, nervous and to an Anglo-

Saxon is likely to appear somewhat argumentative and super-animated, especially when discussing contentious questions. He is something of an introvert and appears to avoid social gatherings. He is regarded as an able and conscientious officer by his colleagues in the [DEA] and this view is shared by Embassy officers who have had dealings with him.” 43 This assessment of Cadieux, one which highlighted both his passionate nature and shyness, captured him well.

The Geneva conference began on 24 February 1958 in the Palais des Nations and was attended by no fewer than eighty-six national delegations. “The Canadians of course have Mr.

Drew,” wrote a British diplomat, “but their second-in-command, Cadieux, is also a most impressive worker.”44 While the conference divided its work into five separate committees, the most controversial issue it faced was the breadth of the territorial sea. In their desire to retain the three-mile limit, which was seen as a relic of colonialism, Canada, the United States, Britain, and most Western European countries were opposed by the Soviet Union and its satellites, by the

Arab countries, and by many Latin American ones. In mid-March, Drew advanced a proposal for

43 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)/RG59/Central Decimal Files (CDF)/1955- 59/1636/399.731/2-1358 – American embassy Ottawa to the Department of State Washington (with enclosure), 13 February 1958. 44 UKNA/FO/371/133266 – B.J. Greenhill to J.P. Gibson, 11 March 1958.

194 a territorial sea of three miles and an exclusive fishing zone of nine. Seeing in the “Canadian proposal,” as it inevitably became known, the best chance to defeat the twelve-mile territorial sea, the United States, despite its reservations about its fishing aspect, supported it. The British, fearing the loss of their fishing off the coast of Iceland and elsewhere in northern waters, did not.

According to Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, the head of the British delegation, the Canadian proposal never stood a chance of gaining the necessary two-thirds of votes in the plenary session of the conference.45

To prevent a swing in support towards a twelve-mile territorial sea, the British introduced a proposal of their own in early April which called for a six-mile limit in which existing passage rights would be retained. As the following report later that month by British Attorney General Sir

Reginald Manningham Buller, who was in Geneva, makes clear, the chairman of the Canadian delegation was beside himself with anger:

Drew’s attitude last night was extraordinary. . . . [H]e attacked me personally and was most abusive. He complained bitterly of some telegram which he seemed to think had gone from London to Ottawa and which he alleged misrepresented him. . . . The Americans are much more understanding and cooperative. While declaring their opposition to our proposal, they did not, as Drew did, seek to tear it to pieces and imply insincerity.46

Now in Ottawa, Cadieux confided in a British diplomat who approached him that Drew’s strong defence of the three-mile limit reflected his initial belief that Britain and the United States would never waver from it.47 According to the same diplomat, the DEA regretted the problems that had arisen at Geneva and chalked them up to a misunderstanding by Drew and to his lack of experience of international negotiations.48 As it turned out, Drew’s troubles were just beginning.

Abandoning their support for the Canadian proposal, the Americans introduced one calling for a

45 UKNA/Dominion Office files (DO)/35/9058 – Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice to Foreign Office, 29 April 1958; UKNA/FO371/150819 – Fitzmaurice, “Geneva Law of the Sea Conference, 1958: Report to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on the International Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Law of the Sea,” July 1958. 46 UKNA/DO/35/9057 – Attorney General to Foreign Office, 14 April 1958. 47 UKNA/DO/35/9057 – U.K. High Commissioner in Canada to Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), 16 April 1958. 48 UKNA/DO/35/9057 – U.K. High Commissioner in Canada to CRO, 16 April 1958.

195 six-mile territorial sea and a six-mile contiguous zone in which countries that had fished there regularly for the last five years could continue to do so. While this satisfied the British, who withdrew their proposal and backed the American one, the Canadians were unimpressed. After all, the notion of permanent traditional rights was antithetical to the establishment of an exclusive fishing zone. Having received cabinet approval on 15 April to co-sponsor an Indian and Mexican proposal establishing a maximum territorial sea of twelve miles, at least for those countries that had claimed such a breadth before the conference, Drew informed Cadieux two days later that this initiative would not receive the necessary support and that, as a result, he planned to submit a new proposal for a six-mile territorial sea and a six-mile fishing zone in which traditional rights would not be recognized.49 In the plenary session, however, the only proposal to command real support was the American one, which still fell seven votes short of the required two-thirds majority.50 While the 1958 Geneva conference adopted four conventions and an optional protocol, its failure to solve the law of the sea’s most vexing problem overshadowed everything else.

The inconclusiveness of the first Geneva conference on the law of the sea all but ensured that there would be a second one, which was eventually scheduled for early spring 1960. In the interim, Canada, the United States, and Britain tried to reconcile their positions. While the

Americans proved more willing to compromise with the Canadians than the British, no pre- conference agreement emerged. As the DEA’s legal adviser, Cadieux was intimately involved in these discussions. Although he no doubt regretted the divergence between Canada and its two closest allies, he loyally defended the Canadian position. In December 1958, for example,

Fitzmaurice reported being told by Sir Kenneth Bailey, the Australian legal adviser, that Cadieux had been “almost brutally frank in saying that the Canadians felt that if they only stuck to their

49 DCER 1957-1958, Part 1, 163-172. 50 DCER 1957-1958, Part 1, 189.

196 guns, they would get what they wanted at the next Conference – that is to say, an unqualified 12- mile fishery limit combined with a six-mile territorial sea.” The Canadian thinking was that, if the Americans and the British wanted to entrench the six-mile limit in international law, they would have no choice but to give in on the fishery question. After all, the alternative was the breakdown of the conference and the end to any hope of restricting countries to six miles.51 Why was Canada so obstinate? According to the British high commission in Ottawa, there were three reasons. First, there was Drew, whose personal prestige was at stake. Second, there were the political problems caused by electoral commitments made to Canada’s fishing communities.

Third, and most intriguingly, there was the Diefenbaker government. Few of its ministers were said to be particularly concerned with or knowledgeable about the law of the sea, but the problem affected them in a different way:

In international affairs generally they are almost pathologically conscious of the shadow of Mr. Pearson and have in the main been content to continue the policies of the previous Government. The Law of the Sea Conference, however, was an entirely new thing: it affords the one example so far of a major international gathering where the new Diefenbaker Government were able to make their mark. They took a stand and rallied support from a number of other countries. They are rather pleased with themselves from what they regard as their initiative and any suggestion that they should back down is apt to be regarded by them as inviting humiliation.52

In other words, the Diefenbaker government regarded the upcoming law of the sea conference not only as a test of its will but also as a second opportunity to put its own stamp on Canadian foreign policy. As the only vice-chairman of Canada’s delegation in Geneva this time, Cadieux, ever the loyal civil servant, was inevitably influenced by these powerful considerations.

On 17 March 1960 the countries of the first Geneva conference, plus two new ones, reconvened at the Palais des Nations in an attempt to succeed where they had previously failed on the question of the territorial sea. The initial American and Canadian positions in 1960 were essentially their final ones at the conference table in 1958. Whereas the United States proposed a

51 UKNA/DO/35/9065 – K.J. Simpson to E.R. Sudbury, 18 December 1958. 52 UKNA/DO/35/9065 – U.K. High Commission in Canada to CRO, 6 May 1959.

197 six-mile territorial sea and a six-mile fishing zone in which the traditional fishing rights of other countries would be recognized, Canada promoted the same scheme but without any historic rights. Two weeks into the conference’s proceedings Cadieux privately informed Norman

Robertson that there were certain problems that he should bear in mind as he observed the delegation’s work from Ottawa. First, none of the delegation’s instructions had been circulated.

This was important since cabinet had empowered it, if necessary, to seek American, British, and

Western European support for the Canadian proposal by making known Canada’s willingness to negotiate with countries a phasing-out period for their historic fishing rights. As Cadieux told

Robertson, however, the Canadian position so far remained firm. It did not help matters, he added, that Drew was silent on his conversations with the heads of other delegations, leaving his subordinates in the dark about what had been said. Third, the delegation was to report on factual or public developments but not to engage in speculation or analysis of informal proposals. This was why, Cadieux told Robertson, the latter’s request for an assessment had created a stir. While

Cadieux maintained that the delegation was strong, he noted that its effectiveness was diminished by the (peculiar) rules under which it was forced to operate. “Morale is up,” he observed, “and I think that in spite of these difficulties we will give a good account of ourselves.” As he concluded amusingly, “The delegation reminds me of a caterpillar. One head, a large body and lots of legs.”53

While working for Drew was an experience, he was nonetheless a vigorous advocate of

Canadian interests in the law of the sea. Nor, in the end, did he disdain compromise. In early

April, thanks to Drew’s prodding of Arthur Dean, the head of the American delegation who had a bevy of Congressmen and fishing industry experts looking over his shoulder, the United States had agreed to support the Canadian proposal with a ten-year phasing-out period for traditional fishing rights. As Cadieux told Robertson, “We are not out of the woods yet but, with bit of luck,

53 LAC/ER/2/3 – Cadieux to Norman Robertson, 30 March 1960.

198 there is a fair chance, I would put it no higher than that, that the Conference will agree on the two basic concepts embodied in our proposal.”54 A few days later Drew informed Ottawa that both the United States and Britain would support the new Canadian formula, which he considered

“virtually a total and complete success” for the Canadian position, and that the previous

Canadian and American proposals would be withdrawn in favour of a joint one. For the first time, he concluded, Canada, the United States, and Britain would be working together to win the support of two-thirds of the countries attending the conference.55

The Canadian, American, and British delegations spared no effort in achieving this goal.

As vice-chairman to Drew, Cadieux was invaluable. He advised him, he drafted many of his speeches, he chaired meetings of the Canadian team in his absence, and he was indefatigable in lobbying members of other delegations. “Do have a good Easter week-end,” Drew told Cadieux in mid-April. “You have been working at a tremendous rate and what we have been able to do so far is mainly the result of your untiring efforts, not only during the past few months but ever since the preparation for the first Conference. Whatever the out come [sic] may be, you certain[ly] have every reason for satisfaction.”56 It was generous of Drew to say so, particularly in view of how the conference ended. Despite a remarkable diplomatic campaign, one Howard

Green later claimed was among the most extensive that Canada had ever undertaken, the joint

Canadian-American proposal failed to receive two-thirds support by a single vote.57 The final tally was fifty-four votes in favour, twenty-eight against, and five abstentions. Cadieux correctly attributed this defeat to the fact that India, Chile, and Ecuador all switched their votes at the last minute.58 The Indians had been unable to get the proponents of the Canadian-American proposal to agree to prior authorization (rather than simply notification) of warships wishing to sail within

54 LAC/ER/2/3 – Cadieux to Robertson, 2 April 1960. 55 LAC/DEA/5308/9456-RW-8-40/1 – George Drew to DEA, 6 April 1960. 56 LAC/DEA/5308/9456-RW-8-40/2 – Drew to Cadieux, 14 April 1960. 57 For Green’s comment on the diplomatic campaign see NARA/RG59/CDF/1960-63/857/399.731/5-260 – American embassy Ottawa to Secretary of State, 2 May 1960. 58 LAC/DEA/5308/9456-RW-8-40/2 – Henry F. Davis to Green, 26 April 1960.

199 twelve miles of a coast. While Chile and Ecuador, along with other Latin American countries, had pressured the United States into recognizing a form of preferential fishing rights outside the twelve-mile zone, they chose to vote against the proposal rather than to abstain.59

The mood must have been gloomy the next day when the Canadian delegation assembled for the last time in Room 8 of Hotel de la Paix, where it was staying in Geneva. All the same,

Cadieux argued that Canada might capitalize on the atmosphere created by the conference by circulating, among those countries that had backed it, the Canadian-American proposal as a treaty or a convention. The idea was to prevent the strong block of support that existed from collapsing. In an apt analogy, Cadieux pointed to the example of the UN and NATO: after the first organization had failed to protect collective security, it had been necessary to create the second.60 While the Canadian and British governments would ultimately show interest in the idea of a multilateral convention, even undertaking a survey of countries to gauge its potential for success, the United States remained sceptical of the scheme and thus withheld its support.61 The result was that the Canadian government would be forced to consider other, perhaps unilateral, measures. But all this lay in the future. In returning to Ottawa, Cadieux, as Drew had told him, had every right to be proud of his work in Geneva. Should there be any doubt, George F. Curtis, the University of British Columbia’s dean of law and someone who had done early work on

Canada’s position on the law of the sea and attended the recent conference on the subject, wrote the following to Howard Green: “. . . I did want to tell you of the wonderful job that Marcel

Cadieux did. Everyone on the delegation worked their hearts out, but I must say that I thought

Marcel’s job was so outstanding that I thought I would like to let you know. He was brilliant in

59 For an analysis of the conference see UKNA/FO371/150819 – Fitzmaurice, “Law of the Sea Conference, Geneva, 1960: Report to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,” 4 July 1960. 60 LAC/DEA/5308/9456-RW/8/40/2 – “Minutes of Twenty-Fifth and last Meeting of SEADEL 9:30 to 10:15 Wednesday, April 27.” 61 LAC/DEA/10843/20-1-2-USA-HEENEY-MERCHANT/1 – Cadieux to Heeney, 27 June 1964.

200 his ideas and tireless in his application and it really was a very splendid job indeed that he did.”62

It was thus fitting that, in July 1960, Cadieux was made deputy under-secretary of the DEA.

III – Deputy Under-Secretary and International Jurist

To understand how Cadieux became deputy under-secretary in 1960, it is necessary to go back to when he was named legal adviser and assistant under-secretary in 1956. While it is unclear how many people in the DEA knew it, Cadieux had made an arrangement with Max

Wershof to hold his position until 1960, when Wershof would return to Ottawa as legal adviser and Cadieux would replace him in Geneva as permanent representative to the European office of the UN.63 Technically Cadieux did not have the power to ensure the switch, but as the former head of the Personnel Division he may have been confident in his ability to affect the process.

But even the best-laid plans go oft awry. In 1959 Killers’ Row was swept by change. One assistant under-secretary, W.D. Matthews, died. Another, Douglas LePan, resigned from the

DEA. Yet another, R.M. Macdonnell, left it to become head of the ICAO. Of the original five assistant under-secretaries that had begun the year under Norman Robertson, only Cadieux and

John Holmes remained. This was a period when homosexuality in Canada was still a crime and the federal government was determined to purge such elements from the civil service because of their perceived security risk. In the summer of 1959, Holmes, who had had a homosexual affair while serving as chargé d’affaires at the Canadian embassy in Moscow in the 1940s, discovered that he was on the RCMP’s interrogation list. His case, as per official policy, was kept secret, but his life became a living hell. He ultimately resigned from the DEA in March 1960.64 The turnover on Killers’ Row during the first half of 1959 prompted Robertson to give thought to his successor. In late May 1959 he confided to Evan Gill, the assistant under-secretary in charge of

62 LAC/DEA/5638/14020-C-14-2-1/3 – George Curtis to Green, 5 May 1960. 63 See LAC/MC/2/12 – Cadieux to M.H. Wershof, 3 January 1957; LAC/MC/2/13 – Cadieux to Wershof, 13 July 1959; LAC/MC/2/13 – Wershof to Cadieux, 29 July 1959; LAC/MC/2/13 – Cadieux to Wershof, 12 August 1959. 64 For the sad end to Holmes’ promising career in the DEA see Adam Chapnick, Canada’s Voice: The Public Life of John Wendell Holmes (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009), 110-127.

201 personnel matters, that he considered Cadieux and Albert Edgar Ritchie, an economist from New

Brunswick who had joined the DEA in 1944, the best candidates to replace him.65 Informing

Green in June that the DEA would be “pretty thin at the top” over the next months, Robertson proposed making Ritchie, whom he praised for his wide range and good judgement, an assistant under-secretary.66 Leaving the Canadian embassy in Washington, where he had been second-in- command, Ritchie took up his new duties in September.

By 1960 Cadieux, who had served in the East Block for almost five years, was still operating on the assumption that he would be replacing Wershof in Geneva, a prospect that thrilled both him and Anita. As he informed Paul Tremblay in early February, however, his plans had hit a snag: “Le ministre ne veut pas entendre parler de mon départ pour Genève à l’été. Je ne suis pas flatté. Gill et NAR espèrent [vendre] l’idée au cours des mois qui viennent mais, pour le moment, les plans sont en l’air . . .”67 Days later Gill reminded Robertson that, because of the need to consider related appointments, an early decision had to be made on Cadieux’s future.

While Cadieux was said to be amenable to staying in Ottawa for another year, Gill suggested to

Robertson that, provided Green did not object too strongly, the original plan of posting him to

Geneva be followed.68 The minister obviously protested since, in early March, Cadieux told

Tremblay that the decision was sadly final: “Nous restons ici. Anita en pleur de rage. Je me ferai

à l’idée. Mais A. ne veut rien entendre. Je ne sais trop ce qui surviendra. Nous avons pourtant bien assez d’ennuis au bureau. Quand ils se répercutent à la maison, la vie devient difficile. Nous avons fait nos plans en supposant le départ assuré.” Various problems that could have been put off if Cadieux had only been posted to Geneva now had to be faced. For example, he needed a new car, if not a new house. He had also agreed to give a certain number of lectures in

65 LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6/2 – E.W.T. Gill, “Note for File,” 29 May 1959. 66 LAC/Fonds Norman A. Robertson (NAR)/17/2 – Robertson to Green, 25 June 1959. 67 LAC/PT/4/7 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 1 February 1960. 68 LAC/CSC/1986-87/104/3-6/2 – Gill to Robertson, 10 February 1960.

202 international law to doctoral students at the University of Ottawa. Anticipating the work that awaited him upon his return from the law of the sea conference, Cadieux concluded, “Le moral

Cadieux est dégonflé.”69

While it is possible to view Cadieux’s promotion in July 1960 to deputy under-secretary, a post that had remained vacant since Macdonnell’s departure the previous summer, as nothing more than, as Gill told him, compensation for being forced to stay in Ottawa, there were almost certainly other factors at work. We know that Robertson viewed Cadieux as one of two potential successors and so, by making him his deputy, he put him in a position where he could train him.

But why select Cadieux over Ed Ritchie? One possible reason is seniority. Robertson prided loyalty to the department and believed in rewarding its longest-serving officers. Another explanation is that, while Robertson credited Ritchie for being a wide-ranging economist, he recognized Cadieux’s superior breadth of culture and credentials as a generalist. Finally, the timing of Cadieux’s appointment is noteworthy. In 1959 Maurice Duplessis, who had been premier of Quebec since 1944, died, ending a highly conservative period in the province’s history known as La Grande Noirceur. While Duplessis’s Union Nationale successor, Paul

Sauvé, was determined to reform Quebec society, he died of a heart attack in January 1960 after fewer than four months in office. Benefiting from the widespread expectation of change in

Quebec, the Liberal party of Jean Lesage, a former federal cabinet minister, won a surprise minority government in the June 1960 provincial election. A new, distinctively Québécois nationalism was developing in Canada’s most backwards province. Having served for many years under Mackenzie King, Robertson fully understood the importance of both domestic politics and national unity. In making Cadieux his deputy, the under-secretary, not to mention the

Diefenbaker government, which approved the appointment, almost certainly had an eye on

Quebec.

69 LAC/PT/4/7 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 4 March 1960.

203

To Cadieux the greatest reward in serving as Robertson’s deputy was working for the man himself. This is made abundantly clear by his many fond memories of him. Take, for example, Robertson’s appearance. In the winter, Cadieux recalled, he would place a sort of kepi on one side of his head, don a huge buffalo coat that he had procured from the RCMP, and brave

Ottawa’s snowy streets in large rubber boots, swaying from side to side not unlike a goose.

“C’était un phénomène surtout quand il neigeait de voir cette boule de poils immenses [sic] qui s’avançait en oscillant lentement de droite à gauche,” Cadieux observed. “Il avait une silhouette qui était extrêmement pittoresque et caractéristique.” When Robertson took off his cap, Cadieux remarked, he was as bald as a billiard ball. Unlike Arnold Heeney, who was always immaculately dressed in tailored suits made of the finest material, Robertson did not seem to care very much about his physical appearance. When it was not winter he sported a battered old hat that, Cadieux assumed, had been judged unworthy of use until it had aged like a cheese and been variously rained upon, left to sit in some closet for years on end, and bent out of shape.70

While Robertson did not cut an elegant figure, looking at him, Cadieux noted, you imagined “un esprit ouvert, curieux, pénétrant avec un bon sens de l’humour, un homme qui ne se prenait pas au sérieux, qui avait conscience de sa valeur.” He could be reserved at first,

Cadieux conceded, but those who gained his trust discovered someone who was open-minded, hospitable, and in no way contemptuous of his intellectual inferiors, a man who, while fascinated

(but never scandalized) by the failings of his intimates, was friendly and generous in the face of weaknesses or mistakes which he found more amusing than not. Unmaterialistic to a fault,

Robertson enjoyed the company of cultivated and disinterested individuals with whom he played bridge or met for drinks at the establishment Rideau Club.71 He was also keenly interested in the lives of his colleagues. When young François Cadieux got the measles, for instance, Robertson

70 LAC/Fonds H. Basil Robinson (HBR)/ 27/12 – “Oral history interview of Marcel Cadieux for Norman Robertson project by Ambassador A.E. Blanchette,” 11 November 1977. 71 Ibid.

204 made a point of asking his father for the latest news on his condition.72

To know Robertson was to be awed by both his brilliance and vast knowledge. While

Cadieux felt that his boss had little interest in the visual arts, books, that is, the world of ideas, were a different matter altogether. Philosophy, from the evolving thought of Aldous Huxley or of

Bertrand Russell to the themes that Henri Bergson, or Étienne Gilson, or Jacques Maritain might develop, captivated him. So too did good literature. In the early 1950s Cadieux had sat with

Robertson, then High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, on a DEA oral examination board.73 When a doctoral student preparing a dissertation on Georges Bernanos presented himself, it quickly became clear that Robertson knew more about the celebrated Catholic novelist than this self-proclaimed expert.74 On another occasion Cadieux, who had been dealing with a personnel problem relating to a homosexual, opined that the writer who seemed to offer the best guidance on the question was Marcel Proust, who was of course a closeted homosexual. To

Cadieux’s surprise, Robertson replied that he knew Proust’s work well and that it was indeed illuminating on the topic.75 “How such a busy man found time to read and re-read Marcel Proust in the original French,” Cadieux wrote some years later, “remains a mystery to me.” In

Cadieux’s view, the intellectual Robertson was a worthy successor as under-secretary to the scholarly O.D. Skelton. As he warmly recalled, Robertson believed in marshalling all available academic knowledge for the benefit of Canadian foreign policy.76

While Robertson’s academic bent fostered the impression that he lived in an ivory tower, nothing was farther from the truth. As Cadieux observed, “He was the most natural, the least pedantic, of men.”77 He was also eminently practical. Consider, for example, his approach to

72 “The Late Norman A. Robertson,” in External Affairs: A Monthly Bulletin of the Department of External Affairs 20, No. 9 (September 1968): 353. 73 LAC/HBR/27/12 – “Oral history interview of Marcel Cadieux.” 74 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 8 March 1968; “The Late Norman A. Robertson,” 352-353. 75 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 8 March 1968. 76 “The Late Norman A. Robertson,” 353. 77 Ibid.

205 meetings. Far from a social occasion, every meeting, Robertson argued, had a specific goal: to arrive at a decision. To get to that point, however, it was necessary to prepare the meeting and never to hold one without knowing exactly what was to be achieved from it. This did not mean imposing the result you wanted, but rather knowing how to maneuver in order to get it. When a consensus was reached, Robertson advised adjourning the meeting at once, lest somebody propose an alternate idea that led to a loss of control of the operation. “Pour un type qui avait la réputation d’être dans les nuages, et de perdre le nord,” Cadieux remarked of Robertson, “c’était un avis qui était assez malin.” His advice on what to do when you received a book as a gift was just as clever: thank the giver immediately, since the longer you waited the more he would assume that you had read the book and would comment on it, no easy feat if the volume in question were poor. “Voilà encore le Norman astucieux, plein de tours,” Cadieux noted. “C’était une des joies d’être avec lui, de découvrir tout à coup, comme ça, des côtés de sagesse populaire chez lui, des côtés d’expérience acquise au cours des années, et qui étaient infiniment précieux.”78

Nevertheless, there was something unsettling about Robertson’s habits. As Cadieux recalled, “Often, when he studied a question and saw objections, he simply heaved a long, very long, incredibly long, sigh. He had said everything. We understood that there were a multitude of problems we had not foreseen in our plans. And we withdrew without further ado.”79 When

Cadieux became Robertson’s deputy, Jean Chapdelaine gave him the following excellent advice:

“Ne laisse jamais dormir les papiers chez lui.” It was a reference to Robertson’s notoriously messy desk and the growing pile of memoranda in his in-tray. The point, however, was not that the documents remained there because they were unread, but rather because Robertson had studied and found them wanting in some respect. When after several days the under-secretary

78 LAC/HBR/27/12 – “Oral history interview of Marcel Cadieux.” 79 “The Late Norman A. Robertson,” 354.

206 had not signed a memo of his, Cadieux would retrieve it from the tray and reconsider it. As he noted of Robertson’s technique in dealing with memos, “It was his way, discreet, patient, [and] indirect, of inviting people to reflect more fully on the matter.”80

While it is no exaggeration to say that Cadieux revered Robertson, one aspect of his personality impressed him more than any other: his philosophy as a civil servant. The role

Robertson chose to play was admirably self-effacing. Indeed, he shunned all publicity in the belief that it was his very anonymity that earned him the trust of the governments he served.81

Far from being a weakness, Robertson taught Cadieux, the fact that civil servants were not elected was a strength, since it meant that the relationship between them and their political masters was based on intellectual excellence.82 Commenting on Robertson’s great integrity,

Cadieux observed, “Cet homme se ferait couper en morceaux plutôt que de donner un avis intéressé ou qu’il aurait connu comme insuffisant.” Under no circumstances, Robertson believed, was a civil servant to use his position to ingratiate himself with the party in power.83 Politicians came and went, but the interests of the state, much like the civil service itself, were permanent.

This explains why, as Cadieux recalls, Robertson could be absolutely tenacious in defending his point of view. While he was too much of a professional ever to mobilize outside opinion against his minister, he was not above making his stance known at every turn.84 His remarkable determination left a deep impression on Cadieux.

While Robertson conferred on Cadieux greater and greater responsibilities, the latter had not finished making his mark as an international lawyer. In the spring of 1961 the Diefenbaker government nominated him for election to the ILC, which, as we have seen, existed to develop

80 Ibid., 354; LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 8 March 1968. 81 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 8 March 1968. 82 “Round Table on Norman Alexander Robertson: Transcription of Proceedings held in Rideau Hall, Saturday, February 18, 1978, under the Chairmanship of His Excellency the Governor General Jules Léger,” 21. I am grateful to Dr. Greg Donaghy for allowing me to consult a copy of this transcript. 83 LAC/MC/8/14 –Journal intime, 8 March 1968. 84 “Round Table on Norman Alexander Robertson,” 22.

207 and to codify international law. The nomination might have gone to one of several outside candidates, including George Curtis, McGill law professor Maxwell Cohen, University of

Toronto dean of law Cecil Wright, and Université de Montréal dean of law (and Cadieux’s former teacher) Maximilien Caron. There was also an inside candidate: Max Wershof.85 Because

Cadieux had reservations about some of these individuals, Wershof excluded, he was careful not to show any personal interest in the opportunity. He was thus taken completely by surprise when in late May, just a few days before the UN deadline for nominations to the ILC, Howard Green chose him. As Cadieux speculated to a colleague, “I suppose that the Minister decided to put my name forward because, with elections coming, it might be preferable for me to remain in Ottawa longer.” Noting that he was resigned to the idea, Cadieux remarked that, as soon as his wife gave birth to their second child and he had saved a little more money, he would look for a new house.

As he wrote, “I am assuming that I will now be in Ottawa for quite some time. Having just completed my sixth year [here], this is a somewhat melancholy assumption.”86 No doubt it was, but Cadieux’s nomination to the ILC also represented an opportunity: to escape Ottawa every spring for the commission’s annual two-month session in Geneva.

The first order of business was actually getting elected to the ILC. Under Article 8 of its statute, electors, that is, the members of the UN, were to ensure that each candidate was qualified and that the commission as a whole reflected the main forms of civilization and legal systems of the world. To this end, seats on the original fifteen-member ILC had been allotted as follows: one to each of the five permanent members of the Security Council, four to Latin America, three to Western Europe, one to Eastern Europe, and two to Africa and Asia. When the ILC expanded to twenty-one members in 1956, an informal agreement had granted three seats to Africa and

Asia, one to Western Europe, one to Eastern Europe, and one on an alternating basis to Latin

85 LAC/DEA/5126/5475-AX-2/40/2 – Robertson to Green (in Geneva), 10 May 1961. 86 LAC/MC/3/5 – Cadieux to A.E. Gotlieb, 3 June 1961.

208

America and the Old Commonwealth. By declining to propose a candidate in the spring of 1961,

Australia and New Zealand had cleared the way for Canada to do so. While Cadieux’s nomination, which was officially made by Britain and Australia, stood to benefit from the informal agreement, there was some uncertainty over whether it would be honoured by Latin

America or, as was expected, in the event the ILC expanded again. Leaving nothing to chance, the DEA asked Canadian missions around the world to make Cadieux’s candidacy known and to seek support for it. At the nominee’s own request, the missions were also asked to make two special points: first, that as Chief of Staff of the Canadian delegation to the UN in 1955, he had been closely concerned with the Canadian initiative on the new members question; and two, that having been educated in Quebec, he was well versed in both the French civil law and British common law traditions.87

To strengthen his candidacy for the ILC, Cadieux attended part of the UN session that fall, representing Canada on the Sixth Committee. As a civil servant who had never stood for election, it must have been a novel experience for him to press the flesh and to lobby his fellow delegates. Yet according to Fred Bild, an anglophone from Montreal, though a perfectly bilingual one, in his first year in the DEA and who was helping Cadieux in his campaign, the latter was magnificent at it:

He would invite me to his business lunches with the other delegates he was lobbying. He was wonderful. He could talk about any subject. He was determined to entertain people. He wasn’t a kind of charmer who flatters you and tells you funny stories. He would tell you things about Canada. He would illustrate them and make them noteworthy, stories about the North, about the wilderness in Quebec. There wasn’t a single foreigner he met who wasn’t impressed. He knew how to tell a story. That stayed with me and influenced me. You don’t just have to make chit-chat and stick to the party line. He believed that you could say anything as long as you kept the people interested.88

Thanks to the groundwork done by Canadian missions in the summer, and no doubt to Cadieux’s impressive campaign style, by late September forty-eight of the approximately one hundred

87 LAC/DEA/5126/6475-AX-2-40/6 – Robertson to all missions abroad, 20 June 1961. 88 Fred Bild, interview with the author, Toronto, 14 March 2014.

209 countries in the UN had pledged to vote for him.89 By mid-November that number had grown to sixty-five.90 Around the same time, the ILC was expanded to twenty-five members. Competing with forty-three other candidates for the available seats on 28 November 1961, Cadieux placed an impressive fourth on the ballot with 89 out of 102 votes. While his success can be attributed to the fact that, despite the lack of any informal agreement among countries in 1961, the majority of states in the UN adhered to the geographical voting pattern that had governed previous elections to the ILC (the extra four seats went to the Asian-African group). But of course certain candidates had racked up large majorities. According to the Canadian delegation to the UN, some of those individuals, including Cadieux, owed their vote total to the high esteem in which they were regarded by the Sixth Committee.91 For the first time in its history, the prestigious

International Law Commission boasted a Canadian as one of its members.

The Canadian press celebrated Cadieux’s achievement. As the The Globe and Mail announced to its readers, “A quiet, unassuming official described by his colleagues as having one of the keenest and most disciplined minds in the Federal Civil Service, has won high honor for himself and for Canada with his election this week to the International Law Commission.”92

Newspapers in Quebec were especially pleased. Under the headline “Nouveau fleuron hautement mérité,” La Presse declared of Cadieux’s election to the ILC, “Evidemment, nous nous réjouissons d’une présence canadienne-française. Présence combien précieuse, présence combien

éminente.” While noting that Cadieux would likely disapprove of his doing so since he was the definition of modesty, the author of the article observed that he was the defender of French

Canadians: “Toujours avec courage et dignité, il a réclamé des voix françaises dans nos ambassades et si nombre de bons points sont acquis, dans une très large mesure, on les doit à sa

89 LAC/DEA/5127/5475-AX-2-40/8 – W.H. Barton to Robertson, 27 September 1961. 90 LAC/DEA/5127/5475-AX-2-50/8 – Canadian delegation to the UN to DEA, 10 November 1961. 91 LAC/DEA/5127/5475-AX-2/50/8 – Canadian delegation to the UN to DEA, 14 December 1961. 92 Langevin Cote, “Honor to Self and Country,” The Globe and Mail, 30 November 1961.

210 ténacité aussi vigoureuse que subtile.”93 A front-page article in Le Devoir entitled “Marcel

Cadieux reçoit un témoignage éclatant” was so fulsome in its praise that it left its subject embarrassed. Nor did it help matters that the reporter, Clément Brown, claimed that, in normal circumstances, Cadieux would soon succeed Norman Robertson.94 In a firm response, Cadieux privately reminded Brown that he was neither the first nor the only French Canadian in the DEA to promote the cause of his ethnic group and that what they had been able to accomplish as a group was due in large measure to the support and encouragement of their English-Canadian colleagues, first among them Robertson.95 In December 1961 the Lesage government designated

Cadieux Queen’s counsel, a distinction reserved for truly accomplished jurists. In thanking the premier, Cadieux wrote, “Il m’est particulièrement agréable de recevoir cette marque d’estime du gouvernement de la province qui a la charge des intérêts des Canadiens français. Votre geste continue à mes yeux une nouvelle preuve que le gouvernement du Québec s’intéresse à la présence française dans ses divers manifestations et ménage des encouragements à ceux qui cherchent à l’affirmer dans l’administration fédérale.”96

The election of Cadieux to the ILC led to a series of meetings of the Legal Division, and later to the formation of a departmental legal planning committee, to prepare him for its work.

The discussion ranged widely and prompted a closer look at new developments in and the future of international law. For the third divisional meeting, scheduled for late December 1961,

Cadieux asked his fellow lawyers to familiarize themselves with the discussion in the Sixth

Committee on peaceful co-existence.97 A political concept associated with Soviet premier Nikita

Khrushchev, it had not taken long for peaceful co-existence to infiltrate the legal sphere. The problem was that, while the philosophy was based on the belief that capitalist and communist

93 “Nouveau fleuron hautement mérité,” La Presse, 5 December 1961. 94 Clément Brown, “Marcel Cadieux reçoit un témoignage éclatant,” Le Devoir, 4 December 1961. 95 LAC/MC/38/5 – Cadieux to Brown, 5 December 1961. 96 LAC/MC/3/5 – Cadieux to Jean Lesage, 21 December 1961. 97 LAC/DEA/5126/5475-AX-40/5 – “Notes on Third Meeting on the International Law Commission, December 28, 1961,” 3 January 1961.

211 countries could co-exist without having recourse to war, the battle was to be waged by other means: “. . . the policy of peaceful coexistence, as regards its social content,” Khrushchev had declared in January 1961, “is a form of intense economic, political, and ideological struggle of the proletariat against the aggressive forces of imperialism in the international arena.”98 As first defined in a 1954 treaty between communist China and India, the five principles of peaceful co- existence were mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in internal affairs, equality and cooperation for mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence. Needless to say, such principles appealed to newly independent countries resentful of their colonial past and concerned about their national sovereignty going forward. As a result, during the 16th session of the UN, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Ceylon, Czechoslovakia,

Ghana, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Romania, the United Arab Republic, and Yugoslavia, strongly supported by the Soviet Union, had called on the Sixth Committee to undertake a general survey of international law under the title “Consideration of Principles of International

Law Relating to Peaceful Co-existence of States.” Uneasy with such a politically charged title the western representatives on the committee had strongly resisted it, leading to agreement on the more neutrally-worded “Consideration of Principles of International Law Relating to Friendly

Relations and Cooperation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.”

Nevertheless, simply by putting this item on the agenda for the next session of the UN, the communists had achieved an important success, one Cadieux sought to counter.

At the third divisional meeting on the ILC it was suggested that, instead of simply reacting to Soviet initiatives on peaceful co-existence, it was better to adopt an independent and dynamic western position. As Cadieux argued, such an approach could take one of two forms: that traditional international law was out of date, in need of total revision, and therefore did not

98 Stephen M. Schwebel, Justice in International Law: Selected Writings of Stephen M. Schwebel, Judge of the International Court of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 520.

212 exist, or that, while in need of being updated, revised, and perhaps even supplemented, it was the only law there was for the time being and thus had to exist. Having framed the alternatives in this way, Cadieux believed that the second approach was more progressive and provided the West with a greater opportunity to advance some of its own ideas.99 In mid-February a letter signed by

Cadieux, recently returned from New Delhi, where he had served as the deputy head of the

Canadian delegation to the Second Commonwealth Education Conference, went to Canadian missions in London, Washington, and Oslo seeking the views of the governments there on the future development of international law. He expressed concern at the attacks of the Soviet bloc on traditional international law, at the practice and legal theories of some new states on colonial and treaty questions, and at the lack of a clear and coordinated western position to confront the challenge. The letter referred to a remarkable statement by the Soviet representative on the Sixth

Committee at the last session of the UN:

Quite apart from objections on political or legal grounds to the item or to some of the elements allegedly embodied in the concept of ‘peaceful co-existence’, the U.S.S.R. delegate when arguing in support of the item drew a distinction between ‘old international law’ and ‘new international law’. He described the former as being based on suppression of colonial peoples and primarily concerned with sanctioning unequal colonial arrangements, while the latter, dating from the emergence of ‘socialist states’, formed the basis of a ‘purification’ of the entire field of law. The clear impact of his remarks is that much of traditional international law should be eliminated in the process of the development of international law. It is possible that in opposing the item the Western countries may have appeared in Afro-Asian eyes to be overly conservative, if not reactionary, thereby enabling the Soviet bloc to appropriate to themselves the credit for all the constructive developments and trends in contemporary international law.

What Cadieux wanted was a comprehensive western position to legal questions in the Sixth

Committee, in the ILC, and in such private bodies as the International Law Association (ILA).

Indeed, his concern that the communists were packing the ILA with government spokesmen promoting peaceful co-existence was behind an effort to increase the liaison between western

99 LAC/DEA/5126/5475-AX-40/5 – “Notes on Third Meeting on the International Law Commission, December 28, 1961,” 3 January 1962.

213 representatives on the association and western foreign ministries.100 To this end, Edward

McWhinney, a professor of law at the University of Toronto and a member of the ILA’s committee on the legal aspects of peaceful co-existence, was asked to visit the DEA, where he had fruitful conversations with members of the Legal Division and Cadieux on the policy considerations raised by the concept. It was also agreed that the DEA would be represented at the upcoming biannual meeting of the ILA in Brussels in August.101 As for the Canadian approach to the Sixth Committee, Cadieux and his colleagues chose to fight the Soviets on legal rather than on political grounds. In late March, Allan Gotlieb, a former member of Legal Division serving in

Geneva on his first posting abroad, provided J. Allan Beesley, a bright officer who, according to one former colleague, had managed to antagonize every lawyer in it, with a good strategic approach: that the crucial difference between the Soviet and western view of international law was that, whereas peaceful co-existence was based on the primacy of municipal (that is, national) law, the second was founded on the belief that there was a legal structure above states to which they were subject.102 With Cadieux’s approval, a Canadian initiative was in the works by April whereby, when the “Friendly Relations” item came up for debate that fall in the UN’s Sixth

Committee, Canada and its allies would argue for a “Declaration on the Primacy of the

International Rule of Law” as the basis for any restatement of the legal principles relating to friendly relations.103

But the 17th session of the UN seemed a long way off in the spring of 1962. The next three months would prove to be Cadieux’s busiest ever as legal adviser. In relatively short span of time, he was involved in the annual meeting of the ILC, in a case before the International

100 LAC/DEA/6425/5475-AX-37-40/1.1 – Cadieux to Canadian missions in London, Washington, and Oslo,” 12 February 1962. See as well LAC/DEA/6425/5475-AX-47/40/1.1 – Cadieux to London, Washington, and Oslo, 8 March 1962. 101 LAC/DEA/5472/11647-A-40/3 – J.A. Beesley, “Liaison with Canadian Branch of International Law Association on Subject of Peaceful Co-existence,” 8 March 1962. 102 LAC/DEA/5126/5475-AX-40/5 – Beesley to A.E. Gotlieb, 2 April 1962. The comment on Beesley is from John Graham and Doug Small, interview with the author, Ottawa, 19 March 2013. 103 LAC/DEA/5126/5475-AX-40/5 – Gilles Sicotte to Robertson, 5 April 1962.

214

Court of Justice (ICJ) on UN peacekeeping expenses, and in the first session of the legal sub- committee of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. The first two tasks required extensive personal preparation. As Cadieux had told Tremblay in February, he was forced to spend his evenings mastering the details of the UN financing issue when he should have been devoting all of his attention to ILC matters, all the while teaching at the University of

Ottawa. “Quel sacré boulot,” he complained.104 On the eve of his departure for Europe in mid-

April, Cadieux remarked that he was working like a slave in the office during the day and preparing for the ILC session and the ICJ case at home during the evenings. As he concluded,

“C’est à perdre la boule.”105 Nor did it help matters that, at the same time, he and Anita were selling their house and building a more spacious one on Chalmers Road, near Billings Bridge in

Ottawa’s Alta Vista neighborhood. While this was a stressful period for Cadieux he found relaxation in Geneva, where the ILC met every year. Upon his arrival in the city, he and his family, which now included René Cadieux, who had been born in September, took up residence in a large apartment right on Lake Geneva, in front of the famous Jet d’eau, and with a view of

Mont Blanc. “La vie en Europe a un charme indicible,” Cadieux observed to Tremblay: “De notre fenêtre … nous voyons les bateaux évoluer, avec l’arrière[-]plan, les montagnes. Le soir nous allons faire des promenades dans la vieille ville.”106 Cadieux savoured every moment away from Ottawa. Life in Europe was good.

His work there was also intellectually stimulating. The fourteenth session of the ILC lasted for over two months, from 24 April to 29 June 1962. During its first two weeks, the commission concerned itself with both its future tasks and methods. It then turned to the subject that would preoccupy it over the next five years: the law of treaties. While treaties are of course fundamental to international relations and international law, Cadieux could not have known that,

104 LAC/PT/4/9 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 6 February 1962. 105 LAC/PT/4/9 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 16 April 1962. 106 LAC/PT/4/9 – Cadieux to Tremblay,

215 within three years, they would also become a matter of controversy in Canadian constitutional law. The law of treaties had been on the ILC’s agenda since its inaugural meeting in 1949. Three special rapporteurs had succeeded one another in trying to prepare reports on the subject. In early

May, a fourth, Sir Humphrey Waldock, a noted British jurist from Oxford, a member of the ILC, and a future president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), presented the commission with a series of draft articles on the conclusion, entry into force, and registration of treaties. His work was well received. As Cadieux was recorded as saying before the commission, “His [Waldock’s] proposals were admirably reasonable and moderate, steering a middle course between codification and progressive development [of international law] and skillfully avoiding certain political shoals.”107 While Cadieux also admired the flexible way in which the author accepted criticisms of and changes to his draft articles, he privately observed that the latter’s gracious approach was exploited by the ILC’s communists, who freely challenged his authority and opposed many of his impartial formulations.108

Much of the ILC’s work on the law of treaties was spent codifying existing practices, but

Cadieux noted that there was a significant element of progressive development involved when it dealt with general principles. Take, for example, Waldock’s draft Article 3, which sought to define which entities under international law had treaty-making capacity. Needless to say, this was a highly political question. Indeed, a statement on the powers of dependent states, that is, states that were not fully sovereign, raised the issue of whether, under the “new international law,” such actors could be recognized. The same article contained an important paragraph on the treaty-making capacity of the constituent parts of a federation or union. While some members of the ILC favoured deleting the entire article because it raised the separate (and thorny) issue of the

107 Yearbook of the International Law Commission 1962, Volume 1, Summary Records of the fourteenth session: 24 April-29 June 1962 (New York: United Nations, 1964), 131. 108 LAC/DEA/5126/5475-AX-40/6 – Cadieux, “Report on the International Law Commission – 14th Session – Geneva, April 24-June 29, 1962,” 3 July 1962.

216 subjects of international law, the majority, including Cadieux, argued for a general approach that avoided specific problems. The final result was an article with three clauses: one, that the capacity to conclude treaties was possessed by states and other subjects of international law; two, that the capacity of members states in a federation to conclude treaties depended on the federal constitution; and three, that the capacity of an international organization to conclude treaties depended on the instrument by which it was constituted.109 While the second clause of this article seemed innocent in 1962, federal-provincial conflict and troubled relations with a certain NATO ally ensured that, by the late 1960s, the DEA, under Cadieux’s leadership, was desperately lobbying for its deletion from the draft convention that emerged from the ILC’s work on the law of the treaties.

The most controversial articles on that subject in 1962 concerned which states were entitled to sign a treaty and to join it by accession. As Cadieux remarked of the ILC’s work as a whole, “The Commission showed a clear and demonstrable tendency to modify the historical conception of treaties which [had been] based on the principle of unanimity in respect of virtually all decisions of a procedural or substantive character.” As a result, the ILC adopted articles that universalized the right to participate in treaties of a general multilateral character and which overturned the requirement of unanimity for the acceptance of reservations to them.

When, near the end of the session, a redraft was proposed by the Nigerian member of the ILC and supported by the communists that general multilateral treaties should be open to all states,

Cadieux vigorously intervened, saying that the article impinged on the complex question of recognition. Aware that the redrafted article would mark a significant step towards the recognition of such states as East Germany, North Korea, North Vietnam, and perhaps even the

People’s Republic of China, Cadieux insisted that if the ILC, for political reasons, accepted the innovation proposed by the Nigerian candidate, one which was contrary to UN practice, the

109 Ibid.

217 commission’s prestige would suffer. It was also problematic that those members of the ILC who were legal advisers were potentially committing their governments to a view of recognition that the latter did not necessarily share. From a technical standpoint, Cadieux stressed, the redrafted article was unacceptable because it contradicted the basic principle of the law of treaties on the will of parties. As he explained, a country that did not recognize certain states could hardly be expected to accept that they could participate in certain treaties it signed. If the ILC’s goal was to codify international law and to contribute to its progressive development, he added, the commission was making a serious mistake by ignoring the practice of most nations or by forcing a policy on them. According to the minutes of the ILC’s fourteenth session, Cadieux’s firm conclusion was that the redrafted article was “inopportune for material reasons, unjustifiable for technical reasons, and objectionable for practical reasons” and that he would have to vote against it. While Cadieux’s French, American, and British colleagues shared his viewpoint and voiced similar arguments, the redrafted article passed by a vote of ten to seven with three abstentions.110

In assessing the members of the ILC, Cadieux argued that the most influential ones were

Roberto Ago of Italy, Waldock, Grigory Tunkin of the Soviet Union, and André Gros of France.

A member of the ILC since 1956 and a future judge on the ICJ, Ago, Cadieux noted, was knowledgeable, persuasive, and widely respected. That said, he liked to be popular and could be overly accommodating on matters of principle. As we have seen, Waldock impressed Cadieux with his realism and flexibility. As for Tunkin, the head of the legal department of the foreign ministry of the Soviet Union, he combined a deep knowledge of the subject with “an infallible sense of purpose.” As Cadieux observed, “He never misses an opportunity to advance Soviet interests and he is all the more successful doing this in that he speaks in reasonable terms and gives the impression of operating merely as a specialist in international law.” In explaining

110 Yearbook of the International Law Commission 1962, 248. See also Cadieux, “Report on the International Law Commission.”

218

Tunkin’s success, Cadieux highlighted his previous experience on the ILC and the fact that he and his fellow communists on the commission fostered and capitalized on a spirit of camaraderie within it. As a result, there was an unfortunate tendency to believe that the communists were compelled for ideological reasons to take certain positions and that it was somehow bad form to oppose them. “The result,” Cadieux lamented of some of the non-communists on the ILC, “is that the Professors take theoretical positions, disregard the political implications and, rather naively, play right into the hands of the Soviet bloc.” Gros, for his part, presented an interesting case study in what Cadieux called the “classical approach” to international law. While Gros’ statements were persuasive, he was less influential than he might have been because he was identified with a reactionary approach to developments in the field, one that was unappealing to the new countries. Of the other members of the ILC, Cadieux noted that American Herbert

Briggs, a professor at Cornell, was disinclined to engage in scraps in the ILC and that he seemed out of his depth when political questions arose. “It is unfortunate that the leading country in the

West should be so severely handicapped,” Cadieux regretted. There was also Milan Bartos.

While this hefty Yugoslavian usually adhered to the Soviet line in debates, on the few occasions he disagreed with it Cadieux was amused by how quickly he backtracked under pressure from

Tunkin. A critic of Indians since his time on the ICC, Cadieux had harsh words for Radhabinod

Pal, whose election as president of the ILC was owing to Tunkin’s behind the scenes maneuvering. Shockingly biased, Pal often ignored Cadieux and other members when they raised their hands to speak, instead recognizing Tunkin, who had not. While Pal let Tunkin, Bartos, and

Manfred Lachs, the Polish member and the session’s rapporteur, repeat the same points ad nauseam, he asked others not to prolong the discussion.111

In summing up the ILC’s members, Cadieux noted that they were generally of high quality. He was disturbed, however, by the fact that, unlike Britain, the United States, Italy, and

111 Cadieux, “Report on the International Law Commission.”

219 other key countries, the representatives of the Soviet bloc were all legal advisers to their respective governments. As Cadieux concluded, “The case for the West is often presented and fought in a very loose fashion, even in disarray, without regard to the political implications, while the Soviet side operates as a tight, well integrated and powerful political instrument.” This had not been the UN’s intention in founding the ILC, but it was an inevitable reality of the Cold

War. While Cadieux clearly regretted the influence wielded by the communists, he believed that the ILC had scored a victory in adopting, for the first time in its history, a series of articles on the law of treaties. He also derived satisfaction from the fact that the communists had been unable to make much progress on the “new international law” or “peaceful co-existence.” While the Soviet bloc was certainly pursuing its interests, Cadieux conceded that its members were cooperating fully with the ILC, something he believed would have a stabilizing effect in international affairs.

Even the communist triumph on the all-states provision of Article 7 was not necessarily a serious problem for the West. After all, it would take some time for the various articles on the law of treaties to come before an international conference and it was by no means certain that the article in question would receive the required two-thirds support to pass. Even if it did, Cadieux argued, it was perhaps in the West’s interest to have entities which claimed to be states accept the legal principles which universal law-making treaties entailed, principles he hoped would moderate their behaviour.112 As the minutes of the ILC make clear, Cadieux was an active participant in its

14th session. As the preceding analysis shows, he was also a thoughtful commentator on its proceedings. It is thus regrettable that, because of his growing responsibilities in the DEA, he had difficulty attending the next four sessions of the ILC. Nevertheless, he took part in them when he could and followed their work closely.

In mid-May 1962 Cadieux briefly absented himself from the ILC to go before the

International Court of Justice in The Hague to plead the Canadian case in the matter of “Certain

112 Ibid.

220

Expenses of the United Nations.” The stakes could not have been higher. The UN was in a financial crisis, with a debt of $94 million. Most of this money resulted from the failure of certain countries, including the Soviet bloc, to pay their share of the costs for UNEF in the

Middle East and for the United Nations Organization in the Congo (ONUC), a peacekeeping mission involving Canada which had begun in 1960 after a civil war had broken out following

Belgium’s granting of independence to the African country.113 An important legal question was at the heart of the financing issue confronting the UN: did Article 17(2) of its charter, one which stipulates that “the expenses of the Organization shall be borne by the Members as apportioned by the General Assembly,” extend to peacekeeping costs? With its members as bitterly divided as ever on the question in December 1961, the UN asked the ICJ for an advisory opinion.

Agreeing to hear the case, the court requested that interested countries provide written statements. Twenty-two states, including Canada, which, as a participant in both UNEF and

ONUC and a strong supporter of the concept of peacekeeping, had an obvious interest in ensuring that such operations were well financed, availed themselves of the opportunity.

Deciding to hear oral statements as well, the court scheduled them to begin on 14 May.

When Cadieux made his oral presentation to the International Court of Justice that day, it marked the first time that Canada appeared before it. As it turned out, he was also the first representative of any country to plead his case, taking precedence over his colleagues from

Australia, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Britain, and the United States, all countries that, like Canada, believed that peacekeeping costs were justified under Article 17(2). It was felt, especially by the Americans, that Cadieux’s statement provided a good opening, since it set out the western point of view in broad terms.114 Not one to forget his roots or to miss a chance to express Canada’s ethnic duality abroad, Cadieux spoke in French to the fifteen distinguished

113 LAC/DEA/5102/5004-AT-40/1 – “United Nations Financing,” 8 March 1962. 114 LAC/DEA/5102/5004-AT-40/2 – Canadian embassy Washington to DEA, 7 May 1962; LAC/DEA/5102/5004- AT-40/2 – Canadian embassy The Hague to DEA, 12 May 1962.

221 judges looking down at him.115 The points made by the western representatives were several.

First, that Article 17(2) of the UN charter required members to pay the expenses of the organization and that it did not make a distinction between ordinary costs and extraordinary ones like peacekeeping. Second, that the UN’s budgetary and fiscal powers were vested solely in the

General Assembly and that its resolutions on the financing of both UNEF and ONUC made clear that their costs were expenses of the organization under Article 17(2). Third, that the court had no reason to look into the validity of the resolutions establishing UNEF and ONUC (some countries had argued that, under Chapter VII of the UN charter, only the Security Council was competent to undertake enforcement action). Fourth, if the court felt compelled to consider the validity of the resolutions of the General Assembly and of the Security Council establishing

UNEF and ONUC, the legal basis for them could be found in the express or residuary powers of these organs under the UN Charter. Cadieux was the only western representative to explore the many articles of the Charter that were relevant to the situation.116 Less reluctant than some of the other western powers, particularly Britain, to broaden the debate, he had observed in February,

“In my opinion, the core of the issue is whether the Assembly can make recommendations to member states concerning collective military action . . . If the answer is in the affirmative, the rest, budgetary provisions, follows quite logically on the basis of Article 17.”117 In summing up

Cadieux’s case, Donat Pharand, a colleague at the University of Ottawa, wrote the following:

. . . Mr. Cadieux argued for Canada that the General Assembly’s resolutions authorizing the Middle East operations found their legal basis in certain specific provisions of the Charter, in the Uniting for Peace resolution of 1950 [which granted the Assembly responsibility for ensuring international peace and security if the Security Council was unable to do so]. He argued in particular, and very ingeniously, that the Security Council itself had recognized this responsibility of the General Assembly and had admitted that the powers of the latter extended directly to operations of the United Nations Emergency Force. … He based this conclusion on the fact that the Security Council, being unable to

115 LAC/PT/4/9 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 15 May 1962. 116 LAC/DEA/5102/5004-AT-40/2 – Canadian embassy The Hague to DEA, 23 May 1962. 117 Cadieux marginalia on LAC/DEA/6425/5475-AX-37-40/1.1 – Canadian delegationt o the UN to DEA, 12 February 1962.

222

act because of the exercise of the veto, had decided to transfer the matter to the General Assembly by virtue of the Uniting for Peace resolution of 1950.118

In a likely sign of the strength of Cadieux’s arguments, Tunkin, who presented the Soviet case before the court, gave them special attention. According to the western representatives on hand, however, Tunkin’s own arguments were unpersuasive.119 The court ultimately agreed. In mid-

July 1962 it voted by a margin of nine to five that peacekeeping costs were indeed “expenses of the organization” as understood by Article 17(2). Cadieux and his western colleagues had won their case. It remained to be seen, however, whether the court’s advisory opinion would be sufficient to put the UN back on the road to solvency, let alone influence its most recalcitrant members.

In addition to his involvement in the UN expenses case, Cadieux was also active in the first session of the legal sub-committee of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer

Space (COPUOS). Taking place from late May to mid-June in Geneva, where he already was for the ILC, Cadieux was Canada’s official representative. While he had been impressed by the willingness of the communists on the ILC to cooperate in its proceedings, he was dismayed by their uncompromising stand on the legal sub-committee. Established as a permanent body in

1959, COPUOS had been created as a result of the new space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1957 the U.S.S.R. successfully launched Sputnik I, the world’s first artificial satellite. Alarmed, the United States responded in 1958 by launching a satellite of its own,

Explorer, and by creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Not to be outdone, in 1961 the Soviet Union sent cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space, where he completed a full orbit of the earth. In this brave new world of spy satellites and intercontinental ballistic

118 A. Donat Pharand, “Analysis of the Opinion of the International Court of Justice on Certain Expenses of the United Nations,” The Canadian Yearbook of International Law (1963): 289-290. 119 LAC/DEA/5102/5004-AT-40/2 – Canadian embassy The Hague to DEA, 23 May 1962. See also Michael K. Carroll, Pearson’s Peacekeepers: Canada and the United Nations Emergency Force, 1956-67 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009), 68.

223 missiles (ICBMs), COPUOS tried to ensure the peaceful development and use of outer space for all humanity.

Since COPUOS’s mandate included a consideration of the legal challenges posed by the space age, the legal sub-committee had been created. As Cadieux discovered, however, any chance of success at its first session was shattered early on when Tunkin, who was the Soviet representative here too, and his allies accused the United States of hypocrisy in discussing cooperation in outer space while preparing to conduct high-altitude atomic tests in the Van Allan radiation belt that encircles earth. While regretting that Tunkin had injected politics into a legal discussion, American representative Leonard Meeker could not resist responding in kind. As

Cadieux observed, “The impact of the attack of the Soviet bloc states . . . had the effect of introducing a cold war atmosphere into the inner workings of the Committee, thereby reducing to a minimum any chances for entering into negotiations that had any meaning.” Those negotiations revolved around a Soviet proposal for a declaration of basic principles governing the exploration and use of outer space, two proposals, one American and one Soviet, involving assistance to and the return of space vehicles and personnel, and one American proposal concerning liability for space vehicle accidents. On the Soviet Union’s proposed declaration, the majority of the conference resisted it on the grounds that it raised controversial issues that fell outside the scope of the sub-committee. Cadieux concluded that it was too early to draw up a draft code at this time. On assistance to and the return of space vehicles and personnel Meeker and Tunkin advanced similar proposals, but the latter’s draft contained two controversial elements: that advance notice would be given before each launch and that space vehicles on which surveillance equipment was found would not be returned. Although the Americans and the Soviets seemed willing to agree on a working group to study the question of liability in the case of accidents by space vehicles, the Soviets insisted that this same group also consider their proposal on

224 assistance and return.120

In an attempt to break the deadlock, Canada, backed by many neutral and western countries, including the United States, proposed a compromise whereby the matter of liability would be referred to a working group constituted according to Soviet wishes, but that the discussion of the issues of assistance and return and of general principles governing outer space

(not including the Soviet proposal for a space code) be deferred until later. The Soviet Union rejected the compromise the next day and so the conference ended in failure. Speculating on the motives of the Russians in refusing to support a Canadian proposal he was sure they could have backed, Cadieux opined that “an indication of even very marginal progress of this kind would

[have] defeat[ed] what was possibly their main objective, namely to demonstrate to the world that cooperation in outer space was impossible as long as the U.S.A. continued, according to their view, its aggressive spatial activities.”121 In short, the political and military struggles of the

Cold War made the development of international law, particularly in new fields, difficult in the extreme.

Returning to Ottawa in the summer of 1962, Cadieux turned his attention to, among other things, the Canadian initiative on international law in the Sixth Committee of the UN. The success of western representatives to the ILA that August in Brussels in opposing a proposal by

Tunkin for a draft declaration on the principles of peaceful co-existence augured well for the upcoming debate in the Sixth Committee. After consultation with the Americans and the British, the idea of proposing a draft UN declaration on the primacy of international law had been dropped. As Cadieux informed his colleagues on the legal planning committee in early

September, the State Department preferred a tactical approach that affirmed the need for international law to keep pace with developments in the world, stressed the fundamental

120 Cadieux, “Canadian Delegation Report on the Work of the First Session of the Legal Sub-Committee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space,” 24 July 1962. 121 Ibid.

225 importance of the UN Charter in this field, and rejected the codification of general principles on which there was likely no agreement in favour of one that promoted empirical studies of certain specific subjects, including some of the principles of peaceful co-existence.122 This was the background to a co-sponsored Canadian resolution (L-507) on 31 October 1962, three days after the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, affirming that the UN Charter was the fundamental statement of principles of international law on friendly relations and cooperation among states and proposing that a study be made of the obligation to respect the territorial and political integrity of states and to resolve disputes by peaceful means. This resolution was opposed by a

Czechoslovakian one (L-505) proposing a declaration of no fewer than nineteen different principles, of varying political acceptability and legal basis, on friendly relations and cooperation among states. When the Yugoslavs, after raising western hopes with a draft resolution that was surprisingly moderate, tabled a co-sponsored one in mid-November that called for a declaration proclaiming six principles as governing relations among states and that hewed closely to the

Soviet concept of peaceful co-existence, Cadieux was in no mood to compromise. As he scribbled in the margin of the telex from New York analyzing the many defects of the new resolution, “The problem is one of arithmetic. How much do we have to go to get the required majority? But do we need a resolution at all costs? How about no resolution?123”

No doubt on Cadieux’s advice, Robertson advised Howard Green to instruct the

Canadian delegation to discontinue its efforts to have the Yugoslav resolution serve as a compromise between the Canadian and the Czech-sponsored resolutions. Instead, it was to push as hard as it could for the adoption of L-507.124 These instructions puzzled, if not annoyed, Allan

Beesley, who was assisting Norman Genser, a Montreal lawyer serving as the Canadian

122 LAC/DEA/5129/5475-AX-37-40/2 – “Minutes of Meeting of the Legal Planning Committee at 11:00 a.m., Wednesday September 5, 1962,” 13 September 1962. 123 Cadieux marginalia on LAC/DEA/5129/5475-AX-37-40/3.1 – Canadian delegation to the UN to DEA, 19 November 1962. 124 LAC/DEA/5129/5475-AX-37-40/3.1 – Robertson to Green; LAC/DEA/5129/5475-AX-37-40/3.1 – Green to Canadian delegation to the UN, 24 November 1962.

226 representative on the Sixth Committee. As Beesley saw it, no one in New York had considered abandoning the Canadian resolution for the Yugoslav one, either as it was or as it could be amended. The orders from Ottawa also clashed with the strong desire of the chairman of the committee and the co-sponsors and supporters of L-507 to see the sponsors of the three different resolutions get together and find common ground.125 There was also the embarrassing prospect that both L-507 and L-509 would pass. As a result, two days later, on 25 November, Green authorized the delegation to discuss a compromise. After week-long negotiations that lasted over thirty hours, the three groups agreed on a resolution, unanimously passed by the General

Assembly, calling for the study of four principles governing friendly relations and cooperation among states: respect for territorial and political integrity, the settling of disputes by peaceful means, non-intervention, and sovereign equality. The evidence suggests that the DEA (and

Cadieux) were not entirely pleased with this outcome.126 After all, two additional principles were to be studied, including the controversial one of non-intervention, which was central to peaceful co-existence and dear to the Soviet bloc and many new states. Given his crucial role in the negotiations, however, Beesley deserves the last word. As he saw it, the compromise preserved the essential elements of the western resolution by making clear that the rule of law and the UN

Charter (not the five principles embodied in peaceful co-existence) represented the basis of friendly relations, by adopting the study (rather than the declaration) approach to certain select principles, and by resisting the attempts of the cosponsors of L-505 and L-509 to go beyond a restatement of the principles embodied in the Charter.127

125 LAC/DEA/5129/5475-AX-37-40/3.1 – Beesley to H.C. Kingstone, 26 November 1962 [unsent]. 126 LAC/DEA/5130/5475-AX-37-40/3.2 –Robertson to Green. As Robertson (or perhaps Cadieux) wrote, “The new resolution as it stands is acceptable to the West from a political standpoint, but it is readily recognized that this resolution does not begin to provide the same firm satisfactory approach from a legal standpoint in handling the legal studies under contemplation as was contained in the Canada-sponsored resolution.” 127 LAC/DEA/5130/5475-AX-37-40/3.2 – Canadian delegation to the UN to DEA, 5 December 1962; LAC/DEA/5130/5475/AX-37-40/3.2 - DEA to Canadian delegation to the UN, 27 December 1962; LAC/DEA/5130/5475/AX-37-40/3.2 – Beesley to J. S. Stanford, 4 January 1963; LAC/DEA/5130/5475/AX-37- 40/3.2 – Beesley to Cadieux, 22 February 1963.

227

When one considers the threats that the western interpretation of international law had faced in early 1962, the situation a year later did seem less dangerous. In a talk on peaceful coexistence to the University of Poitiers in 1963, one subsequently published in La Revue du

Barreau de la Province de Québec, Cadieux concluded by making three key points. First, that the concept was highly propagandistic in that the Soviet Union was trying to take credit for all the advances in the field of international law since 1920 and especially to identify itself with its progressive development. Second, that the Soviet initiative represented a clear attempt to mobilize the law to further, or at least not to obstruct, communist aims. As Cadieux noted, peaceful coexistence’s emphasis on national sovereignty risked undermining the very idea of international law, and its vague principles threatened to make of it nothing more than a political instrument. Third, and above all, the West had finally realized the Soviet intentions and, having roused itself, was pursuing dynamic initiatives to counter them. But, as Cadieux proclaimed, the battle was not won:

Il faudra être vigilant pour que les principes qui vont faire l’objet d’une étude approfondie ne soient pas unilatéraux ou édulcorés. Mais si les pays intéressés, maintenant conscients du dessein soviétique dans le domaine du droit, font preuve de la vigilance et de la souplesse qu’ils ont manifestées au cours de la dernière année, l’opération provoquée par les Soviétiques aura des résultats utiles. Un dialogue fructueux peut s’engager. Le droit international sera précisé et développé. Et la cohésion de la communauté internationale sera augmentée.128

Because of the Cold War, international law was just another battleground where the West and the

Soviet Union confronted each other and where, as a result, progress would be slow. While

Cadieux hoped to see the field develop and the cohesion of the international community increase, he had no sympathy for a communist legal approach which he saw as both mischievous and dangerous. By 1963 he could derive satisfaction from the fact that his election to the ILC had set

128 Cadieux, “La coexistence pacifique et le droit international,” La Revue du Barreau de la Province de Québec 23, No. 9 (November 1963): 520.

228 in motion a successful Canadian-led western campaign to blunt, at least for the time being, the

Soviet legal offensive.

IV - A Reluctant Administrator, an Anxious French Canadian, and the Fall of a Government

While Cadieux spent much of his time as deputy under-secretary on legal issues, he was also involved in administration. In September 1960 the Diefenbaker government created the

Royal Commission on Government Organization, chaired by J. Grant Glassco, a former “dollar- a-year man,” a chartered accountant, and an executive vice president of the Brazilian Traction

Light and Power Company, “to inquire into and report upon the organization and methods of operation of the departments and agencies of the government of Canada and to recommend the changes therein which they consider would best promote efficiency, economy and improved service.” As the words “efficiency,” “economy,” and “improved service” imply, the commission was expected to bring the managerial philosophy and techniques of the private sector to the public one. While the Glassco Commission was perhaps necessary because of the growth in both the size and complexity of the government since the war, Cadieux was uncomfortable with the idea of having a small army of outside management experts investigate federal departments and agencies. As he saw it, the civil service, which for so long had enjoyed a sterling reputation, was now being put on the “operating table.”129

There was also the problem that, as Cadieux had argued since his days as Personnel

Officer, the DEA was unique in the federal civil service. As he pointed out to the commission in early 1961, “While the organizational structure of our Department is relatively simple, its administration is made complex by the need to maintain a rotational service at Ottawa and abroad. This complexity is augmented by Civil Service Commission and Treasury Board

129 Confidential interview.

229 controls designed primarily for non-rotational government departments.”130 The crux of the issue was whether a royal commission appointed to study the organization and operations of the government as a whole would be able to understand the special challenges faced by arguably its most untypical department.

The Glassco commission adopted a “horizontal” and a “vertical” approach to its work: whereas the first entailed the study of a wide range of governmental activities, the second involved investigations of specific departments, including the DEA.131 The individual chosen to study it was Max Cohen. The McGill professor, who served as part-time adviser and speech writer for Diefenbaker, was not well liked by some members in the department, particularly its lawyers, who saw him as a dilettante and a self-promoter.132 As Cohen told the prime minister in late April 1961, he was aware that “one or two officials” in the department had “raised their eyebrows” about the fact that he was the one conducting the investigation: “Since in general I seem to have the qualifications and the interest and the objectivity I am surprised at these objections, and I hope I shall have your support in not permitting those few officials concerned to interfere with the Royal Commission’s desire to have me do the job, and with my own rather keen desire to do it.”133 While Cohen would have Diefenbaker’s support, the latter secretly (and quite typically) inquired into his politics and learned that he wanted the Liberal nomination in the federal riding of Saint-Antoine–Westmount. “Apparently,” Diefenbaker was informed, “our

United Nations Delegation,” of which Cohen had been a member during the 14th session of the

UN in 1959-60, “did not show enough respect for his views and he has therefore returned to the ranks of ‘fighting Liberals.’”134 This detail about friction between the Canadian delegation and

Cohen no doubt explains why in the summer of 1960 Cadieux had been pleased to learn that the

130 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 199. 131 Ibid., 198. 132 Allan Gotlieb, interview with author, Toronto, 8 February 2013. 133 University of Saskatchewan Special Archives & Special Collections (UOS)/John G. Diefenbaker fonds (JGD)/XII/D/34/Cohen – Maxwell Cohen to Diefenbaker, 28 April 1961. 134 UOS/JGD/XII/C/104/Cohen – Egan Chambers to Diefenbaker, 3 May 1961.

230 professor would not be a part of the national delegation to the UN’s 15th session. “Il y a ici et là des améliorations qui ne sont pas négligeables,” Cadieux had remarked to Tremblay.135 It seems clear that more than “one or two officials” in the DEA objected to Cohen and that Cadieux was one of them.

The task Cohen faced was made even more daunting by the fact that, as he told

Diefenbaker in sending him a draft outline of his study, “The whole question as to what makes a

Foreign Office effective is subtle and to some extent frustrating to answer.”136 In late June 1961 he went over his outline with senior DEA officials in Cadieux’s office. Beginning the discussion,

Cadieux made three points. First, the study should recognize that almost all the missions the

DEA would open over the next few years would be “hardship posts” and that it should assess the impact of this reality on recruitment, the rotational system, and the concept of a career service.

Second, the DEA was a career service marked by great dedication and its rotational policy ensured that its officers shared equally in both the good and bad aspects of its work. While

Cadieux conceded the DEA’s need for specialists in certain areas, he stressed how unfair it would be to expect such individuals to serve perpetually in places like Asia and Africa. Third, he remarked that, while Cohen’s outline was focused heavily on the operations of the DEA at home, it should not ignore that half of the department’s work that was on foreign soil.137

Concerned since the 1940s about staffing problems, Cadieux urged consideration of the burden imposed on the DEA by international conferences, of the fact that about two divisions worth of its officers were always on loan to governmental and international agencies, and of the need to make time for such routine tasks as answering mail, writing reports for government and private publications, and briefing politicians and others. Cadieux pointed out that the constant

135 LAC/PT/4/7 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 8 July 1960. 136 UOS/JGD/XII/D/34/Cohen – Cohen to Diefenbaker, undated [circa late June 1961]. 137 LAC/DEA/5372/10425-T-40/1 – “Royal Commission on Government Organization Project No. 20: Meetings with Senior Officials of the Department of External Affairs.”

231 expansion in the department’s activities and its practice of drawing up an annual establishment based on the previous year’s work were incompatible. By the time the establishment was complete it was already out of date.138

In a second meeting between Cohen and senior DEA officials in early July, Cadieux stated that any fair analysis of the department’s personnel policies had to take into account the size of the service, the need for it to reflect the country’s ethnic duality, and the regulations of the

Civil Service Commission. “In the context of this last point,” the minutes of the meeting read,

“Mr. Cadieux pointed out that it was difficult, if not impossible, to indulge in any degree of permanent specialization, since a person whose duties stayed unchanged received no promotion.”

The CSC, he added, was unsympathetic to the DEA’s view that an expert in disarmament, for example, had in three years become more proficient. All the commission cared about was whether his responsibilities had changed.139 While Cadieux’s comments were rather defensive, he clearly felt that the DEA needed to make its views known before Cohen’s investigation began.

Cadieux never reconciled himself to the necessity of having the DEA put under the microscope. As he told Tremblay shortly after the second meeting with Cohen, the latter wanted memos on this and memos on that, he wanted to visit missions, and he wanted to attend the morning meetings held in Norman Robertson’s office to see how foreign policy was made. “La vie est belle!” Cadieux observed sarcastically. While he claimed not to be particularly worried about Cohen’s study, he felt that it reflected the unpleasant atmosphere in Ottawa where, even though Green had recently recommended his nomination to the ILC, there was a lack of confidence between the government and the civil service.140 He was far blunter in a letter to

Tremblay in August in which he lamented how lonely it was in Ottawa: “Et avec Max Cohen qui

138 Ibid. 139 Ibid. 140 LAC/PT/4/8 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 8 July 1961.

232 fait enquête sur le Ministère . . . la situation est délicate. L’hostilité du gouvernement ne nous abandonne vraiment pas. Mais ce dernier coup est particulièrement dégueulasse!”141

As a result of the Glassco Commission, in the spring of 1962 Cadieux became responsible for all administrative matters in the DEA. As he later recalled, Robertson, who disliked administrative work and had doubts about the importance some in Ottawa attached to it, had personally given him the task of overseeing the reorganization of the department. To make room for Max Wershof, who was now back in Ottawa, Cadieux also gave up his legal duties. As he told Tremblay, “Pour aider NAR j’ai cédé le juridique. Batêche. Juste au moment où j’avais l’impression que j’allais dominer la matière, je pars encore dans une autre direction. . . . Je ne suis pas tant inquiet qu’un peu déconcerté et déçu. Parfois je me demande si je ne suis pas la bonne poire, prêt à faire tout ce dont les autres ne veulent pas.”142 In fact, Cadieux remained legal adviser when he returned from Geneva that summer. But he was also made chairman of the

DEA’s newly-formed Committee on Administration. While he was clearly not thrilled by the prospect of immersing himself in the subject, it was precisely his ability to range widely and to handle almost any work – whether political, legal, or administrative – that made him so valuable to both Robertson and the DEA.

The DEA’s mixed response, both before and after the formation of the Committee on

Administration, to the various reports and studies of the Glassco Commission in the early 1960s has been well covered by the department’s official historians and need not be re-examined here in detail.143 Nevertheless, it is helpful to review briefly those of its recommendations that the department (and Cadieux) most opposed. For example, an attractive suggestion in the first volume of the commission’s report that the independence of departments be strengthened vis-à- vis Treasury Board was made less appealing by the accompanying proposal that an

141 LAC/PT/4/8 - Cadieux to Tremblay, 18 August 1961. 142 LAC/PT/4/9 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 16 April 1961. 143 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 198-208.

233 interchangeable group of financial and personnel experts be created to serve throughout the bureaucracy. The idea was seen as a potential threat to the rotational system. Nor was the DEA willing to make anyone but an experienced FSO its Personnel Officer.144 The report’s second volume, while helpfully defending the continued existence of a Legal Division in the DEA separate from the Department of Justice, advanced the suggestion that the position of legal adviser be re-named “general counsel” and that it be made non-rotational. Since political factors impinged on international law, this idea and the notion that the Legal Division as a whole might be staffed by non-rotational experts were unwelcome in the DEA.145 The report’s third volume contained a highly critical study of the department’s information services.146 A draft of the paper in December 1961 had observed that its information mechanism was “improperly organized,”

“unprofessionally manned,” “under-nourished financially,” had “no fixed-long range objective aims,” and had “deplorable” relations with the press corps in Ottawa. As Cadieux’s angry comments in the margin of the study make clear, however, the DEA had never been given the money, the staff, or the political guidance to do a proper job in the information field.147

The DEA was also unhappy with Cohen’s own interim and final study, which appeared with the fourth volume of the Glassco Commission’s report in early 1963. Stressing that the department’s work had always exceeded the resources needed to complete it, Cohen argued that this state of affairs had led to insufficient specialization and, as a result, to amateurishness in policy and weakness in administration. He called for more money to allow for an “orbital” pattern of service whereby FSOs would spend their careers specializing in one particular area while moving back and forth between Ottawa and the field and for a special administrative class of officer. In addition, Cohen suggested overhauling Killers’ Row to strengthen its organization

144 Ibid., 199-200. 145 Ibid., 201-202. 146 Ibid., 202. 147 Cadieux marginalia LAC/MC/37/4 – G.H. Lash, “Department of External Affairs – Information Services,” December 1961.

234 and sense of direction. For example, he wanted the number of assistant under-secretaries increased to six, a second deputy under-secretary position created, and, so that he could focus all of his attention on international law, the legal adviser to supervise only one division: Legal.148

This last recommendation irked Cadieux, not least because he had felt targeted by the way it had originally been worded in the interim report. While Cohen willingly revised the offending paragraph, he expressed surprise to Robertson that it had been found objectionable: “. . . I had assumed that my good will and sympathetic approach to all Officers of the Department had been presumed from the very beginning.” As Cohen added, “Indeed the fact that I was prepared to submit my findings and recommendations to the Department, before the Royal Commission itself saw those findings officially, seems to me to speak for itself in the matter of my general desire to treat this whole exercise as a joint study rather than as a cold inquiry by an outsider.”149

But the latter is exactly how many in the DEA, including Cadieux, viewed the study. It did not help matters that, in his final version of it, Cohen repeated his unpopular suggestions about the

“orbital” pattern of service (though the period for a single specialization was reduced to ten years) and improved administration.150 As Cadieux observed to Norman Robertson in April 1963 about Cohen’s work, “There are several interesting ideas that warrant careful examination as well as some perfectly dreadful ones that deserve an early burial.”151 In summing up their analysis of the impact of the Glassco Commission on the DEA, John Hilliker and Donald Barry draw the following conclusion:

. . . the department’s problems had been analysed and some means put in place for dealing with the recommendations that had emerged. Action was just beginning, however, and the years to come would see frequent and time-consuming appraisals of the department’s work. The response to the Glassco Commission indicated that outside inquiry would not necessarily be regarded as a congenial experience and that challenges to the department’s special requirements, arising from its operations abroad, were likely

148 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 204-205. 149 LAC/ER/2/3 – Cohen to Robertson, 21 November 1961. 150 Hilliker an Barry, Coming of Age, 206-207. 151 LAC/DEA/5025/1086-H-1-40/1 – Cadieux to Robertson, 18 April 1963; Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 207.

235

to be resisted.152

This passage not only captures the DEA’s view of the Glassco Commission but also Cadieux’s.

While he was no stranger to administrative reform, his experience in the field dating from his days as Personnel Officer, the managerial revolution of the 1960s meant that he would have no choice but to devote an ever-increasing amount of his time to the problem.

A more serious problem for Cadieux in these years was national unity. While

Diefenbaker had won fifty of Quebec’s seventy-five seats in his landslide national election victory in 1958, this impressive result belied his true support in the province. The prairie prime minister neither spoke French nor understood Quebec. He owed his strength there to Premier

Maurice Duplessis’ electoral machine. As a result, the Tory caucus from Quebec consisted mainly of Union Nationale recruits. Diefenbaker also declined to appoint a Quebec lieutenant, as

Mackenzie King had done, and named only three French Canadians to his 1958 cabinet.153 When the Union Nationale lost the Quebec election of June 1960, Diefenbaker also lost the base of his support in the province. The situation alarmed Cadieux. As he wrote, “L’on persiste à nous traiter comme une minorité et non comme la minorité en nous accordant des satisfactions d’ordre purement nominal,” of which he included the nomination of francophones as both Speaker of the

Senate (Mark Robert Drouin) and Governor General (General Georges Vanier). As Cadieux correctly observed, “Notre influence réelle est faible et j’ai l’impression que les [canadiens français] commencent à regimber,” that is, to rebel. He worried that in the next election Quebec would vote Liberal while the Tories remained in power with a reduced majority from the rest of

Canada. “Si les conservateurs ne font pas attention,” Cadieux feared, “l’unité du pays peut être

152 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 208. 153 Robert Bothwell, Canada and Quebec: One Country, Two Histories, revised ed. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998), 101-101; Lawrence Leduc et al., Dynasties and Interludes: Past and Present in Canadian Electoral Politics (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2010), 207.

236 engagée.”154

Because national unity mattered more to Marcel Cadieux than any other issue, he did everything he could from within the federal government to strengthen it. For example, he was troubled by the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan of 1959. The scheme, as he told Robertson before it even came into effect, “should be supplemented in some fashion to ensure that there is some regard to the two major Canadian cultures in developing a government programme of scholarships.” He anticipated (correctly) that the Commonwealth initiative would be objectionable to French-Canadian taxpayers on the grounds that it was really only of interest to English Canada.155 By the summer of 1960 Cadieux was having some success in lobbying for his point of view: “Je ne désespère pas d’arriver à faire supplémenter le plan de bourses du

Commonwealth pour les autres pays, et intéresser en particulier les universités de langue française ici. Le Devoir fait une campagne vigoureuse. Et je pousse tant que je puis.” Indeed,

Robertson supported the idea and had already broached it with Howard Green. “Le problème,”

Cadieux observed, “reste toujours de trouver les sous.”156

Another problem was determining what form his project would take. In early August he suggested that a plan to provide scholarships as one-time gifts to the many French-speaking

African countries about to gain their independence from France be presented as technical assistance (to avoid criticism from Quebec that Ottawa was encroaching on provincial jurisdiction in education) and that the minister be invited to consider a broader scheme.157 About a week later Cadieux stressed that the draft memo to cabinet on the subject should emphasize the fact that Canada was one of the only western countries to which French-African states might turn, consider the idea of sending teachers trainers to Africa instead of awarding scholarships,

154 LAC/PT/4/7 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 8 July 1960. 155 LAC/MC/2/13 – Cadieux to Robertson, 21 April 1959. 156 LAC/PT/4/7 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 10 July 1960. 157 Cadieux marginalia on LAC/DEA/5258/8260-15-40/1 – Information division to Cadieux, 3 August 1960.

237 and suggest the possibility of fostering direct links between Canadian universities and African educational institutions. By mid-September Cadieux wanted a programme for French-speaking

Africa over period of years, one which bore reasonable proportion to the Commonwealth scheme.158 In October Cadieux wrote, “Il s’agit là de projets seulement mais il va falloir faire quelque chose pour calmer l’agitation grandissante au Québec concernant les plans du

Commonwealth.”159 When Robertson suggested that the $600,000 Cadieux sought for French- speaking Africa seemed like a large sum, the latter replied that African Commonwealth countries were already receiving $3,500,000 in aid from Canada. But after meeting with Green in early

November, Cadieux was forced to accept $300,000.160

More problems cropped up. The Finance department preferred scholarships to development assistance programs. From Paris, where he was heading the Canadian delegation to the general conference of UNESCO, Cadieux dug in his heels. Upon his return, he prevailed on

Wynne Plumptre, the assistant deputy minister of finance, to accept both scholarships and the provision of teachers and teacher-trainers for French-speaking Africa.161 Informing Tremblay in

February 1961 that the submission on the development assistance program had now been approved by all interested parties and that it was in the hands of Green, who he predicted would take it to cabinet any day, Cadieux remarked, “Je suis assez fier de mon coup, si l’opération réussit.”162 In the event, it did succeed. In April 1961 the Diefenbaker government authorized

$300,000 in educational assistance for French-speaking Africa. The sum was perhaps unimpressive but the principle was not: for the first time ever Canadian aid was targeting

158 Cadieux marginalia on LAC/DEA/5258/8260-15-40/1 – Information Division to Cadieux, 26 September 1960. 159 LAC/PT/4/7 – Cadieux to Paul and Gertrude Tremblay, 1 October 1960. 160 Cadieux and Robertson marginalia on LAC/DEA/5258/8260-15-40/1 – Information Division to Robertson, 19 October 1960; LAC/DEA/5258/8260-15-40/1 – Information Division to Robertson, 7 November 1960. 161 LAC/DEA/5258/8260-15-40/1 – Cadieux to Robertson, 12 December 1960; LAC/DEA/5258/8260-15-40/2 – Cadieux to A.F.W. Plumptre, 18 January 1961; LAC/DEA/5258/8260-15-40/2 – Cadieux to Plumptre, 24 January 1961; LAC/DEA/5258/8260-15-40/2 –Berlis to Plumptre, 7 February 1961; LAC/DEA/5258/8260-15-40/2 – Robertson to Green, 10 February 1961. 162 LAC/PT/4/8 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 17 February 1961.

238 francophone countries. An advisory committee, including representatives from Quebec, was set up under Cadieux’s chairmanship. While, as the historian Robin Gendron has shown, the program was plagued by early administrative problems, Cadieux sought to expand it to satisfy his restless compatriots in Quebec. He explained his rationale to the African and Middle Eastern

Division in 1962:

French-Canadians [sic] are going through a period of intense nationalism. In their present mood they are critical of the degree of influence that they have in national affairs and in particular in the field of external affairs. If a scheme of aid for African states should be developed in such a way as to provide an outlet to the French-Canadian interests in French language states, the results in terms of national unity might be quite substantial. This would be due to the fact that there is little prospect that French-Canadian aspirations are likely to be satisfied as quickly and as easily in other fields of interest to them; e.g., a national flag, repatriation of the constitution, bilingual cheques, the status of French in other provinces, etc.163

Green refused to consider increasing the program for French-speaking Africa until it was operating more effectively. Worse, he insisted that any expansion could not come at the expense of Canadian aid to other parts of the world, particularly the Commonwealth. When Green suggested that Congo and Morocco also be added to the list of countries drawing on the

$300,000, Cadieux reacted negatively. As he observed, “[The] UAR is also French speaking – if all these are added to those states which are now benefiting (?) the amount available for each will hardly be worth the cost of administration.”164 Cadieux’s sarcastic question mark following the word “benefiting” conveyed his frustration over the inadequate funds. Disappointed by Green’s attitude, he was forced to bide his time.

Fortunately, he was involved in other projects. To Cadieux, national unity had always depended on the willingness of French-Canadian students, particularly those from Quebec, to choose careers in the federal civil service. As we have seen, the DEA had historically been the most successful department in attracting francophones to Ottawa. But in early 1961 its recruitment pool seemed to be drying up. As Cadieux told Tremblay, the DEA’s most recent

163 LAC/DEA/5259/8260-15-40/4 – Cadieux to African and Middle Eastern Division, 3 January 1962. 164 Cadieux marginalia on LAC/DEA/5259/8260-15-40/4 – Green (in Geneva) to DEA, 18 March 1962.

239 annual competition had been a disappointment: the best students from Quebec had not written the entrance examination and those who had had been trained in the social sciences. Incredibly, not a single law student had applied to the DEA. Troubled, Cadieux asked, “S’agit-il d’un préjugé contre le fédéral, de meilleurs traitements offerts par l’entreprise privée, d’une chute de prestige du Ministère?” In a throwback to his days as Personnel Officer, he decided to meet with university authorities in Montreal to urge them to direct their brightest students to the DEA.165

Indeed, the problem of recruitment was so serious that Cadieux dusted off a manuscript on the

Canadian diplomat that he had written while posted to NATO in the early 1950s. Having revised and updated it, he planned to submit the work to Fides. His goal in publishing it was to draw much-needed attention to the DEA. As he told Tremblay, “Il faut entretenir constamment chez les étudiants l’idée d’Ottawa. D’autant plus,” he added in a reference to the forces unleashed by the so-called “Quiet Revolution” of the Lesage government, “qu’il y a au Québec un renouveau nationaliste voire séparatiste extrêmement curieux. Les grands points d’interrogation qui ont hanté nos années d’université sont posés de nouveau.” As Cadieux recognized, given the careers opening up in Quebec in the universities, in the provincial bureaucracy, and at Radio Canada, and given the Diefenbaker government’s attitude on the French-Canadian question, students did not want to come to Ottawa. While he himself had doubts about urging them to, he took a long- term view of the problem:

Je suis d’ailleurs un peu hésitant moi-même à les encourager à venir. Mais malgré tout, j’ai décidé de bouger. Je reste convaincu que l’avenir des [canadiens français] est au sein du Canada. Et je crois que l’épreuve que nous traversons est temporaire. Le PM ne nous comprend pas. Son parti se trompe. Nos ministres ne sont pas à la hauteur. Le moral des [canadiens français] à Ottawa comme celui du Ministère comme celui de l’administration est en baisse. Mais il y aura une réaction. Il faut penser à l’avenir.166

This passage captured Cadieux’s fundamental conviction about national unity. While the principle seemed at risk in the early 1960s, he knew that the federal government would

165 LAC/PT/4/8 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 17 February 1961. 166 LAC/PT/4/8 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 25 March 1961.

240 eventually react. Preparing for the future was crucial.

It was to this end that in 1962 Cadieux published his fourth book, Le diplomate canadien:

éléments d’une definition. As its title suggests, it was a comprehensive, if somewhat dry, study of the Canadian diplomat, including chapters on the origins of the DEA, on the nature of its work, on a mission abroad, on the writing of diplomatic dispatches, on postings, and on the issues of specialization, recruitment, and advancement. “Les Canadiens français peuvent jouer un rôle utile, unique, au sein de l’administration,” Cadieux insisted in a passage on the anglicizing tendencies of the civil service, “en restant fidèles à leur race.”167 As he had hoped, the 125-page book received widespread (and largely positive) attention in Quebec. In La Patrie, for example, the literary critic Roger Duhamel observed, “Son livre pondéré et clair contribuera à dissiper plusieurs illusions et à nous convaincre du rôle irremplaçable, séduisant et difficile exercé par nos agents à l’étranger.”168 In Le Devoir Jean Ethier Blais praised Le diplomate canadien’s author to the skies: “Il est peu d’hommes, dans la fonction publique, qui jouissent du prestige de

M. Marcel Cadieux; il y honore la nation canadienne-française. Il a choisi de l’y représenter au sein des affaires extérieures et il ne fait aucun doute qu’il y défend les intérêts les plus élevés des

Canadiens français avec intelligence et la dernière énergie.” A former member of the DEA, Blais grasped better than others Cadieux’s goal in writing the book: “La lumière que projette M.

Marcel Cadieux sur son métier est crue. Celle qu’il déverse sur les conditions physiques et psychologiques de ce métier pour des Canadiens français ne l’est pas moins. Quiconque après avoir lu ce livre prendra la décision capitale de devenir diplomate au Canada le fera les yeux ouverts; il ne saurait plus tard prétexter ignorance.”169 Indeed, Cadieux was widely praised for his honest treatment of the difficulties young French Canadians faced in anglophone Ottawa.

While focusing on his statements that francophones should not expect to spend most of their

167 Marcel Cadieux, Le diplomate canadien: Éléments d’une définition (Paris : Fides, 1962), 99. 168 Roger Duhamel, “Marcel Cadieux: Le Diplomate canadien,” La Patrie, 22 April 1962. 169 Jean Ethier-Blais, “‘Le diplomate canadien’ de Marcel Cadieux,” Le Devoir, 8 April 1962.

241 careers in French-language countries and that they should learn English as quickly as possible,

André Patry, an acquaintance and a professor of international law at Université Laval, concluded in Le Nouveau Journal, “Il semble, à la lecture du livre de M. Cadieux, que le Ministère prenne de plus en plus conscience du rôle que peuvent jouer nos compatriotes de langue française et qu’il soit disposé à reconnaître davantage leurs mérites particuliers.”170 While Le diplomate canadien succeeded in drawing public attention to the DEA, it had little immediate effect on declining French-Canadian recruitment: of the thirty-four officers who joined the department in

1962 and 1963, only three were francophone.171 As Cadieux had argued, however, it was important to take steps with an eye to the long-term future.

The political and social ferment in Quebec led Cadieux to tackle another issue of longstanding interest to him: bilingualism in the federal civil service. While committed to the goal, he had always refrained from pushing for it aggressively. When an unhappy francophone officer abroad opined that papers written in French should receive as wide a circulation in the

DEA as those written in English, Cadieux replied as follows: “Si tu veux affirmer un principe, tu peux toujours écrire en français. Si tu veux des lecteurs, il faut écrire en anglais. Je sais bien que dans un pays bilingue, chacun devrait pouvoir lire les deux langues. C’est une vieille histoire. Ne perdons pas notre temps à rabâcher les réponses que tu connais aussi bien que moi. Les institutions canadiennes ne sont pas encore parfaites et il faut s’en accommoder.”172 By 1962, however, there was strong pressure from Quebec for federal institutions to change. In an editorial in Le Devoir in January of that year André Laurendeau called for a royal commission on bilingualism and the participation of French Canadians in the civil service.173

While Diefenbaker opposed the idea, Cadieux, Clerk of the Privy Council Bob Bryce,

170 André Patry, “Ce qu’on attend d’un diplomate canadien,” Le Nouveau Journal, 28 April 1962. 171 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 187. 172 LAC/MC/3/2 – Cadieux to Jean-Louis Delisle, 8 January 1960. 173 André Laurendeau, Journal tenu pendant la Commission royale d’enquête sur le bilinguisme et le biculturalisme (Outremont: VLB Éditeur, 1990), 289.

242 and George F. Davidson, who would soon become director of the new Bureau of Government

Organization in the PCO, were giving serious thought behind the scenes to the whole problem of bilingualism. Recognizing that a solution to the issue would be neither quick nor easy but that an effort had to be made, in early December 1962 Cadieux proposed to Bryce the creation of a small interdepartmental committee of ministers, assisted by officials, to give the problem the attention it required.174 As Cadieux argued, it was essential for the government to take French-Canadian grievances seriously, for it to treat the civil service with respect, and for its ministers to take the lead in attracting French Canadians to Ottawa and retaining them. As for the civil service,

Cadieux felt that the CSC had to do much more to help young Quebeckers adjust to Ottawa, that senior federal officials needed to maintain contacts in Quebec and to participate in its social life, that the Personnel Officer or his assistant in each department should be a French Canadian so that the problem of recruitment could be addressed at the grassroots level, and that departments should offer both the facilities and incentives to encourage greater bilingualism. While Cadieux rejected quotas, he warned that the merit system was an ideal that threatened to break up

Confederation: “It is axiomatic that it cannot be left to operate in isolation from other considerations.”175 In arguing for his committee, one he insisted report to cabinet, be provided with a secretariat, and be composed of both English and French Canadians, Cadieux believed that it could be more effective than a royal commission:

I am concerned that a Royal Commission would stir up all sorts of trouble and might produce a report which could be good or bad, but might not have a lasting effect. What is important, I believe, is that as part of the machinery of government there should be a group of people at the political and at the official levels who make it their business to ensure on a continuing and effective basis that something is done about a problem which is bound to remain with us indefinitely.176

Given his skepticism about a royal commission on bilingualism’s long-term influence, Cadieux

174 LAC/DEA/10162/1-1-5-2/1 – Cadieux to R.B. Bryce, 6 December 1962. 175 LAC/DEA/10162/1-1-5-2/1 – Cadieux to Bryce, 10 December 1962. 176 LAC/DEA/10162/1-1-5-2/1 – Cadieux to Bryce, 10 December 1962. Note that this is not the same letter as the one cited above.

243 must have been disappointed when later that December Lester Pearson announced that, if elected prime minister, he would create one. But Cadieux did not let the news sap his enthusiasm. As a letter from him to Davidson in January 1963 makes clear, he was interested in such questions as the relationship between civil service entrance examinations and the educational system in

Quebec, the problem of translators and bilingual stenographers, and even the composition of

Canadian delegations to international conferences. On this last point, Cadieux called for both major ethnics groups to be represented, noting that a short survey would reveal that the present situation was nothing short of “shocking.”177

Cadieux remained a man ahead of his time. His persistence was rewarded when in

August 1963 the Pearson cabinet authorized the establishment of a continuing Interdepartmental

Committee on Bilingualism in the Federal Service (under the chairmanship of Davidson and including Cadieux) to advise the Cabinet Committee on Government Organization and

Bilingualism on an initial four-year program on the subject.178 While the Royal Commission on

Bilingualism and Biculturalism had been established the previous month and would prove undeniably influential, it is important to note that, a year and a half before it submitted its famous preliminary report, a largely forgotten interdepartmental committee was working to make the federal civil service more bilingual.179

While Cadieux tried to appease Quebec’s new nationalism by pushing for a development assistance program for French-speaking Africa, by attracting Quebec youth to the DEA, and by fostering greater bilingualism in Ottawa, some of his early responses to the Quiet Revolution

177 LAC/DEA/10162/1-1-5-2/1 – Cadieux to G.F. Davidson, 4 January 1963. 178 LAC/PCO/6254 – Cabinet conclusions, 3 August 1963. 179 As Max Yalden, a member of the DEA in this period and later Canada’s language commissioner, recalls, “With the appearance of the commission’s Preliminary Report in 1965, the linguistic fat was in the fire. The federal government had appointed the commissioners; now it had to decide what to do about their recommendations. We should not suppose, however, that it was totally inactive in earlier days. On the contrary, the cabinet had authorized in 1963 the formation of an interdepartmental committee of senior officials to report on measures designed to promote bilingualism in the public service.” See Maxwell Yalden, Transforming Rights: Reflections from the Front Lines (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 44-45. It should also be noted that Pearson’s cabinet had a much stronger collection of French Canadians than Diefenbaker’s.

244 were also defensive. Nowhere was this more apparent than in his reaction to the Lesage government’s announcement that it planned to re-open an office in Paris (as we have seen,

Duplessis had closed the previous one in the 1930s) under the direction of Charles Lussier, a lawyer with good contacts among provincial intellectuals and who since 1956 had been head of

La Maison des Étudiants Canadiens in the French capital. In February 1961 Cadieux informed

Tremblay that he was taking steps to “contain” the provincial operation. Recognizing that the twin issues of language and culture were driving Quebec’s renewed interest in France, he had

René Garneau, a friend and an information officer who had served with distinction at the

Canadian embassy in France, transferred from Brussels to Paris with the title of minister. As

Cadieux privately (and revealingly) remarked of Garneau’s enhanced status, “Ainsi il ne serait pas nécessaire de mobiliser l’ambassadeur chaque fois pour empêcher Lussier d’être la vedette.”180 To Garneau himself, Cadieux insisted that no mention be made of the fact that his new assignment was a response to Quebec’s appointment of an agent in Paris.181

The second step Cadieux took to limit the provincial operation was to try to prepare federal cultural agencies for the challenge of Quebec’s upcoming presence in France. He was certainly experienced in the cultural field. Since 1957 he had overseen the Information Division, where most of the admittedly limited cultural work in the DEA was concentrated. He was also a member of both the Board of Governors of the National Film Board and the Executive

Committee of the National Commission for UNESCO. While Cadieux was not a complex man, he was a sophisticated one. He loved history, art, and literature, especially French, of which he had an outstanding collection of Bibliothèque de la Pléiade editions. He was also deeply interested in the federal government’s role in fostering a national culture, one recommended by the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences in 1951 and

180 LAC/PT/4/8 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 17 February 1961. 181 LAC/MC/3/6 – Cadieux to René Garneau, 19 April 1961.

245 given tangible expression by the creation of the Canada Council for the Arts in 1957. It was a role Quebec, which looked to preserve its exclusive constitutional jurisdiction over educational matters, opposed.

Informing a colleague in 1960 that the DEA now had a cultural section within the

Information Division, Cadieux predicted that the department’s activities in this field would only grow in the future. While conceding that Ottawa was extremely cautious in the cultural sphere and that the DEA’s (deplorably miniscule) budget for such work would increase only slowly, he refused to be discouraged: “Au cours des dix dernières années, le progrès dans ce domaine a été considérable et je crois que dans les années à venir il sera encore beaucoup plus marqué.”182

Indeed, in another letter to the same colleague, Cadieux predicted a day when cultural work would have its own division in the DEA, one which would coordinate the international activities of the NFB, Radio Canada, the Canada Council, and, to a certain extent, the National Research

Council: “Evidemment, il faudra faire davantage et pour ma part je m’en réjouis parce que je considère qu’il est bien établi que les relations culturelles doivent s’intégrer à notre politique

étrangère et peuvent dans certains cas en constituer un instrument de première importance.”183

Cadieux also argued in early 1961 that Canadian cultural activities in foreign countries had developed as services or as responses to requests rather than as the result of a general policy. He pointed out that, since the DEA did not engage in cultural work for the sake of culture itself but rather to further the political aims of Canada’s foreign policy, it would be worthwhile to study

Canadian cultural work in both Britain and France. That the challenge from Quebec weighed heavily on Cadieux’s mind in making this recommendation is clear from the following excerpt from his letter to Father Georges-Henri Lévesque, the Vice-President of the Canada Council, promoting it:

182 LAC/MC/3/4 – Cadieux to Jean Bruchési, 24 August 1960. 183 LAC/MC/3/6 – Cadieux to Bruchési, 7 February 1961.

246

L’occasion de cette étude est fournie tout naturellement par l’ouverture d’un bureau de la Province de Québec à Paris et peut-être bientôt à Londres. Il va falloir déterminer dans les deux cas les frontières entre les opérations qui devraient être assumés par … [le] Québec et celles qui doivent revenir au gouvernement et aux agences fédérales. A cet égard, il serait utile d’examiner ce qui se fait déjà et d’étudier ce qu’il y aurait lieu de faire à l’avenir. … Le Conseil des Arts aurait donc avantage, vu le rôle accru [du] … Québec, à prendre l’initiative d’une étude sérieuse de la question. … Il est important que la Commission étudie ensemble l’éventail de nos relations avec les deux pays et s’éloigne de l’idée que les relations avec la France n’intéressent que Québec et celles avec l’Angleterre que les autres provinces.184

It is striking that, even before Quebec inaugurated its office in Paris, Cadieux recognized the potential for federal-provincial conflict there and the danger inherent in the notion that relations with France somehow only interested that province.

The official opening of the Maison du Québec in Paris in October 1961 must have made

Cadieux uneasy since the French government rolled out the red carpet for visiting premier Jean

Lesage, who was treated almost like a head of state, and for the large delegation, including eight cabinet ministers, accompanying him. There were glittering banquets and effusive toasts. At the

Elysée palace French President Charles de Gaulle welcomed the Quebeckers to France in historic terms. De Gaulle had visited Canada in April 1960 but, despite Cadieux’s suggestion that the occasion be used to play up the “traditional ties of France with Canada and Anglo-French solidarity within the country,” the DEA and Diefenbaker had treated it in international terms and declined to stress French Canadians’ special interest in France.185 Now, at the Elysée, de Gaulle declared, “Vous êtes le Québec! Vous êtes les Canadiens français! Il n’y a pas de temps écoulé qui ait pu effacer du cœur de notre peuple la nostalgie de ceux de ses enfants qu’il avait laissés là-bas voici tantôt deux cents ans . . . ‘Je me souviens!’ c’est la devise du Québec. En le voyant en votre personne, la France vous en dit autant.” The rapprochement between France and its

184 L.A.D. Stephens, “Study of Canadian Government Information Abroad 1942-1972: The Development of the Information, Cultural and Academic Divisions and their Policies,” March 1977. This report can be accessed electronically through the DFAIT digital library at http://dfait-aeci.canadiana.ca. 185 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 155.

247 former colony was underway.186

For the time being, however, Lussier was without official status in Paris. As Cadieux had explained in early 1961 to François Lacoste, France’s ambassador to Canada, provincial representatives in London were treated as consuls-general and granted certain consular privileges and immunities, including duty-free liquor and cigarettes and exemption from income tax.187

While Lacoste initially foresaw no difficulty in replicating such an arrangement in Paris, he learned from the Quai d’Orsay, where France’s Ministère des Affaires étrangères (MAE) was headquartered, that it was impossible under French law. Would the Canadian government object, he asked Cadieux, to Lussier being given normal diplomatic privileges and having his name inscribed on the Canadian embassy’s diplomatic list. “I told Mr. Lacoste,” Cadieux informed

Robertson, “that such an arrangement would not be compatible with the constitutional position here as it implied that the Provinces had status in international law and could maintain separate diplomatic representatives.”188 In taking this stand Cadieux was not trying to cause problems for

Quebec but rather to ensure that its presence abroad was legally valid. Since Lacoste had raised the possibility of France solving the issue by an ad hoc arrangement or by an amendment to their laws, Cadieux helped to draft a telex from the minister to Pierre Dupuy, Canada’s ambassador to

France, expressing the hope that the French could be convinced “to take [a] cooperative attitude and to be as forthcoming as possible in dealing with what may be for them an unprecedented situation.”189 But the problem was not resolved.

In the early spring of 1962, Jean Lesage phoned the DEA and asked to speak to

Robertson. Since the latter was away, the premier spoke to Cadieux, whom he had known when he served in the St. Laurent cabinet. Noting that his three “ambassadors” were with him in his

186 Alain Peyrefitte, C’était de Gaulle, vol. 3 (Paris: Editions de Fallois, 2000), 303-304. 187 LAC/DEA/3197/5175-40/1 – Cadieux to Robertson, 2 February 1961. 188 LAC/DEA/3197/5175-40/1 – Cadieux to Robertson, 16 February 1961. 189 LAC/DEA/3197/5175-40/1 – Green to Canadian embassy Paris, 24 April 1961.

248 office, Lesage expressed concern about their status. While his agent general in London, where

Quebec had just opened an office, was in a good position, the ones in Paris and in New York, where the province had been present since 1940, were not.190 At Lesage’s request, Cadieux received the trio in Ottawa. The result of their meeting was a recommendation to Green that, since Quebec-Ottawa relations on the issue of provincial representatives abroad had hitherto been excellent, and since the semi-consular status they were seeking seemed reasonable, the federal government should assist them in their quest.191 That said, Cadieux had not hesitated to raise with the Quebeckers the legal problems involved. As Lussier later recalled of his approach to the status question that day, “Comme monsieur Cadieux ne voulait la considérer que sous l’angle juridique, il s’est avéré difficile d’arriver à un règlement quelconque. Nous savions que sous l’angle juridique nous n’arriverions à rien et nous en avions prévenu monsieur Cadieux.”192

Despite Cadieux’s genuine desire to help, friction was developing between Ottawa and Quebec on the issue. There would be no solution to it for the foreseeable future.

In private, Cadieux regretted Quebec’s interest in developing its international presence, for example in New England, where there was a large but quickly assimilating French-speaking minority. As he argued to Claude Châtillon, the Canadian Consul in Boston, it made more sense for the province to focus on its fellow French Canadians in New Brunswick and Manitoba.

“Tandis que les Français aux [É]tats-Unis ne demande pas mieux que de s’assimiler,” he observed, “les groups canadiens-français dans les autres provinces du Canada ont droit à survivre et ne demandent pas mieux.” In Cadieux’s view, Quebec was making a mistake in looking abroad:

Je crains que la Province de Québec, qui a aussi ouvert des bureaux à Londres et à Paris et qui pense en ouvrir ailleurs, ne disperse ses efforts. Encore une fois je crains que nous

190 LAC/DEA/3197/5175-40/1 – Cadieux to Robertson, 26 March 1962. 191 LAC/DEA/3197/5175/40/1 – Robertson to Green, 4 April 1962. 192 Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BANQ)/Fonds Jean Chapdelaine (P776) /2001-01-006/1 – Charles A. Lussier to René Arthur, 31 May 1963.

249

cédions au prestige des missions quasi diplomatiques et que nous négligions les tâches substantielles et urgentes que nous pourrions faire dans le reste du pays. Avant d’ouvrir un bureau à Londres il aurait été bien préférable, à mon avis, qu’on ait ouvert un bureau à Toronto.193

It is significant that, in using the personal pronoun “nous,” Cadieux fully himself identified as a

Québécois. This would prove increasingly difficult in the years to come, when a new kind of nationalism gripped the province and sought international expression.

Life in Ottawa for civil servants was not easy in the early 1960s. The growing problems of the Diefenbaker government, which was running annual deficits as it tried to cope with high unemployment and an economic recession, made its relations with the senior civil service as poisonous as ever. In 1961 Cadieux observed that the Coyne Affair, a prolonged and highly embarrassing public spat between the prime minister and Minister of Finance Donald Fleming on the one hand and Bank of Canada Governor James Coyne on the other over fiscal and monetary policy, raised the problem of the relationship between the government and its officials.194 Nor had the DEA’s own situation improved much since 1957. While Cadieux noted that Norman

Robertson had done his best to reconcile the department and the government, by 1962 the under- secretary was admitting that he had failed. As his deputy saw it, he was hardly to blame: “En réalité, des incidents récents ont montré que le PM se méfie toujours du Ministère et qu’il nous cherche des querelles d’allemand. D’ailleurs le PM ne consulte jamais NAR, ne l’invite pas à sa résidence. Il l’ignore tout à fait. Il n’y a pas lieu d’espérer que la situation puisse changer maintenant.”195 As Cadieux had remarked of Diefenbaker to Tremblay, “Faut-il être bête de négliger l’occasion de prendre avis d’un des meilleurs commis qui soient.”196

In December 1962 Cadieux experienced a similar neglect. In what the DEA initially interpreted as a sign of improvement, the prime minister asked Cadieux and Jake Warren, an

193 LAC/MC/3/9 – Cadieux to C.C.-E. Châtillon, 9 December 1963. 194 LAC/PT/4/8 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 8 July 1961. 195 LAC/MC/3/7 – Cadieux, “Chronique scandaleuse,” [undated] 1962. 196 LAC/PT/4/7 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 8 July 1960.

250 assistant deputy minister in the Department of Trade and Commerce, to accompany him to

Nassau for his discussions with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who was scheduled to meet first with American President John F. Kennedy. On the flight south, however, Diefenbaker spoke to the press but ignored Cadieux and Warren. Once in Nassau, they were given no opportunity to brief the prime minister, who proceeded to have lunch with Kennedy and

Macmillan, both of whom loathed him.197 During a subsequent meeting with Macmillan,

Diefenbaker made Cadieux and Warren wait outside the room, a humiliating experience. Back in

Ottawa, Cadieux angrily told Green that he would never again allow himself to be used as mere window-dressing for the prime minister.198

What especially troubled Cadieux about the relationship between the DEA and the government was the latter’s increasing demands on the department without giving it the necessary resources to meet them. Between 1957 and 1962, the DEA’s total staff increased by 14 percent and the number of its officers rose from 383 to 448.199 To Cadieux, however, this was not enough. During the annual establishment review in 1960 he observed, “Comme chaque année, nous devons réduire nos demandes au minimum, à l’essentiel. Etc. La même vieille rengaine,” that is, the same old tune.200 The next year Cadieux lamented, “Les divisions sont débordées. . . . [L]es agents partent sans être remplacés. Le PM et le Ministre veulent que tout soit fait tout de suite. Et pour faciliter les choses, ils nous demandent des textes à la dernière minute quand ils auraient facilement pu prévoir ce dont ils ont besoin et nous donner une semaine d’avis. L’incroyable c’est que nos gens ne protestent pas et font le nécessaire.”201 Doing the essential became much harder in the summer of 1962 when, faced with a serious foreign exchange crisis, Diefenbaker announced a series of austerity measures, including a year-long

197 Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 170. 198 Confidential interview. 199 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 185. 200 LAC/PT/4/7 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 10 July 1960. 201 LAC/PT/4/8 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 17 February 1961.

251

$250 million cut to government spending. As Cadieux observed to Jules Léger, now Canadian ambassador to Italy, “Nous sommes dans une situation curieuse où le Gouvernement nous demande sans cesse davantage en nous coupant les vivres et en nous refusant les moyens nécessaires d’exécuter ses décisions. Le moral de la boutique en prend pour son grade, franchement je ne sais plus exactement où nous en sommes.”202 The problem of human resources in the DEA had bedevilled Cadieux since his days as Personnel Officer. It would continue to frustrate him in the years to come.

While Diefenbaker’s financial difficulties undermined his government, which was reduced to a minority in an election in June 1962, it was the issue of nuclear weapons that brought about its downfall.203 This was simply the climax of its increasingly controversial foreign policy in the early 1960s. While Diefenbaker admired the elderly Dwight D. Eisenhower, his dislike for Kennedy, who was young, charismatic, and everything the sixty-five-year-old prime minister was not, was intense. The feeling was mutual. The anglophile Diefenbaker also managed to alienate Britain with his campaign to prevent it from allegedly abandoning the

Commonwealth by trying to join the recently established European Economic Community

(EEC). As for Howard Green, his crusade at the UN for nuclear disarmament and his anti- colonialism irritated the United States and many of Canada’s NATO allies.

As early as July 1960 Cadieux had commented in private on the curious foreign policy of the Tories: “Ils pratiquent une drôle de politique à la fois sentimentale à l’égard du

Commonwealth et farouchement nationaliste à l’égard de nos alliés de l’OTAN et des EU,” that is, the United States.204 Present at the ministerial meeting of NATO in mid-December, Cadieux later captured the reaction of its members when Green took it upon himself to criticize their

202 LAC/MC/3/7 – Cadieux to Léger, 3 August 1962. 203 For the most recent scholarship on the Diefenbaker and the nuclear issue see Patricia I. McMahon, Essence of Indecision: Diefenbaker’s Nuclear Policy, 1957-1963 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009). 204 LAC/PT/4/7 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 8 July 1960.

252 attitude towards the UN and colonialism:

Ce fut comme si le vicaire avait raconté une histoire scabreuse au cours d’une réunion des dames de Saint Anne. Les ministres de Belgique, de Hollande, d’Italie, de France, du Royaume Uni ont pris des airs scandalisés tandis que les Américains se marraient à pleins tuyaux en suggérant que les alliés pouvaient enfin voir quels farfelus nous sommes devenus. Et tout le monde s’est mis à taper sur M. Green.

Refusing to be lectured on the subject of colonialism, British Foreign Secretary Lord Home reminded Green that his great grandfather, Lord Durham, had set Canada on the road to independence. Now, Home added, he wondered whether his ancestor had acted rightly. Noting that the irritation provoked by Green’s comment was widespread, Cadieux commented that he had never heard foreign ministers say such harsh things about Canada. While Green had been right to urge NATO’s members to make a greater effort to influence the UN’s new countries,

Cadieux saw that his anti-colonial expressions had undermined his case with Canada’s allies.205

It was Canadian nuclear policy that the allies, and especially the United States, disliked most. The Diefenbaker government had agreed to accept nuclear warheads for the BOMARC anti-aircraft system in North America and for Canadian ground and air forces under NATO in

Europe. Now it seemed prepared to renege on its commitments. The Canadian public favoured the acceptance of nuclear weapons, but Diefenbaker ignored the fact. His indecision was reinforced by conflicting advice from Green and Douglas Harkness. His vacillation persisted through the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. This left Diefenbaker exposed to discord inside the cabinet, and to public dissatisfaction, when Pearson’s Liberals announced they would honour Canada’s nuclear obligations. In February 1963 the government fell on a non-confidence motion in Parliament and was defeated in the subsequent general election on 8 April 1963. The Liberal Party formed a minority government on 22 April.

Diefenbaker’s defeat came as a relief to most senior officials, including Cadieux, who noted that the work of the civil service had been made almost impossible in this by the divisions in the

205 LAC/PT/4/8 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 7 January 1961.

253

Diefenbaker cabinet. The atmosphere of mistrust prevailing there was so great that officials were allegedly told not to talk to their colleagues in other departments. As a result, there was no central control and no communication among the government’s components.206

Change was coming to Ottawa and Cadieux stood to benefit from it. He had served at headquarters for nearly eight years, an unusually long time by any standards. While he would have preferred to spend at least part of this period abroad, especially after his health briefly deteriorated in 1961, he cast aside his personal preference, not to mention his wife’s, for the good of the service. His loyalty to the DEA was truly impressive. Indeed, in relatively quick succession in the early 1960s, Cadieux was offered the chance to become a full-time professor at the Université de Montréal, the head of the new political studies department at that institution, and the under-secretary of state. All of these offers he politely declined. As he wrote to Philippe

Garigue, the dean of social sciences in Montreal, “Vous savez sans doute que je suis au Ministère depuis bientôt vingt ans. Jusqu’à présent, la carrière m’a donné beaucoup de satisfaction et je ne saurais, en toute justice, songer à l’abandonner au moment où je n’ai aucune raison de croire que la tâche que je puis y accomplir est terminée.”207 The truth of the matter was that, for all the trials and tribulations of life in Ottawa, Cadieux loved his work. In the autumn of 1961 he was seated next to Fred Bild on a flight back from New York. Commenting to his junior colleague about how fulfilling their career was, Cadieux stressed that there was only one way to approach it: “Il faut épouser le ministère!”208 Perhaps the most enticing opportunity for Cadieux outside the

DEA came in 1962 when Bob Bryce suggested that, in order to facilitate the recruitment of

French Canadians to the federal administration, Cadieux be made president of the Civil Service

Commission. While this would have been a major promotion and an opportunity for him to make a difference in a field he was passionate about, Norman Robertson told Bryce that his deputy was

206 Confidential source. 207 LAC/MC/3/2 – Cadieux to Philippe Garigue, 1 February 1960. 208 Fred Bild, interview with the author, Toronto, 14 March 2014.

254 not interested in leaving the DEA. The under-secretary added, in a comment that Cadieux was aware of, that he planned to go abroad within the year and that he intended to recommend him as his successor.209 Through Howard Green, the Diefenbaker government intimated to Cadieux that he was their choice as well.210 Thus, when the Liberals regained power in April 1963, the deputy under-secretary was the heir apparent to head the DEA. He had been married to the department for over two decades. It was time for his fidelity to be rewarded.

209 LAC/MC/3/7 – Cadieux, “Chronique scandaleuse,” [undated] 1962. 210 Confidential source. See also LAC/MC/13/1 – Journal intime, 8 December 1972. As Cadieux declared in 1972, “. . . dans le passé, les conservateurs m’ont bien traité. J’étais leur homme pour remplacer N.A. Robertson.”

Chapter Four The Under-Secretary, the Minister, and the Department of External Affairs: 1963-1968

After enduring the chaos and the indecision of the last stages of the Diefenbaker government, Cadieux and most of the Department of External Affairs welcomed the election on

8 April 1963 of a Liberal one headed by Lester B. Pearson. The new prime minister, an experienced diplomat, could be counted on to repair Canada’s damaged relations with the United

States and Britain and, with an eye on Quebec, to build new ones with France. Pearson boldly promised “60 Days of Decision” once elected, but his government stumbled when Finance

Minister and nationalist Walter Gordon, assisted by experts from outside the civil service, tabled a disastrous first budget, one which included a controversial (and quickly withdrawn) 30 percent tax on foreign takeovers of Canadian firms. It was an omen that nothing would come easily for the Pearson government, which somehow managed to weather Gordon’s maiden budget, a string of crises and scandals, and two raucous minority parliaments while leaving a legacy that included a national flag, the Canada Pension Plan, Medicare, and the impetus for official bilingualism.1 If domestic policy proved to be an unexpected source of strength for the Pearson government, foreign policy proved to be an unforeseen source of weakness, or at least disappointment. Instead of dramatic departures, it offered steady if predictable leadership. But in the 1960s the status quo became harder to defend as Canadian peacekeepers were ejected from

Egypt, the shadow of the Vietnam War darkened Canadian-American relations, and defence policy began to inspire doubts among some of its oldest supporters. The one great departure in this period, closer relations with France, turned into a nightmare in centennial year 1967 when

French President Charles de Gaulle shouted the separatist rallying cry “Vive le Québec libre!” in

Montreal. As under-secretary, Cadieux had a front-row seat for all of it.

1 John English, “Pearson,” Policy Options 24, No. 6 (June-July 2003): 63-69.

255 256

To no one’s surprise, Pearson tapped Paul Martin to be his Secretary of State for External

Affairs (SSEA). A Liberal Party warhorse first elected to the House of Commons in 1935 for the

Windsor-based riding of Essex East, and consistently re-elected by its voters in every election he contested after that, Martin was hard-working and supremely ambitious. In 1948, after just three years in cabinet, he ran for the Liberal leadership, which he had no chance of winning, only to withdraw at the last minute at the behest of Mackenzie King. As minister of health and welfare between 1946 and 1957, Martin earned a reputation as a social reformer by introducing a system of federal health grants and then national hospital insurance. In 1958, with the Liberals in opposition for the first time in his career, he ran for the leadership of the party again only to lose decisively to Pearson, who was basking in the afterglow of his Nobel Peace Prize. Over the next five years Martin would bide his time, ably assailing the Diefenbaker government in parliament.

His appointment as SSEA in 1963 seemed natural. A lawyer with training in international law, he had attended the University of Toronto, Harvard, Cambridge, and the School of International

Studies in Geneva. His interest and involvement in foreign affairs, were nourished by wide reading and dated back to the bygone days of the League of Nations, to which he had been a delegate in the 1930s. In the 1950s Martin had headed Canadian delegations to its successor, the

UN. He believed strongly in that organization and multilateralism, in NATO and collective security, and in good relations with the United States. He had known Pearson for almost forty years, longer than any other duo in the cabinet.2

Much as Martin shared the ideals of Pearsonian diplomacy, his job was not easy, what with Canada’s most famous diplomat looking over his shoulder as prime minister. Between 1963 and 1968 the former and the current SSEA would co-exist uneasily, each believing that he could do the other’s work better. Martin envied Pearson’s success; Pearson disapproved of Martin’s

2 As a student at the University of Toronto in the 1920s, Martin had met Pearson, then a lecturer in history, several times. See Paul Martin, A Very Public Life: Far From Home (Ottawa: Deneau, 1983), 44.

257 ambition. None of this was a secret. As Cadieux observed, Martin suffered from a “complexe terrible” vis-à-vis Pearson.3 In early 1965, for example, Pearson raised with the DEA the idea of countries providing the UN with forces to be used for peacekeeping, the practicality of which was increasingly being questioned in the 1960s. Not to be outdone, Martin got in touch with a journalist to say that he, Martin, had thought of getting thirty or so nations together to organize peacekeeping forces, but outside of the UN. “Il est évident que le Ministre veut s’élancer au[-

]devant du Premier [m]inistre pour lui damer le pion,” Cadieux noted privately. Adding that

Pearson had no intention of consulting the DEA or its minister about an upcoming speech on foreign policy in New York, and that he was raising strange objections to a list of diplomatic appointments, Cadieux wondered if Pearson were perhaps trying to pressure Martin into changing portfolios. “Ce qui est certain,” Cadieux noted, “[c]’est que depuis des années nous avons l’impression au Ministère que M. Pearson ne tient pas M. Martin en très grand estime.”

The abuse of the DEA and of governemnt resources for his personal publicity did nothing to endear Martin to Pearson or to his fellow ministers, many of whom, Cadieux sensed, had formed an unfavourably clear impression of their most senior colleague: “Ils voient sans doute en lui un politicien assez intéressé, soucieux de son avancement personnel et en réalité assez peu pré- occupé [sic] de servir l’intérêt général et d’avancer telle ou telle cause pour le bien du pays.”4

Already in March 1965 Cadieux was hearing rumours that the DEA would be getting a new minister. There was some truth to the gossip. In late August Pearson confided in Walter Gordon that Martin was “doing a very poor job at External[,] where morale is low.” In Gordon’s words,

“He said he had to get Paul out and wanted to know if I would take it on.”5 While nothing came of the idea, a misguided one considering Gordon’s poor performance in his own portfolio and his

3 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 7 June 1968. 4 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journl intime, 3 March 1965. 5 LAC/Fonds Walter L. Gordon (WLG)/16/11 – “Note of Conversation with Mike Re the Election Decision,” 12 September 1965.

258 well-known anti-Americanism, it had not taken the prime minister long to express dissatisfaction with his SSEA.

If Pearson would have liked Martin to leave the East Block, the feeling was mutual.

Martin coveted the prime minister’s office, which was just down the hall from his. Critics sneered that there was a reason he wrote “p.m.” at the bottom of every memorandum that passed his desk. In fairness, Pearson, who found the job of presiding over two fractious minority governments draining, had a habit of giving Martin and other would-be successors, including

Mitchell Sharp, Gordon’s replacement as minister of finance after the November 1965 election, and Paul Hellyer, the minister of defence, hope that he was about to retire. As W. Walton

Butterworth, the American ambassador to Canada, reported in early 1967, based on information given to him by Cadieux, Pearson’s indecision about his political future was problematic:

As you know, during the past year as things have gone well or badly, Mike Pearson’s attachment to the office of Prime Minister has risen and fallen with the tide of events and temperament, though Maryon’s [his wife’s] has remained consistently disenchanted. This, as Marcel Cadieux and others have frankly told me, is one of the problems with which they have to cope, and when Mike is in low spirits and talks about chucking in his hand, the Martins, Sharps and Hellyers are encouraged to act to widen their popular support; then Mike reacts and says, “Who the hell do they think is Prime Minister anyway?” and takes some counteraction in their field without consulting them.6

Nowhere was such “counteraction” more likely than in the field Pearson knew best: foreign affairs. What Cadieux later termed the “concurrence malsaine,” that is, the unhealthy rivalry, between Pearson and Martin would greatly complicate the running of the DEA and the life of its under-secretary.7

I – The Job of Under-Secretary

By 1964 Robertson had been under-secretary for five difficult years. He was exhausted, demoralized, and, above all, sick. When he began coughing up blood, it was clear that something was very wrong with him. In January 1964 a cancer diagnosis necessitated the removal of a lung,

6 NARA/RG59/1966-1975/Lot file/2/POL 7 – W. Walton Butterworth to Rufus Z. Smith, 10 February 1967. 7 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 7 June 1968.

259 an operation which initially landed him in the Intensive Care Unit. The question of his succession was now pressing. When Pearson offered his old friend the job of chief Canadian negotiator to the Kennedy Round of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) in

Geneva, Robertson, from his sick bed, sent his wife, Jetty, to inform the prime minister that he would only accept if Cadieux were made under-secretary.8 This dramatic show of loyalty testified not only to Robertson’s faith in the man whom he had chosen to be his deputy in 1960 but also to his conviction that, given the complex and rapidly evolving situation in Quebec and the related focus on bilingualism in the federal civil service, a French Canadian must succeed him.

That Robertson was forced to lobby for Cadieux makes clear that his appointment was neither inevitable nor automatic. As Cadieux confided in a colleague posted to Italy, “Il y a eu en effet, comme vous dites, concurrence et pendant quelques jours il a été fortement question que je sois nommé moi-même à Rome.”9 While recent scholarship suggests that Escott Reid and

George Ignatieff, both of whom were senior to Cadieux, were also candidates for the top job, they could not have been very serious ones.10 Reid, while bright and imaginative, was prone to flights of diplomatic fancy, could be emotionally unstable, had served abroad since 1952, and was no longer working for the DEA but for the World Bank in Washington. While affable,

Ignatieff, the Canadian permanent representative to NATO, was of average intelligence, insecure, and known to insist that his name grace every communication his subordinates sent to

Ottawa.11 As Cadieux himself later confirmed, his strongest competition for the job of under- secretary was neither Reid nor Ignatieff but Ed Ritchie, his companion on Killers’ Row since

1959. But Robertson, through Jetty, pushed for Cadieux, leading Pearson to promise to do

8 Granatstein, A Man of Influence, 362; LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 23 March 1964. 9 LAC/MC/7/5 – Cadieux to Georges Charpentier, 24 June 1964. 10 Greg Donaghy, Grit, 195-196. 11 The comments on Ignatieff are derived from Peter Towe, interview with the author, Ottawa, 24 July 2012.

260

“whatever Norman wants.” While Martin would later take credit for the appointment, he hesitated at the time, prompting Jetty to remind him of Pearson’s pledge.12 The minister was fortunate that his prospective deputy was unaware of his reservations. As Cadieux remarked in the late 1970s of his association with his minister, “J’espère que nos relations n’ont pas été aussi mauvaises qu’elles auraient pu l’être si les hésitations et les appréhensions de Monsieur Martin à mon sujet m’avaient alors été connues.”13

While Cadieux’s appointment seems to have been all but confirmed by mid-February

1964, the high-profile nominations of former Minister of Justice Lionel Chevrier as High

Commissioner to the United Kingdom and of Jules Léger as ambassador to France had made it politically unwise for the government to name yet another French Canadian to a senior post so soon. As a result, Cadieux remained the DEA’s interim under-secretary until 7 May 1964, the date he finally became its permanent one, a promotion which brought with it an annual salary of

$27,000, making him as well paid as Clerk of the Privy Council R.G. Robertson and Deputy

Minister of Finance R.B. Bryce.14

Letters of congratulations from colleagues past and present filled his mailbox. “It is a promotion that you abundantly merit,” Douglas LePan wrote generously from Queen’s

University, “because of your long and conspicuous service to the Department, and because of the qualities of intelligence, sympathy and imagination that your friends know so well.” With characteristic humility Cadieux replied, “I am the hero of the play only because worthier and more brilliant actors than I withdrew from the scene.”15 His appointment thrilled many (but not all) French Canadians in the DEA. One of them, Gilles Mathieu, observed from Accra,

“J’éprouve, comme tous les autres collègues de langue française, une grande fierté de vous voir

12 Granatstein, A Man of Influence, 362-63. 13 LAC/HBR/27/12 – “Oral history interview of Marcel Cadieux for Norman Robertson project by Ambassador A.E. Blanchette,” 11 November 1977. 14 “Senior civil servants given salary increases,” The Globe and Mail, 15 January 1966, 3. 15 LAC/MC/7/6 – D.V. Lepan to Cadieux, 14 May 1964; LAC/MC/7/6 – Cadieux to Lepan, 20 May 1964.

261 accéder à ce haut poste.”16 The politicians also chimed in. In a communiqué that was otherwise

(typically) critical of the government, John Diefenbaker praised Cadieux’s nomination. “I might not have been among those who were considered for this post,” Cadieux thanked the Tory leader,

“if you and your colleagues had not approved my appointment a few years ago as Deputy Under-

Secretary.”17 Finally, the prime minister sent his congratulations. “I do so with all the more pleasure,” Pearson told Cadieux, “because you are an old friend and colleague in the Dept. and it is good to see one who has worked his way up through the ranks reach the top responsibility.”18

While Cadieux and Pearson were former colleagues, they were hardly “old friends.” Ever since

1948, when Pearson had left the civil service for politics, the two had drifted apart. Had it not been for the astute lobbying of Robertson, Pearson might not have chosen Cadieux as under- secretary. As the prime minister told Escott Reid several months later, flattering his ego, “I am sorry I could not appoint you to succeed N.A.R. but you had no accent in your name.”19 Neither did Cadieux of course, but Pearson’s meaning seems clear: his choice of a French Canadian to head the DEA in 1964 represented a grudging acknowledgement of the imperatives of bilingualism.

The appointment certainly made headlines in Quebec. “Remaniement dans la fonction publique: Marcel Cadieux devient sous-secretaire d’Etat aux affaires extérieures,” announced Le

Devoir on its front page. A similar story in La Presse included a flattering professional photo of

Cadieux striking a pensive pose.20 Premier Jean Lesage telegraphed the new under-secretary his

“félicitations les plus enthousiastes et les plus chaleureses” while opposition leader Daniel

Johnson sent his “meilleurs voeux de succès” by letter. As Johnson, an old classmate, reminded

Cadieux, “Depuis notre temps d’université, où vous m’aviez impressionné par votre sérieux et

16 LAC/MC/7/5 – Gilles Mathieu to Cadieux, 15 May 1964. 17 LAC/MC/7/5 – Cadieux to J.G. Diefenbaker, 25 May 1964. 18 LAC/MC/3/12 – Pearson to Cadieux, 10 May 1964. 19 LAC/ER/35/31 – “L.B. Pearson,” 27 August 1964. 20 “Remaniement dans la fonction publique,” Le Devoir, 9 May 1964, 1; “Importantes nominations à Ottawa : Marcel Cadieux devient sous-secrétaire d’Etat aux affaires extérieures,” 21.

262 votre esprit de travail, je n’ai jamais douté que vous atteindriez les plus hauts échelons.”21 For the second time in the history of the DEA, a francophone had reached the top of its greasy pole.

While Cadieux had kept his French accent, the English language had long ceased to intimidate him. One day, as he was dictating in French to his secretary, Pauline Sabourin, he was interrupted by a telephone call, which he took in English. When he returned to his dictation, he unconsciously finished the job in English, leaving a bemused Sabourin holding a document written flawlessly in both Canada’s official languages.22 Was there any better proof of Cadieux’s perfect bilingualism?

While Cadieux’s bilingual credentials to be under-secretary were impeccable, he was far from a stereotypical diplomat: “If there is anyone less likely to use a quill pen or to have the striped-pants syndrome,” wrote one journalist in a rare story on the usually faceless official, “it is

Marcel Cadieux,” who was described as “a friendly but pugnacious-looking man.” Based on his appearance, Cadieux was “almost the antithesis of his scholarly-looking, contemplative, predecessor, Norman Robertson.” The reporter added, “You feel as though you had run into a small cyclone of energy and words and decisiveness, when you meet the 49-year[-]old deputy minister of Canada’s foreign service and that is what his colleagues are finding.”23

The new under-secretary also had an undiplomatic streak that was part of what one colleague vividly referred to as his “fulminating personality.”24 One recalls how Cadieux liked to make a point by raising his voice and banging his fist on his desk. “He actually said what he thought,” recalled another associate, “forcefully, in funny metaphorical language[,] like a stream of sparks.”25 Sometimes, when upsetting messages arrived from abroad, he wrote so hard in the margins of these documents that his annotations went right through the originals onto the

21 LAC/MC/7/6 – Jean Lesage to Cadieux, 11 May 1964; LAC/MC/7/5 – Daniel Johnson to Cadieux, 8 June 1964. 22 Paul Sabourin, interview with the author, Ottawa, 12 March 2013; Stephen L. Abrahams, interview with the author, telephone, 5 March 2013. 23 John Walker, “Marcel Cadieux – Canada’s under-secretary of state,” Ottawa Citizen, 5 June 1964. 24 Bothwell and Granatstein, Pirouette, 16. 25 Bothwell, “Marcel Cadieux,” 212.

263 copies.26 During the most serious period of the Canada-Quebec-France drama, an irate Cadieux was constantly telephoning a key senior colleague, who recalled thinking that the under-secretary was about to have a heart attack.27 When angry, Cadieux was a force to be reckoned with.

Shortly after becoming Canadian ambassador in Havana, Léon Mayrand began sending him dispatches urging Canada to mediate between Cuba and the United States, a hare-brained idea given that both sides were just two years removed from the Cuban Missile Crisis and that thousands of Soviets troops, disguised as tourists, were still stationed on the island. Incensed,

Cadieux phoned Tom Hammond, the desk officer for Cuba in the Latin American Division, demanding to know what Mayrand was doing. Clearly, Cadieux stated amidst a torrent of invective, the ambassador wanted Canada “to pull Castro’s chestnuts from the fire.” The under- secretary insisted that Mayrand, that “son of a bitch,” be recalled. While the poor ambassador ultimately kept his job, Cadieux ensured he was sent a stern reprimand.28

Cadieux had a distinctive habit, which was accentuated when he was irate, of tugging on his collar as if it were a noose and of loudly clearing his throat. Subordinates speculated on the mysterious cause of this practice. Was it the time he had spent cooped up in the icy Canadian embassy in early post-war Brussels? Was it a disease that had followed him home from

Vietnam? Was it asthma? More likely it was diabetes, with its potential throat problems and high blood pressure. As Cadieux wrote Paul Tremblay during one particularly trying period of his tenure as under-secretary, “Les diabétiques doivent avoir une vie calme! Dans les circonstances actuelles, je me sens capable de concurrencer les usines de Tirlemont,” a reference to the famous

Belgian sugar company.29 Whatever the reason, the sight of Cadieux pulling on his collar and coughing as he prepared to unleash a stream of invective in both French and English could be

26 Max Yalden, interview with the author, Ottawa, 30 October 2012. 27 Confidential interview. 28 Bothwell, “Marcel Cadieux,” 212; John Graham, interview with the author, Ottawa, 19 March 2013. 29 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 8 March 1968.

264 terrifying indeed. Yet there were two Marcel Cadieux: the man of the volcanic personality and the more thoughtful diplomat with the first-rate mind. While the first was often quick to appear, the second always reasserted himself to provide the government with sound advice.

The same went for Cadieux’s relations with people. As the historian Robert Bothwell writes, “The volcanic personality subsided just as quickly as it erupted, and many diplomats had occasion to pasture on its gentle slopes.”30 Those who were so fortunate discovered a boss who was unfailingly loyal, totally unpretentious (he liked to poke fun at those he called the “Tout-

Paris d’Ottawa”), and wickedly funny. “He could launch [into] a diatribe against one of his favourite bêtes noires,” recalled colleague Arthur Andrew, “that would leave a listener paralysed with laughter and never once crack a smile himself.”31 In a speech as under-secretary to new recruits on security and the dangers of life abroad, Cadieux recounted how, as a junior officer himself, he had been warned about the beautiful women the Soviet Union recruited to seduce westerners. “That was twenty years ago,” Cadieux announced with a straight face, “I’m still hoping.”32 In 1964 the Territorial Sea and Fishing Zone Act unilaterally established a twelve- mile fisheries zone off Canada’s coast and provided enabling legislation to enclose other areas by drawing straight baselines across them.33 The Americans refused to accept, however, that Canada could close off such bodies of water as the Bay of Fundy, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Queen

Charlotte Sound, and Dixon Entrance. Recognizing that they had a case, Cadieux compared the legal defence of the proposed Canadian action to a jockstrap that only covered one testicle.34

When Thomas Delworth, the desk officer for Vietnam in this period, asked Pauline Sabourin whether Cadieux was as funny in French as he was in English, she replied, “Much funnier.”35

30 Bothwell, “Marcel Cadieux,” 212. 31 Andrew, The Rise and Fall of a Middle Power, 19. 32 Stephen L. Abrahams, interview with the author, telephone, 5 March 2013. 33 L.S. Parsons, Management of Marine Fisheries in Canada (Ottawa: National Research Council of Canada and Department of Fisheries and Oceans, 1993), 227. 34 Paul Lapointe, interview with the author, 12 May 2013, telephone. 35 Thomas Delworth, interview with the author, Ottawa, 2 August 2012.

265

Yet beneath the explosions and the magnificent sense of humour was a man of conviction, a fierce anti-communist, a proud civil servant, and a passionate French-Canadian federalist. When

Cadieux felt that his most cherished principles were under attack, he did not hesitate to stand up to his political masters.

It is hard to imagine an under-secretary approaching his position with more respect than

Cadieux. As he studied the photographs of his predecessors which adorned the antechamber of his spacious new corner office, number 263, whose elegant, if drafty, wood windows looked east to the Chateau Laurier and south to Wellington street, he was struck by the remarkable qualities of “compétence,” “dignité,” “d’énergie,” and “dévouement” shown by the previous leaders of the

DEA. “Mes prédécesseurs ont été des animateurs de grande classe,” Cadieux observed reverentially. As he added, “Ils ont créé un certain esprit, un répertoire de valeurs qui tiennent à l’essence même du rôle du Ministère dans l’administration.”36 The heir of such giants as O.D.

Skelton and Norman Robertson, Cadieux knew well the weight of expectations that now rested on his shoulders.

The seriousness with which he took his role as under-secretary was apparent in the prolonged thought he gave to it. In his view, the most challenging but important part of the job was to be the direct link between the DEA and its minister, with whom he tried to meet every morning. “Ces réunions avec le ministre,” Cadieux noted, “comportent une sorte de marchandage et de négociation continuels entre l’administration et le Gouvernement.”37 In an article for the International Journal on the work of the under-secretary, he expanded on this key insight:

Il est naturel, pour le Ministre, de tenir compte des nécessités de sa circonscription électorale, de son parti, du gouvernement, des intérêts et l’Etat, il est donc aussi naturel pour le fonctionnaire de penser aux nécessités administratives, à la continuité, à la

36 Cadieux, “La Tâche du Sous-Secrétaire d’Etat aux Affaires extérieures,” International Journal 22, No. 3 (Summer 1967): 512. 37 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 23 March 1964.

266

cohésion des intérêts de l’Etat. Les deux ont donc un rôle à jouer en tenant compte des intérêts respectifs qu’ils représentent et ils doivent chercher, au cours d’un dialogue qui n’est pas toujours facile, un équilibre qui n’a rien de permanent ni de général.

The job of under-secretary thus contained, in Cadieux’s words, an “élément politique, une dimension extra-administrative.” As he noted matter-of-factly, “Il n’y a pas là de quoi s’étonner.” After all, foreign policy had to reflect the general policy of the governing party. It was up to the minister and to his deputy to agree on what was possible and what was not, and to act accordingly. An overly dynamic minister, Cadieux warned, would drain the resources of the

DEA. On the other hand, left to its own devices, the DEA risked seeing its policy stagnate. It was not surprising, then, that what was needed most between SSEA and USSEA was balance: “Si un

équilibre valable peut être établi et maintenu, la coopération entre les deux sera profitable au

Gouvernement dans la réalisation de ses desseins et au Ministère dans son souci de s’organiser et de s’équiper de façon à être à la hauteur des tâches qui lui sont dévolues pour servir le pays.”38

It was up to the under-secretary, Cadieux felt, to see Canadian foreign policy whole, to consider its place within larger global currents, and, when necessary, to recommend change. Yet the decision to forsake old policies for new ones was not to be taken lightly. “Au milieu des pressions publiques favorable aux changements,” Cadieux remarked of the DEA head, “il doit savoir distinguer entre ce qui est fondamental et ce qui l’est moins, entre les avantages à long terme et les avantages immédiats.” As he added, “Tout en ne perdant jamais de vue l’intérêt national, il doit éviter l’excès de nationalisme ou d’idéalisme qui ne peuvent rehausser notre prestige international.”39 These considerations (and others) entered into Cadieux’s thinking daily, making his job arguably one of the most stimulating but also one of the most demanding in the civil service.

38 Cadieux, “La Tâche du Sous-Secrétaire,” 513-14. 39 Ibid., 514.

267

There was a less glamorous side to the work of under-secretary: ensuring intradepartmental coordination, no easy feat in a headquarters divided between the cramped but well-located East Block and a handful of other buildings in downtown Ottawa. Documents flowed upward in the hierarchical department and Cadieux was the channel for everything its twenty-five (in 1964) geographic and functional divisions sent to the minister. As he told his parents shortly after becoming interim under-secretary, the job was like an assembly line: “Il y a bien du travail ici. Surtout quand le Parlement est en session. Les papiers entrent sans arrêt. C’est une vraie usine.”40 Yet his work was more complex than the industrial model suggests. Before writing “MC” at the end of a memorandum addressed to the minister, he not only had to ensure that the advice it contained was sound but also that it was consistent with that which was coming from elsewhere in the DEA. As Cadieux soon discovered, the only way to exercise such control was to be practically always at his desk. Otherwise, documents would either fail to reach the minister or the DEA would fragment into self-contained departments.41 Put another way, like a general observing his army from atop a hill, Cadieux had to oversee the operations of his entire department in order to lead it.

While ensuring that the policy of the DEA was coherent was a crucial part of an under- secretary’s job, it was not always an easy one, given the multiplicity of views on a given issue.

Take, for example, the case of sanctions against the unrecognized southern African state of

Rhodesia, whose predominantly white government, in an effort to keep its black majority down, had unilaterally declared its independence from the United Kingdom in November 1965. As

Cadieux pointed out, while the African and Middle Eastern Division had naturally been the first in the DEA to study the question, its United Nations, Economic, Legal, and of course

Commonwealth Divisions had all taken a position on the issue as well. So too had Canadian

40 LAC/MC/3/13 – Cadieux to Roméo and Berthe Cadieux, 4 February 1964. 41 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 23 March 1964.

268 missions abroad. “Compte tenu de ces éléments divers,” Cadieux recalled of his role in this complex policymaking process, “je devais m’assurer que des recommandations cohérentes et adéquates soient soumises aux ministres de façon à permettre à notre pays de passer à l’action.”42

Since the machinery of the DEA did not allow for the “automatic reconciliation” of the opposing views of different divisions, Cadieux told a former colleague, the under-secretary was sometimes called to “emulate Solomon.”43

Of course, the DEA was not the only department to take an interest in foreign policy. “En fait, de nos jours,” Cadieux remarked of a trend that has only become more pronounced,

“presque tous les Ministères sont touchés à divers degrés par les événements internationaux, ou doivent jouer un rôle lorsqu’il s’agit de déterminer l’attitude du Canada dans ce domaine.”44

Nevertheless, as the architects of Canada’s policy towards the world, it fell to the DEA and to its under-secretary to coordinate it. For example, since Canadian participation in continental defence, NATO, peacekeeping, and military aid was governed by foreign policy considerations, the DEA and the Department of National Defence (DND) had to be in close touch. Strong links also had to exist between the DEA and the Department of Trade and Commerce, whose economic programs abroad had to be in keeping with Canada’s larger international objectives.

The same went for the relationship between the DEA and the Department of Immigration and so forth. Put simply, constant and often prolonged consultation both within the department and outside of it was a fact of life for Cadieux, who knew that the wheels of bureaucracy ground slowly.

Administration was also an unavoidable part of the work. Ever since the five-volume report of the Glassco Commission in 1962-63, there had been a growing emphasis on applying private-sector management techniques to government. Increasingly, under-secretaries were

42 Cadieux, “La Tâche du Sous-Secrétaire,“ 517. 43 LAC/DEA/10244/1-1-14/1 – Cadieux to John W. Holmes, 28 September 1966. 44 Cadieux, “La Tâche du Sous-Secrétaire,“ 514.

269 expected to introduce the wonders of modern administrative science into their department. As

Cadieux told John Holmes, they were now rated for “efficiency,” that classic watchword of business. “In this field,” Cadieux explained, “they have to cope with problems involved in collective bargaining and in planning, programming and budgetary questions.” They even had to consider how much of their work could be done by computers, a new development in the 1960s.

“This sounds crazy,” Cadieux remarked, “but unless they are willing to tangle with these contraptions they are disqualified before the game begins.”45

The word “contraptions” captures Cadieux’s deep scepticism about the management reforms sweeping the civil service in this period. That said, he was not against making improvements. After all, as the authors of the official history of the DEA conclude in their comprehensive chapter on its administrative changes between 1963 and 1968, “…the department was well on the way to the most thoroughgoing alteration there had been in the way it conducted its business since the reforms introduced when Arnold Heeney was under-secretary between

1949 and 1952.”46 In late 1969, as Cadieux neared the end of his own tenure in that position,

John Carson, the private-sector recruited president of the Public Service Commission, praised him for his crucial role in transforming the administration of the department for the better.47 Yet

Cadieux learned in these years what his mentor had grasped from the start: that to devote oneself to “la grande diplomatie” and “la haute politique,” one could not become bogged down in administration. What made a ministry of foreign affairs great, Robertson had always understood, was not the quality of its administration but rather the quality of its advice.48 As Cadieux pointedly informed a senior member of the Treasury Board secretariat in this period, administration had to remain a secondary priority in the DEA. He felt the same about the civil

45 LAC/DEA/10244/1-1-14/1 – Cadieux to Holmes, 28 September 1966. 46 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 316. 47 LAC/MC/12/11 – Journal intime, 28 August 1969. 48 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 8 March 1968.

270 service as a whole. The idea that the essence of government was administration, an insidious view spread by the control agencies, disturbed Cadieux. “En somme, ce qu’on veut ou ce qu’on menace de nous faire avaler,” he observed, “c’est que l’accessoire doit passer avant le principal.”49 Having entered and progressed in the civil service during the age of the mandarins, he feared seeing it become the age of the administrators.

The one exception to Cadieux’s dislike for administration was personnel work. As a former Personnel Officer in the DEA, he took a direct interest in managing its human resources, particularly its most prized asset, Foreign Service Officers (FSOs). As Cadieux noted in mid-

1967, the DEA was made up of only two thousand Canadian employees. Of these, 435 (soon 500 with recruitment) were FSOs while another 140 were External Affairs Officers (EAOs), that is, experts in either administrative, consular, or information work. The first thing that struck

Cadieux about these numbers was how inadequate they were to the needs of the DEA.

Paradoxically, he also noted how big they were compared to the tiny outfit of about forty-five officers he had joined in 1941. Back then, he recalled with some nostalgia, everyone had known each other and decisions regarding postings and promotions had been rooted in a personal knowledge of such factors as the competence, limits, attitudes, and familial obligations of the individual in question. Officers had been colleagues in the truest sense of the word. A decade later Cadieux reminisced about how the DEA had gotten by with twelve new recruits a year. By the 1960s this intimacy had been lost forever. Over fifty new FSOs entered the DEA in 1966 and an equivalent number was expected in 1967. “Cet été,” wrote Cadieux, “nous en arriverons au point ou environ un cinquième de tous les agents n’auront appartenu au cadre du Ministère que pendant une année ou moins.”50

49 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 14 March 1968. 50 Cadieux, “La Tâche du Sous-Secrétaire,“ 524.

271

As Cadieux recognized, the growth of the DEA was transforming the relationship between the under-secretary and his ever-expanding department: “La croissance du Ministère ne permet plus au Sous-Secrétaire de jouer le rôle du père encourageant ou réprimandant selon le cas les membres dispersés de sa famille. Les relations vont inévitablement devenir plus impersonnelles, plus méthodiques et plus organisées.” The recent decision of the government to allow civil servants to bargain collectively, Cadieux noted, would only accentuate this dynamic.

Back in 1941, he stressed, every officer could aspire to be either under-secretary of the DEA or head of one of its three most important missions abroad. By the 1960s, however, there were too many officers vying for too few top positions, even though the total number of those positions had greatly increased. For example, whereas the DEA had operated about fifteen foreign posts in

1941, and forty-five in 1951, by 1967 it oversaw ninety. Clearly, opportunities for advancement existed, but fewer of them were in close and familiar places like the United States and Western

Europe than they were in faraway spots like Latin America, Africa, and Asia. As under- secretary, Cadieux attached great importance to the fulfilment officers derived from his department: “J’ose espérer,” he wrote hopefully, “que nous pourrons maintenir une ambiance dans laquelle les agents continueront de voir le Ministère comme un groupe homogène leur permettant, au fur et à mesure de leurs progrès, de jouer un rôle de plus important comme membres d’une équipe et non comme employés anonymes d’une vaste et rigide entreprise dans laquelle les dirigeants s’affronteraient aux travailleurs.”51

While Cadieux was right that the size of the DEA now prevented its under-secretary from playing a parental role to his subordinates, there was one key exception to the rule: French

Canadians. Numbering just 84 out of 395 FSOs in early 1965, or about 21 percent, they were still few enough that he could know them personally and keep tabs on them.52 On one occasion, for

51 Ibid., 525. 52 For the number of francophones see LAC/PT/7/58 – APO to Tremblay, 29 May 1970.

272 example, he wrote directly to the Canadian ambassador to Turkey to share with him his impressions of a francophone officer to be posted to Ankara, one who required “fairly delicate handling.” While the individual in question was capable, Cadieux observed, he was also rather immature, impatient, and nationalistic in his conviction that, unless Quebeckers like himself got preferential treatment, they would forsake Ottawa. Yet Cadieux’s intention in contacting the ambassador had not been to criticize his newest employee but simply to help him:

…my purpose is really to ask your assistance in retaining this young man in our Service. I believe that he has potential and that in the end a little restlessness for a man of his age is not a disturbing sign. It will be well worth your while, however, to keep an eye on him, to supervise his work fairly closely and to give him an occasional word of encouragement when this is warranted.53

Of course, when French-Canadian officers disappointed Cadieux, he told them so directly. Take, for instance, the case of Joseph François Xavier-Houde, a forty-one-year-old diplomat from

Quebec City whom he had recalled from Uruguay to serve as his special adviser. But when

Houde, who was married with seven children, failed to leap at the opportunity, Cadieux voiced his displeasure: “Je lui ai expliqué que s’il tenait à avoir une carrière purement décorative, rien ne serait plus facile que de lui trouver un bon petit poste pépère [cushy] au Ministère pour commencer et qu’il finirait par se réveiller dans un poste secondaire à l’étranger.”54 In September

1965 Houde was appointed ambassador to Peru. There was also Michel Dupuy, the son of retired

Canadian ambassador Pierre Dupuy. While Cadieux respected the talent of Dupuy fils, who was that rare francophone in the DEA proficient in economics, he resented that, much like Dupuy père, he preferred life in Europe to service at headquarters. He wanted Dupuy to serve in Ottawa and so one day he lectured him on the importance of obedience, driving his point home with an evocative image: “Quand le général ordonne au troufion [grunt] d’aller nettoyer les chiottes

53 LAC/MC/3/13 – Cadieux to B.M. Williams, 15 February 1964. 54 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 9 July 1964.

273

[toilets], le troufion n’a qu’une chose à faire: aller pelleter la merde.” As Dupuy recalled in his memoirs, never had he expected to hear such language from an under-secretary.55

Yet Cadieux felt that he had to be cruel in order to be kind. Since his days as Personnel

Officer he had taken an intense, some would say obsessive, interest in the fate of his fellow

French Canadians in the DEA, whom he was determined to see prosper. Indeed, now that he was under-secretary in Ottawa and that the Quiet Revolution was in full swing in Quebec, it was imperative that federal francophones make something of themselves. Moreover, for every harsh word that Cadieux had for his French-Canadian officers, he also had an encouraging one. For instance, when Claude Châtillon, the Consul General in Boston, failed to receive a promotion in these years, Cadieux wrote to express his sadness that he had been overlooked: “Je n’écris pas pour excuser le Ministère, nous faisons ce que nous pouvons, mais pour te dire de tenir bon. …

Je compte sur toi pour continuer à travailler ferme et je suis confiant que tu auras au sein de notre boutique les satisfactions professionnelles et autres auxquelles tu as droit.”56 Shortly after André

Couvrette, whom, one recalls, Cadieux had admonished at their first meeting some years ago for being from wealthy Outremont, arrived on posting to Nigeria in early 1965, he received a letter from his boss, an excerpt of which read as follows:

Mon cher André, Vous êtes maintenant arrivés et installés. C’est un moment difficile. Au début, dans un pays tropical, les impressions sont déconcertantes. J’espère que dans votre cas elles n’auront pas été trop négatives. Je me permets de vous rappeler, d’après mon expérience au Vietnam, que certaines choses qui nous choquent au début finissent par ne plus nous inquiéter du tout. J’espère qu’il en sera de même pour vous dans votre nouveau poste. Je ne m’attends pas à ce que vous me donniez maintenant un compte rendu de vos opérations et de vos prouesses mais je veux tout simplement vous signaler que je garde en mémoire ce que je vous ai dit lors de notre dernière conversation. Je tiens à vous dire l’estime que j’ai à votre endroit et à vous réitérer mes meilleurs vœux de succès dans vos nouvelles fonctions.57

55 Michel Dupuy, Diplomate de père en fils (Montreal: Carte Blanche, 2012), 432. 56 LAC/MC/4/3 – Cadieux to C.C.-E. Châtillon, 25 February 1965. 57 LAC/MC/4/3 – Cadieux to André Couvrette, 25 February 1965.

274

These kind words not only captured Cadieux’s interest in his French-Canadian officers but also his deep concern for them. Given the demands of his office, he had been under no obligation to write this letter but he had done it all the same.

Nor was the personal attention Cadieux gave to his officers limited to French Canadians.

Despite the size of the DEA, he had a unique talent for making its members, especially the senior ones, feel understood and valued. As Robert Bothwell notes, “He took an interest in his staff’s families, and his correspondence is full of advice and appreciation.”58 This interest could take the form of his complimenting a Canadian ambassador on his son’s scholarly achievements in

French, or sending congratulations to the parents of his deputy under-secretary on their fiftieth wedding anniversary, or, as the following passage demonstrates, wishing a recently married

Head of Mission well in his new assignment:

I suppose that by now or very soon you will both have returned to Belgrade. In many ways, I think that this is a very appropriate post for you to begin your life together. I confess that my views on Yugoslavia have largely been influenced by Rebecca West’s book [Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia (1941)] and for this reason I have visions of both of you spending week-ends on the island of Hrab [Rab] or inspecting Mestrovic’s sculptures at Dubrovnic. I also have visions of excursions to the Byzantine monasteries in the Ochrid [Ohrid] area. … I can assure you that very often I wish myself that I were honeymooning in some remote country like Yugoslavia. I do not begrudge you the chance. You have worked well and hard in these particular vineyards and I think you should make the most of the occasion you now have for a little chance of pace and in occupation.59

When Cadieux travelled abroad he never failed upon returning to Ottawa to thank the heads of post in the countries he had visited and to commend them for their work. “It is seldom that we have opportunities to pass bouquets,” he wrote to Saul Rae, the Permanent Representative to the

European Office of the UN in Geneva, “but this is one that I am passing on to you with pride and great pleasure.”60 Sometimes Cadieux extended this courtesy to junior officers. For example, after returning from a ministerial visit to Japan, he wrote to Fred Bild, who, recall, had been with

58 Bothwell, “Marcel Cadieux,” 213. 59 LAC/MC/4/12 – Cadieux to Williams, 5 May 1969. 60 LAC/MC/4/2 – Cadieux to S.F. Rae, 14 June 1965.

275 him at the UN three years before, to praise him and his colleagues and to say that the minister had been pleased with a speech that had been prepared for him. “I know that you had something to do with that,” Cadieux kindly told Bild.61 Finally, when officers left headquarters for abroad,

Cadieux made sure they knew they were missed, as he did with Ross Campbell in 1964:

We have a saying in French[,] “loin des yeux, loin du coeur[,]” which most certainly does not apply in your case. We miss your wise counsel, your inexhaustible energy, your dry humour every day of the week. If it were not that we think that you will enjoy your present assignment and that you will be able to return to us later, refreshed in mind and body, a constant stream of memoranda with urgent tags would go to the Minister recommending your re-assignment here. … You are the proof, which I am afraid does not apply in every case, that successful headquarters men can also thrive abroad. … All of us in Ottawa have had many occasions to be grateful to you for your loyalty to the Department. I am glad that your letter gives me this opportunity of assuring you that we will not soon forget the contribution you have made and are still making to our team.62

It is indicative of just how much Campbell, who was not inclined to be sentimental, was touched by this letter that he called it “one of the most encouraging, heart-warming messages that it has ever been my privilege to receive.”63 In short, Cadieux cared deeply about his officers, who knew it and respected him all the more.

It was partly because Cadieux identified so strongly with his fellow FSOs that he took such a dim view of non-career appointments to the DEA, ones he successfully strove to limit between 1964 and 1970. While he was not totally opposed to such nominations, he knew that they demoralized the service. After all, there was something patently unfair about making an outsider an ambassador when an officer had spent years, if not decades, preparing for the same opportunity. Moreover, while some non-career appointees to the DEA were distinguished, others were not. Soon after becoming interim under-secretary Cadieux became convinced that, given the outsiders in the Canadian U.S. consulates and the non-career Heads of Mission in such places as Athens, Lisbon, London, Madrid, and Stockholm, the limit had been reached. What he truly resented, however, was when politicians appointed unwanted mandarins in other departments to

61 LAC/MC/3/11 – Cadieux to M.F. Bild, 8 September 1964. 62 LAC/MC/3/11 – Cadieux to Ross Campbell, 18 November 1964. 63 LAC/MC/3/11 – Campbell to Cadieux, 30 December 1964.

276 the DEA. Thus, when Pearson tried to foist one such person on the service, Cadieux resisted, making the following point to Gordon Robertson, the Clerk of the Privy Council and a former member of the DEA:

Pour la bonne bouche, j’ai ajouté que nous n’étions pas en principe opposés à la nomination de personnes compétentes. … Seulement, il m’est impossible d’aller à Montréal ou ailleurs au Canada français et d’inviter les jeunes à venir faire carrière chez nous si le Ministère doit servir de dépotoir pour l’administration fédérale. Il me semble important que le Gouvernement fasse son idée. Ou bien notre Ministère va continuer à avoir un certain prestige … ou alors nous allons laisser les politiciens continuer à prostituer cette maison et nous courons à un échec certain. C’est un ou c’est l’autre. Il n’est pas possible de faire les deux.64

The vigour with which Cadieux expressed himself, as shown by his use of such words as

“dépotoir,” “prostituer,” and “échec certain,” captured his opposition to non-career appointments that did not enhance the prestige of the DEA. That said, he also had a sense of humour about such matters. When one senior military official nearing retirement broached with him the idea of becoming an ambassador in some comfortable country, perhaps in the Caribbean, he replied that the general would get his embassy when he, Cadieux, got his regiment.65 Put simply, the rewards of service in the DEA were mainly reserved for its career officers.

The upshot of all this was that staff, career or not, had to be worthy of the DEA. When, for example, Cadieux learned that an otherwise promising new recruit who had been appointed to the department but had not yet formally joined it was making partisan speeches on television, he informed Personnel Division. “If he intends to have a career in the Foreign Service,” Cadieux observed, “it is not very wise for a young man to intervene in this fashion a few months before he joins the Civil Service.”66 When, on another occasion, rumours reached him about the personal life of a Canadian ambassador who, estranged but not divorced from his wife, was living with another woman at the official residence, Cadieux sought an explanation directly from

64 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 25 March 1964. 65 André Couvrette, interview with the author, Ottawa, 26 July 2012; François and René Cadieux, interview with the author, Montreal, 22 May 2012. According to René, Cadieux had asked for a “cruiser” rather than a regiment. 66 LAC/MC/4/5 – Cadieux, Memorandum for Personnel Operations Division, 14 June 1966.

277 the colleague in question.67 Similarly, when he discovered that a non-career Consul General in the United States was allegedly a drunkard, he summoned James H. (Si) Taylor of Personnel

Division to his office and ordered him and a security officer to board a plane for the given

American city and, in a truly unenviable task, to investigate whether the charge was well- founded (it was). As Taylor recalled, “This was the sort of thing that Marcel attacked with ferocity.”68

Whether it was liaising with the minister, administering the department, or watching over its scattered personnel, being under-secretary of the DEA was a hard job. To help cope with its pressures in these years, Cadieux did two things: he bought a cottage in the Gatineau and he kept a private diary. His decision to purchase a cabin on Lac Vert, about ninety kilometers north of

Ottawa, near Lac-Saint-Marie, proved inspired. “Avec le travail que je fais, les pressions que je dois subir,” Cadieux explained to his frugal parents in late 1964, “il n’est pas mauvais que j’aie un endroit où je puisse aller me reposer en fin de semaine.”69 Prior to this, he and his family had vacationed on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, in the historic resort district of Saint-Patrice,

Rivière-du-Loup, where Sir John A. Macdonald and Louis St. Laurent had owned summer residences, but since the site was a six-hour drive from Ottawa, they had frequently been separated. In Lac Vert things were different. There the family could spend every weekend together from Easter until almost Christmas. Of course, it had to contend with mosquitoes in the summer and with the local population. As Cadieux amusingly told Paul Tremblay, “Les gens du

Lac Ste-Marie sont convaincus que les citadins ont été créés pour être exploités et permettre aux

‘habitants’ de la région de survivre durant l’hiver.”70 Nevertheless, Cadieux was at peace in his country refuge. In the early years it had no electricity, no hot water, and nothing but a wood

67 Out of consideration for the ambassador’s family, I have chosen not to identify him by citing the relevant archival source. 68 James H. Taylor, interview with author, Ottawa, 3 December 2012. 69 LAC/MC/5/13 – Cadieux to Roméo and Berthe Cadieux, 2 November 1964. 70 LAC/MC/5/11 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 29 April 1971.

278 stove to cook with, a rusticity he loved. Wearing boots and garters, which he maintained were the only accessory that kept his socks up, Cadieux would busy himself painting the cabin, clearing the land, and chopping wood. He also hunted and fished, though not with much success.

Despite equipping himself with the best rod money could buy, the only fish he usually caught was the bait he put on his hook. Little did he care. Out on the water, far from the East Block and its incessant memos, telegrams, and problems, the under-secretary was free. The only reminder of work at Lac Vert was a telephone specially installed in his cabin by Bell so that the government could reach him in the event of an emergency. In sum, while Ottawa was complicated, Lac Vert was blissfully simple, an Arcadian retreat.71

The second way Cadieux handled work-related pressure between 1964 and 1970 was to keep a journal intime. As we have seen, he had started such a diary in 1951 only to abandon it after a few months. In March 1964, however, he returned to it and, this time, stuck with it. It is easy to see why. Though remarkably outspoken, even Marcel Cadieux was required to observe certain proprieties – in short, to be a “civil” servant. In his private journal, by contrast, there were no such rules. In its pages he could praise, censure, and lampoon the politicians at will. He could give vent to his anger and to his frustrations, and he could celebrate his triumphs. He could express his refreshingly unvarnished views on the great Canadian foreign policy issues of the day and fantasize about giving the government advice he knew it was in no position to accept. Above all, however, Cadieux used his journal intime to let off steam. That, together with his colourful personality, explains why it is written with such verve and is so entertaining. As Pauline

Sabourin, to whom he dictated it, recalls, “He would fly like a bat out of hell speed wise.”

Always a full sentence behind her boss, despite being an experienced typist, she frequently had to ask him to slow down. When she missed something, she would raise her hand, prompting

Cadieux to repeat the last two words in a multitude of them. It is a testament to how much he

71 François and René Cadieux, interview with the author, Skype, 30 December 2012.

279 trusted Sabourin that he made her privy to his innermost thoughts. She took the compliment seriously and trained herself to forget what she wrote for him. Nor did she ever discuss it. She might have typed the diary, affixing “PS” after “M. Cadieux” at the top right corner of every entry, but it was not hers.72 Many of its pages were marked “PERSONNEL ET SECRET” in capital letters and all of them were kept hidden in a filing cabinet. Clearly, discretion was of the essence. As Cadieux knew, if his political masters were to discover the existence of the journal intime, the bond of trust between him and them risked being broken. It was for this reason that

Norman Robertson never kept a diary. As he had told Jules Léger, almost invariably diaries led authors to want to make the part they play conform to the narrative they concoct, thereby in this case affecting the judgment of the under-secretary in his main advisory role.73

For all Cadieux admired Robertson, however, he ignored his views on the inadvisability of keeping a diary. Historians (and this biographer) are fortunate that he did because his journal intime is one of the great diaries in Canadian political history. It is an invaluable window on the governments of both Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, on the DEA and the civil service, and on the life of an under-secretary in Ottawa and then of an ambassador in Washington. It also represents that rare example of a transplanted Québécois commenting candidly on the anglophpones in his midst, a reversal of the usual situation. While Cadieux’s journal intime is diverse and wide-ranging in scope, three great problems dominate its pages for the years its author was under-secretary: Paul Martin, the Canada-Quebec-France triangle, and the relationship between the DEA and the Trudeau government.

II – The Minister

Relations with Martin, the Secretary of State for External Affairs, were a constant source of frustration for Cadieux between 1964 and 1968. This was regrettable since, as even he

72 Pauline Saborin, interview with the author, Ottawa, 9 October 2013. 73 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 8 March 1968.

280 conceded, Martin had many good qualities, chief among them intelligence, experience, and charm. Moreover, he was broadminded and took advice well. After debating with officials at length once, he declared, “Well boys, you haven’t convinced me, but you’ve surrounded me.”74

There was also the fact that the Ottawa-born Martin was of French descent on his mother’s side.

In truth, his French, marred by a strong English accent, was poor. “Parfois laborieux” was how

Cadieux (generously) assessed it. Nevertheless, to his credit, the minister always spoke to his deputy in his mother tongue, despite the fact that he would have been far more comfortable conversing in English. It would be wrong to assume, however, that Cadieux viewed “Monsieur

Martin” as an anglophone. “Il a les astuces, les préjugés, la façon de voir les choses d’un Latin,”

Cadieux recalled of his boss, “et mon idée de sa personnalité totale, n’est pas du tout celle d’un

Anglo-Saxon.”75 Finally, as Martin’s biographer, Greg Donaghy, rightly points out, his subject and Cadieux “shared a fundamentally similar worldview”: “They were both Catholics and strong anti-communists, deeply committed to Western liberal values and the US-led alliances that protected them.”76 What could go wrong?

As it turned out, a lot. By virtue of their respective professions, the two men inhabited vastly different worlds. “A true but unusual product of postwar External,” observed Andrew of

Cadieux, “he strove constantly to maintain professional standards and to perform that miracle of combining obedience to political direction without compromising professional integrity.”77 In short, while Cadieux was the quintessential civil servant, a purist who sought to remain untainted by politics, Martin was the classic politician, a political animal whose thinking was wholly dominated by politics. Cadieux held politicians to a very high standard and Martin fell well short of it. While both men were professionals, Cadieux would be consistently disappointed by the

74 LAC/Library of Parliament (LOP)/2574/7 – Interview of Arthur Menzies by Tom Earle, Library of Parliament Oral History Project, June-July 1994. 75 LAC/HBR/27/12 – “Oral history interview of Marcel Cadieux,” 11 November 1977. 76 Donaghy, Grit, 197. 77 Andrew, The Rise and Fall of a Middle Power, 18.

281 type of professional politician that Martin was. This factor, more than any other, explained their uneasy relationship.

Put simply, Martin was a difficult man to work with. While he was an exceptional grassroots politician, one who had earned the loyalty of his constituents with three decades of handshakes and favours, the inordinate amount of time that he spent in his riding frustrated both colleagues and subordinates. “What the hell’s he doing in Windsor?” an irritated Pearson demanded to know from Duncan Edmonds, Martin’s youthful executive assistant, upon learning that his foreign minister was not in Ottawa but eight hundred kilometres southwest down

Highway 401. As Edmonds recalled of his boss, “He was always in the damn constituency, which was solid as a rock.”78 Indeed, in the 1962, 1963, and 1965 federal elections, Martin essentially tripled the vote total of his closest rival. Yet Windsor was always on his mind. One year into his tenure as SSEA in the Pearson government, he reportedly remarked to a member of his staff, “I had no idea this portfolio would interfere so much with my constituency work.”79 Of course, Martin’s officials had no idea that his constituency work would interfere so much with his portfolio. Even when Martin was at his desk in the East Block, it was not easy to get his attention. The civil servant who ventured into his office was forced to compete with his favourite accessory, the telephone. Often, if it were not some needy constituent ringing him up, it was

Martin himself doing the calling. While his attachment to his riding was in some ways admirable, in others it was not. As Cadieux noted in his diary, the DEA had all sorts of trouble preventing its monthly bulletin from being full of photos of Martin and from being widely distributed, free of course, in Essex East. Early on Martin had also wanted to appoint Don

Emerson, his long-time aide, Consul General (in Detroit of all places), but Cadieux rightly

78 Duncan Edmonds, interview with the author, Ottawa, 7 May 2013. 79 NARA/RG59/1957-1966/Lot file 66D482/3/POL 15 – Memorandum of conversation between G.S. Murray and Charles A. Kiselyak, 7 April 1964.

282 objected on the grounds that the minister would be accused of patronage by the public and would lose all authority vis-à-vis his colleagues when opposing political nominations to the DEA.80

More seriously, in mid-1964 Martin informed Cadieux that the list of potential architects supplied by the Department of Public Works to design the new headquarters planned for the

DEA on Sussex Street was incomplete. Cadieux had the list expanded, but Martin was not satisfied. As he made clear, he could not agree to the contract being awarded to a firm from

Montreal when he represented an anglophone riding in Ontario. Once again, Cadieux had the list revised but Martin was still unhappy. Finally, Martin stopped beating around the bush and told his deputy that there were architects in his riding who were perfectly capable of undertaking the work concerned. Cadieux angrily wrote, “J’ai fini par comprendre – il s’agit d’une odieuse, d’une dégoutante, d’une merdeuse affaire de patronage.”81 While Dongaghy dismisses Cadieux’s reaction as “adolescent self-righteousness,” he merely notes that his subject was fighting with ministers over the awarding of the contract.82 Consider the whole story. When Cadieux, at

Martin’s request, personally spoke to Lucien Lalonde, the deputy minister of Public Works, about the contract, the latter did not hold back. Apparently, Martin had promised Quebec senator

Louis-Philippe Gélinas the awarding of the contract only to reverse himself. Now Ontario

Senator John Connolly, the Leader of the Government in the Senate, wanted to propose his own candidate. To complicate matters, Montreal architect Ernest Cormier wished to be considered for the job. As Lalonde told Cadieux, because there were few Canadian architectural firms that could handle such a large project, it would be unwise to hire a small and inexperienced company.

Moreover, if Martin succeeded in naming an architect from Windsor, it was likely that there would be a scandal in parliament. “Il est en effet inouï,” agreed Cadieux, “que les seuls architectes qui puissent être compétents pour entreprendre les dessins d’un ministère des affaires

80 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 3 March 1965; LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 25 March 1964. 81 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 2 July 1964. 82 Donaghy, Grit, 197.

283 extérieures se trouvent précisément dans le comté du Ministre des Affaires extérieures.” To complete the picture, Lalonde told Cadieux that the firm from Windsor which Martin favoured was actually a branch of an American company from Detroit which the federal government had dealt with before and with disastrous results. While Martin planned to meet with the minister of

Public Works, Jean-Paul Deschatelets, and wanted Cadieux and Lalonde to be present, the under- secretary had other ideas: “Je ne vois pas en quoi je devrais me mêler de cette affaire et j’ai bien l’intention d’indiquer bien clairement au Ministre qu’il peut faire lui-même ce genre de sale cuisine.”83 Put simply, the issue was not that Martin was feuding with other ministers over the awarding of a contract – that, after all, was a “dog-bites-man” story – but rather that he seemed to have no qualms about dragging his deputy into that fight.

While Martin’s political concerns began in his Windsor riding, they certainly did not end there. He had not become a successful politician by accident. Although in some ways more open to change than both Cadieux and Pearson, Martin was cautious to a fault. He preferred compromise over confrontation, he saw various shades of grey instead of right and wrong, and he studiously avoided giving offence to anyone. While these practices ensured that he made few mistakes, they also meant that he was congenitally reluctant to take a strong stand on anything.

As Tom Kent, Pearson’s principal policy adviser between 1963 and 1966, recalled, Martin

“rarely voiced a firm view.”84 In Parliament, wrote the prominent Canadian journalist Peter C.

Newman, he was “seldom reduced to the indignity of making a factual reply”:

Using half a dozen vague, circumlocutory sentences where six short words would do, he spun out the smooth skein of Canada’s foreign relations into webs of verbiage that he himself could not possibly have unravelled. Although each of these occasions served Martin’s purpose of transmuting the rasping realities of a troubled world into comforting generalizations, they did little to enhance his reputation.85

As Cadieux no doubt saw it, Martin’s aversion to strong positions, especially on controversial

83 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 2 July 1964. 84 Tom Kent, “Pearson never compromised on who spoke for Canada,” The Globe and Mail, 11 October 2005. 85 Peter C. Newman, The Distemper of Our Times (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1968), 202-203.

284 issues, betrayed a lack of professional responsibility. It did not help matters, as Duncan Edmonds observes, that the personalities of the minister and his deputy were not particularly compatible:

“Cadieux was strong, bullish, aggressive, strident, black and white, while Martin was the polar opposite.”86 As André Couvrette, who served in Martin’s office before being posted to Nigeria, remembers, “M. Martin avait un peu peur de lui [Cadieux]. Son agressivité. Il était tellement fort.”87 In fairness, Martin likely did not have much regard for Cadieux’s political sense, his grasp of public opinion, and his understanding of the mood in Parliament. The under-secretary was admittedly less politically attuned than other deputies in this period. Nevertheless, while

Cadieux would not have been much of a politician, Martin himself did not make for a very heroic or courageous one. When he spotted in an issue a political element that made him uneasy, he was apt to temporize. Assessing his potential successors in a conversation with Walter Gordon in

March 1966, Pearson dismissed Martin as “too indecisive."88 As Allan McGill, his senior departmental assistant from August 1967 on, observed, the second volume of Martin’s memoirs is “full of ‘I decided this…’ or ‘I decided that…’ but there are many passages in the chapters covering the period when I was with him where I know for a fact that he did not lead but was pushed or persuaded, often reluctantly, by his officials.”89 According to Thomas Delworth,

Cadieux often insisted that memos for Martin end with a blunt question: “Do you agree?” On one occasion Martin replied, “I do not disagree,” prompting Cadieux to grumble, “And here the bugger has put a line with a hook on it. I don’t know how to interpret this.”90 Put simply, getting an overly cautious politician like Martin to make a decision could be an exercise in frustration for the famously decisive Cadieux.

86 Edmonds, interview with the author, Ottawa, 7 May 2013. 87 Couvrette, interview with the author, Ottawa 22 May 2012. 88 LAC/WLG/16/11 – “Lunch with L.B.P.,” 30 March 1966. 89 Allan S. McGill, My Life as I Remember It (Vancouver: Granville Island Publishing 2004), 232. 90 Delworth, interview with the author, Ottawa, 2 August 2012.

285

While Donaghy writes that Cadieux “smirked” at his subject’s “political difficulties, and viewed his tradecraft – the quick, reassuring smile before TV cameras and the white lie to supplicants and office-seekers – as evidence of a fundamental dishonesty,” it was not these actions so much that Cadieux found unacceptable but rather, as we shall see, his penchant for deliberately misleading him, at times with outright lies.91 As Cadieux observed in his diary after the second such episode in relatively quick succession in mid-1967, “Voici donc, au cours des quelques dernières semaines, une deuxième occasion où je suis à même de constater la bonne foi de mon chef politique.”92 As Edmonds recalls more gently, it was not that Martin lacked

“integrity” so much as “consistency”: “You never knew if he was telling you the exact stuff. He was very good at little falsehoods all the time. He was always scrambling around telling one person one thing and another person the other thing. Most of his colleagues looked on him with a kind of grin. That was ‘Old Paul’ again. He was bright, highly intelligent, but none of his colleagues fully trusted him.”93 Smiling at the television cameras and telling white lies to supplicants was one thing, but it is not clear what political advantage Martin derived from occasionally misleading his own under-secretary. Far from ensuring his loyalty and support, such conduct only further damaged his already fragile relationship with Cadieux.

But what undermined that relationship more than anything else was Martin’s ambition.

While there is nothing dishonourable about an ambitious politician wanting to become prime minister, the problem with Martin was that he was so open about it. As Jim Coutts, Pearson’s appointments secretary between 1963 and 1966, has astutely observed, “In politics it is essential to be ambitious – it is equally important not to show that ambition.”94 For all his experience,

Martin never learned this lesson and it arguably cost him his chance at Canada’s top political job.

91 Donaghy, Grit, 197. 92 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 14 July 1967. 93 Edmonds, interview with the author, Ottawa, 7 May 2013. 94 James A. Coutts, “An insider’s review of the Pearson Government,” 1 May 2013, http://www.thepearsoncentre.ca/progressive-memos/an-insiders-review-of-the-pearson-government.

286

In Cadieux’s view, Martin was too concerned with making a headline and cutting a dash in his relentless pursuit of the succession. Nor, as Robert Bothwell points out, was the under-secretary alone in feeling this way: “Indeed, Martin’s inability to mitigate or soften the impact of his personal ambition on his work or his contacts both domestic and international seriously compromised his effectiveness as minister of external affairs. Even acquaintances who liked him were inclined to write off some of his initiatives and Martin himself as ‘pas sérieux.’”95 In short,

Martin’s political ambitious not only had a habit of taking precedence over his ministerial duties but also of distorting them. Despite his generally cautious nature, he was constantly demanding

“initiatives” from the DEA. In doing so, he overrated Canada’s relative international importance in the 1960s. As one of his officers perceptively recalled, “The diplomatic world that External was involved in was simply not big enough for Paul Martin.”96

The second thing that Martin overestimated was the desire of the DEA to supply him with said initiatives. As Allan Gotlieb, who rose to prominence as an FSO in these years, recalls,

“Nobody gave Martin the initiatives; you had to save him from himself.”97 From the most senior to the most junior officer, it was well known in the DEA that Martin sought a foreign policy success that would both rival the Nobel Prize that Pearson had won and burnish his credentials to succeed him as prime minister. Yet as Pearson’s retirement loomed, the DEA became even less inclined to brainstorm initiatives for its minister for one simple reason: the federal government’s relations with both Quebec and France were in a state of acute crisis. This was where the most vital work in Canadian foreign policy was being done in these years, but it was a field Martin was wary of since it was controversial and offered little in the way of good publicity. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the minister and his initiatives, however, was that he almost never authored them. As Bill Barton, the kindly head of UN Division, tellingly observed after Martin

95 Bothwell, “Marcel Cadieux,” 215. 96 Confidential source. 97 Allan Gotlieb, interview with the author, Toronto, 11 April 2013.

287 left office, “I cannot remember one idea he ever contributed.”98 In a sense, the minister did not know his own mind. As a result, it fell disproportionately on the DEA to help him make an impression and fulfill his ultimate aim. Needless to say, such a relationship did not sit well with a department and an under-secretary who prided themselves on being apart from the tainting world of politics. In short, Martin’s burning ambition and its effect on the DEA was at the heart of his uneasy relationship with Cadieux between 1964 and 1968. Over the next few years Martin’s endless political concerns would alternately entertain, frustrate, and anger Cadieux, who sometimes prefaced his diary entries on the subject with the line, “Une autre perle pour la collection.”

Not surprisingly, one of the issues that caused Cadieux the most trouble with Martin was the DEA’s relations with the press. From the start Martin had made clear that this area needed improvement. “Il ne semble pas se rendre compte,” Cadieux complained of his minister, “qu’il est le premier à nous empêcher de lui rendre les services qu’il attend de nous dans ce domaine.”99

Yet Martin had a point: the inherent secrecy of diplomacy and the natural discretion of its practitioners had led some Canadian journalists in this period to dub the DEA the “silent service.” The problem, however, was more complex. As Cadieux recalled years later, if the government wanted the department to do more with the press, why was it that the first item it always cut in the DEA’s budget was publicity?100 More importantly, it soon became clear that

Martin had uniquely unreasonable expectations in this field. Over drinks with Herb Moran, the cigar-chomping former Toronto businessman whom he had first met as head of Personnel

Division in the late 1940s and who was now director of the External Aid Office (EAO), Cadieux told a story (possibly apocryphal) which captured his frustration with Martin’s pursuit of publicity. He told Moran how Martin had said to him one day, “Marcel, Marcel, we have to get

98 McGill, My Life as I Remember It, 232. 99 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 10 April 1964. 100 LAC/HBR/27/12 – “Oral history interview of Marcel Cadieux,” 11 November 1977.

288 my name in the paper, you have to talk to the press.” As a result, Cadieux had met with journalists from the major dailies and in due course an article was published. Discovering, however, that the piece was buried on page eleven, Martin urged Cadieux to try again. This time

Cadieux’s efforts led to an article about Martin appearing on page five, but Martin was still dissatisfied, prompting Cadieux to exclaim, “God damn that man, he wants so much.” After having succeeded at last in getting a column on Martin to appear on the front page, Cadieux was sure that his boss would be happy and that he himself would finally be left in peace. Instead, a disappointed Martin had asked, “Marcel, no picture?”101

As a civil servant in the mold of Norman Robertson, Cadieux prided himself on his self- effacement. By contrast, as a “politician’s politician,” to quote the American embassy in Ottawa,

Martin craved public attention.102 It was not so much that Cadieux was unsympathetic to his political needs but rather that he felt Martin himself gave them too much weight, causing him fundamentally to misunderstand what it meant to be a diplomat, a question, as we have seen, to which Cadieux had given considerable thought. “Bien entendu, le diplomate dans le monde actuel doit se préoccuper des relations extérieures,” that is, relations with the press, “mais cette préoccupation ne doit pas chez lui être prédominante,” Cadieux wrote in his diary after an especially trying conversation with Martin. “Au surplus,” he added, “il faut bien reconnaître qu’en matière de publicité notre cher Ministre est absolument insatiable.” Cadieux observed that in some ways Martin’s attitude towards the press hurt him. For example, he was too inclined to boast when something went well, making both journalists and his colleagues in parliament highly suspicious of him. As Cadieux remarked, “J’ai l’impression que cette manie d’exagérer sa publicité personnelle pour tout et pour rien finit par se retourner contre lui.” There was also the fact that Martin was constantly conferring with and passing information to the press. It was clear

101 Eric J. Bergbusch, interview with the author, Ottawa, 3 May 2013. The story was told to Mr. Bergbusch by Herb Moran himself. 102 NARA/RG59/1964-66/1984/POL 15-1 CAN – John R. Vought to Department of State, 8 January 1965.

289 to Cadieux that a journalist with such easy access to the minister would not waste his time with second-hand sources, namely the DEA’s press officers, who would quickly be discredited.103 Of course, the crux of the question was whether their job was to explain Canadian foreign policy or to promote Martin. While the minister likely never saw the distinction, Cadieux (and others in the DEA) did. “Ce que le Ministre veut,” his deputy remarked, “c’est une machine de propagande personnelle que le Ministère n’est pas et ne doit pas être en état de lui fournir.”104

When Cadieux informed Norman Robertson of his troubles with Martin over publicity,

Robertson promised to speak to Pearson about it after Cadieux was officially confirmed as under-secretary. Indeed, when one considers how uncomfortable his lengthy interim status in that position must have been, Cadieux’s stand is even more impressive. “Je crois que nous approchons du moment,” he wrote on the eve of his appointment, “où il faudra déterminer si les prétentions du Ministre sont justifiées et s’il faut [a]mputer le Ministère pour lui donner satisfaction.”105 Such drastic action proved unnecessary. After weeks of fruitless discussion,

Martin surprised Cadieux by accepting his recommendation that D’Iberville Fortier, a bright and well-liked career FSO from Montreal who had headed up the Press Section of NATO, take charge of the Press and Liaison Division of the DEA. While Martin would have preferred to hire a journalist, Cadieux had resisted in part because of his feeling that an outsider would have been putty in the hands of his minister. As Fortier himself later recalled, one of the main reasons the

DEA was pleased with his work in these years was that he had some success in “neutralizing”

Martin. While Fortier served Martin as best a civil servant could, holding regular press briefings in a concerted attempt to interest generally uninterested Canadian journalists in their country’s

103 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 10 April 1964. 104 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 4 May 1964. 105 Ibid.

290 foreign policy, he refused to propagandize for him. Not surprisingly, Fortier enjoyed Cadieux’s full confidence.106

While Cadieux was critical of Martin for always seeking the limelight, he was not above exploiting Martin’s propensity to do so. In mid-1967, for example, he was annoyed to receive a memo back from his minister on the planned Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris with the comment, “Let us discuss.” As Cadieux amusingly asked himself, “Let us discuss quoi?” After all, Martin had approved the idea twenty times, had gotten all his French-Canadian colleagues in cabinet to agree to it, and Cadieux had even sought and obtained the support of some of the

English-Canadian members there. To force the issue, Cadieux mischievously took Martin by what he called his “point faible,” sending him a short note explaining that since time was of the essence Martin should publicly announce the purchase of the Cultural Centre during his upcoming visit to Paris. “Le résultat a été immédiat,” wrote a satisfied Cadieux. Martin signed off on the project and the relevant documents were now on their way to the Treasury Board. As the under-secretary remarked in his diary, “Et voilà comment il faut s’y prendre pour persuader son Ministre à se commettre vis-à-vis la Trésorerie.”107

As this anecdote suggests, speechmaking was a key component of Martin’s publicity machine. Indeed, as Cadieux reminisced, it was “ridicule” to claim that the DEA was not interested in the press when one considers the sheer number of speeches its overworked officers were churning out for their minister.108 “[T]he texts of Paul Martin’s speeches,” Peter C.

Newman observed vividly, “could have papered the Peace Tower.”109 In some ways Martin had no choice but to rely on the DEA. Back then, Cadieux recalled, ministers could not seek funds from cabinet to hire ghost writers and so Martin negotiated the difficulties vis-à-vis both the

106 LAC/LOP/2572/9 – Interview of D’Iberville Fortier by Tom Earle, Library of Parliament Oral History Project, July 1991-February 1992; confidential source. 107 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 31 May 1967. 108 LAC/HBR/27/12 – “Oral history interview of Marcel Cadieux,” 11 November 1977. 109 Newman, The Distemper of Our Times, 203.

291

Treasury Board and parliament by assigning the drafting of speeches to FSOs who had not been authorized by the public to perform such duties. Cadieux found it hard to convince his subordinates to write speeches for the minister. One disgruntled officer bluntly said that Cadieux could consider him as resigned from the DEA immediately or let him go to his office to compose his letter of resignation. He had not spent five years at Oxford with the goal of helping to craft

Canadian foreign policy, the officer explained, to be used as a servant in the minister’s office.

This basic fact of human psychology, that is, that some considered the writing of ministerial speeches a poor use of their talents, was lost on Martin, who was disappointed in the attitude of the DEA.110

Nor was Martin an easy person to write speeches for. One of his writers in this period,

Wayne Hubble, who in 1972 would die in a plane crash in Asia, provoked a small crisis in the minister’s office when he refused to continue because he considered its occupant dishonest and unworthy. As Cadieux remarked of Hubble, “Il va falloir le déplacer immédiatement et trouver une autre victime.”111 Simply put, drafting speeches for Martin was a thankless task. He had a vexing and unpardonable habit of asking several people to write the same speech without informing them that duplication was occurring. Invariably, he would warn his officers at the last minute that he needed a speech and then pester them mercilessly until he got it. One day Ross

Campbell’s secretary received a phone call from Martin asking if her boss had finished the speech he was drafting for him. Thinking that his secretary had hung up the phone, Campbell exclaimed, “Tell that son of a bitch he’ll get it when it’s finished.” A few minutes later the phone rang again. “It’s the son of a bitch,” Martin announced good-naturedly. “Is that speech ready yet?”112 As Cadieux observed, if the DEA weakened and finished a speech for Martin early, it was almost always asked to start over. Adding to the frustration was the fact that, according to

110 LAC/HBR/27/12 – “Oral history interview of Marcel Cadieux,” 11 November 1977. 111 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 8 June 1967. 112 Sabourin, interview with the author, telephone, 20 May 2015.

292 his deputy at least, the minister was a very bad judge of quality: usually, the speeches that made headlines were those Martin had initially criticized the most. Writing a good ministerial speech also brought few rewards. “Si vous aviez un bon discours pour Monsieur Martin,” Cadieux recalled, “vous étiez sûr que, le lendemain matin, il vous en aurait demandé deux.”113 In other words, the job of writing speeches for Martin could be interminable. On his third day as head of the DEA, Cadieux was asked by Martin to draft a speech. He was either the under-secretary or a speech writer, the deputy angrily replied, but he could not be both. The minister backed down.114

In mid-1968, after Martin was no longer SSEA, Cadieux perceptively observed that his obsession with giving speeches had hurt him: “Il parlait tellement souvent que ce qu’il disait n’était jamais vraiment neuf. On ne l’écoutait donc plus ou si on l’écoutait on ne s’intéressait qu’à sa façon de dire les choses plutôt qu’à la substance de ses propos. Il aurait plus influencé l’opinion et obtenu une meilleure publicité s’il avait su espacer judicieusement ses discours.”115

It is ironic that a civil servant like Cadieux, with his admittedly limited understanding of public opinion, grasped what an experienced politician like Martin never did: in speechmaking, less is more.

What especially rankled Cadieux and his colleagues in the DEA was that their minister profited so shamelessly from their hard work. While understandable, this feeling of resentment was somewhat misplaced: as the face of the department, it was only right that Martin benefit publicly from its labour, especially since he also shouldered the public criticism directed at it.

Still, the minister went too far. Take, for example, the case of the three lectures in the Jacob

Blaustein series which he delivered at Columbia University in April 1967. When first told of this project several months before, Cadieux had been disgusted to learn that Martin was to be paid an

113 LAC/HBR/27/12 – “Oral history interview of Marcel Cadieux,” 11 November 1977; LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 6 June 1968. 114 Marcel Cadieux, interview with Don Page, GAC Oral History Collection, Ottawa, 29 June 1979. 115 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 6 June 1968.

293 honorarium of $2,500 when the speeches, drafted of course not by the minister himself but by his officials, were published in book form. “Je trouve personnellement scandaleuse cette nouvelle opération qui consiste à exploiter le Ministère pour des fins de publicité qui sont largement personnelles et dans l’intention délibérée de toucher des honoraires en supplément,” Cadieux wrote bitterly in his diary. “Ce genre d’opération,” he added in an apt analogy, “me semble aussi malhonnête que celle qui consisterait à empocher le traitement d’employés qui seraient fictifs ou encore d’employer le personnel du Ministère à des tâches purement personnelles et privées comme par exemple d’utiliser un messager du Ministère pour tondre sa pelouse ou servir à ses réceptions.” It was bad enough, Cadieux felt, that Martin was already using the DEA for self- promotion, but that he was now profiting financially from the process was simply “monstrueux.”

Recalling how some years ago Pearson had published, and undoubtedly also benefited from, a book largely written by Arnold Smith, Cadieux remarked on the gall of politicians who hypocritically urged their officials to devote themselves without ulterior motive to the public good.116

After debating what to do with the honorarium from the Blaustein lectures, which

Cadieux reiterated had been drafted “de bout en bout” by officers in the department, Martin rejected a suggestion that he commission an artist to paint his portrait for the new headquarters of the DEA and elected instead to pay a publisher to print a collection of his best speeches. “Pour que le cycle d’exploitation soit vraiment complet,” Cadieux sarcastically observed, “il faudrait que l’on insiste pour que ceux qui ont rédigé ces textes achètent à leur frais des exemplaires de ces bouquins et que le Ministre empoche les droits d’auteur.” Summing up, he wrote, “Il faut dire que comme exploitation éhontée, scandaleuse, incroyable du personnel du Ministère, on ne

116 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 17 January 1967.

294 peut vraiment pas imaginer mieux.”117 When in August 1967 Allan McGill became Martin’s senior departmental assistant, he noted that John Schioler, a junior officer in the minister’s office, was spending much of his time editing Paul Martin Speaks for Canada, the collection of speeches in question. As McGill remarked in his memoirs, “This was really aimed at advancing

Martin’s political career but that a departmental officer was doing the work was typical of the blurred lines he favoured.”118 The DEA was perhaps not the personal propaganda machine for its minister that Cadieux had feared, but at times it had that appearance.

One of the least admirable aspects of Martin’s quest for publicity in the field of Canadian foreign policy was his insistence that nobody but himself be the focus of it. “Back then if your name appeared in the paper as an FSO,” reminisces Allan Gotlieb, “Martin would call you on the carpet.”119 He exhibited the same attitude towards his colleagues in the government. In early

1967, for example, Cadieux noted that Martin had authorized Donald Macdonald, his parliamentary assistant and a junior MP from the Toronto riding of Rosedale, to attend a meeting of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg but had forbidden him from making the slightest speech, this despite the fact that the European Division of the DEA had wanted him to speak on

Canadian-European relations. “En somme,” Cadieux observed incredulously, “Macdonald doit aller à Strasbourg simplement pour le voyage.” It was the same problem with Pierre Trudeau,

Pearson’s tough new parliamentary secretary from Montreal. The DEA had sought and received

Martin’s approval to send him on a tour of francophone Africa, where Ottawa and Quebec were vying for influence, and to attend a meeting of French jurists in Lomé, Togo. Yet Martin now claimed that he had never agreed to the mission and that Trudeau should only participate in the legal meeting. When one considers how crucial Trudeau’s work was to the federal government in

117 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 8 June 1967. Such conduct also “grated” with Duncan Edmonds, who noted that he was given no credit whatsoever for a speech he drafted for Martin in 1960 that was subsequently published. Edmonds, interview with the author, Ottawa, 7 May 2013. 118 McGill, My Life as I Remember It, 232. 119 Gotlieb, interview with the author, Toronto, 11 April 2013.

295

Africa, Martin’s position, one he was fortunately unable to maintain, was selfish in the extreme.

There was also the case of E.M.L. (Tommy) Burns, a former lieutenant-general in the Second

World War and Canada’s adviser on disarmament in Geneva since 1960. Cadieux was convinced that Martin did not want to extend Burns’ posting to Switzerland because he had received publicity for publishing a book of his own and for recently appearing in an interview on television. In Cadieux’s view, Martin’s greedy approach to public attention in early 1967 was symptomatic of just how involved he was becoming in the race to succeed Pearson.120

While Martin’s hunger for publicity was one of the most consistent criticisms found in his deputy’s journal intime, Cadieux also wrote in it how his minister had “des idées bien curieuses” about personnel. “Il ne veut pas laisser partir personne,” Cadieux remarked incredulously in one early entry, adding that Martin believed (not altogether wrongly) that positions at headquarters were the most important and that younger officers in the DEA should aspire to hold them. The problem, as Cadieux noted, was that this view was contradictory: “S’il ne laisse pas partir ceux qui sont ici comment pouvons[-]nous trouver des emplois pour les jeunes qui pourraient éventuellement y venir[?]” Nor did Martin seem to grasp that, in most posts abroad, it was simply not possible to leave officers there indefinitely. “En Indonésie, en

Indochine,” Cadieux gave as examples, “au bout d’un an ou deux il faut rapatrier nos agents, et si nous n’avons pas de place pour eux ici, il faut bien se demander ce que nous allons faire.”121

It soon became clear to Cadieux that Martin considered the only important posts in the

DEA to be those in the East Block, either in his own office or in the department proper. Except for a few very rare exceptions, posts abroad were of no importance. “J’ai dû ce matin m’élever contre cette façon de voir,” Cadieux wrote in his diary, “en lui expliquant que si tel était là son sentiment il serait vite connu du personnel et qu’il deviendrait impossible d’assurer le bon

120 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 23 January 1967. 121 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 14 April 1964.

296 fonctionnement du Service.” Martin’s views, Cadieux went on, certainly did not apply to

Canada’s High Commission in London, to its delegation to the UN in New York City, to its embassy in Washington, and to both its delegation to NATO and its embassy in Paris, among others. Indeed, as Cadieux pointed out to him, Martin complained every day about not having an able officer in Athens. Yet nobody could have predicted when Antonio Barette, premier of

Quebec for six months in 1960, was named ambassador to Greece that that country would be engaged in a dangerous dispute with Turkey over the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. “La morale de l’histoire,” Cadieux observed, “c’est qu’il faut avoir de bons hommes partout parce qu’on ne sait pas quand les difficultés vont surgir.” There was also the consideration, Cadieux stressed to Martin, that unless officers were sent abroad on increasingly challenging assignments, it was impossible to train them for the major positions to which he attached such importance.122

These being cogent arguments, Cadieux was right to feel frustrated with Martin’s reluctance to let staff leave. In the spring of 1964 alone, for example, the minister objected to the posting abroad of at least three senior officers: Malcolm (Mac) Bow, who would become ambassador to

Czechoslovakia; Geoffrey Murray, who would become deputy high commissioner to the United

Kingdom; Ross Campbell, who would become ambassador to Yugoslavia. The minister also opposed the idea that Ed Ritchie, whom in July Cadieux would appoint as his deputy under- secretary but who two years later would become ambassador to the United States, might leave.

While Martin understandably preferred to have these capable men at his beck and call, he seemed oblivious to the fact that they had an opportunity to advance their careers abroad and that this was perhaps what they and their families wanted.

Although Martin actively tried to keep his favourite officers in Ottawa, he was far less engaged in helping Cadieux to recruit new ones. As the latter observed in early 1964, the greatest problem the DEA faced was “l’état lamentable” of its personnel resources, a situation which, as

122 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 4 May 1964.

297 he told a former colleague, was “probably worse than it has ever been.” The austerity program of the Diefenbaker government in 1962, he noted, had only aggravated an already bad situation.123

As Personnel Officer, Cadieux had seen that, while the work of the DEA had grown steadily since the war, its resources had never kept pace. Indeed, even in the mid-1980s, Si Taylor, one of

Cadieux’s successors as under-secretary, could only dream of the day the DEA would have all that it needed to do all that was asked of it.124 A good international citizen, post-war Canada always seemed ready to open a new mission abroad, increase its development assistance programs, or perform some thankless task for the benefit of the world community. When it did, its overworked diplomats were left scrambling to fill the void. In Cadieux’s view, one he made no effort to hide, the system worked against the DEA:

Nous étudions soigneusement nos besoins en personnel avec les représentants de la Commission du Service civil et de la Trésorerie. Nous discutons pendant des heures si dans un bureau donné il faut une sténographe 2b ou 3. Tout cela en réalité est une pure perte de temps. Quand nos prévisions arrivent au Conseil du Trésor, il nous est imposé chaque année des réductions massives et arbitraires ce qui veut dire que d’année en année nous n’avons pas le personnel nécessaire pour accomplir les tâches qui nous sont confiées.

There was also the fact, Cadieux noted regretfully, that the department’s ministers, whether

Lester Pearson, Sidney Smith, Howard Green, or now Paul Martin, had traditionally been unwilling to lend it vigorous support, “à jeter dans la balance en faveur du Ministère leur prestige et leur autorité.”125 Perhaps they would have subscribed to Charles de Gaulle’s famous motto about such seemingly secondary concerns: “l’intendance suivra.” As Cadieux had known since his formative days in Personnel Division, the members of the DEA were at the mercy of officials in the control agencies who neither understood nor wanted to understand their needs.

In these circumstances, as Cadieux wrote in his diary, his main objective was to proceed with “un recrutement massif” over the next five years. Given the severity of the situation, when

123 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 26 March 1964; LAC/MC/3/13 – Cadieux to J.B.C. Watkins, 24 April 1964. 124 Taylor, interview with the author, Ottawa, 31 January 2012. 125 LAC/12/10 – Journal intime, 26 March 1964.

298

Martin, as Cadieux had predicted he would, declined to sign a letter drafted for him to Pearson asking the prime minister to intercede with George McIlraith, the chairman of the Treasury

Board, in support of the DEA’s personnel requests, the under-secretary was not impressed. “Le tableau est complet,” he recorded in his diary. “Dans les moments essentiels, notre cher Ministre refuse de se mettre au blanc,” that is, to expose himself, “mais quand il s’agit d’exploiter la boutique à des fins personnelles ou d’obéir à des préjugés inconcevables chez un homme dans sa situation,” a reference to Martin’s belief that only service at headquarters truly mattered, “il n’y a plus d’inhibitions.” As a result, Cadieux resolved, as he sometimes did in these years when

Martin proved obstinate on crucial matters, to act indirectly by giving Gordon Robertson the relevant material (including Martin’s unsent letter) and asking him to get Pearson to intervene.126

Two months later, in July 1964, Cadieux noted that, at great cost, the DEA had managed to complete and to send to Treasury Board studies on its function, on its current personnel needs, and finally on those it anticipated over the next five years. He had gone to the trouble of personally lobbying Robertson, George Davidson (who had replaced Steele as Secretary of the

Treasury Board), and R.B. Bryce. While Martin had written directly to McIlraith, Cadieux confirmed that, exhibiting what he sardonically called “un courage caractéristique,” his minister had refused to write to Pearson. Cadieux reiterated how he had worked through Robertson, asking him to show the prime minister the three studies and to make perfectly clear that Martin had declined to do so. Early reports from the Treasury Board, however, were discouraging: there was talk of government deficits and even a ceiling on spending. For Cadieux, as this excerpt from his diary reveals, it was a blow:

Nous allons devoir continuer la bataille, jour après jour, semaine après semaine sans désemparer bien péniblement et sans doute partiellement nous obtiendrons des concessions de la Trésorerie. … Nous sommes toujours en pleine folie. Le Gouvernement prend des engagements, nous impose des obligations mais quand vient le temps de

126 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 4 May 1964; LAC/PCO/101/G-1-11-E1 – Cadieux to R.G. Robertson, 4 May 1964; LAC/PCO/101/G-1-11-E1 – Cadieux to Robertson, 22 May 1964.

299

demander les moyens nécessaires pour mettre en œuvre les politiques qu’il [a] adoptées, il n’est pas question de nous donner les moyens indispensables. Intellectuellement, je trouve ces procédés d’une malhonnêteté répugnante …127

Although deputy ministers must learn to expect such disappointments, given how much time and energy Cadieux had invested in the first half of 1964 in making the case for more resources for his department, he inevitably felt let down.

Ultimately, however, his persistence was rewarded. Already, the month before,

Robertson had expressed to Pearson his own concern about the staff problems of the DEA and shown him the study on its projected needs that Cadieux had unofficially supplied him with.

Above all, he had stressed Martin’s reluctance to push for major increases:

I suppose he feels that it would look as though he, as a single minister, was trying to get special privileges for his department. In a sense that is the case – but I think it is amply justified by the tremendous growth in the responsibilities of External Affairs. If you were able, at some point, to tell Mr. Martin that you felt that way, and particularly if you were able to do it in the presence of Mr. McIlraith, I think it might help a great deal in getting the sort of special attention that is needed if the external problems are to be coped with adequately in the next few years.128

Agreeing with Robertson, Pearson wrote to Martin several months later to say that he had seen the DEA’s submission to Treasury Board on its staff shortage and that he was “impressed by the problem and the necessity of doing something about it.”129

Something was done. Between 1964 and 1968 the DEA recruited a total of 218 FSOs. To give some sense of the magnitude of this number, by the end of 1963 there had only been 465 officers (including, it seems, the administrative, information, and consular External Affairs

Officer category) in the DEA.130 Such an increase certainly qualified as the “recrutement massif” that Cadieux had envisioned and pushed for from the start. While the personnel problems of the

DEA were certainly not solved overnight – after all, the newcomers required training, a process

127 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 2 July 1964. 128 LAC/PCO/101/G-1-11-E1 – Robertson to Pearson, 2 June 1964. 129 LAC/PCO/101/G-1-11-E1 – Pearson to Paul Martin, 31 August 1964. In his letter Pearson said that he knew Martin was “not only impressed [by the problem] but greatly worried.” 130 These figures are drawn from the annual reports of the DEA for these years.

300 that could take years –it is significant that complaints about resources did not creep into

Cadieux’s diary again until late in the decade, when the cruel bite of austerity regained its teeth.

Although Donaghy notes that “The department’s annual non-aid budget, despite Cadieux’s griping that Martin had failed External Affairs, had tripled since the spring of 1963 from $24.4 million to over $74 million [by 1967],” these figures are somewhat misleading, since they lump together so much and since it is by no means clear that Martin deserves credit for them.131 If the experience of 1964 is any indication, the expansion of the DEA in this period took place, not with the early and vigorous support of its minister, but in spite of it. As Cadieux remarked after his boss had relinquished his portfolio in mid-1968, “M. Martin voulait tout avoir sans nous en fournir les éléments.”132

What made Martin’s reluctance to press for personnel increases so vexing was that, according to Cadieux, he demanded more from the DEA than any of his predecessors. Thus, when in early January 1967 the Martin family combined together to inform Cadieux that it was the minister who was exhausted, his under-secretary felt precious little sympathy. In what

Cadieux sardonically called “une journée de surprises,” he first received a phone call from Nell

Martin, Martin’s wife, who “d’une voix larmoyante” claimed that her husband, who was sick with the flu, was in bad shape and that it was the duty of the DEA not only to protect him but also perhaps to intercept the official invitations he was sent. Cadieux replied that Martin had always been very active and that he had never been one to decline invitations. Moreover, in the past, when the DEA had managed to convince him to stay in his apartment, he had been unable to sit still there; rather, he had either phoned people, issued his own invitations, or committed himself to something at the last moment. As for intercepting invitations, Cadieux stressed that this was risky since Martin and the DEA might get their signals crossed and give a foreign

131 Donaghy, Grit, 263. 132 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 13 May 1968.

301 ambassador conflicting replies. The department would do its best, Cadieux told Mrs. Martin, but there was no easy solution to the problem. Later in the day, Martin himself phoned Cadieux to ask whether Mitchell Sharp could not receive visiting French Minister of Economy and Finance

Michel Debré, an idea Cadieux managed to reject on the grounds that such a senior member of the government of France might take offence at being received by anyone less than the Canadian minister of foreign affairs. Then, in the afternoon, Cadieux received a phone call from a third member of the Martin family, Paul Martin Jr., his minister’s twenty-eight-year-old son and a recent graduate in law from the University of Toronto. In Cadieux’s words, “le fils de M. Martin m’a appelé pour m’accuser en somme d’assassiner son père en ne le protégeant pas contre les responsabilités qui lui incombent à titre de Ministre des Affaires extérieures.” Just as he had promised Nell Martin, Cadieux told Paul Martin Jr. that the DEA would do its best but that it could hardly contain someone who by temperament refused to be contained. Finally, in the evening, Mrs. Martin called Cadieux again to protest. Noting that her exhausted husband had gone to bed early, she expressed anger that the DEA did not have his interests more at heart.

While Cadieux was able to calm her by patiently explaining that the department could hardly be blamed for Martin’s current predicament, she greeted him rather coldly at the reception for

Debré the next day.133

The irony of the situation was not lost on Cadieux. In a striking passage in his diary, he excoriated Martin for his cavalier treatment of the DEA:

Ce qui est comble [c]’est que ce ministre qui a exploité et harassé ce ministère comme jamais Ministre ne l’a fait, nous accuse maintenant, renversant les rôles, de le persécuter lui et de le crever, lui. Je n’ai aucune sympathie pour la famille Martin dans cette affaire, d’autant plus que je soupçonne madame Martin d’agir à l’instigation du Ministre lui- même. C’est incroyable s’imaginer maintenant que le Ministère va le soulager d’une façon ou d’une autre d’une partie de ses responsabilités pour lui permettre de donner le plus grand coup de sa carrière et d’arriver à recueillir la succession de M. Pearson. Le Ministère a suffisamment fait pour lui et je ne vois pas qu’il soit de notre devoir de nous crever pour lui venir en aide dans les circonstances. Le Ministre sera soulagé en aucune

133 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 13 January 1967.

302

façon de ce que nous ferons pour lui. Il aurait tout simplement plus de temps pour se dévouer davantage à des fins purement personnelles et partisanes.

This was strong stuff, but Cadieux was not done. He concluded his rant on the subject with a critical statement enlivened by a typically evocative image: “L’histoire n’est pas très jolie mais elle mérite d’être racontée parce qu’elle illustre bien les procédés du Ministre à l’égard de sa boutique. Il s’agit encore de presser le citron dont il faut extraire jusqu’à la dernière goutte.”134

As we have seen, Cadieux felt that what was needed most between a minister and his department

(as embodied by its under-secretary) was balance. Unfortunately, such equilibrium was often sorely lacking with Martin.

While Cadieux never revised his views on Martin’s indelicate handling of the DEA, he was fair enough to concede some weeks later that his minister’s workload, whether in its purely political or ministerial aspects, would inevitably grow in Canada’s centennial year. In an effort to avoid a crisis with Martin, who had tried to show his officials he was overwhelmed by giving them the cold shoulder, Cadieux took steps to ensure that the DEA made better use of the time

Martin granted it. That said, the under-secretary was sceptical that it would be able to reduce its demands on the minister. Even if it did, he noted, Martin would simply seize the opportunity given by such a respite to do more on the political side and thus he would remain just as busy. As

Cadieux predicted, “Il risque de demeurer aussi impatient et malappris,” that is, ill-mannered.135

Cadieux’s characterization of Martin in the journal intime was at times harsh, but his frustrations were great. Life with Martin was trying. According to Allan McGill, Martin was an inveterate complainer who “very rarely acknowledged good service with any graciousness” and who, when prodding his officials, preferred “needling tactics” to “blandishments.”136 Making matters worse, McGill observed, was the fact that it was impossible to “impose a system on Paul

134 Ibid. 135 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 30 January 1967. 136 McGill, My Life as I Remember It, 232-233.

303

Martin”: “You couldn’t impose on him or persuade him to follow anything systematically. He would cut it off, break it all down by telephoning people in the middle of the night or you know cutting across everything.” He needed constant urging to sign memoranda and he had a remarkable habit of seeking advice from everybody under the sun, from his barber to lowly desk officers, while all the while keeping his own counsel. In fact, as minister, Martin was free to consult whomever he wanted. Nevertheless, as McGill notes, Cadieux, who as we have seen wanted to be the sole channel between the DEA and its minister, found exercising this kind of control increasingly difficult.137

Martin could also be chaotic, unpredictable, and disorganized. In late May 1967, for example, he told the department that there was a chance that its budget would be examined in parliament that afternoon and that he needed a speech on Canadian foreign policy. Cadieux and his colleagues therefore spent the morning busily requesting and coordinating contributions from the various divisions so that, by 2 p.m., they had a speech that would have allowed Martin to speak for over an hour. As Cadieux observed in his diary, this “manoeuvre” was classic Martin:

“Cet homme est sans pitié pour ses services. Il est prêt à nous crever sans savoir si les corvées qu’il nous impose servant à quoique ce soit d’utile.” It soon became clear that the speech in question was not needed for several days and that the “grand branle-bas,” that is, the great commotion that Martin had prompted in the DEA, had been pointless. “Cet homme, qui est agité de tempérament,” Cadieux concluded scathingly, “ne se sent rassuré que s’il boul[e]verse, énerve et asticote sans cesse et sans nécessité tous les gens de son entourage.”138

Yet Martin was not without admirable personal qualities. An early riser eager to tackle the day and its challenges, he was undeniably dynamic and hardworking. Moreover, as even

Cadieux conceded after he left office, Martin had shielded the DEA from serious political

137 Allan McGill, interview with Don Page, GAC Oral History Collection, Mt. Lehman, British Columbia, 13 September 1978. 138 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 29 May 1967.

304 problems. Though Cadieux did not say it, Martin had also been commendably averse to going outside the civil service to fill its top positions. Nevertheless, Cadieux deeply regretted one such appointment that Martin supported in the summer of 1966: the replacement of Herb Moran as

Director General of the EAO by Maurice F. Strong. A self-made businessman from Oak Lake,

Manitoba who as a child had endured the hardships of the Great Depression, his diverse career had taken him from an Arctic trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the 1940s, to the

Alberta oil patch in the 1950s, to the boardroom of the Power Corporation of Canada, one of the country’s leading investment firms, in the first half of the 1960s. Martin and Strong were old friends. It did not go unnoticed in the DEA that, shortly before Strong resigned as President of

Power Corporation, he hired Paul Martin Jr. to be his executive assistant there.

While the choice of a businessman of Strong’s stature to head the EAO was widely seen as a coup for the Pearson government, Cadieux disagreed. Moran had been an old DEA hand, but

Strong was an ambitious outsider who would be difficult to control. There was also the fact that

Strong, a member of the United Church active in the Young Men’s Christian Association

(YMCA), had a strong moral streak and viewed development assistance primarily as a way to help developing countries. By contrast, Cadieux saw it as an indispensable tool of foreign policy, all the more so in a period where Ottawa and Quebec were challenging each other in francophone Africa. In short, the political sense of the EAO, which the Trudeau government would rechristen the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in 1968, was of constant concern to the DEA and its under-secretary.139

But what Cadieux resented most was the end run Strong made around the senior bureaucracy in 1967 in promoting his scheme for a Canadian international development centre, one Cadieux felt would not impress developing countries whose needs he believed were more concrete, and was obscenely expensive (“If we have $500 million to spare in the next five years,”

139 James C. Langley, interview with the author, Ottawa, 27 July and 30 November 2012.

305 he scribbled in the margin of one letter to him from Strong about the centre, “I have 5 million other ideas!”).140 Nor was Cadieux alone in his views; rather, they were shared by most senior civil servants. For example, R.B. Bryce, the deputy minister of finance, agreed that Strong’s ideas were harebrained and that a businessman with his experience would not only involve the government in such a project but also appear unaware of the need to exercise precautions in throwing around so much taxpayer money. “Deux ou trois opérations de ce genre,” Cadieux wrote in his diary of Strong, “et j’ai bien l’impression qu’il va se discréditer au sein de l’établissement.”141 Despite the unanimity in the senior ranks of the civil service that the proposed centre was too costly and that the tactics Strong was using to advance it were

“intolérables,” Cadieux conceded in July 1967 that the initiative was here to stay. This was because both Martin and Pearson backed it. As Cadieux saw it, Strong was serving the former’s political ambitions since an international development centre would appeal to young Canadian academics critical of the Vietnam War who were attracted to the socialist NDP.142

While this interpretation of what would become the International Development Research

Centre (IDRC) was simplistic – after all, Pearson, no fan of Martin’s ambitions, was also one of its champions – Cadieux was right to be suspicious of the close relationship between Martin and

Strong. In early 1968 he learned, in a detail confirmed by both Strong and Duncan Edmonds, that

Martin had asked Strong to resign from the EAO to head up his campaign for the Liberal leadership, Pearson having announced his intention to retire in late 1967. While Strong, after apparently initially agreeing to it, (wisely) declined Martin’s request, Cadieux, as seen in the following excerpt from his diary, felt vindicated:

Voici qu’il devient tout à fait clair que M. Strong n’avait été nommé à son poste actuel qu’à cause de sa fortune personnelle, de son appartenance à la Power Corporation et de

140 Peter Stockdale, “Pearsonian Internationalism in Practice: The International Development Research Centre” (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 1995), 123. 141 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 15 March 1967. 142 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 12 July 1967.

306

son utilisation politique éventuelle. Comme je l’avais bien saisi dans le temps, des nominations de ce genre constituent une subversion complète de la fonction publique. Les Commissaires [of the Civil Service Commission] ont mal agi en sanctionnant cette nomination. Ils auraient bien dû voir quel était le dessein subversif et intéressé de M. Martin. Il est certain qu’il n’y a pas son pareil pour trouver des moyens d’exploiter à son profit personnel les affaires de l’Etat. M. Strong vaut ce qu’il vaut. Ce qui est en cause ce ne sont pas ses aptitudes personnelles mais l’utilisation consciente de sa part et la part du Ministre comme tremplin politique d’un poste important de la fonction publique.143

While Cadieux could take an overly protective view of the civil service, his concern for its integrity and for the potentially subversive effect the appointment of outsiders could have on it was admirable. Indeed, he would have been outraged to learn that Strong, at least according to

Paul Martin Jr., still had an “active involvement” (perhaps through a financial donation) in his minister’s campaign.144 Nor was Cadieux’s concern about Strong’s use of the EAO as a

“trampoline” necessarily misplaced. In 1970, after barely three years as the head of it and CIDA,

Strong resigned from his position to serve as Secretary-General of the UN Conference on the

Human Environment. As Peter Towe, the career diplomat who had been deputy to Herb Moran and whom Cadieux had favoured to succeed him in 1966, once wryly observed, Strong was always thinking, not of his next job, but of his next job after that. Perhaps even Martin came to regret his choice for, as he later told Towe, “I should have appointed you.”145 Cadieux would have heartily agreed.

In addition to all his other problems with Martin, Cadieux also had a personal reason for resenting his minister, one that curiously goes unmentioned in his diary. As Cadieux recalled,

143 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 1 February 1968. While Cadieux claims that Martin asked Strong to head up his team in late January 1968, Edmonds places the date even earlier, between Christmas 1967 and New Year’s Day 1968. According to Edmonds, he, Strong, Martin, and Paul Martin Jr. held a “very emotional” meeting at Martin’s Champlain Towers apartment in Ottawa. By the end of it Strong had agreed to resign from the civil service to head up Martin’s leadership campaign. A few days later, however, after consulting Ed Ritchie in Washington, he backed out, leaving Edmonds to chair his bid. Edmonds, interview with the author, 7 May 2013. Strong, for his part, simply notes that Martin was “quite persistent” in trying to get him to head his leadership campaign but that he declined the offer. Maurice Strong, interview with the author, telephone, 13 April 2013. 144 Paul Martin, Hell or High Water: My Life in and out of Politics (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2008), 69. Asked about this reference to his involvement in the leadership campaign, Strong vaguely recalls giving Martin Sr. $100,000, a significant sum in 1968. Strong, interview with the author, telephone, 13 April 2013. 145 The wry observation, while Towe’s, was communicated to me by Langley, interview with the author, Ottawa, 30 November 2012. The reference to Martin’s regret comes from Peter Towe, interview with author, Ottawa 24 July 2012.

307

Martin used to “invite himself over” to his deputy’s Alta Vista home on Sunday afternoons for some of Anita’s tasty tourtière. Similarly, when Nell Martin was unavailable to entertain, which was often, it was Anita who filled in for her. Thus, when Cadieux asked Martin if Anita could join them and Nell on an official visit to Warsaw and to Moscow in November 1966, he no doubt felt that she had earned it. Instead, Martin said no, prompting an angry Cadieux to serve notice that there would be no more Sunday visits or receptions. “She wants one thing and you won’t give it to her,” Cadieux recalled saying to Martin of Anita, “so she is too busy to cater to your needs from now on.”146

While Cadieux’s reaction may seem somewhat childish, it must be stressed how unhappy

Anita was at times in Ottawa during these years. Health problems (she had been hospitalized once) and the strains of being a housewife to such a prominent official were taking their toll and so the prospect of an exotic escape likely seemed appealing. When Martin refused to oblige

Anita, Paul Tremblay, who was ambassador to Belgium, welcomed her in Brussels with open arms. The following passage from the letter Cadieux sent to his friend after returning from

Europe in late 1966 provides an insight into his wife’s emotional needs at this time: “Je puis vous assurer … que le voyage à Bruxelles a eu des effets sensationnels et je veux vous en remercier tout spécialement. Anita traversait une période noire. Son séjour chez vous l’a transformée. Elle est revenue encouragée, remontée, transformée. Je vous suis bien obligé de l’avoir accueillie comme vous l’avez fait. Nous allons pouvoir durer ici encore un moment.”147

While seemingly petty, the quarrel between Cadieux and Martin over bringing Anita to

Eastern Europe struck at the heart of Cadieux’s conception of family. He had noted as early as

1964 that his minister was unwilling to recognize “l’importance des obligations et des soucis

146 Marcel Cadieux, interview with Don Page, GAC Oral History Collection, Ottawa, 29 June 1979. 147 LAC/PT/4/11 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 5 December 1966.

308 d’ordre familial dans la vie de son personnel.”148 Indeed, Martin once bluntly asked Cadieux,

“Do you consider your wife important?” He certainly did. As Cadieux recalled, Martin’s life was his job whereas he believed in nurturing relations at home.149 There was truth in this characterization of Martin. While there is no doubt that he loved his children, the minister felt that he did not have to spend much time with them to prove it. He was entirely devoted to his job, he added, and he believed the same should hold for civil servants. Their wives, he went on, could care for the children and run the household.150 With two boys aged five and ten, as well as a restless wife, such a regimen was impossible for Cadieux. As Pauline Sabourin recalls, his sons

François and René were “gold bricks” to him. He arrived at work every day at 8:30 a.m. and left promptly at 6 p.m. in order to spend as much time with them and their mother as possible.151

Finally, while Donaghy claims, probably rightly, that Cadieux’s request to have Anita included on the Eastern Europe trip would have been “a clear departure from government policy,” exceptions could be made, particularly when the policy in question likely predated the advent of cheap air travel in the 1960s.152 Even if it had not, Anita’s condition should have given Martin pause. Above all, the alleged policy in question was not applied consistently, since she was allowed to accompany Cadieux on other government trips to Europe between 1964 and 1970, notably the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in January 1969. In any case, wherever the blame lies, the episode gave a personal edge to the already frayed professional relationship between the minister and his under-secretary. It has already been shown how this professional relationship suffered in their disagreements over the internal operations of the DEA. In the next three chapters, we shall see how Cadieux and Martin confronted the great issues in Canadian foreign policy between 1963 and 1968.

148 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 4 May 1967. 149 Cadieux, interview with Don Page, GAC Oral History Collection, Ottawa, 29 June 1979. 150 Paul Martin, interview with Don Page, GAC Oral History Collection, London, England, 20 March 1979. 151 Sabourin, interview with the author, Ottawa, 12 March 2013. 152 Donaghy, Grit, 197.

Chapter Five The Under-Secretary, the Minister, and Canadian Foreign Policy: 1963-1968

While as under-secretary Cadieux oversaw the totality of Canada’s external affairs, something his background as a generalist allowed him to do well, his main focus was on the country’s relations with France and Quebec. It was not that he was uninterested in other policy issues – indeed, Martin recalled that he had a “firm grip” on the DEA and “sought to exercise leadership in almost every area” – but rather that he was confident that his subordinates could handle them.1 As James C. Langley, the Oxford-educated assistant under-secretary for economic affairs between 1966 and 1970, recalled of Cadieux, “I found him an extraordinary delegator. He chose the people he wanted to work with. He gave them the work to do. And he trusted them to do it.”2 With the exception again of France and Quebec, Cadieux never gave his officers the impression that he was looking over their shoulder. Instead, he followed their work through the frequent “prayer meetings” he held with his assistant under-secretaries and through the daily flow of paper that reached his desk. When necessary he advanced ideas and made suggestions of his own to heads of division and even desk officers, many of whom he knew personally because he took such a direct interest in who did what in his department. Above all, while Cadieux was careful not to overextend himself, he still had a coherent approach to the role of the Canadian diplomat, as this excerpt from his 1962 book on the subject shows:

Peu portés aux généralisations et à l’idéalisme, nos diplomates se caractérisent plutôt par la modération de leurs interventions et leur souci de trouver des solutions pratiques aux problèmes qui se posent. A cause du caractère dualiste et fédératif du pays, de ses relations avec l’Angleterre et les [É]tats-Unis et de son rang de moyenne puissance, ses représentants diplomatiques ne peuvent pas souvent prendre position en flèche et proposer des solutions radicales. D’instinct autant que par nécessité ils sont hommes de compromis, de la formule efficace plutôt que des grands projets sensationnels.3

While this approach was perhaps cautious and unadventurous, it was also sane and realistic. By

1 UTA/RB/B1987-0006-010 – Paul Martin, interview with Robert Bothwell and J.L. Granatstein, Windsor, Ontario, 10-11 February 1987. 2 Langley, interview with the author, Ottawa, 30 November 2012. 3 Cadieux, Le diplomate canadien, 123-124.

309 310 the 1960s, the so-called golden age” of Canadian post-war diplomacy, if it had ever existed, had given way to a gritty one that no longer glittered. This was because Canada’s relative influence in the world had declined with the recovery of both Western Europe and Japan from the ravages of the Second World War and with the admission to the UN of a host of newly independent countries from Africa and Asia. As under-secretary, Cadieux understood that, since Canada’s diplomatic credit was more limited than ever, it should be used more judiciously than ever.

Finally, while Cadieux did not play a consistently decisive role on any foreign policy issue in this period besides France and Quebec, his diary entries shed new light on Canadian diplomacy and its practitioners in the 1960s and thus are worthy of consideration.

I – Crises

Two months before officially becoming under-secretary, Cadieux was faced with a crisis on the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, which had been granted independence from

Britain in 1960. In late 1963 violence had erupted between the majority Greek Cypriots and the minority Turkish Cypriots over their respective constitutional powers, violence that threatened to involve NATO allies Greece and Turkey. This tense situation seemed tailor-made for the UN and so in early March 1964 the Security Council established the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP). But who would take part in it? When U Thant, the Burmese-born

Secretary General of the UN, invited Canada, Brazil, Ireland, Sweden, and Finland to join, there was hesitation, not least in Ottawa, which tried to clarify the force’s terms of reference. On 11

March Martin received a message from British Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations

Duncan Sandys, who “possessed energy and arrogance in seemingly unlimited measure” according to British peacekeeping historian Allan James, urging Canada to take the lead in announcing its participation in UNFICYP and warning that, if the force were no closer to formation the next day, Britain might consider withdrawing its military presence from Cyprus.

311

When American president Lyndon Johnson phoned Pearson on 12 March to express his concern about the situation, which seemed more dangerous than ever following a Turkish threat to invade the island, Pearson assured him that all Canada was waiting for was for U Thant to assemble a multilateral force.4 Buoyed by the news that a Finish decision to participate in UNFICYP was both imminent and virtually assured, and that only Helsinki’s decision was needed to secure

Stockholm’s, Martin flew to New York to stress Canadian willingness to join the force only to be dismayed when a passive U Thant was unable to guarantee Swedish participation. On 13 March, a Friday, the decision was taken in Martin’s office that he would phone his counterparts in

Dublin, Helsinki, and Stockholm to urge them along. As Martin proudly recalled in his memoirs,

“The result of my phone calls was the establishment of the UN force in Cyprus.”5

Cadieux, who was quickly learning how his minister operated, would not have gone so far. Commenting in his diary in April 1964 on Martin’s habit of trumpeting everything he did,

Cadieux observed, “Je suis bien convaincu qu’il ne serait pas empoisonné comme il l’est maintenant au Parlement au sujet de Chypre” (where the fledgling peacekeeping force was distressingly small and without a clear mandate) “s’il n’avait pas un peu forcé la note en revendiquant le mérite exclusif de l’établissement de l’ONU à Chypre.”6 That Martin exaggerated his role as its “author” has been demonstrated by James.7

His antennae now twitching, Cadieux noted that an article in Time Magazine in late April

1964 placed Martin in a highly favourable light vis-à-vis the DEA. The piece claimed that, with the Cyprus crisis at its height, the DEA had supposedly advised Martin to call in the Swedish and

Finnish ambassadors and to instruct Canadian ones in Stockholm and Helsinki to approach the governments there. “But since there was patently not time for such an old-fashioned diplomatic

4 Alan James, Keeping the Peace in the Cyprus Crisis of 1963-64 (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 107-108. 5 Paul Martin, A Very Public Life: So Many Worlds (Toronto: Deneau, 1985), 547. 6 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 10 April 1964. 7 James, Keeping the Peace, 110-111.

312 charade,” reported Time, “Martin instead simply picked up the phone to the Swedish and Finnish premiers [and] successfully helped clear the way for the quick dispatch of the U.N. force to

Cyprus.”8 This was news to Cadieux. Noting that “ce qui est amusant c’est qu’exactement le contraire s’est passé,” he proceeded to give his own version of events in his diary: “Le vendredi en question, le matin, Gordon Robertson, Ross Campbell et moi avon[s] passé presque deux heures dans le bureau du Ministre. C’est moi en particulier qui ai insisté pour qu’il appelle le

Ministre des Affaires étrangères de Suède. Je suis moi-même sorti du bureau pour aider à établir la communication.” As Cadieux added, Martin seemed to be using “une nouvelle technique”:

“Au sujet de l’OAS,” that is, the Organization of American States, which Martin favoured joining but which he well knew Pearson and cabinet were much less enthusiastic about, “il accuse le Ministère de l’empêcher d’arriver à ses fins. Au sujet de Chypre, c’est lui qui voulait téléphoner d’après les histoires que je le soupçonne de répandre.”9

If Cadieux suspected Martin of twisting the facts in 1964, he likely would have been astonished to learn that years later the latter would tell historians interviewing him that Cadieux himself had advised him against communicating directly with his counterparts across the

Atlantic.10 In assessing this claim, which interestingly goes unrepeated in Martin’s published memoirs, it is important to keep in mind two things. First, Martin had a well-known habit of changing the historical record in his favour, so much so that any uncorroborated claim by him should be weighed carefully. Second, it is hard to imagine that someone of Cadieux’s integrity would lie so brazenly, especially in his private diary. Of course, diaries are often written with an eye on posterity, but a public figure like Martin had far more to gain, both at the time and later, by exaggerating his role in resolving the Cyprus crisis than did a civil servant like Cadieux.

8 “Brilliance Written with a Quill Pen,” Time Magazine, 27 April 1964. 9 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 23 April 1964. 10 UTA/RB/B1987-0006-010 –Martin, interview with Bothwell and Granatstein, Windsor, Ontario, 10-11 February 1987; Martin, interview with Don Page, GAC Oral History Collection, London, England, 19 March 1979.

313

Indeed, Cadieux’s genuine surprise at the Time article seems to be the best proof of all for the veracity of his account. That said, trying to discern if it was Martin or the DEA who thought of having him phone foreign ministers on 13 March distracts from the real issue here: that, as the likely source of stories about his allegedly crucial role in resolving the Cyprus crisis, Martin was making himself popular at the expense of his officials.

As the Cyprus episode suggests, as under-secretary Cadieux was immediately involved in any international crisis that affected Canada. Such was the case in May 1967 when Egypt, which was officially called the United Arab Republic (UAR), demanded the withdrawal of the United

Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) and its contingent of eight hundred Canadians from the Sinai

Peninsula, where they had kept the peace since the Suez Crisis of 1956.11 The origins of this request and of the Six-Day War between Israel and the UAR, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon three weeks later lay in competing Israeli and Syrian water-diversion projects, in increasingly serious attacks and counterattacks on Israeli borders, in rivalries within the Arab world, in its continued opposition to the very existence of the state of Israel, and finally in that country’s acute need for security. While Cadieux had never been to the Middle East nor had ever had much to do with its problems, events there in the spring of 1967 became too serious to ignore.

Given inaccurate information by the Soviet Union that Israel was massing for war against

Syria, Egyptian President Gamal Adbel Nasser, a brash-talking pan-Arab nationalist long accused by his partners of hiding behind UNEF, began moving his army into the Sinai. On 16

May U Thant learned that the commander of UNEF had been asked to withdraw “all UN troops which install observer posts along our borders.” Despite being warned by George Ignatieff,

Canada’s representative to the UN, against agreeing too quickly to Egyptian wishes, the

Secretary General, who insisted that UNEF depended on the consent of its host government, informed the UAR on 17 May that he would grant a withdrawal request submitted directly to him

11 For the Canadian perspective on the withdrawal of UNEF see Carroll, Pearson’s Peacekeepers, 161-181.

314 and only for UNEF’s full removal. On 18 May Cairo happily obliged, telling U Thant that it had terminated the presence of UNEF, which was to leave “as soon as possible.”12 This development was ominous and so from Ottawa, where Pearson and Martin had found the attitude of the

Secretary General disturbing, Ignatieff received orders to press for consideration of the issue by the UN General Assembly, which had authorized UNEF over a decade ago. Back then, as SSEA,

Pearson had argued that Egypt had accepted a “limitation of its sovereignty” in agreeing to the stationing of the force on its soil and that it was thus up to the UN, not to Cairo, to decide its fate.

While Ignatieff echoed this view, U Thant disagreed.13 Needless to say, so did the UAR, which knew that Canada was pushing for a delay. It also knew, since he could not resist saying so publicly, that Martin had raised with Israel the idea of moving UNEF to its side of the border, an idea Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban told Martin that “additional thinking” would convince him was “both illogical and impractical.”14 When the always-energetic Martin flew to New York on 20 May for discussions with the key players, he expressed concern to U Thant about the termination of UNEF but, after meeting with the representative from the UAR, noted just how inflexible and sensitive that country was on the question.15

Feeling that Canada had done all it could to save UNEF, Cadieux advised Martin upon his return to Ottawa on 22 May against giving the UAR the (further) impression that Canada sought to postpone the withdrawal of UNEF. As Martin was reminded, John Starnes, the ambassador in Cairo and an old and trusted colleague of Cadieux’s, had been warned that any

12 U Thant, View from the UN (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1978), 220-224; George Ignatieff, The Making of a Peacemonger (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 219-221. See as well Maj.-Gen. Indar Jit Rikhye, The Sinai Blunder: Withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force leading to the Six-Day War of June 1967 (London: Frank Cass, 1980), 14-41. Rikhye was the Indian commander of UNEF. 13 LAC/DEA/10642/21-4-6-UNEF-1/2 – DEA to Canadian mission New York (UN), 18 May 1967; LAC/DEA/10642/21-4-6-UNEF-1/3 – Cadieux to Canadian mission New York (UN), 18 May 1967; LAC/DEA/10642/21-4-6-UNEF-1/2 – Canadian mission New York (UN) to DEA, 18 May 1967; U Thant, View from the UN, 224-226. 14 LAC/DEA/10643/21-14-6-UNEF-1/3 – Abba Eban to Martin, 19 May 1967; LAC/DE/10050/20-1-2-ISR/3.2 – African & Middle Eastern Division to Cadieux, 19 May 1967. 15 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 389.

315 effort to have the issue discussed in either the UN General Assembly or the Security Council would be viewed as an unfriendly attempt to help Israel and that, if certain countries complicated the task of the Secretary General, the UAR would remove UNEF unilaterally. “We believe it would be unwise not to take these UAR views seriously,” Cadieux counselled Martin,

“particularly in the present inflamed state of feelings in the Middle East.” With the UAR on record as favouring “an orderly and dignified” withdrawal of UNEF, Cadieux argued that it was in both Canada’s short-term interests, for the security of its troops, and its long-term interests, for any hope that it had to play a future peacekeeping role in the Middle East, “to ensure that there is no deterioration in this situation.”16

This was good advice, but on the same day, events in the Sinai took a turn for the worse.

In an act that would provide the casus belli for the Six-Day War, the UAR closed the Straits of

Tiran, which separate the Gulf of Aqaba from the Red Sea, cutting off the southern Israeli port city of Eliat from its eastern lifeline and access to Iranian oil. As Nasser boldly declared, “The

Aqaba Gulf constitutes our Egyptian territorial waters. … The Jews threatened war. We tell them: Ahlan Wa-sahlan (You are welcome), we are ready for war. Our armed forces and all our people are ready for war, but under no circumstance will we abandon any of our rights. This water is ours.”17 On 23 May the Department of National Defence (DND) announced that it was sending one supply ship and two destroyers for exercises in the eastern Atlantic and as part of a contingency plan for the evacuation of Canadian soldiers from the Middle East.18 On 24 May

Canada and Denmark co-sponsored a resolution in the Security Council supporting mediatory efforts by U Thant in Cairo and urging restraint, but it was opposed by the UAR representative

16 LAC/DEA/10643/21-14-6-UNEF-1/3 – Cadieux to Martin, 22 May 1967. 17 Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Rosetta Books, 2010), 84. 18 LAC/DEA/10643/21-14-6-UNEF-1/4 – DEA to London, UN, Washington, and Cairo, 24 May 1967.

316 and blocked by the Soviet one, who denounced Ignatieff’s arguments as neo-imperialistic.19 As the official historians of the DEA observe, Pearson’s meetings with visiting Israeli President

Zalman Shazar in Ottawa on 21 May and with visiting American president Lyndon Johnson at

Harrington Lake (the Canadian prime minister’s country retreat) on 25 May only increased UAR doubts about the Canadian position. “These talks,” write John Hilliker and Donald Barry, “were viewed in Cairo as the beginning of a diplomatic campaign aimed at keeping the Gulf of Aqaba open for navigation.”20

A “short but frank” conversation between a senior American diplomat and Cadieux on a possible joint statement to be issued after the Johnson-Pearson meeting proved, according to the

United States embassy, “illuminative of current EXTAFF attitudes on Canada’s cherished role as one of the world’s more important ‘peacekeepers.’” When asked why he wanted deleted a line in the American draft to the effect that Johnson and Pearson had agreed that the Gulf of Aqaba should be open and that freedom to navigate it was of vital international interest, Cadieux bluntly replied that Canada had “800 hostages in the UAR.” When queried on whether he thought Nasser would target them, Cadieux said no but worried, in the American diplomat’s words, about “a typical Middle Eastern howling mob” that might “subject the Canadian contingent to indignities” and result in a “hullabaloo” in Parliament. Prodded on whether he thought Diefenbaker would cause it, Cadieux said yes, adding, in a revealing aside, that “of course Tommy Douglas,” the leader of the NDP, “would not because he’s for peacekeeping.” When assistant under-secretary

Ralph Collins walked into the room a few minutes later, he not only reacted the same way that

Cadieux had to the American text but also used the word “hostages,” showing the Americans

“that that expression has some currency in EXTAFF.”21

19 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 389; Ignatieff, Making of a Peacemonger, 223. 20 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 389. 21 NARA/RG59/CFPF/1942/POL 15-2 CAN – Butterworth to Secretary of State, 15 May 1967.

317

If Cadieux and the DEA were souring on peacekeeping, a request from UAR foreign minister Mahmoud Riad to U Thant on 27 May that Canadian forces leave Egyptian soil within forty-eight hours would have marked a further stage in their disillusionment. In justifying this ultimatum, Riad cited Canada’s “regrettable attitude” to the withdrawal of UNEF, its

“procrastination and delay,” its “unfriendly position” towards Cairo, and its sending destroyers to the Mediterranean, an act which had allegedly “inflamed” Egyptian public opinion.22 While

Canada was left with no choice but to evacuate its soldiers, their humiliating exit tarnished

Pearson’s greatest international achievement.

One of the first problems Cadieux and the DEA faced was whether or not Pearson should communicate with Nasser. Despite his initial doubts, Cadieux supported the idea when he realized that it could be used to explain to the Egyptian leader that there had been a misunderstanding in Cairo about Canadian policy. Showing that his first priority was the safety of Canadian troops, Cadieux noted that a letter from Pearson to Nasser might help to ensure that they were not mistreated. It would also allow ministers to state in parliament that they had done their best to protect their evacuating forces. Pearson agreed. The second challenge confronting

Cadieux and his colleagues was crafting Ottawa’s public statement for when the UAR’s demand inevitably became known. The task took more than an hour. “Le Gouvernement, tout en ne voulant pas prendre une attitude agressive,” Cadieux explained, “ne voulait pas non plus avoir l’air d’un chien battu.” While relieved to hear that U Thant had declined an Egyptian offer to transport the Canadian UNEF contingent out of the country and had asked Ottawa to do it instead, Cadieux urged Pearson and Martin to show “la plus grande prudence” in parliament until the operation was completed.23

22 LAC/DEA/10643/21-14-6-UNEF-1/4 – New York (UN) to DEA, 27 May 1967. 23 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 28 May 1967.

318

The next day, 28 May, Cadieux wanted to use the separate ministerial statement on the withdrawal of UNEF to answer the Egyptian charge that Canadian policy had not been impartial and that Canada had sent destroyers to the Mediterranean. Yet, as his diary reveals, the under- secretary felt that Martin and Pearson had been anything but objective during the crisis:

L’inconvénient majeur de la situation c’est que le Ministre et le Premier [m]inistre tout en faisant des déclarations générales soutiennent de fait Israël sur tous les points majeurs. Les Arabes qui ne sont pas des imbéciles, s’en sont bien aperçu et soutiennent avec raison, à mon avis, que le Canada a de fait pris partie [sic] contre eux. Le Ministre et le Premier [m]inistre se nourrissent de la douce illusion que tout peut être arrangé s’ils expliquent aux Egyptiens qu’ils ont tort et que le Canada conserve à leur endroit les meilleur[e]s dispositions. Ils ne semblent pas imaginer que cette simple réitération de la politique canadienne constitue pour les Egyptiens un motif grave d’irritation. Mais la communauté juive au Canada est puissante et riche; elle fait des contributions généreuses à la caisse du Partie [sic]. Le Gouvernement est obsédé par le souci de garder les faveurs des financiers juifs et ne comprend pas qu’en faisant le jeu d’Israël, en énonçant des grands principes vagues, il compromet la sécurité de nos troupes.24

These criticisms, while somewhat crudely expressed, have merit, but require qualification. For example, what the Egyptians (and Cadieux) saw as Canadian hypocrisy and favouritism towards

Israel could also be interpreted as a well-meaning if futile attempt to prevent war. Moreover, even if the Jewish lobby had not been powerful, no Canadian politician could ignore the extreme threats that Nasser and other Arab leaders were making against Israel. Indeed, while western military intelligence knew that that nation could defend itself against its hostile neighbours, there was great public alarm, bordering on hysteria and not confined to Jews, about the mortal danger supposedly confronting Israel. As a professional diplomat, Cadieux may have resented such pressures, but they are inherent in any democracy. Finally, while by no means perfectly neutral,

Canadian policy towards the Middle East in this period was arguably more balanced than it has been in any period since.

The Gulf of Aqaba also preoccupied Cadieux. Britain and the United States were pressing

Canada to sign a declaration of maritime powers calling for free passage through its waters and

24 Ibid.

319 perhaps even to join a naval task force to assert the principle. On 28 May Canada received word that Tel Aviv was asking Ottawa directly whether or not it would join with other maritime powers, if necessary outside of the UN, in forcing the straits.25 By chance Pearson phoned

Cadieux about his letter to Nasser, giving Cadieux an opportunity to inform him of the demands on Canada. The prime minister replied that Canada could not commit itself to anything outside the UN. “Pour une fois, nous sommes d’accord,” Cadieux noted privately. Yet, as he had feared, by the afternoon Pearson was no longer so sure that, if the UN failed, Canada should abstain from participating in separate collective action. “Son souci est évidemment d’encourager les

Israéliens à ne pas attaquer,” observed Cadieux.26 Since Martin shared his opposition to involvement, Cadieux sent Pearson a memo through him stressing the reasons against. First and foremost, such a move might provoke Cairo when Canadian soldiers were still in Egypt. Second,

“Canada has no merchant marine to speak of, no commitments of direct interest in the area and may be required to take drastic action later on denying free access to foreign ships in special areas (the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Queen Charlotte Sound), on both our coasts, which other countries consider to be part of the high seas.” Indeed, Canada’s future bilateral relations with the United States over the law of the sea weighed heavily in Cadieux’s thinking. “Admittedly the circumstances are not identical,” Pearson was told, “but in both cases unilateral action in violation of the accepted rules of international law would be involved.”27 Such arguments had an effect for on 29 May cabinet, in Cadieux’s words, “a décidé de ne rien décider” about the naval task force. As for the evacuation, by now it was underway, though not before Martin briefly expressed a preference that Canadian soldiers remain in Pisa, the first stop on their journey home. “Si nous laissons entendre que nous les gardons à Pise dans l’intention de les renvoyer

25 LAC/DEA/13434/25-3-2-ARAB-ISR/9 – Louis Rogers to DEA, 28 May 1967. 26 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 28 May 1967. 27 LAC/DEA/13434/25-3-2-ARAB-ISR/9 – Martin to Pearson, 28 May 1967.

320 sous une autre étiquette dans la région d’où ils viennent, nous allons de nouveau avoir des histoires avec les Egyptiens,” Cadieux correctly predicted.28

In the end, neither the UN nor the threat of a multinational naval force outside it was enough to prevent war. Having warily watched its Arab neighbours mobilize their armies against it, Israel took its defence into its own hands on 5 June and launched a devastating pre-emptive strike on the Egyptian air force. At 6 a.m. the phone in Cadieux’s house rang. It was Thomas

Carter, the head of the African and Middle Eastern Division, telling him that hostilities between

Israel and the Arab countries were underway. At work that morning it did not take Cadieux long to grasp that, aside from a predictable statement by Pearson at 10 a.m. that Canada would work towards a ceasefire and protect its nationals in the region, the country had little role to play:

Pour le moment, nous n’avons pas la [cote] avec les Arabes. Les Israéliens sont fort déçus de notre refus de signer la déclaration anglaise. Il reste de Gaulle, U Thant, Wilson et Johnson. Nous venons de dire non à la déclaration de Wilson. Nous disons à qui veut l’entendre que U Thant s’est ‘gouré’ en retirant précipitamment les forces de l’UNEF et nous ne cessons d’agacer les Américains au sujet de leur façon de conduire la guerre au Vietnam. L’occasion n’est pas propice aux grandes initiatives de notre part et notre crédit ne semble considérable nulle part.29

Cadieux was right. As Robert Bothwell puts it, “In the 1967 crisis, Canadian diplomacy fluttered around the margins of great events.”30 Nor did it help that Pearson and Martin approached these situations differently. When on 7 June Martin instructed Ignatieff to propose an amendment to a

Soviet ceasefire resolution in the Security Council, Pearson, who had not been consulted on the move, expressed irritation. “Pour arranger les choses,” Cadieux despaired in his diary, “nous nous trouvons avec deux ministres des affaires étrangères qui cherchent tous les deux à tenir le premier rôle.”31

The Six-Day War of June 1967 was a triumph for Israel, which by the end controlled the

Egyptian Sinai and Gaza Strip, the Jordanian West Bank, and the Syrian Golan Heights. When in

28 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 28 May 1967. 29 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 5 June 1967. 30 Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 267. 31 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 8 June 1967.

321

November 1967 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242 calling on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories and on the Arab countries to recognize its right to live in peace,

Cadieux had long ceased to take a direct interest in the question. Nevertheless, a depressing but stimulating visit to the Middle East in late 1969 with Mitchell Sharp, Martin’s replacement as

SSEA, who Cadieux noted was even more beholden to the Jewish lobby, convinced him that the chances of either side compromising were bleak indeed.

II – The United States, China, and the Vietnam War

While crises like Cyprus and the Six-Day War came and went, there had been one perennial factor in Canadian foreign policy since 1776: the United States. Curiously enough,

Cadieux had never been posted to Washington. He had occupied the American desk at headquarters, but only for a month in 1947. Moreover, one of the drawbacks of his Quebec classical education was that he had no real understanding of economics, the backbone of the

Canadian-American relationship. Nevertheless, as Cadieux later recalled, it was plain to him that the relationship with the U.S. trumped all others: “As a bureaucrat with increasing responsibilities, I could see that Canada-USA relations were of primary importance to us. They are of incredible volume and complexity. They take pride of place over anything else for

Canada.”32 While this was a truism, Cadieux’s unshakeable belief in the western alliance also predisposed him to a deep respect for its undisputed leader. As he saw it, the United States was shouldering the burdens of the free world and so, whenever possible, it was to be given the benefit of the doubt. That said, Cadieux could be very tough when Canada’s bilateral interests were at stake. Whereas Norman Robertson had on occasion seemed anti-American for his views on such issues as trade, Cuba, and nuclear weapons, in Cadieux the United States had one of the most pro-American under-secretaries ever to hold the office.

32 LAC/MC/37/9 – Cadieux, “A Canadian Looks at the USA,” address to the National Defence College, Kingston, Ontario, 3 March 1980.

322

Given how John Diefenbaker and Howard Green had mismanaged them, good relations with the United States were important to Pearson and to Martin, who of course represented a border city heavily dependent on the auto industry. At the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis

Port, Massachusetts in April 1963, Pearson and John F. Kennedy toasted a fresh start in

Canadian-American relations. Notwithstanding Walter Gordon’s controversial budget two months later, the Pearson government achieved early bilateral successes with its acceptance of

American nuclear weapons, with the ratification of the Columbia River Treaty in September

1964, and with the signing of the Canada-United States Automotive Products Agreement (or

Auto Pact) in January 1965. Yet, as he told Martin in June 1965, Cadieux was struck by what he called a “basic fault” in Canada’s relations with the United States:

If we consider these relations in their entirety and over time we find that, on the one hand, we have a tendency to seek from the United States cooperation, and sometimes special relationships, on bilateral questions affecting our material interests and, on the other hand, an equal tendency to stand up to the United States on questions affecting our national independence or our foreign policy objectives. This may be inevitable as a general principle, but, looking back over the past several years, I am not very happy about the way it works out in practice. At any given moment there may develop in Washington a climate which is inimical to our material or national interests and which can even render our efforts to pursue foreign policy objectives self-defeating. I think we should examine this state of affairs with a view to correcting it insofar as it is within our power to do so.

What Cadieux wanted was for Canada to adopt a more coordinated approach, including biannual cabinet reviews, towards the United States in which its representations to Washington were limited to matters of vital Canadian concern and in which its decisions to disagree with it were based on similar criteria. Central to Cadieux’s proposal was what he called a “private type of diplomacy.” While conceding that “the question of how soon to speak out on a given issue and how much to say when one does speak is one of the most tantalising of the many which face a

Foreign Minister,” Cadieux stressed that his “own conviction, based on many years in close touch with this sort of operation, is that as a general rule the greatest possible resort to private

323 diplomacy increases our chances of actual success and at the same time places the government in the best possible position to establish a public record of long-term, lasting achievement.”33

What Cadieux called “private diplomacy” would later be promoted as “quiet diplomacy” by former Canadian ambassador to the United States Arnold Heeney and former American ambassador to Canada Livingston T. Merchant in their government-mandated August 1965 report on the Canadian-American partnership, one whose proposals soon overshadowed

Cadieux’s own thoughtful, if overtly ambitious, ones.34 In a period of unprecedented unease over

American economic and cultural dominance of Canada, as captured by philosopher George

Grant’s best-selling Lament for a Nation (1965), and over the morality of American foreign policy, as captured by public concern over the recent U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic and its escalating war in Vietnam, “quiet diplomacy” quickly became synonymous with

Canadian complicity in the vaguely defined but invariably nefarious American “agenda.” In the increasingly radical campus environment of the 1960s, a new generation of professors and students called for an “independent” foreign policy, a demand echoed in parliament by the NDP and some Progressive Conservatives. Seminars, speeches, and books were devoted to the subject.

While Cadieux felt that anti-Americanism inspired much of this ferment, some of those behind it were so vociferous and influential that they could neither be ignored nor left totally unappeased.

As it always did, the Canadian-American relationship ground along in these years, despite such bilateral irritants as policies on energy, investment, and territorial waters, but Pearson and Martin were under increasing public pressure to chart an independent course for Canada in the world. As it turned out, two places it seemed possible to do so were in Asia: China and Vietnam.

As Martin publicly made clear after becoming minister in 1963, he favoured a more flexible approach to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), founded in 1949 by the Chinese

33 LAC/DEA/10842/20-1-2-USA/3 – Cadieux to Martin, 24 June 1965. 34 A.D.P. Heeney and Livingston T. Merchant, Canada and the United States: Principles for Partnership (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1965).

324

Communist Party of Mao Zedong following the defeat of nationalist Chiang Kai-Shek, whose

Republic of China (ROC) re-established itself on the island of Taiwan. Shunned by the United

States for fifteen years, the PRC was now engaged in a bitter ideological split with the Soviet

Union. As the American embassy reported, Martin’s goal was “widely shared” in the DEA.35

Indeed, even Cadieux, despite his strong anti-communism, had no objection to it. Where opinions differed, however, was how to follow through with it. While Martin wished to see the

PRC admitted to the UN, from whose General Assembly and permanent seat on the Security

Council it had been barred at the expense of Taiwan, this was easier said than done. Since 1961 the matter of Chinese representation there had been considered an “important question” needing a two-thirds majority in the assembly. Since 1962 another annual resolution, usually sponsored by communist Albania, had called for the PRC to be seated in the UN and for Taiwan to be banished from it. Historically, Canada had voted for the “important question” and against the

Albanian-type resolution because it was neither willing to sacrifice Taiwan nor, more importantly, to incur the wrath of the United States. Yet, as both Martin and the DEA knew, the situation in the UN, whose new members could not be counted on to favour the exclusion of the

PRC, was changing. Since Washington could not hold the line forever, the time seemed ripe for

Canada to seek to break the deadlock in a way that still preserved western interests. Above all,

Martin grasped that such a step would manifest Canada’s independence from the United States.

In the autumn of 1964 Cadieux met with his subordinates to study a paper on the Chinese question drafted in Far Eastern Division. He subsequently recommended to Martin that, while

Canada should vote as before on the issue at the upcoming session of the UN, it might introduce a declaratory resolution giving member states a chance to proclaim the existence of independent regimes in both mainland China and Taiwan, thus helping the United States and other like- minded powers to adjust to the imminent admission (or so it was assumed) of the PRC to the

35 NARA/RG59/CFPF/3853/POL CAN-A – American embassy Ottawa to Department of State, 21 November 1963.

325 international organization. But before it moved to gauge support for such a resolution, Martin was told, Ottawa should consult closely with Washington. When it did, however, the United

States proved so opposed to the idea that it had to be dropped. That said, since the focus of the

19th General Assembly of the UN was overwhelmingly on Article 19 and the funding of peacekeeping operations, the point was moot.36

Nor were the prospects of a breakthrough on China any brighter at the UN assembly the next year. The attitude of the PRC to the worsening war in Vietnam, to an alleged communist coup attempt in Indonesia, and to Afro-Asian affairs had all damaged Beijing’s international standing. No doubt sensing that his country would continue to be excluded from the UN, Chinese foreign minister Chen Yi attached a number of impossible conditions to its admission at a defiant press conference in late September 1965. As Cadieux and Ralph Collins, his Chinese-born assistant under-secretary, well understood, Yi’s statement was a gift in a year where no advance was expected on the question. On the advice of Cadieux, a disappointed Martin publicly reiterated the Canadian desire to see the PRC join the UN but stressed Beijing’s own role in its continued absence from it. “In the view of the Canadian Government,” Martin declared, “it is not for the UN to accommodate itself to the views of a single nation, however powerful or populous.”37

The New Year brought renewed hope for movement on the issue. In Washington, Dean

Rusk, the American Secretary of State from Georgia, gave Martin the impression that he was ready to be flexible, while State Department officials seemed engaged in considerable soul- searching of their own. By mid-March, however, it was clear that the United States had returned

36 LAC/DEA/9324/20-CHINA-14/9 – P.A. McDougall to Arnold Smith, 2 February 1965. 37 LAC/DEA/9324/20-CHINA-14/10 – R.E. Collins to Cadieux, 28 October 1965; LAC/DEA/9324/20-CHINA- 14/10 – Cadieux to Martin; LAC/PCO/6271 – Cabinet conclusions, 15 November 1967; LAC/DEA/9324/20- CHINA-14/10 – “Chinese Representation,” press release by Martin, 17 November 1965.

326 to its former intransigence on the Chinese question.38 Nevertheless, Cadieux approved the creation of a small working group, a favourite bureaucratic device, to study the various courses of action open to Canada. “The champagne bottle is smashed,” he wrote in a mock christening of the exercise.39 While the resulting twelve-page preliminary paper sent to Pearson through Martin argued that “the most logical course” was perhaps to abstain on the Albanian resolution, it added that a “more positive Canadian policy” would be to introduce a resolution which, without referring to Taiwan, called on the PRC to be seated at the UN. Fearing an adverse reaction in

Washington, however, Pearson felt that an abstention was as far as Ottawa should go.40 He also requested that Norman Robertson be consulted. As Cadieux told Martin, while Robertson conceded the arguments in favour of an “unspectacular shift” in the Canadian position that year, he felt that the state of the Vietnam War and the difficult position of the American administration perhaps made it “unwise” to consider any shift at all. Although Cadieux agreed that “these factors must be taken fully into account as the time for taking a public position draws closer,” he felt that “we should not, at this stage, abandon our efforts to make a cautious forward move on the China item.” He thus advised an apparently pleased Martin to propose that government approval be sought for an abstention on the Albanian resolution.41 Yet Pearson, as his extensive comments on Martin’s draft memorandum to cabinet of July 1966 reveal, had doubts “about

‘abstaining’ on a resolution which includes a specific provision for the expulsion of Nationalist

China from the U.N.”42 Since Pearson, for reasons that are unclear, did not comment on the draft memo until late September, the DEA was given almost no time to produce a different policy. In a hopeless attempt to square the Chinese circle, it recommended (and cabinet approved) sponsoring a “one-China, one-Taiwan” resolution that would see both the ROC and the PRC

38 LAC/DEA/9324/20-CHINA-14/11 – Cadieux to Far Eastern Division, 21 February 1966; LAC/DEA/9324/20- CHINA-14/11 – Cadieux to Martin, 17 March 1966. 39 Cadieux marginal comment on LAC/DEA/9324/20-CHINA-14/11 – Klaus Goldschlag to Collins, 31 May 1966. 40 LAC/DEA/9324/20-CHINA-14/12 – Martin to Pearson, 28 June 1966. 41 LAC/DEA/9324/20-CHINA-14/12 – Cadieux to Martin, 22 July 1966. 42 Pearson comment on LAC/DEA/9324/20-CHINA-14/12 – Martin to Pearson, 22 July 1966.

327 seated at the UN as a temporary solution until their rival territorial claims could be settled.43

But in early November, when Canada shared with the United States, Japan, Australia, and

New Zealand, among others, the text of its resolution, the reaction to it was overwhelmingly negative. Indeed, Dean Rusk, who earlier that year had warned Martin not to discount the views of countries with first-hand experience of Chinese militarism simply to pursue a policy that made

Canada “feel warm inside,” wrote directly to Pearson to say that the Canadian resolution, which included a call for the PRC to occupy the permanent Chinese seat on the Security Council, was

“bound to create maximum mischief for minimum result.”44 When Martin and Cadieux, fresh from their visit to Warsaw and Moscow, arrived in Rome in mid-November, the under-secretary noted that a pile of telegrams and a crisis on the Chinese question awaited them. With the

Italians, mindful of American concerns, were eager to see the UN refer the issue to a simple study group, Martin unsuccessfully tried to get them to agree to certain elements in the Canadian resolution. As Cadieux observed, “J’ai bien l’impression … que nous avons raté là une bonne occasion d’avancer dans cette question tout en gardant contact avec les [É]tats[-]Unis.” While

Cadieux’s preference not to stray too far from the Americans on this issue may seem unheroic, a colleague and friend recalled that he did not “favour change for the sake of change” but rather

“needed to be convinced change was for good reasons.”45 As he would have seen it, the proposed

Canadian resolution on China threatened Canada’s relations with the United States for no practical diplomatic benefit. Indeed, Cadieux was strongly influenced by comments made to

Martin and him by Italian deputy Prime Minister Pietro Nenni, who despite his age radiated intelligence, on the Cultural Revolution in China, which had begun in August 1966 and which was an attempt by Mao Zedong to recapture the spirit of the Chinese revolution by encouraging

43 LAC/DEA/9325/20-CHINA-14/17 – McDougall to Arthur Menzies, 29 December 1966. 44 LAC/DEA/10842/20-1-2-USA/4 – Canadian embassy Washington to DEA, 26 July 1966; LAC/DEA/9325/20- CHINA-14/15 – Butterworth to Pearson with letter from Rusk, 9 November 1966. 45 Confidential source.

328

Red Guards of youth to denounce all things traditional and bourgeois.: “…il [Nenni] nous a dit franchement son sentiment qu’il se passait là [in China] quelque chose de grave, de mystérieux et d’émouvant. … A tout événement, la Chine suivrait une ligne plus rigide et elle ne serait pas disposée à accepter de compromis quant à son admission aux Nations Unies.”46

While Nenni was right, Martin was understandably attracted by the political benefit of a forward move on the question. With the Canadian “one-China, one-Taiwan” resolution dead, he expressed support at the UN for the Italian study group but made clear his disappointment that it had not gone further. Then, on 29 November, Martin convinced Pearson to allow him to abstain on the Albanian resolution later that day. While his senior officials, including Cadieux, had feared displeasing the Americans more and thus advised him against such a move, Donald

Macdonald and Pierre Trudeau, who were in attendance at the UN, had been exerting countervailing pressure. In the end, abstaining on the Albanian resolution was a small Canadian step forward that had no real impact on the UN, where the resolution, after a tie in 1965, was defeated by eleven votes, or on the Chinese, who colourfully termed Canadian advocacy of a two-China solution as a “plot in service of USA imperialism.”47 Nevertheless, as Martin had predicted to Pearson, Ottawa had shown independence from Washington without provoking its ire.48

Cadieux had opposed the abstention, but that decision concerned him less than a comment Pearson had made five days before in parliament to the effect that, should UN efforts to seat the PRC fail, Canada would consider establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing. This was a classic case of Pearson acting without consulting Martin, who told American ambassador

46 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 28 November 1966. 47 Michael Lumbers, Piercing the Bamboo Curtain: Tentative Bridge-Building to China during the Johnson Years (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 165; LAC/DEA/9325/20-CHINA-14/19 – John M. Fraser [Trade Commissioner in Hong Kong] to DEA, 1 June 1967. 48 Donaghy, Grit, 259. See as well Don Page, “The Representation of China in the United Nations: Canadian Perspectives and Initiatives, 1949-1971,” in Reluctant Adversaries: Canada and the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1970, edited by Paul M. Evans and B. Michael Frolic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 97.

329

Walt Butterworth that he had gotten the news from The New York Times.49 While Pearson had counted on the Italian study group to buy him a year’s delay, its subsequent defeat at the UN put him in an awkward position. Already, Cadieux noted, the DEA had received instructions from on high to produce a new policy. “Il s’agit maintenant de savoir ce que nous pouvons proposer aux

Chinois,” he remarked, adding that, since Pearson had consistently refused to sacrifice Taiwan, it was unclear how Ottawa planned to interest Beijing. Nor did he feel that Pearson and Martin were on the same page: “Bien clairement, M. Martin préférerait poursuivre les opérations au sein de l’ONU, ce qui lui permettrait de gagner du temps et de tenir la vedette. Par contre, il est non moins clair que le Premier [m]inistre ne l’entend pas de cette oreille et qu’il préfère explorer l’avenue des relations bilatérales ce qui lui permettrait de diriger les opérations et de tenir les manchettes.” Complicating matters, Cadieux added, was that excited ministers were making “des déclarations intempestives et prématurées” on the subject. “En fait,” he added with annoyance,

“ils parlent avant que nous ayons pu réfléchir pour eux.”50 While Cadieux was right to be concerned about the sudden acceleration in Canadian policy on China, and the inevitable effect it would have on Canadian-American relations, his worries proved short-lived. With the Cultural

Revolution in full swing in China by early 1967, any new approach to that country would be delayed indefinitely.

The problems China caused for Canadian-American relations paled in comparison to those occasioned by Vietnam, the war there being the single most controversial foreign policy issue in both Canada and the United States in these years. The situation in Vietnam had changed dramatically since Cadieux’s “six mois à Hanoi” in 1954-55. Despite receiving economic and military aid from the Eisenhower administration, the Saigon regime had proven unable to quell the growing campaign of terrorism and assassination against it in the countryside by the

49 NARA/RG59/1966-1975/Lot file/2/POL 7 –Butterworth to Smith, 10 February 1967. 50 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 7 December 1966.

330

Vietcong, the communist guerrilla movement, or to prevent the infiltration across the demilitarized zone or through neighbouring Laos of weapons, equipment, and trained cadres from the north. Accepting the logic of the “domino theory,” which posited that the fall of one country in a region to communism would lead to the toppling of others, the Kennedy administration had greatly increased aid to South Vietnam, where by the end of 1962 there were

9,000 American military advisers compared to just 800 two years before. As well, President

Kennedy agreed to a CIA-backed coup by senior officers in the South Vietnamese army that would result in the murder of its unpopular and heavy-handed Catholic president, Ngo Dinh

Diem, and his brother. Three weeks later Kennedy himself had been assassinated, leaving his vice president and successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, with a situation in South Vietnam that was more unstable than ever. A rough but highly effective former Democratic Senate leader from

Texas, Johnson would have preferred to focus on his fight against domestic poverty and racial discrimination under the banner of the “Great Society,” but, like Eisenhower and Kennedy before him, he refused to abandon Saigon. By the end of 1964 he had increased the number of military advisers in South Vietnam to 24,000, named General William C. Westmoreland commander there, and prevailed upon Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which obviated the need for a formal declaration of war by granting the president all the necessary powers to respond to aggression in Southeast Asia. Even before this congressional authorization in August, the Johnson administration had used J. Blair Seaborn, the Canadian commissioner on the ICC, to convey to the north its determination to escalate the war unless the division of the country along the 17th parallel was respected. Hanoi, which knew that it had time on its side and that it could play off its feuding Soviet and Chinese allies for support, was unintimidated. The

ICC, for its part, was no more able to stop the clouds of war from gathering over the jungles of

Vietnam in 1964 than it had been to guarantee the application of the Geneva Agreements a

331 decade earlier.

While the ICC was more impotent than ever, Canada’s role in it did give Ottawa a say in the conflict, one Pearson and then Martin would take full advantage of. Their unsolicited advice to Washington and their well-meaning but futile attempts to end the war in these years did not sit well with Cadieux. As he recalled in 1980, four years after the formal reunification of Vietnam under Hanoi’s rule, “Because of my NATO exposure, my short but traumatic stay in Vietnam, I must confess that during all this period I had great sympathy for U.S. positions; in many cases, I was not in full agreement, personally, with some Canadian moods and policy decisions.” He added, “After what I had observed personally in Hanoi I was shocked by the NDP (T.C.

Douglas) leader’s statement at the time that the U.S. intervention in Indochina was legally and morally wrong.”51 Nor were Cadieux’s views unique. By 1965 an estimated 23 percent of

Canadian FSOs had served on the ICC in Vietnam.52 The vast majority of them had returned to the DEA sympathetic to Washington and critical of Hanoi. Moreover, as American records show, those officers responsible for Vietnam policy in these years, including desk officers Tom

Delworth and Bill Bauer, Far Eastern Division heads Lou Rogers and Klaus Goldschlag, and assistant under-secretary Ralph Collins, were all, like Cadieux, more hawkish on the question than either Pearson or Martin. Yet as the Vietnam War worsened and public opinion reacted predictably, the politicians felt compelled either to speak up or to be seen doing something to end it. The civil servants dutifully supported them.53

A case in point was Pearson’s speech at Temple University in Philadelphia on 2 April

1965. Exactly one month before the U.S. had launched Operation Rolling Thunder, a controversial bombing campaign of North Vietnam initially limited to targets below the 19th

51 LAC/MC/37/9 – Cadieux, “A Canadian Looks at the USA,” address to the National Defence College, Kingston, Ontario, 3 March 1980. 52 LAC/DEA/10122/21-13-VIET-ICSC-2/1 – Thomas Delworth to file, 30 August 1965. 53 On this point see Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 368.

332 parallel. Five days later, 3,500 Marines, the first American combat troops in the country, had waded ashore at Da Nang in South Vietnam. Betraying his private views on the question,

Cadieux told his parents on 10 March, “Nous avons eu du mal au sujet du Vietnam,” a reference to recent speeches by Pearson expressing doubts about American policy. As Cadieux added,

“L’ennui c’est que l’opinion au pays ne semble pas disposée à appuyer le gouvernement des EU

[États-Unis] dans une politique de fermeté à l’égard des Chinois et des Nord-Vietnamiens. Le gouvernement hésite. La possibilité d’élections n’est pas pour l’encourager à la fermeté.”54 It was a prophetic comment. On 27 March, a Saturday, Cadieux and Basil Robinson met with

Pearson. According to Cadieux, “M. Pearson m’a dit à cette occasion qu’il trouvait que nous

épousions trop étroitement la politique américaine et qu’il fallait trouver moyen de s’en dégager.

Il se proposait, dans son discours, de suggérer un projet de développement économique du sud- est asiatique et voulait aussi trouver un prétexte à une réunion diplomatique.”55 While the traditional account of the Temple Speech states that Pearson specifically asked Cadieux to insert in it a suggestion that the U.S. suspend its bombing of North Vietnam, Cadieux’s diary reveals that the idea was his own:

Le lendemain matin, soit le dimanche, après avoir un peu réfléchi au problème, j’ai proposé à Lou Rogers et à Bauer de développer l’idée, dans le projet de discours à remettre au Premier [m]inistre, qu’il ne fallait pas pousser le Sud Vietnam au désespoir et qu’il serait peut-être plus facile aux Américains qui disposent d’ailleurs déjà du pouvoir de détruire le Nor[d] Vietnam de fond en comble, de prendre l’initiative de la modération, de faire preuve de magnanimité et, au bon moment, de suspendre les opérations dans le but d’inciter les Vietcongs à en faire autant et d’amorcer ou de permettre d’amorcer les opérations sur le plan politique.56

While this suggestion was neither particularly original nor good, Cadieux was obediently responding to Pearson’s desire to bring the two sides to the table. On 29 March the DEA sent a

54 LAC/MC/5/13 – Cadieux to Roméo and Berthe Cadieux, 10 March 1965. 55 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 6 April 1965. 56 Ibid. For the traditional account of the origin of the bombing pause idea in the Temple speech see, for example, Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 371 and Greg Donaghy, Tolerant Allies: Canada and the United States 1963- 1968 (Montrel: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 129.

333 draft of the Temple speech through Martin, but cautioned Pearson that its proposal for a bombing pause “would be more effective if it were put forward, in the first instance, privately to President

Johnson.”57 While Pearson wrote “yes” in the margin, he was torn. That day the Vietcong set off a car bomb in front of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, killing twenty-two, including two Americans, and injuring almost two hundred. Fearing a “hostile” American reaction to the idea of a bombing pause, Cadieux, in another new detail, had the speech re-examined, resulting in two key additions to it on 30 March: first, rather than cease bombing for “a certain period of time,” as the original text had read (despite Cadieux’s statement above), the U.S. was invited to stop “at an appropriate time;” second, the words “if they wish to take it” was added to the same line about how leaders in Hanoi might use the chance to adopt a more flexible policy.58 Both of these changes were crucial to the final version of the Temple speech, though the phrase “at an appropriate time” was changed to read “at the right time.”

According to Cadieux, the DEA considered and advised against Pearson’s going to

Washington after Philadelphia. The point seemed academic when it was later discovered that

Johnson would be at his ranch in Texas and since Pearson had apparently decided from the start that he would not go to the White House. As Cadieux observed, “C’est sans doute ce qui explique, en partie, sa décision de conserver le texte que nous lui avions proposé au sujet de la suspension momentanée des opérations militaires.” Around the same time, Marquis Childs, a journalist whom Pearson had known when he was ambassador to the United States, visited

Ottawa and told both him and Martin that Johnson was only listening to the hawks on Vietnam and that Canada might influence American policy by advancing positive suggestions. As

57 LAC/DEA/10102/20-CDA-9-PEARSON/5.2 – Martin to Pearson, 29 March 1965. 58 LAC/DEA/10122/21-13-VIET-ILAC/CSC/1.1 – Cadieux to Martin, 30 March 1965. As Cadieux told Martin, “I have had this speech re-examined in the light of yesterday’s bombing of the United States Embassy in Saigon. I fear that to come out too strongly in favour of a pause in American action so soon after this outrage might provoke a hostile reaction if not on the part of the audience then of the American press and administration.” As Cadieux wrote in his diary, “Il nous a semblé qu’il serait peut-être prudent d’atténuer la suggestion élaborée dans notre projet de discours et nous avons proposé au Premier [m]inistre un texte qui l’engageait un peu moins.” See LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 6 April 1965.

334

Cadieux noted, “Childs préconisait donc ici une idée que M. Pearson et M. Martin n’étaient que trop disposés à recevoir.”59

This raises the question of what Martin thought of the Temple speech. Much later he recalled warning Pearson, “You can’t make that speech! What you’re doing is calling upon the president of the United States to stop the bombing. If you publicly criticize the United States like this, you’re going to discount our influence in Washington and your own forever.”60 When

Pearson demurred, Martin claims that he threatened to resign. Such a reaction would have surprised Cadieux. “Le Ministre, pour sa part, a trouvé le discours fort intéressant et acceptable,” he wrote at the time, “même si plus tard, en apprenant les réactions du Président, il m’a dit qu’il avait trouvé que M. Pearson avait tort de dire ce qu’il se proposait de dire aux [É]tats-Unis.”61

Here again, Martin may have been trying to reinvent the past. More proof for this theory is that he seems to be the sole source for his alleged threat to resign since nowhere does Pearson, or anyone close to him for that matter, confirm that it was made. Moreover, as Martin surely knew, resigning over the issue of the Canadian prime minister calling on the United States to suspend its bombing amidst growing public concern about the Vietnam War would have been political suicide. If Martin did indeed threaten Pearson with resignation, the latter rightly saw that threat as a bluff. In sum, there is a good chance that Martin, seeing how Pearson, his rival and the famous diplomat, had blundered, later greatly exaggerated his prior opposition to the Temple speech.

In any case, while it is known that the Canadians deliberately delayed giving the

Americans an advance copy of Pearson’s speech, what is less so is that, just before going into the dinner where he would read it at Temple University on 2 April, Pearson received a message from

59 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 6 April 1965. While Martin told Childs that “under press circumstances our public position should not be expected to run strongly and obviously counter to the United States position,” the mildly worded Temple speech arguably did not. For Martin’s comment see Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 372. 60 Peter Stursberg, Lester Pearson and the American Dilemma (Toronto: Doubleday, 1980), 218. See as well Donaghy, Grit, 233-234. 61 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 6 April 1965.

335

Johnson, who would clearly not be in Texas, inviting him to lunch at Camp David in Maryland the next day. Pearson accepted but, as he later told Sir Henry Lintott, made clear that “he would quite understand if the President wanted to withdraw the invitation after reading his speech.”62

Perhaps this is why, in another new detail, Jim Coutts, who was in the party travelling with the prime minister, subsequently received a call from McGeorge Bundy, Johnson’s National

Security Adviser and a hawk on Vietnam, expressing concern about the speech. When Coutts informed Bundy that Pearson had already gone to dinner and that nothing could be done, Coutts overheard Johnson swear loudly on the other end of the line.63

The day after the speech, at Camp David, Johnson took Pearson aside and berated him in an hour-long, profanity-laced tirade. From afar, the Canadian ambassador to the United States,

Charles Ritchie, witnessed parts of the president’s performance: “He strode the terrace, he sawed the air with his arms, with upraised fist he drove home the verbal hammer blows. From time to time Mike attempted a sentence – only to have it swept away on the tide. . . . [T]he drama seemed to be approaching a climax of physical violence. Mike, only half seated, half leaning on the terrace balustrade, was now completely silent. The President strode up to him and seized him by the lapel of his coat, at the same time raising his other arm to the heavens.”64 The stormy encounter shook the prime minister. Aware that Johnson had reacted badly to the Temple speech,

Cadieux explained in his diary that he had suggested a bombing pause to help Ottawa continue to support American policy in Vietnam:

J’ai calculé que les Nord Vietnamiens et les Vietcongs au sud ne seraient pas disposés à s’abstenir, à suspendre leurs opérations même si les Américains prenaient l’initiative d’une telle mesure et que, par la suite, les Américains en reprenant leur activité militaire serait en meilleure posture pour demander et obtenir l’appui de leurs alliés. Il me semblait qu’une suspension temporaire sur le plan militaire aurait pour effet, dans l’ensemble,

62 UKNA/FO 371/180550 – Sir. Henry Lintott to Sir Neil Pritchard, 20 April 1965. 63 James A. Coutts, interview with the author, Toronto, 26 April 2013. While it is not clear from Pearson’s account to Lintott whether he accepted Johnson’s invitation before or after going into dinner, Mr. Coutts’ anecdote strongly suggests the former. 64 Charles Ritchie, Storm Signals : More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1962-1971 (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1983), 81.

336

d’embarrasser les adversaires des Américains et de faciliter la mobilisation de leurs amis.

Needless to say, Cadieux’s goal of mobilizing Washington’s friends had not been Pearson’s idea of showing independence. As for Martin, he wanted to go to the UN to speak to U Thant about

Southeast Asia, an idea the DEA strongly opposed for fear of further damaging Canadian-

American relations. As Cadieux observed of Martin’s wish, “Le Ministre y tient beaucoup parce qu’il croit, à tort, que dans l’esprit du public M. Pearson est maintenant l’homme modéré, l’homme qui poursuit une politique indépendante tandis que lui, M. Martin, est le prisonnier de la politique extrémiste des Américains.”65

Yet for the time being Martin expressed public support for U.S. policy in Vietnam.66

Given Johnson’s mood, he could hardly do the opposite. The DEA, for its part, had become frustrated with the perennial ineffectiveness of the ICC and by July was seriously considering withdrawing from it, but Martin argued that “unilateral withdrawal” might complicate the situation in Vietnam, that membership gave Canada a “locus standi” in talks on the subject while shielding the country from any pressure to play a more direct role there, and that the ICC might be used in the future to work towards peace.67 Yet, as Martin knew, peace in Vietnam seemed a remote possibility. By the end of 1965 there were 184,000 U.S. combat troops in the south who, on General Westmoreland’s orders, were using their superior mobility and firepower to try and slow the Vietcong down. Footage from these battles flashed across television screens back home, where Americans were assured that the resulting “body count,” that morbid statistic, greatly favoured their military. On campuses and in the streets, however, students, professors, and others began to protest the war in greater numbers. One march in Washington in late November, for example, drew an estimated 30,000. Since Canadian culture was so heavily influenced by its

American counterpart, these early ripples of discontent threatened to extend north.

65 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 6 April 1965. 66 Donaghy, Grit, 234. 67 Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 208-209.

337

On Christmas Eve President Johnson instituted a hiatus in the bombing of North Vietnam that would ultimately last for thirty-seven days. Attracted by the prospect of a diplomatic breakthrough and no doubt by the public acclaim that was sure to follow should it succeed,

Martin decided in January 1966 to try to play peacemaker by sending Chester Ronning, a retired

Canadian diplomat born in China to missionary parents, to both Beijing and Hanoi to probe their views on a settlement to the war. It has been said that Cadieux opposed the idea.68 He probably did. The Ronning mission was the kind of shot in the dark that offended his sense of realism. Nor was he alone in feeling this way. As Tom Delworth and Blair Seaborn recall, there was deep scepticism among experts in the DEA about its chances for success.69 Why, then, did the mission go ahead? As one well-informed officer later bluntly explained, “When your minister is as keen on something like that – unless it’s a matter of great principle – you don’t tell him it’s a crock of shit.”70 The choice of Ronning to undertake the mission likely gave Cadieux pause as well.

While as a Sinologist (and Sinophile) he was known and liked in Beijing, Ronning was also a committed socialist who held naively favourable views of communist leaders in Asia and critical ones of U.S. policy there.71 Nor did he respect Cadieux, who he later told a scholar was “a man of no courage” who had been “frightened” during his time on the ICC and who was “deeply prejudiced” and “favoured American activities in Vietnam.”72 Indeed, according to Douglas A.

Ross, who got his information from Ronning himself, Ronning “became embroiled in a ‘shouting match’ with one of the most ardent conservatives” in the DEA when the latter allegedly “inserted a number of ‘stiffly anti-communist’ provisions in the text [of his briefing instructions].”73 Other sources (also basing themselves on interviews with Ronning) all but confirm that this ardent

68 Donaghy, Grit, 249. 69 Thomas Delworth, interview with the author, Ottawa, 2 August 2012; J. Blair Seaborn, interview with the author, Ottawa, 23 October 2012. 70 Confidential interview with the author. 71 On Ronning’s views see Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 231 and Ross, In the Interests of Peace, 285. 72 Victor Levant, Quiet Complicity: Canadian Involvement in the Vietnam War (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1986), 200. 73 Ross, In the Interests of Peace, 285.

338 conservative was Cadieux.74 While Ronning’s mission went ahead in late February, the DEA,

Pearson, and Dean Rusk were all sceptical of it. “Quite frankly,” Rusk wrote to American ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in Saigon, “I attach no importance to his trip and expect nothing out of it.”75

That trip began badly when the Chinese, calling it “inopportune,” refused to see Ronning.

In Hanoi, however, Premier Pham Van Dong seemed to imply that peace talks could begin if the bombing were stopped. Both Ronning and Martin felt that this was an advance on Pham’s rigid

“four points” of April 1965, the first of which demanded full American withdrawal from

Vietnam, but Washington was doubtful. Disappointed, Martin pressed for a response. When the

Americans finally agreed to a second Ronning mission, one which would take place in June

1966, they insisted through Martin’s emissary that peace talks either had to be unconditional or preceded by mutual de-escalation, both of which alternatives were anathema to Hanoi.76 When

William P. Bundy, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, subsequently discussed the mission with Martin, Ronning, Cadieux, Ralph Collins, Klaus

Goldschlag, and Tom Delworth over a three-hour dinner in Ottawa, he found, in Robert

Bothwell’s words, “more support than did the minister,” especially when Martin tried to blame the U.S. for not giving the mission a fair chance.77 Commenting on the discussion as a whole,

Bundy reported that Cadieux and Delworth in particular had “fully accepted the American position in virtually every respect.” He added that, “Both have had extensive experience in

Indochina and see the North Vietnamese as yielding only to relentless pressure.” It was to

Martin’s credit that he let his officers speak so freely despite his own disappointment at the outcome of Ronning’s mission, one he compared to British Ambassador Nevile Henderson’s

74 Levant, Quiet Complicity, 200; Brian L. Evans, The Remarkable Chester Ronning: Proud Son of China (Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 2013), 198-199. 75 Greg Donaghy, “Minding the Minister: Pearson, Martin and American Policy in Asia, 1963-1967,” in Pearson: The Unlikely Gladiator, ed. Norman Hillmer (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), 140. 76 Donaghy, Grit, 251-252. 77 Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 233.

339

“Failure of a Mission” to Nazi Germany between 1937 and 1939. Echoing the general American belief, Bundy stressed that Martin had “viewed the mission as a major attempt to achieve a

Canadian diplomatic success, and as a major effort to put a feather in his own cap as a contender to succeed Pearson.”78 Instead, as he had told Rusk earlier in the day, “Hanoi turned Ronning down cold on their paying any price whatever for the cessation of bombing.”79 Eight days later, on 29 June, that bombing resumed in escalated form when the U.S. targeted oil depots just outside Hanoi and Haiphong.

Disappointed but not entirely vanquished, Martin pushed the DEA, in what had been its first choice if Canada had to play a role in trying to end the Vietnam War, to pursue an ICC initiative with India and Poland. Already in March the minister had referred optimistically in parliament to the prospects of achieving a trilateral consensus, prompting French Ambassador

François Leduc to report that his optimism was both misplaced (according to the Polish ambassador) and not shared by the DEA (according to its officials). Referring to Martin’s increasingly frequent public statements on Vietnam, Leduc had added, “Aussi peut-on se demander si toutes ces déclarations sont destinées à faire croire que l’on joue un rôle ou si, à force de jouer ce rôle, le ministre ne finit pas par y croire.”80 It was a perceptive remark. When

Martin raised the idea of an ICC initiative on his trip to Eastern Europe in November 1966, he received little support. The talks in the Soviet Union were key since it was supplying North

Vietnam with money, weapons, and advisers, but Cadieux noted that the Kremlin simply repeated its propaganda, that is, that the U.S. had to take the first step towards peace by stopping the bombing, despite the fact that Moscow could not say what steps Hanoi would take in return.81

As Cadieux later recalled, the Soviet position on Vietnam was typical:

78 NARA/RG59/1964-66/1990/POL CAN-US – William P. Bundy, “Memorandum for the record: Dinner Meeting with Paul Martin and Other Canadian Officials, June 21, 1966,” 22 June 1966. 79 Donaghy, “Minding the Minister,” 143. 80 Archives du Ministère des Affaires étrangères (MAE)/Série B-Amérique/Canada/1964-1970 (hereafter simply MAE)/244 – François Leduc to Paris, 4 March 1966. 81 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 28 November 1966.

340

Chaque fois que nous avons discuté le problème avec les Soviétiques, leur réponse était bien équivoque. Ils nous disaient ‘tâchez de convaincre vos amis américains d’arrêter les bombardements et après nous verrons.’ Ils laissaient entendre que la situation serait alors transformée. En réalité, après coup, quand nous avons repris les entretiens, les Soviétiques avaient changé leur fusil d’épaule. Ils disaient qu’ils devaient donner au Nord-Vietnamiens ce qu’ils voulaient, autrement ceux-ci n’auraient qu’à s’adresser à leurs amis de Pékin.82

The main interest of the discussions in Moscow for Cadieux was meeting the Soviet leadership, whom he vividly described. For example, Andrei Gromyko was confident, fluent in English, and a hard bargainer. Alexei Kosygin, for his part, was tired-looking but his eyes were sharp and he spoke forcefully without getting carried away. “Il me rappelait un directeur d’usine ou un gérant d’une grande compagnie,” Cadieux observed. By contrast, Leonid Brezhnev was younger, more dynamic, and, compared to his colleagues, better dressed, his cufflinks made of solid gold. He also owned the newest kind of cigarette lighter. “Dur et presque méchant comme un instrument de chirurgie,” was how Cadieux described the appearance of Dmitry Polyansky, who nevertheless had fond memories of his trip to Canada earlier in the year and thus showed the

Canadians off as if he had personally discovered them. Finally, Nikolai Podgorny, the ceremonial head of state, while appearing older than the others, was well preserved. “Tous ces chefs,” Cadieux concluded, “donnent une impression de vigueur, de puissance, de lucidité, d’efficacité qui est très marquée.”83

In Rome, where at the Vatican Pope John XXIII granted Martin an audience, Cadieux continued his keen observations. While the Holy Father had a high opinion of both Martin and

Canada’s role in world affairs, he gave the impression of playing “un peu son rôle,” of being “un tout petit peu acteur,” and of having general if not naïve views on the great international questions. For example, he wondered whether Ronning could suggest to North Vietnam a dialogue with the Vatican. As Cadieux wrote satirically, “Il me semble … bien clair que le jour

82 LAC/MC/13/6 – Journal intime, 8 January 1974. 83 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 28 November 1966.

341 où Hanoi voudra s’engager dans la voie des négociations il va s’arranger pour que le crédit n’en revienne pas au Chef de l’Eglise catholique.”84

While Martin left Warsaw, Moscow, and Rome no further ahead in his search for peace, in both late November, in Washington, and mid-December, in Paris, Dean Rusk expressed his support to him for an ICC initiative.85 Just before Christmas, Martin agreed to an Indian proposal for a preliminary meeting in New Delhi of officials from the three commission powers, but on 28

December Canada learned that Poland would not attend. That day, in New York, an indiscreet U

Thant told George Ignatieff that the Poles had confided in him that a secret attempt had been made by a Polish diplomat, helped by the Italian ambassador in Saigon, to bring Washington and

Hanoi to the peace table. Indeed, the American and North Vietnamese ambassadors to Poland were to have met in Warsaw to discuss certain propositions if the U.S. had not resumed in

December, for the first time in five months, bombing near Hanoi. What the Americans codenamed “Operation Marigold” has recently been called “the lost chance for peace in

Vietnam.”86

When Cadieux got the news he dispatched Klaus Goldschlag to Barbados, where Martin was vacationing with Maurice Strong, with a memo expressing amazement that Rusk would have urged Martin to pursue his ICC initiative without telling him about the one the Americans, Poles, and North Vietnamese were pursuing behind the scenes.87 Irritated with Rusk, Martin was the source behind a report by Robert Estabrook in the Washington Post on 23 January 1967 that

“high Canadian officials” had said that the American bombing of Hanoi had “disrupted” certain unspecified “private soundings then under way.”88 Now Cadieux was annoyed, predicting that the American press would accuse Washington of missing another chance for peace. While

84 Ibid. 85 Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 376; LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 23 January 1967. 86 James G. Hershberg, Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012), 466-468; LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 23 January 1967. 87 Hershberg, Marigold, 471. 88 Ibid., 550.

342

Martin’s revelation would likely increase pressure on the U.S. to stop the bombing, Cadieux reasoned that it would not incline it to make use of Canadian attempts to end the war, a role

Martin cherished. “Dans cette triste histoire,” Cadieux observed, “je me demande ce qui est le plus grave: le manque de confiance des Américains à notre endroit ou l’indiscrétion de M.

Martin à l’égard des [É]tats-Unis.” When Martin phoned from Montreal that day Cadieux told him of the Estabrook story, prompting the minister to ask innocently who its source could have been. When Cadieux told Martin that it was none other than himself, the latter replied that journalists would say what they wanted and that the revelation might ultimately have a good effect. As Cadieux, who disagreed, noted, “Quand je lui ai dit que nous pourrions aussi récolter une vilaine affaire avec les [É]tats[-]Unis il m’a répondu, fort philosophiquement, que nous en avions sans cesse du même genre avec les Américains et qu’il n’y avait pas là de quoi se frapper.”89 Tipped off to the existence of Marigold by Martin, Estabrook pursued the lead with other sources and in early February brought the operation to light in two separate articles. While

Washington now had more to worry about than Martin’s small but key part in this chain of events, one which it was aware of, Cadieux was right in feeling that his boss was playing a dangerous game.90

By 1967 Martin was under growing public pressure to speak out against the Vietnam

War. Demonstrations against the war in Canada, like those held south of the border, were becoming larger and more strident. Speaking at McGill University in mid-February, for example,

Martin was rudely heckled by students. In an effort to silence his critics, he reminded parliament that the goal of Canadian policy was to help end the Vietnam War, outlining seven points that could pave the way. He also declared that the Ronning channel, despite its namesake’s recent

89 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 23 January 1967. 90 For American awareness of Martin’s role see George C. Herring, The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The Negotiating Volumes of the Pentagon Papers (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), 343, 356-357.

343 public criticism of Washington, remained open. Under mounting pressure to condemn the war,

Martin stressed instead his faith in quiet diplomacy.91

In cabinet, however, he was playing games. Later that month he told Cadieux that his colleagues there had pressed him hard on the sale of arms to the United States, one which took place under the bilateral Defence Production Sharing Agreement of 1959. The issue had attracted the ire of left-wing groups, since Canadian firms were profiting from the Vietnam War and since it was assumed that some of their products ended up in Southeast Asia. “Il est évident que le

Ministre a été un peu bousculé lorsqu’il a rencontré les étudiants,” observed Cadieux, “et que les critiques que ceux-ci ont formulées à l’endroit de notre politique concernant le Vietnam le gênent beaucoup dans son désir de se rendre populaire auprès des jeunes et de recueillir des voix dans ce secteur.” He added that David Kirkwood, the head of Economic Division, had received a very different account of what had transpired in cabinet from John Turner, the young minister without portfolio. According to Turner, it was Martin himself who had raised the question of defence sales to the United States, giving as a pretext the alleged pressure that he was under from some officials to change Canadian policy on the question. This startling revelation prompted an angry

Cadieux to remark privately that Martin never missed a chance to “betray” his subordinates.

According to Turner, Martin’s comments had excited several ministers and it had taken Jack

Pickersgill, the Minister of Transport and a former member of the DEA, to stress that Canada could not be both neutral and aligned in the Cold War. As Cadieux revealed, “M. Turner ne croit pas que M. Martin soit bien avisé d’employer ces tactiques vis-à-vis de ses collègues et de son

Ministère dans le but de mousser sa candidature.” The under-secretary fully agreed, especially since a memo prepared at his request on the sale of arms to the United States showed that no one in the DEA favoured a change in policy. Neither did Martin, who grasped its political and economic value to Canada, but his falsehood in cabinet served a purpose. Observing that “un bon

91 House of Commons Debates, 13 February 1967, 12964-12966.

344 service en vaut un autre,” Cadieux vowed to tell Pearson (through Gordon Robertson) what

Martin was doing.92 Little did he know that, two days before, Pearson had expressed dissatisfaction with Martin to Paul Hellyer, telling him that he wanted Martin “out of External

Affairs” since “he had been there too long and is getting too involved in the Vietnam thing to the exclusion of our overall relations with the U.S.”93

Clearly anxious about the public and political problems that Vietnam was causing him,

Martin called in April 1967 for a four-stage return to the Geneva ceasefire agreements of 1954, one based on mutual de-escalation. Briefed on the speech in advance of his visit to Canada in

May, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was told, “The Canadians themselves have privately admitted that Mr. Martin’s proposals were little more than a public relations exercise designed to satisfy internal political demands.”94 As one exchange during these years between D’Iberville

Fortier and Martin suggests, “public relations” dominated the latter’s thinking. Asked one day by

Martin whether he had shared his recent “peace plan” with journalists, the DEA’s press officer replied that he was not aware of such a plan. Questioned by Martin whether he had read his speech, Fortier answered that he had and that he had even spoken to its author, Klaus

Goldschlag, who as head of Far Eastern Division had a knack for making these proposals seem credible. Fortier maintained, however, that it was not a peace plan per se but simply a Canadian reading of events. When Martin insisted that he had advanced a peace plan, Fortier calmly replied that, if this were the case, he would ask Maurice Jefferies, the former Windsor Star correspondent who handled the political side of the minister’s relations with the press, to make it known.95 At least Martin’s proposals in April 1967 could be construed as a “peace plan” since

92 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 22 February 1967. 93 Paul Hellyer, Damn the Torpedoes: My Fight to Unify Canada’s Armed Forces (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990), 209-210. 94 UKNA/Cabinet Office files (CAB)/ 233/366 – “Background Note: Canadian Attitude to Vietnam,” undated, in “Visit of the Prime Minister to Canada and Washington, May-June 1967.” 95 LAC/LOP/2572/9 – Interview of Fortier by Earle, Library of Parliament Oral History Project, July 1991-February 1992; confidential source.

345

Washington and Saigon accepted them, if not Hanoi, which issued a blunt rejection. According to Ed Ritchie in Washington, Dean Rusk “hoped that Canadians would draw the right conclusion from this incident but he rather doubted that we would do so.”96

The idea that Canada was impartially seeking peace in Vietnam suffered a setback in early May when Gerald Clark, the associate editor of the Montreal Star, claimed that Canadians on the ICC were acting as “spies” for the Americans, an allegation that was promptly denied by both Pearson and Martin. In a terse three-line statement issued in his name and personally drafted for him by Cadieux, Martin declared that Canadians in Vietnam were “not engaged in any clandestine or spying activities” but that knowledge gleaned from their “quasi-diplomatic task” was “available for the information of the Canadian Government and for use in exchanges of views with other governments concerned.”97 When the DEA subsequently told Martin that information deemed urgent could be passed to the Americans on site, however, he felt that this fact contradicted his public statement and that he would have to resign. Cadieux bluntly asked him if he hoped to force Pearson to do likewise. When Martin claimed that the government was guiltless since he had not specifically approved anything, Cadieux and James McCardle, who was responsible for security and intelligence in the DEA, patiently explained that personnel appointed by the government typically acted in its name and that a foreign service could not function if everything it shared with other powers required prior approval. While Martin eventually conceded the point, Cadieux described the meeting as “extrêmement pénible” and

“orageuse.”98 In short, Clark’s allegations, though greatly overstated, contained a grain of truth and had frightened Martin. Criticizing his boss some years later for his lack of political courage,

Cadieux recalled that, while Martin had been happy to benefit from the intelligence work of

96 LAC/DEA/9399/20-22-VIETS-2-1/14 – A.E. Ritchie to Cadieux enclosing memorandum of “Informal Talk with Secretary Rusk about Vietnam, France, etc,” 20 April 1967. 97 LAC/10609/21-13-VIET-ICSC-2/2 – Untitled press release, 9 May 1967. That Cadieux drafted this statement is made clear by his initials on the top right corner of the page. 98 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 11 May 1967.

346

Canada’s allies, he had not wanted to authorize anything himself. “Au cours des années,”

Cadieux revealed, ”j’ai contribué à maintenir un minimum de coopération avec les [É]tats-Unis et l’Angleterre en l’autorisant de mon propre chef sans m’en référer à lui." In what was almost certainly a reference to the effect of the Clark story, Cadieux notes that when it had been necessary to pass some rather boring information along to the United States, Martin had shown his true colours by practically forbidding it. Left with no choice, Cadieux had secretly obtained

Pearson’s approval to share the information by acting through Mary Macdonald, the prime minister’s executive assistant and a former member of the DEA.99

With Martin clearly uneasy about anything related to Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson’s brief visit on 25 May 1967 to Expo in Montreal and then to Harrington Lake gave both him and

Pearson a chance to express their concerns about American policy there. Present for that portion of those talks held before officials, Cadieux was greatly impressed by how tall, thin, and solid

Johnson was. At six foot three, his skin tanned by the southern sun, he looked healthy, strong, and in full possession of his faculties. As Cadieux observed, “Il est plus sympathique en personne que dans ses photos.” When Pearson raised the issue of Vietnam and the now widespread call for a suspension of American bombing there, Cadieux felt that Johnson had been anticipating him, for his answers were forceful and convincing. For example, Johnson stressed that he had halted the bombing five or six times before but that, on each occasion, North

Vietnam had simply increased their attacks on American soldiers. “De façon fort dramatique” according to Cadieux, Johnson insisted that a bombing pause entailed the deaths of Americans, whose blood was on his hands, and that he could not in good conscience order one without being assured that his adversaries would stand down as well. In a typically vivid analogy, the Texan said that if he were in a pistol fight he could hardly hang up his gun without first being convinced that his foe would do the same. With what Cadieux described as “la plus entière

99 LAC/MC/13/2 – Journal intime, 20 November 1970.

347 conviction,” Johnson made clear that his goal was not to overthrow the regime in North Vietnam or to seize its territory but simply to ensure that South Vietnam was free to decide its own fate.

As Cadieux saw it, Johnson had bested Pearson and Martin at Harrington Lake:

Il [Johnson] était sans doute préparé. Quant à moi, je l’ai trouvé plus articulé, plus vigoureux dans l’exposé de ses idées que je ne m’y était attendu. Cet homme est un excellent avocat. Il s’exprime d’une façon forte et imagée. Il en impose sans doute parce qu’il représente le plus grand pays du monde mais il est certain qu’il se dégage aussi de sa personnalité une impression de force et de dynamisme qui sont très considérables. Je suis convaincu que nos Ministres n’auront pas le sentiment à la suite de ces entretiens que le Président est incertain quant à la politique à suivre et que des représentations de la part de notre pays, soit privément, soit publiquement, soient de nature à l’influencer beaucoup. Le Président donne l’image d’un homme qui doit accomplir une tâche désagréable, qui préférerait faire autre chose mais qui estime en conscience ne pas pouvoir faire autrement et qui est déterminé à faire ce qu’il doit faire.100

The end of this passage captured well the albatross that weighed on Johnson, whose domestic fight against racial injustice and poverty under the banner of the “Great Society” was overshadowed by the 500,000 American soldiers that he would send to Vietnam during his presidency. While Cadieux’s anti-communism and traumatic memories of Hanoi perhaps predisposed him to be less critical of Johnson than were Martin and Pearson, both of whom had been rather disturbed by the president’s intransigence, the under-secretary grasped the central lesson of the meeting at Harrington Lake: that Ottawa could not hope to sway Washington from its course in Vietnam. If Martin grasped it too, he was for political reasons becoming less inclined to hold his tongue. When four days later the Liberals lost a by-election in Sudbury for a seat that they had held since its creation in 1949, Martin told Cadieux that this victory by the

NDP showed that the Vietnam War was immoral and that the Americans should withdraw.

Irritated by how easily Martin swayed with the shifting winds of public opinion, Cadieux observed in his diary, “Apparemment, il ne lui vient pas à l’idée que la politique américaine peut

être justifiée pour des raisons qui n’ont rien à voir avec la fortune électorale des partis au

Canada.” When Martin said that he could not go much longer without publicly denouncing

100 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 25 May 1967.

348

American policy, Cadieux replied that Canadian condemnation of the war would not necessarily end it. When Martin argued that the United States would have to listen if enough countries protested, Cadieux answered that the communists were counting on world pressure to force

Washington to give them South Vietnam. In private, however, he conceded that there was

“aucun doute que cette guerre au Vietnam n’est pas populaire et que l’opposition au bombardement se joint chez nous à l’anti-américanisme qui est une des formes du développement de notre nationalisme.” While he mused (unrealistically) over what would happen if Ottawa came out strongly in defence of American policy, he knew that the minority

Pearson government needed NDP support. ”L’arithmétique électorale,” he fretted, “risque de nous brouiller sérieusement avec Washington, indépendamment du bien ou du mal fondé des questions qui sont en cause et de ce que les Canadiens en général peuvent en penser.”101

By mid-1967 Martin was willing to take that risk. In a private session held at his request on Vietnam at the ministerial meeting of NATO in Luxembourg in June, for example, he deplored the effect of the war on allied public opinion and urged the United States to cease bombing. He was rebuked by Dean Rusk, who replied that, if the allies were preoccupied with

Vietnam, his country was ten times more so. The other foreign ministers remained silent. While

Martin resented some of them for their timidity, the French, whose president was one of the most outspoken critics of the Vietnam War, reported from Luxembourg that the reason he had received no support was that everyone else grasped that nothing could be done about the problem in NATO, whose members had many other ways of making their views known to Washington.102

No doubt sensing Martin’s changing mood, Cadieux advised him in early July that, as long as

Johnson, key figures in his administration, and the U.S. military were opposed to a unilateral move, no “useful purpose would be served by putting public pressure on the Americans to stop

101 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 30 May 1967. 102 MAE/272 – J.E. Paris (in Luxembourg) to Paris, 14 June 1967. For Martin’s resentment of the silence of others see Donaghy, Grit, 268-269.

349 the bombing without reciprocity.”103 While this was good advice, the politician in Martin was influenced by public opinion. A Gallup poll in this period showed that 41.4 percent of Canadians felt that the United States should withdraw from Vietnam compared to only 15.6 percent who felt that it should remain there. What is sometimes ignored about this poll is that 22.5 percent of respondents actually favoured escalation, making the difference between supporters and opponents of the war just three percent. While it cannot be denied that public support for the

United States in Vietnam had been steadily declining since 1965, Canadians were still more conflicted than Martin let on to Washington.104 There in early September, Martin offered Rusk some unsolicited advice on Vietnam, only to be told, “Dammit, Paul, it is our boys who are dying over there.”105 Undeterred, Martin used his speech at the UN General Assembly later that month to call for a unilateral halt in the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, thus abandoning his previous insistence on both mutual de-escalation as an essential first step and quiet diplomacy.

While he was hardly the first world leader to do so, his efforts made the front page of The New

York Times. “Seeing his name there,” Allan McGill recalled, “put him in a transport of delight!”106

The Americans were not as pleased, but Martin was more a nuisance to them than a threat. That did not prevent Ambassador Butterworth from having a frank talk with Cadieux.

Early in the year he had read to Cadieux excerpts from a personal letter from Rusk expressing the hope that in Butterworth’s next annual report, which was always excessively critical of

Canada, he would see signs that Canadians realized that the United States was an independent country too. Amusingly, Rusk had also hoped that his friends “Mike” and “Paul” would stop

103 LAC/DEA/9399/20-22-VIETS-2-1/6 – Cadieux to Martin, 7 July 1967. 104 For the poll see http://www.library.carleton.ca/sites/default/files/find/data/surveys/ascii_files/gllp-67-sep325-doc. The point about how the poll showed more Canadian division than Martin let on to the Americans was also made by Butterworth in his annual report on Canada for 1967. See NARA/RG59/CFPC/1967-1969/1949/POL 1 CAN-US – Butterworth to Department of State enclosing “Canadian Centenary 1967: Celebration or Coronach,” 2 January 1968. 105 McGill, My Life As I Remember It, 235. 106 Ibid., 235-236.

350 taking ill-considered initiatives.107 Now, in the autumn, Butterworth told Cadieux that the

Americans were outraged at Martin’s treatment of them. Citing his speech at the UN, the ambassador stressed that, in meeting Rusk beforehand, Martin had not revealed his intentions.

Making matters worse, he claimed after the speech that he had warned the Americans about it and that they had not objected. In reply, Cadieux stressed that the race for Pearson’s succession had its exigencies and that Martin was really not anti-American, as his strong support for both

NATO and NORAD showed. But when he asked Butterworth whether Martin was not to be preferred as a prime minister to his Liberal rivals, the ambassador replied that the alternatives were not Martin or Mitchell Sharp but Martin or Robert Stanfield, the new leader of the

Progressive Conservative party. In an attempt both to help his boss and to smooth ruffled feathers in the United States, Cadieux subsequently told Martin that he had reason to believe that the Americans were unhappy and that it might be wise not to expend his credit at the White

House since he would need it at 24 Sussex Drive. As he often did, Martin replied that great changes were coming to the United States, that Johnson and Rusk would not last long, and that they only represented themselves. That said, he promised Cadieux that he would try and reverse the government’s decision to reintroduce legislation that discriminated against such American publications as Time and Readers’ Digest.108

By early 1968 Martin’s quest for peace in Vietnam had become faintly absurd. Detecting some flexibility in a year-end statement by North Vietnamese foreign minister Nguyen Duy

Trinh, he declared publicly that he would go to Hanoi himself if such a trip would help the cause of peace. Since clearly it would not, Martin sent Ormond Dier, Canada’s ICC commissioner, there instead with a letter for Trinh and orders to clarify his stance. While in Hanoi, Dier was

“extremely frank” with the British Consul General, who dutifully reported the following back to

107 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 22 February 1967. 108 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 16 November 1967.

351

London: “He [Dier] was himself fully aware of the poor prospects for accomplishing a constructive mission and might not even succeed in seeing Foreign Minister Trinh. He had however to persevere since [the] project had an important bearing on Mr. Martin’s internal political campaign.”109 While Dier did meet with Trinh, this Canadian initiative, like those before it, failed when it became clear that the official North Vietnamese position remained as unbending as ever.

By then Martin had declared his candidacy for the leadership of the Liberal Party,

Pearson having announced his intention to retire as prime minister. While Martin continued to remind the public of his efforts to achieve peace in Vietnam, Pierre Trudeau, who in mid-

February1968 declared his own candidacy, took a different approach: while conceding that he opposed the war, he stressed Canada’s “limited influence” in the matter.110 It was a realistic and honest stance, especially when North Vietnam and the Vietcong were two weeks into the Tet

Offensive, a massive 70,000-man campaign against the south that would prove to be the turning point in the war. As Cadieux observed shortly after a victorious Trudeau had jettisoned Martin as

SSEA, the latter had “exploité honteusement” the Canadian role in Vietnam:

Ses initiatives, ses pseudo-initiatives et ses initiatives imaginaires ont fait dévier les pressions engendrées par le parti socialiste. Il a négligé pour autant les autres domaines de la politique et il a détourné de leurs fins véritables les énergies du Ministère. Toute l’agitation aujourd’hui au sujet de la r[é]vision de notre politique étrangère est [dû] au fait que pendant trop longtemps nous n’avons parlé que d’initiatives au Vietnam et sur les autres sujet[s] répété trop souvent des choses insignifiantes.111

While it was unfair and simplistic of Cadieux to hold Martin solely responsible for the pressure that the DEA was under by mid-1968 to review its foreign policy, his frustration at both the time and effort that had been wasted on Martin’s “initiatives,” “pseudo-initiatives,” and “initiatives imaginaries” on Vietnam was fully justified. Curiously, Martin seemed oblivious in these years

109 UKNA/Foreign and Commonwealth Office files (FCO)/15/282 – [Brian] Stewart to London, 23 January 1968. 110 NARA/RG59/CFPC/1967-1969/1941/POL 15-1 CAN – Butterworth to Secretary of State, 16 February 1968. 111 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 6 June 1968.

352 to the quixotic nature of his search for peace. “You’re a bunch of smart fellows,” he needled his officials. “Why can’t you come up with some way to solve this Vietnam problem?” According to

McGill, Blair Seaborn “observed drily that there were some other people involved, notably the

Vietnamese and the Americans.”112 Tom Delworth put it best years later: “Paul was always pushing to get something going out there. He didn’t realize that what was at stake was a big power play. He would try to break things down. I don’t think that he ever comprehended fully – and this is funny for a politician – the political forces that were at play in this situation and had to be reconciled before you could move to the conference table.”113 While Martin wanted to be seen by the Canadian public as working towards peace, Cadieux was right that his efforts to that end had disrupted the work of the DEA and sent it down one blind alley after another.

III – Defence

While Cadieux and Martin disagreed over Vietnam, they shared similar views on defence policy, a subject which of course had led to the fall of the Diefenbaker government and which continued to be controversial under Pearson’s. While the White Paper on Defence of 1964 affirmed Canadian support for NATO, NORAD, and peacekeeping, the first two of these commitments were becoming harder to justify in the rebellious and iconoclastic 1960s. To younger Canadians, racial, class, and environmental problems at home and abroad seemed more deserving of attention and money than the Soviet military threat. As we have seen, there was growing alarm across the Canadian political spectrum about western reliance on the deterrent of nuclear weapons and the holocaust that would ensue if that deterrent ultimately failed to deter.

Nor did it help that the United States, whose deepening involvement in the Vietnam War raised doubts about its judgment, controlled the nuclear launch codes. Sensing the popular mood,

Pearson made no secret of his desire to divest Canadian forces of the nuclear weapons that he

112 McGill, My Life As I Remember It, 233. 113 Delworth, interview with the author, Ottawa, 2 August 2012.

353 had recently accepted from the United States. Where NATO itself was concerned, Pearson, who had been one of its architects, felt that the dwindling prospect of a Soviet attack in Western

Europe and the newfound prosperity of that region called for a major reassessment of not only the organization but also of Canada’s place in it. His thoughts on the subject would increasingly disturb Cadieux and Martin, both of whom continued to believe strongly in the foundations on which the western alliance was based.

In a speech to the Canadian Club of Ottawa in early February 1965, for example, Pearson reiterated his faith in the Atlantic alliance, “but less as a defence coalition and more as a foundation for a closely cooperating political and economic community,” a reference to the

Canadian-inspired Article II non-military cooperation in the North Atlantic Treaty. In the future,

Pearson opined, NATO “may have to consider new arrangements by which Europe takes responsibility for the security of one side of the Atlantic, North America for the other,” an idea which evoked the bi-polar or “dumbbell” view of the alliance that Canada had always opposed for fear of being isolated with the United States.114 Needless to say, this speech was greeted with surprise by both the DEA and ambassadors from NATO countries in Ottawa. When one of them,

Sir Henry Lintott, asked Pearson about it, the latter cheerfully noted that Martin and his officials were pushing him for an interpretation of his speech. Informing Lintott that he had drafted it without consultation, Pearson joked, “I know enough about these subjects to talk without advice.”115 The effect on his SSEA was intriguing. “M. Martin a bien senti une critique implicite,” observed Cadieux, “et il nous a tout de suite fait remarquer qu’il éprouvait le sentiment qu’il devait aussi dire des choses percutantes comme le Premier [m]inistre.”116 With

Pearson’s permission in early March 1965, Martin set the record straight by publicly confirming

114 The speech is quoted in NARA/RG59/CFPC/1964-1966/1984/POL 15-1 CAN – W.M. Johnson to Department of State, 15 February 1965. 115 UKNA/DO/182/161 – “Extract of a note of conversation between Mr. Pearson and Sir Henry Lintott on 17th February, 1965.” 116 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 3 March 1965.

354 that Canadian participation in the defence of Western Europe remained “both vital and inescapable.”117 A DEA circular to missions abroad that framed Pearson’s comments in a positive light was cited by one official as proof that the “bureaucracy had brought [the] PM back to [the] party line.”118

Yet in 1966 Pearson strayed from that line again. While France’s decision in March of that year to withdraw from NATO’s integrated military structure and to expel allied forces from its soil led him to ask angrily whether Canada should remove its war dead as well, by mid-June he was in a more flexible mood. In a speech in Springfield, Illinois at the Atlantic Union Awards

Dinner, Pearson, quoting American intellectual Hans Morgenthau, cast doubt on the reliability of the American nuclear guarantee to its allies. Expressing understanding for France’s opposition to an alliance “dominated” by the United States, Pearson stressed that both the French and other

Europeans felt that their continent was now “strong enough” to assume “its rightful share in the control of the policies of the alliance.” Somewhat inconsistently, however, he declared that only

Washington could “give the effective lead required for Atlantic unity.”119 While Pearson subsequently explained to American ambassador-at-large W. Averell Harriman that crises created unique opportunities to affect major change, the DEA learned that, in Cadieux’s words,

Lyndon Johnson was “furieux.” As Walt Rostow, his National Security Adviser, informed

Canadian ambassador Charles Ritchie, Pearson had once again embarrassed the president on his own turf.120

117 NARA/RG59/CFPC/1964-1966/1980/POL 2-1 Joint Weekas [sic] CAN – Francis A. Linville (for Butterworth) to Department of State, 12 March 1965. As this report states, “The Embassy was informed that, unlike Mr. Pearson’s February 10 speech, Martin’s speech was drafted in External Affairs and cleared with the Minister of Defence. It represents the official and coordinated Government of Canada position on NATO.” 118 NARA/RG59/CFPC/1964-1966/1984/POL 15-1 CAN – Butterworth to Secretary of State, 2 March 1965. 119 Lester B. Pearson, “At the Atlantic Award Dinner, 11 June 1966,” in Words and Occasions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), 254-259. 120 LAC/DEA/10296/27-4-NATO-3-1-USA/1 – H.B. Robinson, “Governor Harriman’s Visit: NATO – I,” 15 June 1966; LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 16 June 1966; Charles Ritchie, Storm Signals: More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1962-1971 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1983), 84. As Rostow, who termed Pearson’s speech “egregious,” said, “Why did he [Pearson] come into the President’s own backyard to make such a speech?”

355

To contain the damage from Pearson’s latest intervention, Cadieux made three points about his speeches to Joseph W. Scott, who was Minister at the American embassy. First, since the speeches were not all drafted by the same hand in the DEA, and since its leaders were not always able to remove their “perles,” there would be differences of emphasis between a speech by Martin and one by Pearson. Second, since Pearson would not make headlines simply by repeating what he or Martin had already said, he had to say something new. “Ceci entraîne une certaine escalade qui est peut-être malheureuse,” Cadieux noted, “mais qui est inévitable.”

Thirdly, Pearson did not always grasp that, unlike the suggestions he used to make as ambassador or as under-secretary, the ideas he advanced publicly as prime minister could be mistaken for government policy.121 Despite Cadieux’s clever rationalization, Pearson’s views on

NATO were clearly changing. For example, when key ministers and officials met in July 1966 to consider a reduction in the number of RCAF squadrons in Europe, Cadieux noted that the attitude of the prime minister, who made a point of saying that some of the DEA’s arguments against reduction impressed him more than others, was “équivoque,” “incompréhensible.”

“décevante,” and “déconcertante.”122

In June 1967 Martin informed Cadieux that Pearson, who had privately expressed his concern about the “developing inflexibility of our position” on “Canadian forces in NATO,” especially when the Americans and the British were planning to redeploy some of their own, wanted Walter Gordon to attend its upcoming ministerial meeting.123 Realizing that two days in

Luxembourg, where it was to be held, would hardly change Gordon, Cadieux protested to

Martin, who claimed to share his reservations and to have tried to dissuade Pearson. As Cadieux stressed to Gordon Robertson, unless Pearson wished to imply to its allies that Canada was considering withdrawing from NATO, recognizing Communist China, and attacking American

121 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 16 June 1966. 122 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 23 June 1966. 123 LAC/DEA/10288/27-4-NATO/1 – Pearson to Martin, 4 May 1967; LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 5 June 1967.

356 policy in Vietnam, Gordon should stay home. Robertson promised to speak to Pearson, leaving

Cadieux to fret, needlessly, that Gordon might replace Martin as minister and ruin the DEA with the same outsiders he had brought to Finance.124 Days later, however, Cadieux learned, almost certainly from Robertson, that it was Martin, “utilisant sa tactique bien connue de désarmer ses adversaires,” with whom the idea of taking Gordon to Luxembourg had originated. “Si tel était le cas,” an amazed Cadieux remarked, “je me demande bien pourquoi il a pris la peine de me mentir et de soutenir que c’était le Premier [m]inistre qui avait eu cette idée farfelue.”125 That idea seems to have been a classic case of what Cadieux later termed Martin’s “gimmicks” as minister.126

Nevertheless, Martin played a key role in gaining cabinet approval in September 1967 for

Canadian policies towards NATO and NORAD (which was up for renewal with the United

States), ones Pearson had mandated be reviewed. This triumph was also Cadieux’s since, mindful of the prime minister’s growing doubts about both pacts, Cadieux had carefully followed the drafting of the DEA’s lengthy memoranda to cabinet in support of them and since he had held a helpful meeting with Gordon, who had been accompanied by Pierre Trudeau and Jean

Marchand, two other ministers critical of defence policy.127 While Pearson backed Martin in cabinet, he continued to question the status quo. In mid-November, for example, Martin, who was becoming less inclined to hide his criticisms of Pearson, confided in Cadieux that the prime minister was, in Cadieux’s words, “en train de perdre la boule.” As proof Martin cited a speech that Pearson had planned to give, before willingly agreeing not to, at the Guildhall in London on the failure of both UN peacekeeping and NATO. “Atroce” was how Cadieux described it, noting that, had the text been read, Canada would have been hard-pressed to justify its participation in

124 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 5 June 1967. 125 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 8 June 1967. 126 English, Citizen of the World, 529n54. 127 LAC/DEA/10361/27-4-1-NORAD-1/2 – J.S. Nutt to H.B. Robinson, 28 July 1967.

357 either. When asked by Martin to explain Pearson’s conduct, Cadieux hazarded the view that, feeling somewhat overwhelmed by events, the prime minister was trying to seem dynamic. “Les conséquences étaient qu’il forçait sa pensée pour faire nouveau avec des résultats qui n’étaient pas toujours satisfaisants,” Cadieux reasoned.128

There was more trouble in early December when Martin declined to enlighten cabinet on the new NATO military strategy of “flexible response,” which aimed to avert nuclear war by providing conventional options for responding to a Soviet attack, to be adopted at its upcoming ministerial meeting. Against the advice of the DEA, Martin had tried to keep cabinet in the dark, a tactic Cadieux summed up as follows: “Mentionner seulement le sujet en termes généraux, cligner de l’œil et passer muscade. Le tour est joué.”129 It was a common Martin ploy but

Pearson, who insisted that cabinet could not approve a new strategy without first knowing what it entailed, was having none of it. This was telling since, as Walter Gordon recalled, during these years Martin and Pearson “appeared to adopt a kind of ‘mother-knows-best’ approach with regard to foreign policy which … was seldom raised in cabinet.”130 Times were changing.

Indeed, as Cadieux later remarked, by being overly discreet, Martin had fostered a “curiosité exagérée” about foreign policy in cabinet.131

While Cadieux was critical of Martin for trying to sneak NATO’s new military strategy past ministers in late 1967, his harshest words were for Pearson, whose attitude continued to puzzle him. “A force de secouer les piliers de l’OTAN, je crois qu’il finira par n’en rester grand- chose,” worried Cadieux, who could not understand why, if Pearson no longer believed in the alliance, he had attacked de Gaulle for withdrawing from its military structure. There was also

Article II, which had inspired Pearson’s quest for an Atlantic community. “Ce maudit Article

128 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 21 November 1967. 129 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 5 December 1967. 130 Walter L. Gordon, A Political Memoir (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977), 283. 131 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 7 June 1968.

358

était mort dès 1951,” Cadieux groused, adding vividly that, because of Pearson, the DEA had kept it on life support for years. Nor could one forget the nuclear issue. As Cadieux saw it, having unthinkingly committed himself to finding a non-nuclear role for Canada in NATO,

Pearson was now unable to come up with a useful one. Stressing that the United States guarantee to Western Europe was based on the nuclear deterrent, Cadieux wondered how Pearson failed to see that, without it, “il ne reste plus rien.” Indeed, the very defence of Canada depended on the

American nuclear arsenal. “C’est là une chose qu’on peut aimer ou regretter,” Cadieux declared with cold realism, “mais c’est le point de départ à mon avis de toute réflexion utile au sujet de la défense de notre pays.” No doubt thinking of the last three years, Cadieux ended his attack: “Le plus clair de cette histoire c’est que M. Pearson, au cours des années n’a eu de cesse qu’il ne contredise sans arrêt les positions qui l’avaient amené à proposer la création de l’OTAN.”132

While Pearson’s thinking was more subtle than this, Cadieux’s charge had merit. As John

English, Pearson’s biographer, observes, “By 1968 NATO was losing its best Canadian friendships.”133

Pearson was influenced by the mounting public criticism of government’s foreign policy.

A case in point was a widely publicized speech at the Progressive Conservative “Thinkers’

Conference” in early August 1967 in which outspoken but articulate party president Dalton

Camp declared, “I would hope that ten years from now this nation would be without the encumbrance of any nuclear associations; that our commitment to foreign aid would be maximum; and [that] our obligations to military alliances and a military establishment would be minimal.”134 Behind closed doors, Pearson called for an outside review of Canadian foreign policy. His demand spoiled the end of Cadieux’s summer vacation. As he told Paul Tremblay,

132 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 5 December 1967. 133 John English, “Problems in Middle Life,” in Canada and NATO: Uneasy Past, Uncertain Future, edited by Margaret O. MacMillan and David S. Sorenson (Waterloo: University of Waterloo Press, 1990), 63. 134 Paul Stevens and John Saywell, ed., “Parliament and Politics,” in Canadian Annual Review for 1967 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), 33.

359

“Cette suggestion est manifestement humiliante pour la boutique et nous aurions été obliges de démissionner, les uns et les autres ici qui se sentaient visés si d’une part M. Martin ne m’avait pas assuré que la manœuvre était surtout une affaire de propagande ou de contre-propagande ou si M. [Norman] Robertson n’avait pas été choisi pour entreprendre cette tâche.”135 Shortly after the Liberal leadership convention of April 1968, however, Martin confirmed what Cadieux had suspected all along: that Pearson had been deeply worried by Camp’s criticisms. “De plus,”

Cadieux learned, “son fils Geoff,” that is, Geoffrey Pearson, a mid-ranking officer in the DEA who had doubts about Canada’s traditional policies, “lui avait empoisonné l’esprit.”136 This revelation may explain why, as Cadieux later wrote in his diary, there had been “une assez forte agitation” about his succession in 1967. “Le fils Pearson était fort excité sur la question,” he recalled, “et m’incitait fortement à partir.” Moreover, at the parliamentary restaurant one day, the prime minister had bluntly asked him whether he planned to go abroad and, if so, where.137

According to Martin, who told Cadieux so in April 1968, the previous summer Pearson had wanted him replaced as under-secretary. When asked why, Pearson seems to have had no real cause. Martin claims to have told him that Cadieux had become a friend and that he had faith in his work, especially on France and Quebec.138 Obviously nothing came of the idea since, when

Martin and Pearson vacated their East Block offices in April 1968, Cadieux remained in his as under-secretary.

That position, which had been onerous since the pioneering days of O.D. Skelton, was particularly difficult in these years. In sum, Cadieux was the head of a rapidly growing yet chronically understaffed and overworked department, he was deputy to a devoted but highly political minister, and he was apparently no longer favoured by the man who had made him

135 LAC/PT/4/12 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 19 September 1967. 136 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 8 April 1968. 137 LAC/MC/4/10 – Journal intime, 16 August 1968. 138 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 8 April 1968.

360 under-secretary in May 1964. What lay behind Pearson’s dissatisfaction? One hint may come from a remark that he made to Escott Reid in January 1967: “The morale in External Affairs is low. Cadieux has not turned out to be a good under[-]secretary. With a highly political minister like Martin he should act on his own – the way I did.”139 Leaving aside the fact that Reid may not be a reliable source and that the minister Pearson had served as under-secretary, Louis St.

Laurent, had hardly been the political animal that Martin was, what should we make of this comment? Given how little Cadieux liked and admired Martin, it is highly ironic that Pearson should feel that they were too similar. If indeed they were, something that is seriously open to question, this was because, as we have seen, Cadieux and Martin generally viewed the world through the same lens. But what made Pearson’s statement so unjust was that it ignored

Cadieux’s absolutely critical, if not heroic, role in the events arising from the Canada-Quebec-

France triangle. As a friend and colleague later recalled, it is the privilege of the under-secretary to choose his priorities and Cadieux, sensing the crisis of national unity that threatened Canada in the 1960s, chose Quebec and France.140 No other issue in these years, from Cyprus to UNEF to

China to Vietnam to defence, struck at the heart of Canada’s integrity, indeed its very existence as a country. National unity had brought Cadieux to Ottawa in 1941, and it had kept him in the federal civil service for over two decades. It was now the issue on which he would take a stand as under-secretary. It would be his finest hour.

139 LAC/ER/35/31 – “L.B.P.,” 30 January 1967. I am grateful to Greg Donaghy for drawing this reference to my attention. 140 Confidential source.

Chapter Six The Under-Secretary, Nationalist Quebec, and Gaullist France: 1963-1967

In 1963, confronting a dynamic new nationalism in Quebec, the Pearson government turned to France to strengthen national unity. It promised French Canadians a foreign policy reflecting Canada’s bicultural character in which Ottawa’s relations with Paris would be as close as those with London and Washington. This major departure from the Anglocentrism that had historically defined the country’s approach to the world thrilled Marcel Cadieux, who in 1941 had left Montreal to represent French Canada in Ottawa. Back then he had been a wide-eyed junior officer with broken English. After more than two decades of perseverance he reached the top of the Department of External Affairs (DEA). Yet what should have been a happy and even triumphant tenure as its under-secretary proved anything but. A pan-Canadian nationalist in the tradition of Henri Bourassa, Cadieux watched uneasily as nationalistic fervour gripped his home province. Almost overnight, francophone federal civil servants like himself, who for years had tried valiantly to improve the lot of their ethnic group, became, in his sad words, “the enemy,” representatives of an allegedly hostile and almost foreign government run by les anglais.1 In

July 1967 French President Charles de Gaulle brazenly shouted the separatist rallying cry “Vive le Québec libre!” while addressing a boisterous crowd at Montreal’s City Hall. What had been disturbingly implicit for several years was now clear: France in the person of de Gaulle was both renewing its kinship with Quebec and, more threateningly, abetting its “freedom,” a concept embracing everything from independence to an improved place in Confederation. All this jeopardized the cause to which Cadieux had devoted his career: national unity. Between 1963 and 1970 he waged a determined, if desperate battle to defend it.

1 LAC/MC/3/12 – Marcel Cadieux to E.W.T. Gill, 10 July 1964.

361 362

I – The Emerging Alliance: Quebec and France

Since 1960, under the provincial Liberal government of Jean Lesage, Quebec had increasingly abandoned the clerical, conservative, and defensive nationalism of the late Maurice

Duplessis’ Union Nationale, in power since 1944, for a secular, liberal, and aggressive “Quiet

Revolution” better suited to a modern society that for three decades had been urban and industrialized. Led by such dynamic ministers as Paul Gérin-Lajoie, Pierre Laporte, and René

Lévesque, the new regime insisted that French Canadians be masters of their destiny. It nationalized the province’s English-owned electricity companies, it wrested control of health and education from the Roman Catholic Church, and it greatly increased budgets and bureaucracies to support these and other initiatives. Federal-provincial relations were also affected. Reflecting a wider trend, as provincial governments in Canada reacted against the legacy of Ottawa’s wartime centralization, Quebec was no longer content simply to defend its autonomy, as all of its premiers had done since Honoré Mercier, but wished to expand it. In this heady atmosphere, token gestures like the Diefenbaker government’s bilingual federal cheques, simultaneous translation in the House of Commons, and a $300,000 development assistance program for

French-speaking Africa proved insufficient in appeasing the province. In an age of crumbling empires and decolonization, some Quebeckers called for secession and in 1963 a separatist terrorist group, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), began using violence to achieve it.

Lester B. Pearson saw that his government had to act. It made good on its promise in late

1962 to establish a Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, it considered a formula to amend and thus to patriate the country’s nearly century-old constitution, and it pledged to pursue a foreign policy that addressed the interests of the almost one-third of all

Canadians for whom French was their mother tongue. No one in Ottawa was more committed to this last goal than Cadieux. His only regret was that it had taken a crisis to galvanize his political

363 superiors into pursuing it. When the newly assertive province waded into foreign affairs, they had no choice. In July 1963 the noted journalist (and separatist) Jean-Marc Léger penned a series of articles in the nationalistic Le Devoir on “Le Québec dans le monde francophone.” His thesis was provocative: because the federal government was irredeemably anglophone, Quebec had to engage directly with the French-speaking world.2 This challenge did not go unnoticed. In a memo that bore Cadieux’s inspiration, if not his prose, Norman Robertson, still the DEA’s under-secretary, advised Paul Martin that urgent action was needed to offset potential demands from Quebec for an independent role in the world. The recommendations would exert a crucial influence on federal thinking in the years to come: greater bilingualism in the DEA, in the

External Aid Office (EAO), and throughout the federal administration; expansion of Canada’s diplomatic network in French-language countries, long ignored in favour of the Commonwealth; more development assistance to France’s former colonies and a program of cultural exchanges with French-speaking Europe; and, above all, closer relations with France, including a visit there by the prime minister. Just as Cadieux had argued in 1943, when Quebec had announced its plan to open an office in New York City, the memo stressed that Ottawa could either serve as the agent of Canada’s provinces abroad or watch as they developed the means to care for their own interests. Should Quebec adopt this second course, Martin was warned, “the repercussions nationally and internationally will be very grave.”3 Clearly Ottawa had to be proactive.

Backed by Robertson, who increasingly deferred to him on the subject, Cadieux insisted in September 1963 that the forging of new links with France have “top priority.”4 Both an interdepartmental committee and a DEA task force, the second under his chairmanship, were set up to review all aspects of the Ottawa-Paris relationship, from the bilateral to the multilateral,

2 Jean-Marc Léger, “Le Québec dans le monde francophone,” Le Devoir, 22-26 July 1963. 3 LAC/DEA/6830/2727-AD-40/8.2 – Norman A. Robertson to SSEA, 27 July 1963. 4 Cadieux marginal note on LAC/DEA/10097/20-1-2-FR/1.1 – Malcolm N. Bow to European Division, 9 September 1963.

364 and to recommend improvements. The views of the Canadian embassy in France were also incorporated into this exercise in policy planning. Already certain ideas were gaining currency, including annual ministerial meetings with the French, the sending of a trade mission to Paris, and cultural exchanges. Indeed, since the April 1963 federal election Cadieux had been agitating for a program of cultural relations with France, Belgium, and Switzerland. While he had initially hoped for a multilateral venture, the French foreign ministry’s financial commitment to culture –

$74 million, or 39 percent of its total budget – dwarfed any that Canada could make. As well,

Brussels and Berne, for domestic political reasons, were unenthusiastic. Undaunted, Cadieux pushed for a bilateral program only to be disappointed again when the Department of Finance balked at spending $500,000 annually, agreeing to an outlay of only $250,000 instead, a sum he dismissed as symbolic and unlikely to influence Quebec.5 While Cadieux was right, he had achieved a triumph reminiscent of his $300,000 development assistance program for French- speaking Africa in 1961: having won bureaucratic and political acceptance for a cultural program with francophone countries, all that remained was for him to convince the government to be more generous.

This was all to the good but in late 1963, as Cadieux quietly worked to put relations with

France on a new footing, he was under no illusion that this would be easy. Led by the imperious

General Charles de Gaulle, hero of the wartime French resistance and president of the Fifth

Republic since 1959, France was pursuing an independent policy of grandeur in the world. The country’s international prestige had never recovered from the ignominious six-week defeat in

1940, the debacle of the 1956 Suez Crisis, and the post-war loss of its colonial empire in places like Indochina and Algeria. Grandeur, in short, would restore its place in the sun. To this end, de

Gaulle distanced France from its traditional “Anglo-Saxon” allies, replacing, for example, what

5 LAC/DEA/5057/2727-15-40/1 – Cadieux to Robertson, 23 April 1963; LAC/DEA/5057/2727-15-40/1 – Cadieux to SSEA, 19 August 1963; LAC/DEA/5057/2727-15-40/1 – G. Hamilton Southam to Mary Dench, 27 September 1963.

365 he saw as its failed link to the United Kingdom with a close relationship with West Germany. He was skeptical of the United Nations (UN) and suspicious of the North Atlantic Treaty

Organization (NATO), preferring those multilateral organizations, like the European Common

Market, that he could dominate. He upheld the nation-state – not the supra-national one – as the highest ideal, he opposed the concept of two implacably hostile Cold-War blocs, and above all he resisted anything that smacked of American hegemony.6

The contrast between Gaullism and Pearsonianism – which elevated multilateralism almost to a dogma – was stark. Pearson and Martin felt most at home in the UN General

Assembly or among friends in the North Atlantic Council (NAC), post-war Canadian foreign policy having been defined by those venerable bodies. Nor was the duo inclined to criticize the

United States, a country to which Canada was intricately linked, working instead to repair the harm done to Canadian-American relations by the Diefenbaker government. Martin even considered the possibility of Canada’s fostering a dialogue between Washington and Paris. The idea met with polite American and French interest, but it was not taken seriously.7 In short, de

Gaulle’s foreign policy had created a minefield for Ottawa to navigate as it approached Paris.

Certain domestic factors also complicated new relations with France, not the least of which was the weakness of the Pearson government. Having boldly promised “60 Days of

Decision” once elected, it tabled a disastrous first budget in June 1963 that raised doubts about its ability to govern. Nor was its minority position in Parliament particularly comfortable. The

Official Opposition, under the fiery John G. Diefenbaker, represented Canadians wary of any policy designed to appease Quebec. When the government dared to propose a distinctive national flag in June 1964, for example, the Tories denounced this initiative as a betrayal of the British

6 On de Gaulle’s foreign policy see Maurice Vaïsse, La grandeur: politique étrangère du général de Gaulle 1958- 1969 (Paris: Fayard, 1998). 7 Martin raised the idea in conversation with both Dean Rusk, the U.S. Secretary of State, and France’s Ambassador to Canada. See LAC/DEA/8817/20-1-2-FR-1 – Canadian Embassy Washington to DEA, 9 September 1963; LAC/DEA/10097/20-1-2-FR/1.1 –European Division to Robertson, 10 September 1963.

366 past in the interminable debate that ensued. The theatricality of Diefenbaker’s performances during these years almost “hypnotised” the prime minister who, as one acquaintance said, looked like a “small bird being petrified by a snake.”8 What Canada needed most in the turbulent 1960s was decisive leadership, but Pearson was unable to provide it. “Éminemment raisonnable et conciliateur,” Cadieux later recalled, he seemed “faible” and “mou” next to his foe: “A la télévision, le médium par excellence de notre âge, sa voix, ses traits sont flous. Pour des raisons mystérieuses, son image ne passe pas.”9

The problem of personality ran deeper. While both Pearson and Martin now favoured biculturalism in their foreign policy, the latter was more at ease pursuing it. Of French descent on his mother’s side, Martin could at least speak the language, though with a strong English accent.

Warmer relations with France offered him a chance to shine as a Franco-Ontarian. As the French ambassador to Canada, Raymond Bousquet, cynically remarked, however, it was only after the

Liberals returned to power that Martin suddenly embraced his roots and began making speeches in somewhat ungrammatical French.10 But he was genuinely enthusiastic about the new policy and began courting his French counterpart, the suave Maurice Couve de Murville.

Lester Bowles Pearson, the Ontario-born son of a Methodist parson, was far less at ease in these circumstances. Educated at Oxford, his diplomatic career abroad had been divided between London (1935-1941) and Washington (1942-1946). In Ottawa he had been aware that the East Block was home to a coterie of French Canadians, but, as his biographer notes, he found it neither “unusual” nor “deplorable” that they were forced to work in English.11 In 1954, six

8 The image of the small bird and the snake was used by Jack Pickersgill in conversation with Saville Garner, former British High Commissioner to Canada. See UKNA/FCO/23/82 – Saville Garner to Sir J. [John] Johnston, 1 June 1967. 9 Marcel Cadieux, Le Général et la campagne du Québec (1963-1968), 7. Note that because this manuscript, written in 1980, was never published, the pagination is often inconsistent. I am grateful to Marcel Cadieux’s sons, François and René, for providing me with a copy of their father’s work. 10 MAE/Série B-Amérique/Canada/1952-1963 (hereafter simply MAE)/137 – Raymond Bousquet to Maurice Couve de Murville, 31 December 1963. 11 John English, Shadow of Heaven, 149.

367 years after making the jump to politics as SSEA in the Liberal government, Pearson (and Louis

St. Laurent) named Jules Léger the DEA’s first francophone under-secretary. Though the minister and his deputy were never close, the appointment shows that Pearson was becoming more attuned to Quebec, whose massive support of his party was one of the foundations of its success in the 1940s and 1950s. He also took under his wing Jean Lesage, a new member of cabinet from Quebec, and invited him to correspond with him in French, a language he cursed himself for never having learned.12 Of course, Pearson’s main focus in this period lay abroad, primarily Britain and the Commonwealth, the United States, and the western alliance in the Cold

War. Upon coming to power in 1963 his first concern as prime minister was national unity and that meant Quebec, where the Liberals, with forty-seven of its seventy-five seats, were no longer dominant. While Pearson was deeply committed to solving the “Quebec problem,” as it became known, he remained completely unversed in French-Canadian culture, society, and politics, much to Cadieux’s chagrin. The uncertainty he displayed in his dealings with the province contrasted sharply with the growing confidence that Quebec City was showing vis-à-vis Ottawa.

This situation was distressing for federal francophone civil servants, particularly those in the DEA who exhibited a widespread “malaise” (detected by the French embassy in late 1963).

Their unease was caused in part by the news that Pearson was thinking of naming a politician as the next Canadian ambassador to France and by the fact that no fewer than ten of their compatriots had resigned in the last year. Some of them, like European Division head Jean

Fournier (who resented Cadieux), were lured away by the Quebec government, which naturally turned towards the federal civil service, whose bilingualism Pearson hoped to develop, for trained francophones to staff its own bureaucracy. In this tense atmosphere, it was even reported

(by the French again) that “M. Cadieux est décidé à partir si M. Robertson, dont il est l’ami et le

12 John English, The Wordly Years: The Life of Lester Pearson (Toronto: Lester & Open Dennys, 1992), 84.

368 successeur, demeure à son poste.”13 While it seems unlikely that the deputy under-secretary would have forsaken the DEA, its French Canadians were clearly restless. In mid-1964 Pearson wisely named Léger Canada’s ambassador in Paris and Cadieux the department’s head in

Ottawa. The former was a well-known Francophile who had studied at the Sorbonne and married a Canadian raised in France; the latter had spent three of the happiest years of his career there.

Both personally and professionally these two friends had every reason to be well disposed towards the country of their ancestors.

A state visit to France by Pearson in January 1964 was meant to dramatize Canada’s new relationship with France, one that was already suffering setbacks. In November, for example,

Ottawa had chosen to buy American instead of French-made aircraft for Trans-Canada Airlines, despite heavy lobbying for the Caravelle by France’s ambassador. There was also the vexing problem of uranium which Ottawa sold with no strings attached to both London and Washington but not to Paris, which since 1960 had been building up its nuclear arsenal. While these false starts disappointed Cadieux, he attached more importance to the prime minister’s trip to France.

By the fall of 1963, however, Pearson was getting cold feet, something Bousquet attributed to his

“complexe” vis-à-vis de Gaulle: “Sa prochaine visite à Paris provoque chez lui certaines appréhensions (rencontrer ‘le plus grand homme de l’occident’ pour ce personnage simple, être reçu par de Gaulle et tout ce qu’il représente pour ce croyant de la ‘Communauté atlantique,’ c’est à ses yeux une épreuve qu’il redoute infiniment).”14 Pearson was worried about his poor

French, prompting Cadieux to recommend the “strictest minimum” of occasions in Paris for him to give speeches and especially to improvise in that language. That said, recalling the elaborate welcome the French had given the Quebec premier, Cadieux did not want the prime minister’s own program to suffer by comparison, a wish tactfully communicated to a receptive de Gaulle by

13 MAE/134 – Bousquet to Paris, 24 December 1963. 14 MAE/204 – Bousquet to Louis Roché, 16 October 1963.

369

Pierre Dupuy, Canada’s outgoing ambassador.15 In the end, under pressure from both the DEA and Martin to do so, Pearson ventured across the Atlantic in January 1964 to meet with the

French leader.

Their encounter, under the sparkling chandeliers of the Elysée presidential palace, on the surface, was satisfactory. De Gaulle expressed support for the Canada-France rapprochement and denied any intention of intervening in his ally’s affairs. But his worldview did not appeal to

Pearson who, days later, remarked at the White House that the French president was confident, inflexible, and a century-and-a-half out of date.16 At the head of the officials accompanying the

Canadian leader to Paris was Cadieux. Meeting de Gaulle in person for the first time he was struck by how physically imposing the French leader was, describing him as a cross between a

Turkish wrestler and an elephant:

Il me semble plus grand, plus lourd que je l’imaginais, les traits moins intellectuels que ceux que j’avais attribués au leader de la résistance, à l’écrivain exceptionnel. Son cou et l’arrière de la tête sont musclés, énormes, massifs: ils évoquent pour moi le physique d’un lutteur turc. Je me rappele [sic] que le général est soldat et qu’il a commandé en campagne. L’impression dégagée est celle d’un animal, énorme, puissant, d’une sorte de pachyderme bien différent de la faune évoluant d’habitude dans un grand salon.

Seldom has de Gaulle been described so vividly. The keenly observant Cadieux overheard him speak of another state visit to France, this one in 1961 by the late American President John F.

Kennedy, whom he had found ordinary and uninteresting compared to his charming wife, Jackie.

“Je me dis,” Cadieux recalled, “que tout de même l’anti-américanisme du général le pousse un peu loin!” Yet de Gaulle was impressive. At the last meeting between the Canadians and the

French, he summed up their talks without notes or hesitation. Cadieux, who was present, was in awe: “Jamais je n’ai écouté pendant trois quarts d’heures un exposé aussi complet, aussi lucide, aussi précis. Pour un homme de près de soixante[-]quinze ans l’exploit me paraît remarquable et

15 LAC/DEA/10101/20-CDA-9-Pearson/1 – Cadieux to Robertson, 19 November 1963; LAC/DEA/10101/20-CDA- 9-Pearson/1 – Pierre Dupuy to DEA, 29 November 1963. 16 NARA/RG59/1964-66/1990/POL CAN-US – Memorandum of Conversation between George W. Ball and Lester B. Pearson, 22 January 1964.

370 confirme l’impression première que j’ai notée, d’une force physique, d’une puissance animale exceptionnelles.”17 The French president was certainly formidable.

If, as his biographer claims, de Gaulle received the prime minister coldly, Pearson and his party took no notice of it.18 As Cadieux told the French embassy in Ottawa, both Pearson and

Martin would remember their visit as “inoubliable.” The Canadians had expected to find the

French leader rather “distant et réservé,” but instead he had radiated “beaucoup de cordialité, de bienveillance et de sens de l’humour.” According to Cadieux, Pearson had been especially impressed by de Gaulle’s pious hope that Canada would remain “une nation forte et unie.”19

What coloured Cadieux’s somewhat rosy assessment of the visit was that, for domestic political reasons, Ottawa badly needed its relationship with Paris to succeed. This was especially true as

Old France and New France, whose paths had first diverged in 1763 and then grew wider apart after the bloody and “godless” French Revolution, rediscovered each other. Their reconciliation initially seemed innocent enough. De Gaulle’s global vision predisposed his administration to look kindly upon this tiny island of French in a sea of North-American English. Quebec needed help from abroad if its language and culture were to survive and so it naturally looked to the former metropole for succour as well as for inspiration in building its state. In the euphoria of the retrouvailles it was easy to get carried away. Visiting Canada in the autumn of 1963, the celebrated novelist and French minister of cultural affairs André Malraux declared in Quebec,

“Je vous dis, Canadiens français, que la civilisation de demain nous la ferons ensemble.” By the end of his trip he could barely contain himself: “Les Canadiens? Je ne les connais pas. Je n’en connais pas, je n’ai connu que des Canadiens français. La France n’a de remords qu’à l’égard des

Canadiens français. Il ne s’agit pas d’ignorer la présence des autres mais il est assez normal que

17 Cadieux, Le Général et la campagne du Québec, 28-30. 18 Eric Roussel, De Gaulle (Paris: Gallimard, 2002), 833. 19 MAE/Série B-Amérique/Canada/1964-1970 (hereafter simply MAE)/204 – Charles de Pampelonne to MAE, 20 January 1964.

371 nous pensions d’abord à vous.”20 In Ottawa, Cadieux later recalled, some anglophones began asking whether federal overtures to Gaullist France might not feed Quebec nationalism and complicate an already difficult situation. Those who favoured the new relationship argued that

Ottawa had already waited too long and that it had no choice but to accept the challenge.21

Watching Quebec from Paris, de Gaulle was coming to his own conclusions, as this revealing excerpt from one of his letters makes clear: “Nous pouvons déveloper nos rapports avec le

Canada tel qu’il est encore. Mais nous devons, avant tout, établir une coopération particulière avec le Canada français et ne pas laisser noyer ce que nous faisons pour lui et avec lui dans une affaire concernant l’ensemble des deux Canada. D’ailleurs le Canada français deviendra nécessairement un État et c’est dans cette perspective que nous devons agir.”22

Cooperation between Quebec and France was of course well underway. As we have seen, in 1961 the Lesage government opened a Maison du Québec in Paris, one which was subsequently renamed a Délégation générale. In 1963 Quebec officials made arrangements with the Association pour l’organisation des stages en France (ASTEF), a semi-governmental agency, which the federal government then sanctioned by exchanging letters with the French authorities. Although he did not know it at the time, Cadieux later grasped that the process that had led to the ASTEF agreement had been far more significant than the agreement itself, which provided for the exchange of engineers, technicians, and other specialists between Quebec and

France. As he wrote, “les tractations, les négociations directes qui tiennent Ottawa à l’écart, lui donnent des satisfactions purement de forme et un rôle rituel, sans prise sur les réalités, fournissent un canevas qui sera repris et développé chaque fois que l’occasion s’en présentera

20 Hervé Bastien, “Malraux et le Québec au service du Général,” in André Malraux et le rayonnement culturel de la France, ed. Charles-Louis Foulon (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 2004), 197. 21 Cadieux, Le Général et la campagne du Québec, 179. 22 Maurice Vaïsse, La Grandeur, 655. Even before this, in January 1961, de Gaulle had spoken of his interest in developing relations with Quebec, regardless of whether such contacts proved “désagréables” to Ottawa. See ibid., 653.

372 plus tard.”23 When another provincial initiative, this one to send civil servants from Quebec to study at the prestigious École nationale d’administration (ENA) in Paris, was subsequently presented to the DEA by Bousquet as a French offer open to all Canadians, Ottawa, taking him at his word, reserved two places for its own bureaucrats.24 As a result, Quebec, which claimed the remaining eight spots, made it known to the press – in what Cadieux termed a “poisonous leak” – that federal officials were opening mail and interfering in Quebec’s relations with France.25 The impression that Ottawa was sticking its nose in the province’s business was further strengthened by the fact that the ENA program was authorized by an exchange of letters between Martin and

Couve de Murville during Pearson’s 1964 visit to Paris.

This did not bode well, but Cadieux was anxious to maintain contact with Quebec City.

To this end, he went there in February 1964 to discuss with its representatives the new federal program of cultural relations with francophone Europe, one which had been officially announced in Paris the month before. His mission not only proved difficult but it also made clear the hostility towards Ottawa of some high-level bureaucrats in Quebec. One of them, Gaston

Cholette, who oversaw technical education, said bluntly that, there being no need for federal cultural exchanges, the central government should simply cut the province a cheque for whatever amount it was planning to spend on them. Satisfactory arrangements already existed between

Quebec and France and so there was no reason for Ottawa, which had already wrongly intervened in the ASTEF and ENA agreements, to become involved. French resources being limited, a federal program of cultural relations might encourage Paris to lavish less attention on

Quebec and more on the rest of Canada. While Cholette’s position was uncompromising, Claude

Morin, a former professor at Université Laval and the province’s deputy minister of federal- provincial relations, proved more moderate. He indicated that the Quebec government’s response

23 Cadieux, Le Général et la campagne du Québec, 143. 24 LAC/DEA/10098/20-1-2-FR/2.1 - Cadieux, Memorandum to File, 25 June 1964. 25 LAC/DEA/10097/20-1-2-FR/1.1 – Cadieux to Arnold Smith and Frank G. Hooton, 24 December 1963.

373 to the federal scheme would likely be positive, though he predicted opposition from such nationalistic cabinet ministers as Georges-Émile Lapalme and René Lévesque.26

While Cadieux was uneasy with the calculated approach to France being taken by some in Quebec City, what worried him more in early 1964 was the mood in his home province, its government ambitiously moving in all directions and demanding fiscal concessions from Ottawa to finance its new activities. He observed that a nationalist escalation was taking place whereby ideas like “independence,” “separatism,” and “bi-nationalism” were monopolizing political discourse before Quebeckers were even sold on them. What was sorely needed was for what he called “la thèse fédérale,” and not just “la thèse autonomiste,” to be presented to Quebec intellectuals, who were behind much of the ferment. The problem in his view was that none of

Pearson’s French-Canadian cabinet ministers – including Yvon Dupuis, Guy Favreau, and

Maurice Lamontagne – was suited for this monumental task (little did Cadieux know that all three would soon become embroiled in scandals or pseudo-scandals that would weaken the federal government’s voice in Quebec even more). In the meantime, nationalist politicians in

Quebec were making promises that the province was in no financial position to keep. It was simply not feasible, Cadieux sensibly observed, “de doter la Province de toutes les routes, de toutes les écoles, de tous les emplois, de toutes les missions à l’étranger qui ont été promis.” The situation, he feared, risked getting out of hand: “Si on n’est pas convaincu des avantages de la confédération pour le Canada français, il y a un danger que par suite de leurs promesses

électorales, les deux parties se manœuvrent dans une situation où ils n’ont aucune flexibilité et ils devront se poser en adversaires résolus du pacte fédératif.” While this was a bleak prediction, the mood in Quebec in this period was anything but favourable to Canadian federalism.27

26 LAC/DEA/10098/20-1-2-FR/1.2 - Cadieux to Information Division, 25 February 1964. In his memoirs, Paul Martin incorrectly observes that Claude Morin was the main obstacle at this meeting. See Martin, So Many Worlds, 578. 27 LAC/MC/4/10 – Journal intime, 6 April 1964.

374

But there was only so much Cadieux could do. His main responsibility was external affairs, where he tried to avoid confrontation with his home province. In June 1964, having been named under-secretary, he spoke frankly to the French ambassador. Both Canada and France wished to develop their relations, he reminded Raymond Bousquet, and Quebec could help. But over the last year a number of difficulties had arisen. First, there had been the unfair charge that

Ottawa had deliberately intervened in the ENA agreement. Second, there was the problem of the status (or lack thereof) of Quebec’s délégation générale in Paris. While the main issue here was

French law, Ottawa was blamed by the province. Third, there had been the Caravelle affair and the widespread impression that the French embassy had pressured the federal government by raising hopes in Quebec, where the plane would have been built, hopes that Ottawa had been forced to dash. Lastly, Cadieux sensed more trouble ahead if French automobile companies seeking to establish factories in Canada manipulated public opinion in Quebec in an attempt to obtain impossible concessions from the federal government. In his view, the conclusion was clear: to avoid unnecessary friction between Ottawa and both Quebec City and Paris, it was best if the French dealt with the national authorities before the provincial ones.28

When one considers the unhappy turn Canada-France relations would take over the next six years, Cadieux’s concerns in the summer of 1964 were prophetic. Indeed, it is remarkable just how early he recognized that the peculiar methods of the French were sowing seeds of discord between the two countries. While his conversation with Bousquet failed to restrain

France in the long term, it proved immediately useful. Accepting, or so it seemed, the wisdom of

Cadieux’s point that France should cooperate more closely with the federal government to which, after all, he was accredited, the ambassador volunteered that Paul Gérin-Lajoie, the minister of Quebec’s newly-formed Department of Education, had approached him about

28 LAC/DEA/10098/20-1-2-FR/2.1 - Cadieux, memorandum, 25 June 1964.

375 university-level educational exchanges. Did Ottawa wish, Bousquet asked thoughtfully, to extend this initiative to other provinces and to its federal agencies?29

It did indeed, but meanwhile Cadieux and his colleagues, not wanting to be accused of obstructing Quebec’s plans, scrupulously avoided interfering in them. As had been the case with the ASTEF agreement, they accepted that the province’s negotiations could be ratified by a simple exchange of notes between Canada and France. But if the DEA and its under-secretary formally approved of the increased contact between Quebec City and Paris, they also wanted that contact extended to the rest of the country and Ottawa’s exclusive jurisdiction over foreign affairs recognized. For this reason, they decided to consider the new Quebec agreement a temporary one, pending its insertion into a future general framework agreement to be concluded between Ottawa and Paris and under which every province would be free to engage with France.

This struck Cadieux as a reasonable compromise. Agreeing, Paul Martin wrote separately to

Bousquet and Gérin-Lajoie in July 1964, informing them of federal plans. Both letters went unanswered.30

As tensions simmered between Ottawa and Quebec, Cadieux learned in the late summer of 1964 that Jean Chapdelaine, a friend and member of the DEA since 1937, was leaving it to become Quebec’s delegate general in Paris. Cadieux and others, no doubt rightly, attributed his departure more to ambition than to ideology. Indeed, as Personnel Officer between 1949 and

1951, he had been irritated by Chapdelaine’s pushiness about promotions, as this excerpt from one of his letters to him makes clear: “Comme tu vois, nous faisons des pieds et des mains ici pour rencontrer tous les désirs que tu manifestes et je te dirai franchement que j’ai été très mécontent du ton désabusé de ta dernière lettre. D’accord, tu n’as pas eu la promotion au 1er avril. Seulement, je le répète, personne, PERSONNE, personne n’a eu de promotion dans le

29 Ibid. 30 LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR-QUEBEC/1 – Cadieux to SSEA, 13 October 1964.

376

Service.”31 In 1964, however, Chapdelaine saw himself justified in feeling aggrieved. He had been abroad for nine years as ambassador to Sweden, Brazil, and finally Egypt. This last post he had accepted half-heartedly, making it known, much to the annoyance of Norman Robertson, that he would explore options outside the DEA. His determination to do so increased as he saw friends to whom he was senior succeed: Jules Léger was named ambassador in Paris, Paul

Tremblay was made Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York City, and

Cadieux of course became under-secretary in Ottawa. This last nomination, Cadieux believed, was “le coup final” for Chapdelaine, who personally (and unfairly) held him responsible for condemning him and his family to an unhappy existence under the Cairo sun and ultimately for his resignation from the DEA. As Chapdelaine took leave of the federal establishment he criticized Cadieux, who still made a final attempt to keep him. The timing of the affair, given deteriorating relations between the national and Quebec branches of the Liberal party, was unfortunate. “Les provinciaux,” Cadieux wrote, “sont heureux de saisir toutes les occasions de montrer qu’ils sont eux les défenseurs de l’intérêt canadien-français, et que les fédéraux sont des

‘vendus.’” In short, any prominent francophone civil servant with a grudge against Ottawa was assured of a warm welcome in Quebec City.32

While Chapdelaine’s departure was discouraging, Cadieux had more pressing problems to worry about. In early November 1964 Léger informed the DEA that Charles Lussier, Quebec’s outgoing delegate general in Paris, had asked him to deliver a letter from Jean Lesage to Charles de Gaulle in advance of their meeting a week later. The note, which dealt with the proposal for educational exchanges between the province and France, disturbed Cadieux, not least because copies of it were already in French hands. As he informed Paul Martin, the letter failed to make

31 LAC/MC/6/1 – Cadieux to Jean Chapdelaine, 16 May 1950. 32 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 19 September 1964. See also LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 28 September 1964; LAC/JL/56/5 – Cadieux to Jules Léger, 28 September 1964; LAC/JL/56/5 – Cadieux to Léger, 16 October 1964.

377 clear that the arrangement was an “accord technique intérimaire et exceptionnel” that would either be integrated into or replaced by a general cultural agreement between Canada and France.

This had been the DEA’s position since July and so, at Cadieux’s urging, Léger was asked, in transmitting the letter, not only to disabuse the French on this score but also to remind them that

Canada would only accept the Quebec-France scheme if it were sanctioned by an exchange of letters between the two countries.33 The ambassador carried out his instructions “à contrecoeur,” a reluctance that seemed justified when he subsequently learned that de Gaulle, upon being told of federal wishes by Lesage, had shown “un certain ennui.”34 The president’s reaction was disconcerting, coming as it did amidst rumours that he had taken umbrage at a line in Léger’s speech at the presentation of his credentials in June to the effect that the historic changes occurring in Canada would take place with or without France’s help. As if to confirm the ambassador’s status as persona non grata, de Gaulle excluded him from his luncheon for the

Quebec premier. Yet Léger was less critical of the French leader than of his superiors back home. By taking a persnickety view of Quebec’s educational exchanges with France, he told

Martin, the DEA had wrongly involved the Elysée in an internal dispute and almost certainly left the impression that Ottawa frowned upon the growing contacts between the province and the foreign country. “Nous passons pour des rabat-joie dans l’euphorie des retrouvailles,” warned an annoyed Léger.35

Cadieux disagreed in what was the first serious difference of opinion between the two friends. Given their different temperaments, it was bound to happen. Whereas the under- secretary, according to one admirer, was a “ferocious peasant … shrewd and calculating,” the ambassador, according to the same individual, had a soft-spoken dignity and elegance about him that made you think you were “in the presence of the Pope.” Indeed, their respective methods

33 LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR-QUEBEC/1 – Cadieux to SSEA, 6 November 1964. 34 LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR/QUEBEC/1 – Léger to DEA, 12 November 1964. 35 LAC/DEA/10098/20-1-2-FR/3.1 – Léger to Martin, 13 November 1964.

378 were a study in the contrast between the iron hand and the velvet glove. As Cadieux recognized, while Léger was “patient,” “souple,” and well-mannered, he himself was “fougueux,” “cassant,” and “rigide.” He felt that the department had used their respective talents well over the years by giving Léger more postings abroad, where tact and flexibility were required in dealing with foreign governments.36 Of course, work at headquarters demanded certain skills as well, among them the ability to take the national pulse and to make vital policy decisions that were in the country’s interest.

In a remarkable private exchange with Léger following Lesage’s visit to Paris, Cadieux conveyed the situation in Canada. The mood there was tense on account of the debate underway on constitutional revision, one the Pearson government had encouraged by promoting the Fulton-

Favreau amending formula. “Nos amis du Québec,” Cadieux explained, were increasingly talking about “l’Etat Québ[é]cois” and about securing legal recognition of its right to act abroad.

Professors of international law like Jacques-Yvan Morin of the Université de Montréal and

André Patry of Université Laval were submitting briefs on the subject to the province’s parliamentary committee on the constitution. Le Devoir was promoting the same ideas. It also could not be ignored, Cadieux noted, that Gérin-Lajoie, who had made his name as a constitutional lawyer, likely wanted to set a precedent in the field and thus bolster his support among nationalists.

Nor did Cadieux let France off the hook. Its ties with Quebec were certainly

“souhaitables,” he told Léger, but they were not “suffisants” unless pursued with all of Canada.

Referring to his friend’s report that the French, and particularly de Gaulle, had been annoyed by the recent federal intervention, Cadieux suggested that if anybody had a right to be irritated it was the Canadian government: “Nous avons l’impression parfois que la France se considère en

36 Robert Bothwell, “Allan Gotlieb: A Mind in Action,” in Diplomacy in the Digital Age: Essays in Honour of Ambassador Allan Gotlieb, ed. Janice Gross Stein (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2011), 17; Allan Gotlieb, interview with the author, Toronto, 8 February 2013; LAC/MC/4/10 – Journal intime, 15 August 1968.

379 relations diplomatiques à la fois avec Ottawa et avec Québec. … Je veux bien que nous n’exportions pas nos problèmes constitutionnels mais il faudrait aussi que la France évite soigneusement d’encourager les aspirations séparatistes au sein du Québec.” Indeed, the French government’s actions of late seemed most peculiar to him. For example, after digging in its heels for over a year on the question of the status of Quebec’s délégation générale in Paris, suddenly, on the eve of Lesage’s arrival there, it had responded to renewed pressure from Ottawa for settlement of the issue with what Cadieux termed elsewhere an “over-generous offer” in which the adjective “diplomatique” was frequently used to describe the privileges and the immunities from which the provincial representative would benefit. The issue was such a delicate one in

Canada that Cadieux had trouble believing that the French authorities had not deliberately tried to put Ottawa in a bind. Adding to his suspicions of the French was the type of education agreement they were contemplating with Quebec. Far from being a temporary arrangement for the exchange of university professors, the scheme detailed in Lesage’s letter to de Gaulle would cost no less than one million dollars, last indefinitely, and cover a great number of areas. “Que la

France, qui avait déjà été pressentie, qui connait nos problèmes constitutionnels, ait accepté en principe que son Ministre de l’Education signe un accord comme celui[-]là sans nous en parler,”

Cadieux told Léger, “il y a tu en conviendras, à cet égard aussi, matière à réflexion.” It was possible, Cadieux admitted, that France’s odd conduct was simply the result of “coincidences,”

“maladresse,” and “faiblesse” in the face of the province’s eager advances and thus that Ottawa should have confidence in its ally, but clearly he was beginning to suspect its motives.37

His worst fears seemed confirmed several days later in November 1964 when he learned that Lesage, upon returning from France, had shared with Pearson a remarkable comment made to him by de Gaulle. Apparently the French president had said, in Cadieux’s words to Léger in a

37 LAC/JL/1/12 – Cadieux to Léger, 19 November 1964. For France’s “over-generous” offer on the status of the Quebec delegate general see LAC/DEA/10098/20-1-2-FR/1.2 – Cadieux to Martin, 13 November 1964; LAC/DEA/11629/30-8-QBC/2 – Cadieux to Léger, 9 November 1964.

380 new letter, that “le Canada français est engagé dans la voie de l’autodétermination, que ce processus est irréversible et que lui, le Général, a l’intention d’aider le Canada français à atteindre ce but.” There was more. Recently Cadieux had seen a secret Royal Canadian Mounted

Police (RCMP) report that a “certain terroriste bien connu” had come to Canada, made contact with Quebec terrorists, and, incredibly, met with the French ambassador and his staff on several occasions. While he was eager to get an explanation from Bousquet, the police, who claimed to have a thick file on the ambassador’s activities, did not want their investigation jeopardized.

Cadieux was reluctant to draw “des conclusions tragiques” from either episode – after all, the evidence was still fragmentary and inconclusive – but strange things were afoot. As he told

Léger, they would have to be vigilant since the possibility could no longer be discounted that

France had retreated from the reassuring stand de Gaulle had taken on Canadian unity in early

1964.

Interestingly, Cadieux was not altogether surprised by the prospect of French interference in Canada. As we have seen, while posted to Brussels in the early post-war period, he had reported on the curious attempts by the French embassy there to stimulate Walloon separatists and to create a “Quebec-Wallonie” organization. More recently, while in Switzerland, he had noted that France was fraternizing with that country’s Jurassian separatists. As Cadieux surely recalled from his time in Belgium, the key question had been to what extent these shady activities were sanctioned by the French government. His own view, which he now shared with

Léger, was not only plausible but nuanced:

Il me vient à l’idée qu’il faudra sans doute étudier l’hypothèse que la France a peut-être deux politiques à l’égard des minorités françaises dans le monde: une politique officielle, correcte, défendable; et une autre, beaucoup plus dangereuse, inavouée, appliquée peut- être en dehors de sa volonté consciente mais tolérée, même encouragée en sous-main. Il faudra voir.38

While Cadieux was concerned about the possibility of French mischief, he was more focused on

38 LAC/JL/1/12 – Cadieux to Léger, 23 November 1964.

381 controlling those relations between Quebec City and Paris that were above board. In yet another letter that autumn to Léger, who clung to his view that Ottawa should not export its constitutional problems, he argued that it was hardly unreasonable of the federal government to expect the French to follow international law and practice by refraining from dealing directly with a sub-entity of another country. This, he insisted, was the crux of the problem. Unless

France planned to keep Ottawa in the picture, Canada’s internal situation would become worse and its desired rapprochement with Paris controversial, especially among English Canadians.

The key was to find a way of restraining both the French and the Quebeckers. Far from banking on complete success, Cadieux feared that for some time “nous allons devoir vivre dangeureusement.”39

The problem, as he knew full well, was that the minority Pearson government was neither strategically positioned nor eager to fight Quebec on its developing relationship with France.

Having made that country a foreign policy priority, Ottawa could scarcely object when its French province drew closer to it. In fact, as the issue of the provincial delegate general’s status in Paris showed, Ottawa tried to be helpful. After all, Pearson and his cabinet were publicly committed to a “cooperative federalism” which promised harmony over confrontation, though Cadieux wondered – quite rightly – whether sufficient thought had been given to its limits and implications.40 At a federal-provincial conference that spring, Quebec had unveiled plans for a robust pension program, sending federal representatives scurrying to pick up the pieces of their own less ambitious scheme. The result was that Ottawa had been forced to compromise: there would be two pension plans in Canada – one for Quebec and one for the other provinces. As this episode suggests, the Pearson government was on the defensive in its relations with the Lesage government, forced to react to its every move. It was the same with France: Ottawa always

39 LAC/JL/1/12 – Cadieux to Léger, 3 December 1964. 40 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 6 April 1964.

382 seemed one step behind. While it was one thing for the federal government to dilute its authority within Canada, it was quite another to do so abroad, where the country should be united and speak as one. This explained Cadieux’s desire in late 1964 to bring Quebec’s budding romance with Paris under control. It would be an elusive goal.

When Jean Basdevant, Director General of Cultural and Technical Affairs in the French foreign ministry, visited Ottawa in mid-November 1964, Cadieux stressed that Ottawa wished to see relations with France benefit all of Canada, not just Quebec. While the French official was sympathetic, he noted that it was normal for his country to have closer relations with Quebec since they spoke the same language and language was the vehicle of culture. As for the education arrangement, Basdevant provided Cadieux and his associates with the draft procès-verbal of a meeting earlier that month between French and provincial officials. Mindful of the federal government’s legal concerns, the French official volunteered that, while Paul Gérin-Lajoie might officially sign this document in Paris, that action alone did not make it an international agreement. This was certainly Cadieux’s view and so he tried his luck: could the arrangement be covered, he asked, by an exchange of letters between Canada and France indicating its temporary nature pending the accord cadre? While accepting the principle of this exchange of notes,

Basdevant advised him against using the term “intérimaire,” which risked causing problems with

Quebec. Instead, he proposed that the letters take note of the procès-verbal and make clear that it would be inserted into the wider agreement.41

This was a reasonable compromise, but Cadieux was to be disappointed again. Moving on to Quebec, Basdevant was boldly informed by Gérin-Lajoie that it had the right to negotiate and to sign international agreements in areas of its domestic jurisdiction. The French official wisely declined to get into a discussion on this point, but he noted that the Quai d’Orsay’s legal

41 LAC/DEA/3497/19-1-BA-FRA-1964-3/1 – Procès-verbal de la réunion tenue le 18 novembre 1964 à 9:30 à l’occasion de la visite de Monsieur Basdevant à Ottawa, 18 November 1964.

383 experts were not of the same view. While he persuaded the education minister to accept a less controversial authentication procedure, Basdevant told Léger upon his return to Paris that it would be much better, to avoid any problems, if Ottawa could warn Quebec of the terms of the accord cadre beforehand.42 But the federal government was not yet ready to do so. Thus in late

December 1964 Cadieux decided that there would be no reference to it in the exchange of letters covering the province’s education arrangement.43 Should he have insisted on its inclusion?

Perhaps, but he could hardly ignore French advice. Moreover, given Gérin-Lajoie’s combative mood, it was arguably best to avoid confrontation. Discretion, after all, is sometimes the better part of valour.

But there were limits to Cadieux’s good will. “Chaque fois qu’il le put,” Claude Morin later recalled, “Cadieux ne manqua pas d’insister sur le fait que notre projet n’aurait de portée que dans la mesure où il serait formellement accompagné d’un assentiment fédéral et que nous nous ferions illusion de croire signer là quelque document valable en soi.”44 Moreover, as the

New Year dawned, Cadieux placed renewed hope in the accord cadre. “Mon intention,” he recorded in his diary, “est de démonter à la France, s’il y a moyen, que la réalité française au

Canada ne se limite pas au Québec et de démontrer par la même occasion à certains fanatiques du Québec qu’ils ne sont pas en mesure de donner à nos relations avec la France des dimensions valables.” His words captured the struggle underway between French Canadians like himself, who espoused the older pan-Canadian nationalism, and others who, like many in the provincial government, championed the newer and more exclusive Quebec variant. He also hoped to double, at the very least, the annual $250,000 credit for cultural relations with francophone

Europe. “L’opération promet d’être difficile,” he noted in an oblique reference to the federal

42 LAC/10492/55-3-1-FR-QUEBEC/1 – Léger to DEA, 25 November 1964. 43Cadieux marginal note on LAC/10492/55-3-1-FR-QUEBEC/1 - European Division to Cadieux, 23 December 1964. 44 Claude Morin, L’art de l’impossible: la diplomatie québécoise depuis 1960 (Montreal: Boréal, 1987), 26.

384 government’s reluctance to spend money on culture, which was contested constitutional ground because of its link to education, but success would make it easier for him to prime the pump in the future.45 In mid-January Cadieux sent a draft of the accord cadre to Morin for comment. As with Paul Martin’s missive to Gérin-Lajoie in July, there would be no response.

The reason was that Quebec had more pressing matters to deal with. About the same time that Cadieux wrote to Morin, the latter informed him by phone of the province’s wish that its

“procès-verbal” with France be termed an “accord.” The request triggered a quite negative reaction from Cadieux, who proceeded to give his interlocutor “un bref cours téléphonique de droit international.” The Quebec official then proposed the word “convention,” but Cadieux balked again, noting that Quebec was not a sovereign state. Finally, Morin advanced the term

“déclaration conjointe.” (As he humorously wrote later, “Je n’osai pas lui suggérer l’appellation

‘traité,’ estimant devoir être responsable de la syncope qui en résulterait!”). Once again, such precise legal terminology struck Cadieux as a small step by Quebec towards international recognition, so he advised his minister to oppose it. Ultimately, the two officials agreed on the term “entente,” which being less precise, proved acceptable.46

The entente was signed in Paris in late February between, on the one hand, Gérin-Lajoie and Morin, and, on the other, Christian Fouchet, France’s education minister, and Basdevant.

The Quebeckers trumpeted the event as a major precedent, a view enthusiastically echoed by

Quebec’s nationalist press. Cadieux later tersely summed up the provincial strategy: “Toujours la bataille de l’autonomie. Le public est saisi du conflit. Il y a débat dans la presse et le monde universitaire. Il faut alerter l’opinion nationaliste et circonscrire l’intervention d’Ottawa.”47 In the province’s negotiations with France, Gérin-Lajoie declared publicly, the federal government

45 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 20 January 1965. 46 Morin, L’art de l’impossible, 27; LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR-QUEBEC/2.1 – Cadieux to Martin, 19 January 1965; LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR-QUEBEC/2.1 – Cadieux to Martin, 21 January 1965. 47 Cadieux, Le Général et la campagne du Québec, 100.

385 had been nothing more than a “consenting observer.” He downplayed the fact that only the letters exchanged between Paul Martin and the French embassy on the same day gave the education entente legal validity. There was trouble ahead.

In this charged atmosphere the conclusion that month of the preliminary report of the

Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism – that “Canada, without being fully conscious of the fact, is passing through the greatest crisis in its history” – was not terribly helpful. In early April, François Leduc, France’s new ambassador to Canada, sent a telex to Paris in which he quoted Pearson as making the following remarkable statement: “‘Je veux bien d’une

Autriche-Hongrie,’ m’a dit le [P]remier ministre, ‘mais pas d’états indépendants – et pourtant l’indépendance du Québec ferait bien plaisir à d’autres provinces qui ne demandent qu’à le voir quitter la fédération – c’est pour cela qu’il ne faut pas que les Québécois aillent trop loin.’”48

Since Austria-Hungary was effectively two nations, one wonders if Pearson, seemingly overwhelmed by events, grasped the full implications of his comment.

The Bi and Bi Commission was certainly not making friends in the DEA during this period. When Cadieux learned that it had appointed without consultation Gilles Lalande and

André Patry to investigate certain aspects of its operations, he was livid. As he saw it, both men were committed to views which ran counter to the broad policies of the DEA. The problem with

Lalande was professional: the Université de Montréal political scientist was one of its former officers. He had returned from a posting to Tokyo only to resign from the department, rashly in

Cadieux’s view, upon learning that he would not be assigned to its Far Eastern Division. Was it proper, the under-secretary asked, that he now investigate his former colleagues and superiors?

There was also the fact that Lalande favoured special unilingual divisions for French-speaking officers, an idea repugnant to Cadieux who considered it “impractical” and “dangerous,” not

48 MAE/198 – François Leduc to MAE, 1 April 1965. The French accents, missing in the original source, were added by the author.

386 least because it logically led to two separate foreign policies for Canada. Relations between

Lalande and the department were strained from the start. While his study of its personnel policies went ahead, he worked under a cloud of suspicion, especially after he unsuccessfully pressed the

DEA for full access to its files, some of which contained sensitive personal information.49

The problem with Patry, a professor of international law at Université Laval, was ideological. His relationship with Cadieux dated from the 1950s. Back then the two had been on cordial terms, but by the mid-1960s the Quiet Revolution had created a rift in whatever friendship existed between them. In a brutally frank letter to Ernie Steele, the Chairman of the

Interdepartmental Committee on Bilingualism in the Civil Service, Cadieux questioned Patry’s

“professional qualifications, his judgment and his impartiality.” The under-secretary noted, for example, that Patry had made no significant contribution to the academic literature on international law and that he had been dismissed from the Université de Montréal in 1961 partly because of inefficiency and poor academic credentials. While Patry had worked for NATO in the mid-1950s, Cadieux knew that his record there had been undistinguished. At the time there had been talk of Patry joining the DEA but, his charm and knowledge of international relations notwithstanding, he was seen as too “erratic” and “lacking in judgment.” Most serious of all,

Cadieux informed Steele, Patry had prepared a study for the Quebec Constitutional Commission suggesting that the province be given a limited international competence. “You can appreciate how delicate it is for the Department and its officials,” Cadieux wrote, “to deal with someone who advocates officially such a thesis which, to say the least, is incompatible with the present constitutional position.” He even speculated that Patry might use his investigation to “gather ammunition” against the DEA. Cadieux’s response was to restrict the terms of reference of his

49 LAC/MC/35/4 – Cadieux to G.G.E. Steele, 11 January 1965. The information about Lalande’s reason for resigning is drawn from a confidential interview. See as well Hilliker and Barry, Coming of Age, 349-50.

387 study on the bicultural and bilingual image projected by Canada in international organizations so as to neutralize any threat it posed.50

As Patry told a member of the DEA, he knew his position on the constitution meant that he did not have the confidence of Cadieux, whom he nevertheless claimed to admire and to regard as a friend, but he added that in fifty years the idea of special status for Quebec would seem obvious, this despite the fact that its current proponents were viewed with suspicion.51

While Patry grudgingly accepted his revised mandate, in his final report for the commission, one which would never see the light of day but which can be found in his private papers, he savaged

Cadieux:

Le courage et la combativité recouvrent chez lui un caractère autoritaire et intransigeant: il ne s’entoure guère plus que de collaborateurs dociles, qui acceptent de travailler dans cette atmosphère de méfiance et de crainte qu’engendre son esprit soupçonneux et tatillon. Très intelligent, mais profondément émotif, il satisfait son impulsivité – qu’il doit à chaque instant surmonter – en se livrant à la colère et à l’invective toutes les fois qu’il lui est offert une occasion ne paraissant point tirer à conséquence. J’ajouterai que le choix fait par les Commissaires de ma personne ne pouvait être agréable au Sous- Secrétaire d’Etat aux Affaires extérieures, car, en dépit de l’amitié qu’il me témoigna jadis et qu’il me porte peut-être encore, il m’assimile apparemment aux extrémistes, simplement parce que je suis en désaccord avec la pratique suivie jusqu’ici par le Canada en ce qui a trait au biculturalisme en politique étrangère. [Il] trouva donc difficilement acceptable une ‘intrusion’ comme la mienne dans un domaine soumis, dans une large mesure, à sa gérance personnelle.52

There was some truth to Patry’s characterization of Cadieux. The latter did have a temper, one which cowed many a subordinate, and he resented any outside interference in his department, whose prerogatives he jealously guarded. That said, Cadieux believed that Patry’s constitutional

50 LAC/MC/35/4 – Cadieux to Steele, 11 January 1965. For a more sympathetic view of Patry and his position on Quebec’s international relations see Robert Aird, André Patry et la présence du Québec dans le monde (Montreal: VLB éditeur, 2005). In his diary at the time André Laurendeau, the co-chairman of the Bi and Bi Commission, commented on the uncooperative attitude of French-Canadian bureaucrats in Ottawa to its work and cited Cadieux’s case in particular. See Laurendeau, Journal, 300. Cadieux, for his part, had reservations about Laurendeau: “Celui-ci agit toujours comme un journaliste. Il recherche la bonne copie et ne semble avoir le sens des nuances et le souci des précautions qui s’imposent toujours dans un domaine aussi délicat.” See LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 17 February 1965. 51 LAC/DEA/10486/45-7-1-3/1 – J. M. Weld to Cadieux, 9 March 1965. 52 BANQ/Fonds André Patry (P422)/S3/1995-01-008-5/7 – André Patry, Le visage offert par le Canada en tant qu’état biculturel au sein des organisations internationales et des plans de coopération technique de caractère régional, 5.

388 ideas were so dangerous that he simply could not be trusted. Little did Cadieux know as he worked diligently in early 1965 to circumscribe Patry’s mandate with the Bi and Bi Commission that the Laval professor was planning an even greater “intrusion” into his domain. When Gérin-

Lajoie returned from Paris, emboldened by his recent triumph there, Patry, a friend and adviser of his, urged him to make the public legal case for Quebec’s international competence. He drafted a speech for Gérin-Lajoie and arranged for the consular corps in Montreal to hear him give it.53

II – Action and Reaction: Quebec and Ottawa

On 12 April at the Windsor Hotel Gérin-Lajoie argued that Canada had a dual international personality. In 1937 the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, then the country’s final court of appeal, had ruled that the federal government could not implement treaties whose subjects fell under the domestic jurisdiction of the provinces. Since only the latter could carry out such agreements, and since the constitution of 1867 was technically silent on the power to make them in the first place, it followed, or so Gérin-Lajoie thought, that the provinces could negotiate and sign treaties in areas of their competence. This was a vital point, since the nature of international relations, which had once been narrowly defined, now encompassed “tous les aspects de la vie sociale.” Nor did Quebec accept that Ottawa could supervise or control its dealings with the world. The provinces even had the right, Gérin-Lajoie declared, to participate in certain international organizations dealing with matters of local concern. In sum, what became known as the “Gérin-Lajoie doctrine” – that what was provincial responsibility at home was also provincial responsibility abroad – was a bold constitutional gambit. By stating one of its

53 Paul Gérin-Lajoie, Combats d’un révolutionnaire tranquille (Montreal: Centre éducatif et culturel, 1989), 325- 326;

389 demands so directly, Claude Morin wrote to Jean Chapdelaine, Quebec was serving notice as to what kind of new constitution it wanted.54

Unsurprisingly, the DEA and its under-secretary were aghast. They saw the proposal as fundamentally unworkable, not to mention contrary to both constitutional and international law.

“La thèse de la souveraineté internationale du Québec,” Cadieux recalled, was being asserted

“avec de moins en moins de nuances et de retenue.”55 He strongly contested Gérin-Lajoie’s view of the treaty-making power in a meeting with France’s new ambassador, François Leduc, two days later. As for provincial participation at international meetings, Cadieux told Leduc that it would be hard for federal negotiators to do their job with ten people looking over their shoulder.56 He was furious with Quebec and he made no effort to hide it. When Morin visited

Ottawa later that month he witnessed, neither for the first time nor the last, what he later called the “traits parfois volcaniques” of Cadieux’s personality.57 The under-secretary, Morin informed

Jean Lesage, had been “quasi hors de lui,” observing that if it were separatism that Quebec wanted, it was to be congratulated on its declaration of independence. So loudly had Cadieux raised his voice that the doors of the meeting room had had to be shut. “Il a quand même été poli,” Morin wrote, “mais a manifesté la fermeté qui le caractérise.” He added, “Pour lui, nos exigences sont impossibles à satisfaire.”58 Days before this tumultuous encounter the DEA had released, on 23 April, Paul Martin’s official response to Gérin-Lajoie’s pretensions. Crafted by

Cadieux and his legal team, the statement was clear: only the federal government had an international personality and hence the power to conclude treaties. It noted, though, that Ottawa remained willing to use the federal prerogative to help provinces meet their international goals.

54 BANQ/E42/1990-09-002/405 – Claude Morin to Jean Chapdelaine, 21 April 1965. For a transcript of Gérin- Lajoie’s speech see https://www.saic.gouv.qc.ca/publications/Positions/Partie2/PaulGerinLajoie1965.pdf. 55 Cadieux, Le Général et la campagne du Québec, 100. 56 MAE/327 – Leduc to Paris, 14 April 1965; LAC/DEA/10098/20-1-2-FR/3.1 – Cadieux to Léger, 15 April 1965. 57 Morin, L’Art de l’impossible, 44. 58 BANQ/Fonds Claude Morin (P762)/1999-10-011/60 – Morin to Jean Lesage, 30 April 1965.

390

This was a small gesture toward bonne entente. The prime minister was even more conciliatory. On 3 May, joined by justice minister Guy Favreau and finance minister Walter

Gordon, Pearson met with Premier Lesage and Gérin-Lajoie in Ottawa for a wide-ranging three- and-a-half-hour discussion in which the issue of the treaty power was raised last and only generally. Without compromising on the constitutional and international legal principles involved, the federal representatives agreed to explore “practical and mutually acceptable procedures” with Quebec.59 On 8 and 9 May the two sides met again, this time at the Queen

Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, in talks which were not, as hoped, “frank discussions among fellow

Canadians, but [more like] … negotiations between representatives of two foreign countries,” a development that deeply upset Pearson.60 While acknowledging the federal government’s overall responsibility for Canada’s foreign policy, neither Lesage nor Gérin-Lajoie, who were accompanied by Morin, accepted that Ottawa alone had constitutional power to conclude international agreements and legal capacity in international law. Setting aside their doctrinal differences for the time being, the Canadian representatives proposed, and those from Quebec revised, a handful of procedural arrangements to govern the conclusion of international agreements in fields of provincial jurisdiction. Both Lesage and Pearson agreed to submit the scheme to their respective cabinets for study, but, in the latter’s case, not before the ministers and officials concerned, in particular Paul Martin and Cadieux, who were abroad together, had examined it.61

What was discussed in Montreal has largely been a mystery, until now. Hidden in plain view, as it were, the document in question sat in the DEA files consulted by this writer. It outlined the points of a federal proposal that was first revised by Quebec and then revised again

59 LAC/PCO/6271 – Cabinet conclusions, 4 May 1965. 60 LAC/PCO/6271 – Cabinet conclusions, 11 May 1965. 61 LAC/DEA/11585/30-5-1/2 – Draft Memorandum to Cabinet, 18 May 1965; LAC/DEA/11585/30-5-1/2 – Allan Gotlieb to Cadieux (in London), 11 May 1965.

391 by both sides. Since, as far as I know, it has never before been quoted in any book or article, it is reproduced here in its entirety:

1. A province wishing to negotiate an international bilateral agreement in a field of provincial jurisdiction will inform the federal government of its intention and of the nature and scope of the agreement which it proposes to negotiate. The federal government will advise the province concerning the compatibility of the proposed agreement with Canada’s foreign policy. The province will consult with the federal government on any changes in the agreement originally envisaged that might have implications for Canada’s foreign policy.

2. The provincial government may avail itself of the services of the federal government in the conduct of negotiations.

3. The provincial government will communicate the text of the agreement to the federal government for concurrence as to its foreign policy aspects, before signature.

4. The agreement, once it has been signed by the province and a foreign country, will be subject to sanction by a diplomatic exchange of notes between Canada and the foreign country, if any of the governments concerned so desire.

5. No diplomatic exchange of notes will take place if the government of Canada and the foreign government consider that an agreement between a province and a foreign country is in the nature of a contract binding under the private law of one of the parties, i.e. private international law, and the contract so provides.

6. When the federal government wishes to negotiate an international agreement in a field of provincial jurisdiction, it will inform the provincial governments of its intention and of the nature and scope of the agreement it proposes to negotiate.62

Both Allan Gotlieb, a rising star in the DEA’s Legal Division, and Cadieux had serious qualms about this formula. First, and crucially, it implied that Quebec could sign international agreements in its own right since a clause in the original federal draft that their “validity in international law” would derive from the exchange of notes between Canada and the foreign country involved had vanished from Lesage’s counterproposal. Second, this diplomatic exchange would follow rather than, as was preferable, precede or be simultaneous with the provincial signature, a process that begged the question of whether this important procedure could occur at

62 LAC/DEA/11585/30-5-1/2 – “Federal-Provincial Procedures to Govern the Conclusion of International Agreements in Fields of Provincial Jurisdiction (Based on Mr. Lesage’s counter-proposals revised in discussion with Prime Minister,” 9 May 1965. For Pearson’s original proposal see LAC/DEA/11585/30-5-1/2 – “Federal-Provincial Procedures to Govern the Conclusion of International Agreements in Fields of Provincial Jurisdiction (As originally presented by Prime Minister),” 9 May 1965.

392 all if the federal government were not one of those “concerned.” Third, a clause in the original draft obliging the province to keep Ottawa “informed” of its negotiations with a foreign power had been removed by Quebec, which preferred simply to “consult” the central authorities about any changes to its plans. Fourth, the assumption in paragraph five that such provincial arrangements were generally agreements binding in public international law and only exceptionally private contracts was the opposite of what the normal rule should be, that is, that on rare occasions Ottawa might give international legal effect to dealings between Quebec and a foreign entity.63 Curiously, two of these flaws, specifically the timing of the exchange of letters and the statement about private international law, were present in Pearson’s original proposal.

Never one to mince words, Cadieux warned his minister that, combined, the formula’s various parts represented “an abandonment of the federal position,” “an unauthorized amendment of the

Canadian Constitution,” and “a degree of acceptance of ‘associate state’ status for Quebec.”

Above all, by appearing to confirm that the province could enter into international agreements, it tacitly recognized the “principle of independent nationhood for Quebec.” As Cadieux darkly predicted, it would not be seen as “the final step of the evolution of Quebec’s status but as the beginning of this process.” Martin, a lawyer with training in international law, agreed with this analysis and urged Pearson quietly to “disengage” from the formula. On 20 May, at a meeting of the cabinet committee on federal-provincial relations, chaired by the prime minister, the decision was made to do so.64

What remains unclear is Pearson’s own attitude towards the Montreal proposal. One hint that he may have supported it, at least initially, was his comment to cabinet on 11 May that discussions with Lesage had focused on “practical procedural arrangements” that would not

63 LAC/DEA/11572/30-1-4/2 – Cadieux to Martin, 14 May 1965; LAC/DEA/11585/30-5-1/2 – Draft Memorandum for Cabinet; 18 May 1965. 64 LAC/DEA/11572/30-1-4/2 – Cadieux to Martin, 14 May 1965; LAC/DEA/11572/30-1-4/2 – Martin to Pearson, 17 May 1965; LAC/DEA/11585/30-5-1/3 – Cadieux to Martin, 1 December 1965.

393 bring “the constitutional and legal aspects of the problem into question,” to which he added that

“a good deal of progress had been made in this pragmatic approach.”65 As Cadieux and Gotlieb had shown, however, far from being an innocuous modus vivendi, the Montreal formula had dangerous constitutional and legal implications.

The Gérin-Lajoie speech and the Pearson-Lesage meetings had a major effect on developments in the Canada-Quebec-France triangle. On 13 April, the day after the province’s bombshell, Cadieux decided to amend the accord cadre by making it voluntary for any province that preferred the existing exchange-of-letters procedure. This fateful choice, which sacrificed the original federal aim to bring the Quebec-France relationship under its umbrella, was perhaps the only realistic one in the circumstances. As the Pearson cabinet was informed later that month, the ominous silence from Quebec on the accord cadre was an obstacle to its conclusion with

Paris. For this reason, “and in the spirit of ‘cooperative federalism,’” an “opt-out” or “opt-in” clause had been added to it. The alternative, abandoning the arrangement altogether, was unacceptable, lest a retreat be regarded “as the successful use of a provincial veto and the tacit acceptance by Ottawa of much of the Gérin-Lajoie constitutional thesis.” In Montreal on 8 and 9

May the Quebec spokesmen resigned themselves to the amended accord cadre but rejected

Ottawa’s proposal that a federal official attend meetings of the Quebec-France “commission mixte” that had been created by the education entente and that a Quebec official sit on the same committee planned for in the Canada-France agreement. In other words, the province brooked no interference in its programs with France and refused to be associated with Ottawa’s. On 11 May

Pearson’s government authorized the completion of negotiations on the accord cadre and increased its budget for cultural relations with French-speaking countries to a substantial

65 LAC/PCO/6271 – Cabinet conclusions, 11 May 1965.

394

$1,000,000, much to the satisfaction of Cadieux, who had been the driving force behind both measures.66

In the aftermath of Gérin-Lajoie’s speech, the DEA and its under-secretary had two pre- eminent goals: to place the country’s cultural relations with France on a firmer pan-Canadian basis and to protect the federal government’s exclusive constitutional authority to enter into international agreements. Of course, Quebec had goals of its own. In mid-May its minister of cultural affairs, Pierre Laporte, determined not to be overshadowed by his colleague and eager to bolster the province’s claim to an international personality, publicly announced his intention of signing a cultural entente with the French government and then promptly flew off to Paris to get the negotiations started. Needless to say, Ottawa had not been informed of his plans beforehand.

Laporte’s zeal was troubling, particularly when seen in the context of a speech that he had made in Louisiana the previous month in which he had said, “We can already glimpse the day when it will be possible for us in Quebec to conclude international agreements directly, without having to work through the federal government.”67 In Paris that May to assist a Canadian delegation in negotiations with the French over the sale of uranium, Cadieux met with Éric de Carbonnel, the secretary general of the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (MAE), and Jean-Daniel Jurgensen, its new director of American affairs, and raised the matter of Laporte’s cultural entente. Both officials assured him that France had no intention of signing such an agreement and that the commission mixte was well equipped to handle any new projects. Passing through Ottawa a few days later to discuss with authorities there the accord cadre, a draft of which was finally made

66 LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR/1 – European Division to Legal and Information Divisions, 23 April 1965; LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR/1 – Memorandum to Cabinet, 27 April 1965; LAC/DEA/11585/30-5-1/2 –Gotlieb to Cadieux (in London), 9 May 1965; LAC/DEA/11585/30-5-1/2 – Draft Memorandum to Cabinet, 18 May 1965; LAC/PCO/6271 – Cabinet conclusions, 11 May 1965. 67 Norman Webster, “Quebec: Mission to Paris stresses independent role,” The Globe and Mail, 15 May 1965, 8.

395 available to him, Jean Basdevant gave federal officials similar assurances.68 Yet as spring turned to summer the DEA’s under-secretary became increasingly uneasy. As the Quai d’Orsay mulled over the proposed accord cadre, Cadieux could not help but notice the deafening silence from both Paris and Quebec City about the province’s cultural plans. He met with the French ambassador in early July and stressed that it was the federal government’s wish that France refrain from signing any new entente with Quebec before the accord cadre and that, ideally, any future exchanges take place within the framework of the education agreement. With considerable understatement, François Leduc informed the MAE that Cadieux did not view a second entente

“d’un oeil favorable.”69

Nobody much cared in Paris, where the authorities had decided that it was in their interest to negotiate parallel agreements with Ottawa and Quebec City, the French proposals for which were ready by early August 1965. Certain provincial sources had made France fully aware of the province’s hostile attitude towards the accord cadre. For example, André Patry had taken advantage of his tour of international organizations for the Bi and Bi Commission, a junket which was of course federally funded, to undermine the DEA. In Paris in June, ostensibly to visit

NATO, the OECD, and UNESCO, Patry had had numerous conversations with officials from the

Quai d’Orsay and the Élysée about both cultural relations between Quebec and France and the accord cadre. As he informed Quebec leaders upon his return, the French not only attributed its drafting to Cadieux but they also had serious reservations about three articles in it which related to federal-provincial affairs and which drew them into Canada’s internal problems.70

Their solution, as Ottawa learned in August, was to relegate the provincial enabling

68 Cadieux marginal note on LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR-QUEBEC/2.2 – Canadian Embassy Paris to DEA, 23 August 1965; LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR/2 – DEA to Cadieux (in Geneva), 25 May 1965; Cadieux, Le Général et la campagne du Québec, 139. 69 LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR-QUEBEC/2.2 – Lise Gauthier to J.A. McCordick, 12 August 1965; MAE/328 – Leduc to Couve de Murville, 9 July 1965. 70 BANQ/P422/ S3/1995-01-008-5/2 – André Patry to Paul Gérin-Lajoie. A copy of the letter was also sent to Pierre Laporte and provincial officials Arthur Tremblay, Guy Frégault, and Claude Morin.

396 provisions in the main agreement to an exchange of letters. While this change did not unduly trouble Cadieux and the DEA, they pressed for an addition to the letters specifying that Canadian and French officials would consult with each other about the nature and scope of any projected ententes. The importance of such a statement became apparent at the end of August, when

Cadieux received from Claude Morin the French draft of a cultural entente between Quebec and

France, one whose existence the under-secretary felt contradicted the assurances de Carbonnel and Jurgensen had given him in May.71 The effect of the French draft, Cadieux noted, was to place the onus on the provinces to inform Ottawa of their ententes. As he saw it, this was

“wrong”:

No foreign country should be free to deal with a political subdivision of another without keeping the central authorities informed. We should make this clear to the French in a letter to them or orally. And I do not accept that we are ‘exporting our constitutional issues.’ We must resist interference in our internal affairs and any scheme which allows another country a free hand in dealing with Quebec without telling us amounts to just that!72

This comment was both sensible and prescient. After all, it is a cardinal rule of international law that one sovereign country must not keep another in the dark about its dealings with its constituent parts. As Cadieux was fated to witness in the years ahead, however, France would do just that.

When Jules Léger met with Jean Basdevant in early September, the latter noted that the proposed Canadian addition to the letters accompanying the accord cadre about consultation was unacceptable since it risked forcing France into simultaneous negotiations with both a province

71 MAE/328 – Jean Basdevant to French Embassy Ottawa, 31 August 1965; LAC/10492/55-3-1-FR-QUEBEC/2.2 – Cadieux to Martin, 1 September 1965. The Canadian addition to the letters seems to have been suggested to the French around 26 August, days before Cadieux received from Morin the French draft of the cultural entente. See LAC/1040255-3-1-FR/2 –DEA to Canadian Embassy Paris, 3 September 1965. On 23 August the DEA had received a report from the Canadian embassy in Paris stating that French diplomats saw no reason why the accord cadre should not be signed before the cultural entente, thereby confirming the existence of the second agreement. See LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR/2 – Canadian Embassy Paris to DEA, 23 August 1965. It seems clear, therefore, that the addition to the exchange of letter was prompted by the state of uncertainty France had kept Canada in since May concerning its cultural entente with Quebec. When Morin, and not the French embassy, supplied the DEA with the draft French cultural entente several days later, matters came to a head. 72 Cadieux marginal note on LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR-QUEBEC/2.2 – Canadian Embassy Paris to DEA, 23 August 1965; LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR-QUEBEC/2.2 – Cadieux to Martin, 1 September 1965.

397 and the federal government. It was not a question of principle, Basdevant assured Léger, Paris having no intention of concluding ententes with the provinces behind Ottawa’s back, but one of practical procedure. However, when Léger stood his ground, Basdevant suggested a line to the effect that Paris would keep Ottawa “informed” of provincial ententes. Basing himself on instructions which Cadieux had no doubt inspired, Léger asked the director of cultural relations whether, if his formula were retained, France would inform Canada of its intention to negotiate with a given province, supply it in a timely fashion with the text of any proposed entente, obtain its consent for any agreement not concluded under the accord cadre, and be forthcoming with its embassy when it sought information. All of this was acceptable to Basdevant, who made a point of saying that he did not want to hide anything from the Canadians. Whether he meant it or not is debatable, but it is clear that his assurances, which seem to have been overlooked in the secondary literature, were critical in securing the federal government’s agreement to the French version of the exchange of letters. Indeed, Léger even had the idea, which Cadieux found excellent, of setting out Ottawa’s understanding of the formula used in the exchange of letters in an aide-mémoire given to the French the day the accord cadre was signed.73

Since the federal government’s right to be “informed” of France’s dealings with Quebec would become the main source of friction in the Canada-Quebec-France triangle in the years ahead, it is important to understand just what Cadieux, Léger, and the rest of the DEA thought they were getting into. That said, there is no doubt that Ottawa’s legal position vis-à-vis Paris, notwithstanding Basdevant’s oral pledge, was weakened by the French revision to the written text of the exchange of letters. Cadieux put it best years later when he conceded that the control mechanism in the accord cadre was neither as “complet” nor as “absolu” as Ottawa had initially

73 LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR/2 – Léger to DEA, 13 September 1965; LAC/DEA/55-3-1-FR/2 – Léger to DEA, 4 November 1965; LAC/DEA/55-3-1-FR/2 – Cadieux to Léger, 5 November 1965. For a copy of the aide-mémoire see MAE/328 – Aide mémoire from Ambassade du Canada, 17 November 1965.

398 wanted, but that it was “reconnu” and that it represented “un engagement supplémentaire” that de Gaulle, not to mention the growing Quebec lobby in Paris, would ignore.74

By the time Léger met with Basdevant in mid-September, Cadieux had been provided with copies of both the French and provincial drafts of their cultural entente by Claude Morin, who had recently been named chairman of the Quebec Interdepartmental Commission on

External Relations and with whom he had another memorable confrontation. In Morin’s view, there were two kinds of senior francophones in the federal civil service: those who had risen to the top because they were “culturellement greffés à l’élément anglophone” and those who were so competent that their worth had had to be recognized. Cadieux, he later wrote, belonged to the second group: “Il était authentiquement canadien-français et voulait, à ce titre, exercer une influence longtemps espérée sur la machine gouvernementale fédérale.” The problem, Morin went on, was that Cadieux had become under-secretary just as the new Quebec was beginning to assert itself. Admitting that the Quiet Revolution and the spirit that impregnated it were not

“portés aux distinctions fines,” he noted that, viewed from Quebec City, senior francophones in

Ottawa “prenaient figure d’alliés objectifs de l’establishment anglophone.” Feeling under suspicion in the federal administration, and perhaps seeking to justify its nascent confidence in them, these officials, Morin opined, often took a firmer view of the central government’s prerogatives than some anglophones who were ignorant of the situation in Quebec.75

He was only half right. While Cadieux was authentically French Canadian, and while he was perceived as a vendu in Quebec, his opposition to what it was doing did not stem from either insecurity or a desire to curry favour but rather from a deep-seated belief that the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine would ruin the country and that his home province was afflicted by a disturbing parochialism. Simply put, Cadieux was a passionate man. Next to his family, the two things he

74 Cadieux, Le Général et la campagne du Québec, 105. 75 Morin, L’art de l’impossible, 45-46.

399 cared most about were the DEA and his country. Thus, when first informed by Morin of the cultural entente between Quebec and France, Cadieux had confronted him by saying that he had gotten wind of the project from the French embassy, that its ambassador had been formally warned against establishing direct links with the provincial government, that any cultural exchanges with France would include all of Canada and not just Quebec, and that the negotiation of the accord cadre was well advanced.76

Despite this inauspicious start to their negotiations, between September and November, against the backdrop of a federal election campaign, Cadieux and Morin frequently discussed the texts of both the accord cadre and the cultural entente. For example, the former was strongly opposed to references in that agreement to Quebec as a “pays” and a “peuple.” While he prevailed upon Morin to remove these provocative terms, he apparently did not object (or at least very strenuously) to the more formal and intergovernmental wording of the entente as being concluded between “Le Gouvernement de la République française et le Gouvernement du

Québec.” Essentially, Cadieux and Morin sought to ensure that the other’s agreement did not intrude on their respective government’s jurisdiction. The negotiations were long and, as they neared their end, acrimonious. On at least one occasion, for instance, each man lost his temper.

For Cadieux it came when Morin informed him in mid-November that since André Malraux would not sign the entente with Pierre Laporte, that honour would fall to François Leduc.

Cadieux exploded, insisting that it was unthinkable that an ambassador accredited to the federal government sign anything with a province and that Canada would lose face internationally. After calming himself, he agreed to try to persuade Paul Martin to accept the idea, provided that

Quebec did not create difficulties about the accord cadre and that Laporte publicly refer to the fact that Ottawa had been consulted about the foreign-policy implications of his own agreement.

76 Ibid., 44.

400

Notwithstanding this and other last-minute complications, the accord cadre was signed in

Ottawa on 17 November and the cultural entente in Quebec City one week later.77

Recent scholarship makes a strong case that the province emerged victorious from the battle of the agreements.78 Yet the record shows that Cadieux and the federal government were also satisfied with the results – at least at the time. The reason was that Ottawa’s constitutional prerogative, which had been boldly challenged by Paul Gérin-Lajoie in April and which would have been undermined had the Montreal formula been accepted, was safeguarded. Specifically, the letters accompanying the accord cadre contained not only the provincial opt-in clause but also a critical statement, which had ironically been suggested by the French themselves and which Cadieux and his legal advisers had initially advised removing for fear that it would be interpreted by Quebec as a blanket endorsement of the federal legal position, that the

“capacitation” of provinces to conclude cultural or educational ententes stemmed either from their reference to the agreement and its annexed letters or from the “consent” given to them by the federal government. What is not known, despite its great consequence, is that on 23

November, in response to a letter from Pearson enclosing a copy of the accord cadre, Jean

Lesage acknowledged, without qualification, that he understood this to be the case. Thus,

Quebec had seemingly retreated from its position of April and May on the issue of legal authority, the one most vital to Ottawa.79 It is possible to speculate that Lesage, less nationalistic than some of his ministers and officials, had imposed his view on them.

Less significant, but still relevant, was the fact that the DEA could claim – and did through a reference to tripartite discussions in the separate exchange of letters sanctioning

77 LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR-QUEBEC/2.2 – Cadieux to Morin, 13 September 1965; LAC/DEA/11644/30-14- QUE/1 – Cadieux to Martin, 12 November 1965; Morin, L’art de l’impossible, 55-60. For a brief summary of the federal-provincial exchanges that preceded the signing of the Quebec-France entente see LAC/DEA/55-3-1-FR- QUEBEC/2.2 – Cadieux to Martin, 17 November 1965. 78 Meren, With Friends Like These, 216-221. 79 LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR/2 – Cadieux to Pearson, 12 October 1965; LAC/DEA/14625/30-10-FR-2/3 – Lesage to Pearson 23 November 1965; LAC/DEA/11585/30-5-1/3 – Cadieux to Martin, 1 December 1965.

401

Quebec’s cultural entente – that the central government had been kept informed of the province’s negotiations with France since, throughout the fall, Morin had periodically discussed drafts of the text with Cadieux. This assertion, which conveniently ignored how belatedly the DEA had been apprised of those talks, was also significant, given Quebec’s obligation to keep Ottawa informed of its negotiations with a foreign power had gone unmentioned in the revised Montreal formula. More importantly, Laporte would not be able to say, as Gérin-Lajoie had at the signing of his education entente, that the federal government had merely been a “consenting observer” in the negotiations leading to the new agreement. Revealingly, the French unsuccessfully tried to have this reference to Ottawa removed from the exchange of letters at the eleventh hour.80

Finally, the federal government not only ensured that the exchange of letters authorizing the provincial action preceded – not followed, as the Montreal formula would have mandated – the signing ceremony in Quebec City, but also that it signed its accord cadre before the province did its new entente, a symbolic victory which reinforced its public stance on the treaty-making power, including cultural matters. Indeed, the timing issue was more important than perhaps has been recognized. While it is true that the cultural entente made no reference to the accord cadre, the fact that the latter came first strengthened Ottawa’s position vis-à-vis the province by making clear that the provincial authority stemmed rather than derogated from the federal power. This was because the exchange of letters accompanying the federal agreement had established the procedure to be followed in the case of any entente not concluded under its aegis. A week later, by once again obtaining Ottawa’s written consent before signing its cultural entente, Quebec confirmed this arrangement. “By acting first,” Cadieux had pointed out, “the Government is leading or steering affairs, and not belatedly reacting to them.”81 While this was not quite true,

80 LAC/DEA/11644/30-14-QUE/1 – Cadieux to Martin, 17 November 1965; LAC/DEA/10492/55-3-1-FR- QUEBEC/2.2 – Gotlieb, memorandum, 25 November 1964. 81 LAC/DEA/11632/30-10-FR-2/2 – Cadieux to Martin; LAC/DEA/11585/30-5-1/3 – Cadieux to Martin, 1 December 1965.

402 the federal government’s legal and public position in November 1965 was stronger than it had been in February. The above analysis neither minimizes Quebec’s achievement of a second entente with France nor its developing alliance with that country. What it emphasizes, however, is that both the Lesage and Pearson governments got what they wanted most: for Quebec City, the strengthening of its direct relationship with Paris; for Ottawa, the preservation of its exclusive authority to sign agreements binding in international law.

The DEA’s legal response to Quebec’s international ambitions in 1965 set the tone for the federal government’s approach to them. While Cadieux and his team of lawyers made concessions on substance, they resisted making any on form, since the form of Quebec’s international activities mattered most in both international and constitutional law. The federal cover given to the two provincial ententes was, as one Canadian diplomat from the period later defined it, a “legal fig leaf,” but one that still protected the central government’s position that it alone had an international personality.82 As Quebec and France coordinated their efforts in 1965, the wisest course open to Ottawa was to ensure that no constitutional precedent was being set.

The alternatives – either to play no part at all in the ententes or, conversely, to refuse to authorize them – were unthinkable. Cadieux’s strategy, which has never been fully understood, was to separate the problem of provincial involvement in international affairs from the larger one of constitutional revision and to try to solve it through ad hoc solutions. He was willing to be as forthcoming as possible on such issues as agreements with foreign states, development assistance, and provincial participation on Canadian delegations to international conferences, all of which had been discussed at the Montreal meeting in May and in whose aftermath he authorized studies on what could be done, but he refused to countenance even a limited international competence for Quebec, believing that it would mean the balkanization of Canada.

82 Max Yalden, interview with the author, Ottawa, 7 November 2012. On the DEA strategy of form over substance see Granatstein and Bothwell, Pirouette, 117.

403

The problem was that nothing prevented France from extending to Quebec a kind of de facto international recognition. In late November, for instance, Laporte and Gérin-Lajoie arrived in Paris to red carpet treatment, meeting with French ministers and even de Gaulle himself. Their lavish reception marked a further stage in Cadieux’s disillusionment with France. As he observed to Jules Léger, “Après deux ans de travail acharné, ici comme à Paris, nous avons pu voir au cours de cette fin de semaine combien est encore fragile la structure des rapports entre le Canada et la France.” The French had helped Quebec to trump the federal government. “Je ne vois aucune raison,” Cadieux remarked, “pour que deux ministres du Québec aient rencontré en une seule semaine autant de ministres français que les ministres du Cabinet fédéral en ont vu en un an, sans parler du déjeuner à l’Elysée, que je ne peux pardonner et ne pardonnerai pas.” While he was inclined to believe the French ambassador when he pleaded ignorance of the planning of the trip, he stressed to Léger that the French were obliged to maintain a balance in their relations with Canada and with a province, even one “pas comme les autres.” He also noted, and privately drew his own conclusions from the fact, that Claude Morin, with whom he had been in almost daily contact the week before, had said nothing to him about the program that awaited Laporte and Gérin-Lajoie in Paris. As Cadieux reminded Léger, the political will existed in Ottawa to develop relations with France, but not if it meant allowing France to meddle in Canada’s affairs.83 He quietly made this point to François Leduc by informing him that Ottawa’s plan to buy $8,000,000 in military equipment from France had encountered “technical difficulties” that were not unrelated to de Gaulle’s dalliance with Quebec.84 As Cadieux recognized, however, the federal government had to be circumspect: revenge, while appealing to his combative side, risked pushing France closer to Quebec.

83 LAC/DEA/10098/20-1-2-FR/3.2 – Cadieux to Léger, 6 December 1965. 84 NARA/RG59/1957-1966/Lot file 69D35/8/POL 3 – Memorandum of conversation between Cadieux and Ambassador John W. Tuthill, 27 March 1966.

404

By 1966 Cadieux’s position in Ottawa was paradoxical. For reasons of national unity he remained the strongest federal supporter of the rapprochement with France, but for those same reasons he was also gaining a reputation as its harshest critic. Indeed, he was the only person who saw from the start what the French were up to with Quebec. The American embassy reported in mid-1966, for instance, that while Ottawa treated de Gaulle with “great tolerance and conciliation,” Cadieux was “downright caustic” in his belief (which he expressed privately but had conveyed to provincial leaders) that the General was using Quebec as a pawn to attack the

United States.85 As he knew, however, Ottawa was in a bind: Canada needed France but France did not necessarily need it.

Pearson and Martin nonetheless tried to court Paris, not on such issues as the Vietnam

War, the Third World, or the Middle East, where Gaullist foreign policy was too independent, but on NATO. Canada pushed for a re-examination of alliance tasks and goals, echoed French opposition to the American-inspired Multilateral Nuclear Force, and, after France announced in

March 1966 that it would withdraw from NATO’s integrated military structure, urged alliance restraint. This last project was dear to Martin, who succeeded at the June ministerial meeting of the North Atlantic Council in delaying a decision on its relocation from Paris to Brussels. His closest allies were exasperated, not to mention his own officials, including undoubtedly

Cadieux.86 The minister’s strong stand was somewhat perplexing since, before leaving Ottawa, he had been informed that de Gaulle attached little importance to the question, having told Pierre de Leusse, France’s ambassador to NATO, “if the Council goes, it goes and you will go along with it.”87 After the ministerial meeting Martin informed de Leusse’s American counterpart,

Harlan Cleveland, that he had reliable information that Couve de Murville would have boycotted

85 NARA/RG59/1964-1966/1990/POL CAN-D, Memorandum of conversation between Marcel Cadieux, W. Walton Butterworth, and Rufus Z. Smith, 13 May 1966. 86 Greg Donaghy, “Domesticating NATO: Canada and the North Atlantic Alliance, 1963-1968,” International Journal 52, no. 3 (Summer 1997), 456. 87 LAC/DEA/10296/27-4-NATO-3-1-FR/6 – Canadian Embassy Paris to DEA, 18 May 1966; LAC/DEA/10296/27- 4-NATO-3-1-FR/6 – Cadieux to Martin, 20 May 1966.

405 it had an immediate decision been taken on relocation. “We know of no other evidence to support the notion that the French are prepared to make a big political issue of keeping the

Council in Paris or that Couve had threatened any such boycott,” an incredulous Cleveland informed Washington in a report that was shown to President Lyndon Johnson.88 In any case, while Martin’s efforts reminded France of Canada’s friendship, they had no influence on its policy towards Quebec.

III – Further Skirmishes

The federal failure to contain the Quebec-France relationship was significant. In the provincial election of June 1966 the Union Nationale of Daniel Johnson, capitalizing on the feeling, especially in the electorally overrepresented rural areas, that the Quiet Revolution was moving too fast, surprised observers by winning six more seats than the Liberal Party despite obtaining less of the popular vote. The bespectacled and moustached new premier, the son of a

French mother and an Anglophobic Irish father, was an old university classmate of Cadieux’s, one of the few political leaders in Quebec who knew him personally and who could call him by his first name. At the Université de Montréal, Cadieux recalled, Johnson had devoted himself more to politics than to the law.89 First elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1946, he had served as parliamentary assistant to and then cabinet minister under Maurice Duplessis before becoming party leader in 1961. His political approach can be summed up in three words: conservatism, nationalism, and opportunism. Unlike Jean Lesage, whose attachment to Canada had once made him a possible successor to Pearson, Johnson had no such loyalty. He oscillated between the poles in the title of his 1965 book – Égalité ou indépendance. Equality, of course,

88 Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library (LBJ)/National Security Files (NSF)/Rostow Memoranda for the President/5/8 – Walt W. Rostow to Lyndon Johnson enclosing Harlan Cleveland’s report of his conversation with Paul Martin, 10 June 1966. I am grateful to Charlaine Hester of the LBJ Library for locating and providing me with a copy of this memo, which is referenced but not commented upon in Donaghy, “Domesticating NATO,” 456. 89 LAC/MC/4/9 – Journal intime, 20 September 1968. On Johnson see Pierre Godin, Daniel Johnson, vol. 1, 1946- 1964: La passion du pouvoir (Montreal: Éditions de l’homme, 1980); Godin, Daniel Johnson, vol. 2, 1964-1968 : La difficile recherche de l’égalité (Montreal: Éditions de l’homme, 1980).

406 meant securing more powers from Ottawa – in fact, the creation of a bi-national state. Yet the federal government’s once tolerant attitude towards the province was hardening. The last federal election, while foisting yet another minority government on the fragile country, had brought to the fore new politicians from Quebec who had no sympathy for its unending demands: the labour leader Jean Marchand, the journalist Gérard Pelletier, and the intellectual Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

The general analysis of these “three wise men” echoed Cadieux’s specific one in the field of foreign affairs: the provincial challenge to the national government demanded a commensurate response. Undeterred, Johnson, who had retained the previous regime’s bureaucrats, forged ahead with the Quiet Revolution.

The new government’s international agenda was evident that fall when a visiting Couve de Murville unhelpfully (from the federal perspective) went to Quebec City after Ottawa.

Sensing an opportunity, Johnson resolved to meet with him alone, leaving Paul Martin, who had planned to accompany Couve, to amuse himself. To Cadieux this was a major challenge to the federal government’s prerogative in foreign affairs. Reached in New York, Martin agreed that there should be no formal conversation between Couve and Johnson without him. When the provincial authorities stood firm, Cadieux proposed cancelling the visit to Quebec City altogether and was authorized by Martin to get in touch with Pearson. In the interim, Morin contacted Cadieux and warned him that Ottawa’s failure to back down would only help extremists in the province. The under-secretary promised to pass on Quebec’s point of view, but he was not optimistic that it would get a sympathetic hearing given the principles at stake. Of course, that was before what he called the “coup de théâtre”: Pearson told him that Canadians would not understand why Ottawa was trying to prevent anyone, least of all the Quebec premier, from meeting with whomever they liked. If in the circumstances Martin no longer wished to go to Quebec City, he added, an official could replace him. As a result, an embarrassed Cadieux

407 informed Morin that his minister would in fact absent himself from the proceedings but that

Ottawa hoped the Couve-Johnson tête-à-tête would not be followed by a sensational press statement. Triumphant, Morin and Johnson agreed.90

Cadieux was dismayed. As he noted in his diary, he, Martin, and others had lost face and

Pearson, perhaps without realizing it, had conceded that the premier could meet with foreign representatives outside the presence, and thus the control, of the federal government. This was common practice in Paris, but was it wise to extend it to Canada? While Cadieux recognized that

Pearson may have been right in thinking that the public would not have supported him in this fight, he still felt the prime minister had missed an opportunity to show Quebec and France that

Ottawa was not inclined to let them do what they wanted outside its control. Making matters worse, the federal government was now in a weaker position when world leaders visited Canada for Expo 67. “A cause de ce précédent,” Cadieux predicted, “j’ai bien l’impression que le statut international du Québec va s’affermir rapidement et de façon de plus en plus vigoureuse.” He was angry with Pearson, whom he would criticize more forcefully in the months ahead. Nor was he alone. He learned that Trudeau, who was parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, also disagreed with the decision, especially since it had been made without consultation with Quebec ministers.91

But Cadieux did not give up. Unable to sever the links being forged between Paris and

Quebec City, he took a broader view of the problem. In late September 1966, for instance, he sent a circular to Canadian missions specifying that the DEA was the proper channel for the international activities of the provinces. “I need not stress to missions the importance which attaches to the necessity of coordinating provincial activities abroad with those of the Canadian

90 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 26 September 1966; LAC/DEA/10077/20-FR-9/1.2 – Cadieux to Ralph Collins, 22 September 1966; LAC/DEA/10077/20-FR-9/1.2 – Cadieux to John Halstead, 26 September 1966. For confirmation that Couve de Murville had taken the initiative to go to Quebec City see LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 8 December 1966. 91 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 26 September 1966.

408

Government,” he wrote, “and of ensuring that these activities abroad by the Provinces are fully in keeping with the present constitutional division of responsibilities in Canada.”92 When one hapless Canadian ambassador failed to adhere strictly to the rule that all provincial initiatives, no matter how trivial, be brought to the DEA’s attention, and told Cadieux so over lunch in Ottawa, the latter gave him a scare: “Marcel listened patiently until the Ambassador had finished. He put down his knife and fork, leaned across the narrow table and snarled, ‘You like your job?’ The point made, the conversation turned to other things.”93 As Cadieux knew, unless the federal government attempted to coordinate Quebec’s activities abroad, the province would deal directly with other foreign countries besides France. While it naturally proved impossible to coordinate every Quebec initiative abroad, especially as the decade progressed and provincial officials, politicians, and delegations left Canada on missions of all kinds, in time the policy had an educative effect on foreign governments and international organizations, both of which the DEA ensured were informed that it was the preferred channel for such contacts.

In the same vein, when he learned in the fall of 1966 that his bête noire, André Patry, whom Johnson had made Quebec’s new Chief of Protocol, had communicated directly by letter with Heads of Mission in Ottawa, Cadieux convinced Martin to issue a circular reminding them of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which stipulates that “All official business with the receiving State entrusted to the mission by the sending State shall be conducted with or through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the receiving State or such other Ministry as may be agreed.” Two months later, as a result of Quebec’s penchant for dealing directly with consulates on issues that exceeded its jurisdiction, ambassadors were informed (in a new circular) that the

DEA would be happy to advise them on which subjects could be discussed directly between consulates and the provinces and which, like arrangements for visits to Canada by foreign

92 LAC/DEA/10140/30-2-1/1 – Cadieux to Heads of Post and Heads of Division, Circular document No. A. 6/66, 26 September 1966. 93 Andrew, The Rise and Fall of a Middle Power, 19.

409 dignitaries and officials, had to be raised with the department instead.94 In addition, ambassadors going to Quebec, either on official business or simply to pay a courtesy call, were asked to proceed through the DEA. While most of them did, some, like the British High Commissioner, found the policy a nuisance; others, like the French ambassador, deliberately ignored it. Not surprisingly, Patry refused to receive Heads of Mission who failed to address themselves directly to him. “Cette querelle semble insignifiante, voire ridicule par certains côtés,” Cadieux observed,

“et j’ai bien l’impression que nos chefs politiques vont avoir du mal à maintenir leur position.”95

Yet he knew how vital was the principle at stake: could Quebec deal directly with foreign ambassadors behind the back of the government to which they were accredited? In mid-1968 the

DEA let Heads of Missions once again make their own arrangements with the province, but the department refused to compromise on the essential point that it retain ultimate control by first approving every visit.

Development assistance was yet another field where Cadieux meticulously defended the federal government’s prerogatives. Thanks in part to his relentless prodding, the $300,000 development assistance program for French-speaking Africa inaugurated at his initiative in 1961 was increased by the Pearson government to $4,000,000 in 1964-65, to $7,500,000 in 1966-67, and to $12,000,000 in 1967-78. While Canadian assistance to Commonwealth countries still dwarfed that to French-speaking Africa, and while the second program was handicapped by a lack of both bilingual personnel in the External Aid Office (EAO) and resident missions in the recipient countries (though in 1966 the DEA, despite its strained personnel resources, opened embassies in Senegal and Tunisia), Ottawa was changing its image abroad.

94 LAC/DEA/10140/30-2-1-/1 – Martin to Heads of Mission in Ottawa, Circular note No. L-961, 5 December 1966; LAC/DEA/10046/20-1-2-FR/12.2 – Martin to Heads of Mission in Ottawa, Circular note No. L-124, 2 February 1967. 95 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 20 March 1967.

410

At home, Quebec noticed. The province provided most of the teachers sent to French- speaking Africa under the program and so, as its financial importance grew, it pushed for control.

In early 1965, for instance, Quebec, or at least some of its officials, seemed eager to take over the program, leaving Ottawa to foot the bill. They were opposed not only by Cadieux and Herb

Moran, the Director General of the EAO, but also by Martin and Pearson who, “in an effort to correct the over-simplified and uninformed view which Quebec authorities take on the subject,” stressed to Jean Lesage that aid was fundamental to Canadian foreign policy.96 In April 1965 the

American embassy reported that “one highly competent French Canadian federal official with excellent contacts at the ministerial level” (very possibly Cadieux) had argued that the promulgation of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine that month had been an attempt to force Ottawa’s hand on the aid issue.97 Indeed, if Quebec could not control federal aid money to French- speaking Africa, it wanted at least to place all teachers recruited from the province for the EAO under its Ministry of Education, to pay their salaries and allowances, and to keep tabs on them by communicating directly with recipient countries and sending inspectors there. Federal negotiations in June with a Quebec team led by Claude Morin made progress, but the resulting provincial proposals troubled Cadieux, who warned, “The contracts still have the flavour that

Quebec is moving in and that Ottawa is merely assisting financially!”98 As a result, Ottawa redrafted the texts to make clear that Quebec’s role in the development assistance program was limited to recruiting teachers, but a potential agreement between the two sides fell through in late

August 1965.

Partly to pressure Ottawa, Quebec sent Monsignor Irénée Lussier, former Rector of the

Université de Montréal, on a tour of French-speaking Africa in 1966. Two aspects of his

96 LAC/DEA/10140/30-12-QUE/1 – Ghislain Hardy to Pearson, 21 April 1965; LAC/DEA/10140/30-12-QUE/1 – Pearson to Lesage, 21 April 1965. 97 NARA/RG59/1964-66/1984/POL 15-1 CAN – American Embassy Ottawa to Department of State, 23 April 1965. 98 Cadieux marginal note on LAC/DEA/10140/30-12-QUE/1 – Georges-A. Coderre to Cadieux, 30 June 1965.

411 mandate, which the federal government unexpectedly learned of in January when its embassy in

Washington was approached about visas for Lussier, were disturbing: first, the priest was to inform foreign officials that the Quebec government was “l’expression politique du Canada français,” a claim which denied the representativeness of federal francophones; second, Lussier’s recommendations would allow Quebec “de mieux orienter l’utilisation des fonds canadiens d’aide extérieure et de ceux qu’il administrera lui-même éventuellement,” a highly presumptuous statement.99 In March 1966 Lesage sent Pearson a draft Quebec-Ottawa aid agreement in which the province would be permitted its own program. Far from backing down in the face of such aggressive bargaining, Cadieux dug in his heels. His vigorous marginal comments (which were legendary in the department) on one analysis of Quebec’s proposals are quoted here. “Non!” he exclaimed to the left of one paragraph, adding, “Si la Province voulait aider le gouvernement fédéral certaines de ces clauses auraient du sens mais nous devons prévoir ici un dessein secret d’aller beaucoup plus loin.” Beneath another he wrote, “Le principe général à suivre est le suivant: l’aide fait partie de la politique étrangère et les Provinces n’ont rien à y voir!” If Quebec refused to cooperate, Cadieux suggested Ottawa recruit teachers directly and hire them as federal civil servants, a tough approach he tersely summed up in this way: “Avec la carotte, un gros bâton!”100 Shortly after the Union Nationale came to power in June 1966, Morin warned Cadieux that since some of its members might favour a hard line on Quebec’s international activities, it was best to reach a reasonable compromise on the aid question.101

It seems Morin was not acting in good faith. Frustrated by Ottawa’s refusal even to countenance Quebec’s development assistance proposals, he and Patry convinced Daniel

99 LAC/DEA/10141/30-12-QUE/3 – Canadian Embassy Washington to Cadieux, 27 January 1966. 100 Cadieux marginal notes on LAC/DEA/10141/30-12-QUE/ 3 – Economic Division to Cadieux, 18 April 1966. 101 LAC/DEA/10141/30-12-QUE/4 – Cadieux to Martin, 14 July 1966.

412

Johnson to pursue a more independent course.102 When in September, however, the DEA learned through Tunisia that Quebec had offered it $150,000, it prevailed upon that country to reject it. If the Tunisians had any doubts about their decision, they were dispelled when Cadieux made known to them that, if they negotiated with Quebec, Canada would withdraw its ambassador from Tunis and make no special financial effort for it.103 In his struggle with Quebec nationalists, the under-secretary clearly had no qualms about using aid as a political instrument. When in a joint declaration a year later Rwanda accepted $150,000 from Quebec for its university, Cadieux and the DEA refused to be intimidated: they neutralized the legal significance of the act by seeking (and obtaining) written confirmation from the Rwandans that they had in fact not concluded an international agreement with Quebec.104 While the federal government was not opposed to Quebec’s financing or supporting development assistance projects, it insisted that all formal contact and agreements with foreign states be made through it.

Such matters as proper channels for communicating with governments abroad, protocol for dealing with their ambassadors at home, and development assistance serve as useful reminders that the battle over Quebec’s international personality was waged on many fronts where France had little influence. Cadieux insisted that every provincial action be met with a federal reaction lest it be said that, through inaction, Ottawa had acquiesced in Quebec’s constitutional positions. After all, the province’s challenge to the federal prerogative in foreign affairs was eerily reminiscent of how Canada had achieved independence from Britain, breaking the links one by one; now it was Quebec that was severing ties with Canada, and at a much faster

102 Gendron, Towards a Francophone Community, 111. For a more thorough discussion of the Canada-Quebec dispute over aid see ibid., 105-115. 103 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 6 December 1967. 104 LAC/DEA/30-14-QUE/2 – Cadieux to Martin, 7 December 1967. As Cadieux wrote at the bottom of the memo, “Ce résultat est très satisfaisant et à lui seul nous récompense pour ce que nous avons fait au Rwanda,” a reference to the considerable federal aid that had been given to the National University of Rwanda, which had been founded by the prominent French-Canadian Dominican Georges-Henri Lévesque. See Robin S. Gendron, “Canada’s University: Father Lévesque, Canadian Aid, and the National University of Rwanda,” Historical Studies 73 (2007): 63-86.

413 rate. Since this was a legal struggle, Cadieux put the Legal Division of the DEA on the frontlines and in October 1966 named Allan Gotlieb, a thirty-eight-year-old Winnipeger educated at

Berkeley, Harvard, and Oxford, his Special Adviser on Federal-Provincial Matters. The appointment caused some resentment since Gotlieb was relatively junior, having only entered the

DEA in 1957. As Legal Adviser, however, Cadieux had been impressed by his sharp mind and intellectual rigour. Gotlieb, for his part, welcomed having such a powerful mentor and protector in the fiercely competitive DEA. Cadieux, Gotlieb recalled, was “iron-willed.” As Cadieux’s

Special Adviser, Gotlieb would be “the right hand carrying the spear.”105

The main front in the battle with Quebec was of course France and, increasingly, the

French-speaking world. In June 1966 the African and Malagasy Common Organization (OCAM in French), made up of former French colonies, passed a resolution proposing the creation of a

“spiritual community” of French-speaking countries. While the DEA was generally sympathetic to what was known as la Francophonie, Cadieux was emphatically so. His reasoning, which

Martin accepted, was simple yet persuasive: if Ottawa did not act, Quebec would. Visiting

Canada in September 1966, Senegalese President Léopold Senghor, the prime mover behind the scheme, assured federal authorities that he understood their concerns. When he went to Quebec

City, however, the provincial government impressed on him its determination to play a direct role in the embryonic organization. In widely reported statements, Paul Gérin-Lajoie and Jean

Drapeau, the mayor of Montreal and another of Cadieux’s former university classmates, stressed that Quebec’s participation in la Francophonie should be “sans intermédiaire.”106

While France, not wanting to be accused of neo-imperialism, avoided taking the lead on la Francophonie, Cadieux personally ensured that it knew Ottawa’s position on it. For example, he told Couve de Murville that if the organization eventually grouped together governments (not

105 Allan Gotlieb, “Romanticism and Realism in Canada’s Foreign Policy,” C.D. Howe Institute Benefactors Lecture, Toronto, 3 November 2004; Allan Gotlieb, interview with the author, Toronto, 8 February 2013. 106 LAC/DEA/10683/26-1/2 – Cadieux to Martin, 27 September 1966.

414 just private associations), only the federal one in Canada could join it. Two months later, at the

Quai d’Orsay, he warned against la Francophonie being used to sow division within his country.107 While the French assured Cadieux they were taking no initiatives, by late December

1966 he had learned of at least two. The first was an upcoming meeting of francophone parliamentarians in Luxembourg which Jacques Vendroux, de Gaulle’s brother-in-law and a member of the French National Assembly, was promoting and which Xavier Deniau, a fervently

Gaullist deputy, was manoeuvring to have Quebec attend by inviting local and regional politicians. “Après des histoires comme celles-là,” Cadieux wrote, “il est difficile de n’être vraiment pas sceptique quand les Français nous assurent sans sourciller qu’ils n’ont rien à avoir avec certaines initiatives.”108 In a victory for the DEA, a federal delegation attended the inaugural meeting of l’Association internationale des parlementaires de langue française (AIPF) in May 1967 and ensured that its statutes specified that in countries where a national section existed, approval of members came under its authority. Days before, at a French reception in

Quebec City onboard the elegant ocean liner S.S. France, Cadieux had subjected Gérard

Pelletier, the leader of the Canadian delegation in Luxembourg, to a “lengthy lecture” on what was at stake.109

The second French initiative Cadieux learned of was a meeting of the Institut international de droit des pays d’expression française (IDEF), a non-governmental association, in Lomé, Togo scheduled for late January 1967 to which only the Quebec minister of justice had been invited. When the DEA protested to René Cassin, IDEF’s president and a noted French jurist, he blamed it on a mistake by a clerk. As it turned out, this “clerk” was connected with the

107 LAC/DEA/10098/20-1-2-FR/4.2 – “Extract of the record of discussions between Mr. Martin and Mr. Couve de Murville on September 29, 1966 in Ottawa concerning Francophonie”; LAC/DEA/12/10 – Journal intime, 28 November 1966. 108 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 19 December 1966. 109 Confidential interview.

415

Elysée.110 In the end, Pierre Trudeau attended the meeting in Togo. From there the DEA sent him on to Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Tunisia to explain both Canada’s constitutional framework and its interest in la Francophonie. In mentioning the AIPF and IDEF initiatives to the British High Commissioner in late December 1966, Cadieux spoke with “great energy” of his resolve to keep such activity under Ottawa’s control:

He clearly fears that the Québ[é]cois see these ideas for ‘Francophone’ cooperation as fertile ground for the seeds of the international presence they are trying to develop. He said that he had warned the officials that he had spoken to in Europe that unless the organisers of these activities played ‘according to the rules’ the Canadian Government would prevent such meetings [from] taking place in Canada, if necessary by refusing visas for participants. … But Mr. Cadieux admitted that it was going to be hard work keeping track of all the initiatives, innocent or mischievous, that were likely to be taken in this domain.111

The under-secretary proved up to the challenge. In early 1967, for instance, he raised with

François Leduc the fact that Canada had not been consulted in advance about a francophone solidarity association organized in Paris by Raymond Bousquet, Leduc’s predecessor. Although, as Cadieux noted, the association was “private,” two prominent members of the French government were its honorary presidents. Moreover, Ottawa had been put in an awkward position when Jean Chapdelaine had been invited to join its sponsoring committee on the same basis as Jules Léger (not to mention other francophone ambassadors from sovereign countries).112 Soon after Cadieux learned that Deniau, who had met with Quebec separatists in

Canada, and French official Philippe Rossillon, who according to the RCMP had previously made contact with the FLQ, were also involved in the solidarity association. “Assurément, les

Français nous prennent pour des imbéciles lorsqu’ils nous demandent sans broncher d’autoriser notre Ambassadeur à Paris à être le patron d’honneur d’une telle association,” wrote an amazed

110 UKNA/FCO/33/55 – B.H.C. Sykes to D.M. Cleary enclosing note of a conversation between Cadieux and Sir Henry Lintott on 23 December 1966, 3 January 196[7]. 111 Ibid. 112 LAC/DEA/10045/20-1-2-FR/5 – Cadieux to Canadian Embassy Paris, 11 February 1967.

416

Cadieux.113 From the Canadian perspective, la Francophonie was off to a bad start.

Bilateral relations between Canada and France had also taken a troubling turn. In 1966, exploiting a technicality, de Gaulle refused to receive Governor General Georges Vanier, his wartime associate and alleged friend, as a head of state. In November the University of Poitiers awarded Cadieux an honorary doctorate, but his hosts were so cold towards him that he assumed they had been reprimanded by the French authorities. When a week later federal minister Jean

Marchand flew to Paris to discuss how French immigration could help to redress Canada’s ethnic imbalance, Ottawa having opened consulates general in Bordeaux and Marseilles, and to ensure the survival of French in North America, de Gaulle refused to meet with him as he had with

Quebec’s premier and ministers. This snub led the usually patient Jules Léger to concede in a letter to Cadieux that there were “deux poids” and “deux mesures” at the Elysée, depending on whether a minister came from Ottawa or Quebec. An adviser to de Gaulle put it best to a federal official: “For the General the French Canadians are a very special case. For him they are of course Canadians in the first place but they are also former Frenchmen and for this reason the normal rules do not apply.” Normal rules had indeed been abeyance for some time according to

Léger, who told Cadieux that he now had assurances that, up until his defeat in the provincial election, Jean Lesage had been corresponding monthly with de Gaulle.114

As the relationship between Canada and France deteriorated in late 1966, Cadieux asked himself why. His view was that de Gaulle sought to encourage nationalism, not separatism, and that he saw Quebeckers as a purer expression of French Canada than its spokesmen in Ottawa.

What the French president failed to realize, or so Cadieux thought, was that such favouritism only served the separatist cause. The under-secretary recognized that French policy also took

113 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 28 February 1967. 114 LAC/DEA/10098/20-1-2-FR/4.2 – Léger to Cadieux, 2 December 1966; LAC/DEA/10098/20-1-2-FR/4.2 – Halstead to Cadieux, 16 December 1966; LAC/DEA/10098/20-1-2-FR/4.2 – Cadieux to Halstead, 19 December 1966.

417 shape at a second level, that of government agencies, which usually, though not always, acted correctly. “La nature humaine étant ce qu’elle est,” Cadieux shrewdly observed, “il arrive néanmoins que certains des représentants officiels de la France sont influencés par l’attitude du

Général.” Finally, there was a third level of policy, one conducted by French “zélés” who, he felt, personally interpreted de Gaulle’s thinking and pursued dubious and uncoordinated initiatives that the Quai d’Orsay could not easily prevent. Cadieux’s comments offer one explanation for the actions of the “Quebec lobby” in Paris of politicians and bureaucrats, among others. While its membership was not fully known to him in 1966, what he did know was that, given de Gaulle’s mood, any French official or politician who favoured Quebec over Ottawa would not be made to suffer for it. Where the French president was concerned, Cadieux believed that Ottawa had to await his departure and to avoid any public reaction to his provocations. With official France it was necessary to continue a policy “d’éducation et de fermeté”: “Nous devons répéter sans cesse à tous les intéressés qu’il n’y au Canada qu’une adresse valable pour ce qui est des relations internationales: Ottawa.” As for the zealots, he wondered if Canada could bar them from the country and tell France that it was keeping Belgium and Switzerland, who had similar problems with their meddlesome French neighbour, informed of its decision.115

When Cadieux raised all this with Paul Martin, however, the latter maintained that the situation was not serious.116 While Martin put great faith in his friendship with Couve de

Murville, whose name he mispronounced “Cuve de Mourville,” the evidence suggests that the former was not a particularly effective advocate. As the Quai d’Orsay’s North American desk officer remarked to an American diplomat, the meetings between the two foreign ministers were

“always one-sided,” with Couve dominating the conversation and Martin listening “in evident

115 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 8 December 1966. On the Quebec lobby see Jean-Pierre Fournier and Paul- André Comeau, Le Lobby du Québec à Paris: les précurseurs du Général de Gaulle (Montreal: Québec-Amérique), 2002. 116 Ibid.

418 awe.”117 Cadieux took a more charitable view of the Couve-Martin relationship, which he later called “l’Opération Charme,” in a reference to the disarming personality of Martin’s so-called

“friend,” but he knew it could not contain the problem. The real difficulty, as Canada’s centennial year dawned, was that the minister and his deputy fundamentally disagreed on the threat France posed.

Despite their differences, Martin allowed Cadieux to voice his – and increasingly the

DEA’s – concerns to the French ambassador, a cold and gauche figure who according to Cadieux feigned obtuseness and was hard-headed, and his counsellor, Pierre Carraud. The message, as always, was plain and simple: France was not to deal with Quebec behind Canada’s back.

Specifically, the French consulate in Quebec City was to handle only local and non-political matters, the French embassy in Ottawa was not to interact directly with provincial authorities, and when French ministers in Paris were invited to visit Quebec, the Canadian embassy was to be informed so that the federal government could officially invite them to Ottawa and have a say in their program. Cadieux was impatient with French reasoning. When, for example, Leduc argued that Jean Chapdelaine’s presence on the sponsoring committee of the francophone solidarity association reflected his “quasi diplomatic status,” he retorted that Ottawa had neither asked for nor recognized such a status and that any confusion about it should be cleared up.

Unsurprisingly, Leduc and Carraud rarely admitted French wrongs. Even where de Gaulle was concerned, the ambassador simply shrugged his shoulders helplessly. But when Carraud recalled how Léger had offended the French president at the presentation of his credentials in 1964,

Cadieux balked: there had been nothing in that speech to “fouetter un chat,” he noted, informed federal opinion being of the view that de Gaulle had deliberately used the incident as a pretext to

117 NARA/RG59/1964-1966/1988/POL 18 CAN – American Embassy Paris to Secretary of State, 30 April 1965. This view closely echoed Jean Chapdelaine’s remark in June 1967 that the dialogue consisted mostly of Martin “keeping his mouth open, as if swallowing flies, in reverential admiration as Monsieur Couve de Murville does the talking.” See Meren, With Friends Like These, 117.

419 snub the Canadian ambassador and to encourage Quebec nationalists. Every time Léger was insulted in Paris, Cadieux stressed, his many friends in Ottawa noticed and his own efforts as under-secretary to pursue closer relations with France met with resistance. When Carraud told

Cadieux, whom years later he described as French by temperament but Canadian by conviction and loyalty, that the DEA’s worries were exaggerated, the latter insisted that what seemed trivial to Paris was vital to Ottawa, given Quebec’s constitutional ambitions.118

“Il n’y a aucun doute que depuis quelques semaines nous sommes en voie de reprendre l’initiative,” Cadieux recorded in his diary in February 1967, “et que les représentants français ne pourront pas ne pas savoir très exactement quelles sont nos soucis et nos objectifs.”119 In a report to Paris, Leduc saw Cadieux’s warnings as part of a larger federal offensive against Quebec in the international sphere, one he noted was “essentiellement le fait de canadiens français d’Ottawa qui se montrent extraordinairement méfiants et soupçonneux à notre égard alors que M. Martin se plait à répéter qu’il trouve tout naturel le rapprochement entre le Québec et la France.”120

Their efforts undermined in this way, was it any surprise that Cadieux, Jean Marchand, Pierre

Trudeau and other federal francophones began to despair of Martin?

In his failure to take seriously Canada’s difficulties with France, the combined result of an understandable preference for agreement over confrontation, a natural but often frustrating political aversion to firm stands, and, at least in this particular case, an inexcusable naiveté,

Martin was supported by Jules Léger, whose own profound differences with Cadieux on this issue resurfaced in early 1967. Léger’s advice essentially echoed the French embassy’s view that certain French initiatives did not seem serious and that Ottawa should do nothing until de Gaulle left the stage. Much like Leduc and Carraud, however, Léger, whether by design or not, refused

118 For Cadieux’s conversations with Leduc and Carraud in early 1967 see LAC/DEA/10045/20-1-2-FR/5 – Cadieux to Martin, 25 January 1967; LAC/DEA/10045/20-1-2-FR/5 – Cadieux to Canadian Embassy Paris, 11 February 1967; LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 9 February 1967. For Carraud’s description of Cadieux see YUA/JLG/1989- 036-009/ - Robert Bothwell interview with Pierre Carraud, Paris, 13 October 1987. 119 LAC/MC/12/10 – Journal intime, 9 February 1967. 120 MAE/278 – Leduc to MAE, 13 February 1967.

420 to see what was plain to Cadieux: that apparently trivial matters could have major constitutional implications. While Léger wanted to imitate the Americans and the British, who simply endured de Gaulle’s repeated blows against the English-speaking world, Cadieux knew that was a luxury that Canada could no longer afford:

Malheureusement, le Général agit de plus en plus vigoureusement et je ne crois pas que nous puissions nous croiser les bras et laisser le Général braquer davantage la Province de Québec contre le reste du pays. Si nous avons à choisir entre maintenir la situation ici et endommager nos relations avec la France, Gordon Robertson est bien d’accord avec moi, les relations avec la France ne peuvent pas avoir préséance. Notre premier souci doit être de tenir le pays ensemble. … En somme, M. Léger voudrait bien que les choses restent en état encore un moment mais malheureusement les conséquences de l’inaction de notre côté sont trop graves pour que nous puissions laisser faire ou laisser passer.121

Once again, we see here Cadieux’s emphasis on the danger of inaction. He conceded that he was perhaps too rigid, but he saw no middle way so long as Ottawa claimed exclusive jurisdiction over foreign affairs and Quebec, with de Gaulle’s help, challenged it.122 While Cadieux was the driving force behind the DEA’s tougher stance towards France in early 1967, Léger, whose thinking was closer to Martin’s, often managed to soften the department’s position.

While much has been made of the differences between Cadieux and Léger over how to handle France, one issue on which they both fully agreed was the importance of cultural relations with that country. The under-secretary, in particular, was a pioneer in the use of culture as an instrument of Canadian foreign policy. His ground-breaking $250,000 program for cultural relations with European francophone countries had been quadrupled in 1965. In 1966 he created a Cultural Affairs Division in the DEA and tapped René de Chantal, a Franco-Ontarian and an expert in French literature, to head it. By early 1967 Cadieux could remark with satisfaction that

Canada’s cultural activities in Paris were now more numerous and more significant than those of the Quebec delegation, a fact duly noted by provincial officials who increasingly referred among

121 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 28 February 1967. 122 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 20 March 1967.

421 themselves to the veritable federal cultural offensive in France.123 While Ottawa of course had greater financial means at its disposal than Quebec, it had taken Cadieux to mobilize them. In addition to being under-secretary, Allan Gotlieb recalls, he might well have been an assistant deputy minister for cultural affairs. There were those who doubted his approach. Douglas LePan, now a college principal at the University of Toronto, observed to Gotlieb that he was not against promoting culture in international relations but that it was “completely un-Anglo-Saxon.”124 But surely that was the point, culture not only being at the heart of Quebec’s relationship with France but also that which it sought to establish with the French-speaking world.

France did not make things easy for Cadieux. While it attached great importance to its cultural projects with Quebec, it sent Jean Basdevant almost alone to Ottawa to discuss those it had with the federal government. Spurned, Cadieux and Léger were forced to focus less on cultural cooperation than on a federal cultural presence in France. For example, they convinced the Pearson government to grant the cash-strapped Maison des étudiants canadiens in Paris

$500,000 to finance its expansion. More impressively, they were the driving force behind its decision in 1967 to build, at the cost of about two diplomatic missions, a cultural centre in the

French capital. When Minister of Industry Charles (Bud) Drury, who was acting foreign minister in Martin’s absence, expressed reservations about the designation of the new centre, the first such institution that Canada would operate abroad, Cadieux, who had adeptly steered the proposal through the bureaucracy, persuasively defended it:

I hope that it will be possible for you to withdraw your objections to the designation of the building we have just purchased in Paris as a cultural centre. … [The] opening of this cultural centre meets the argument made by nationalists in Quebec that the Federal

123 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 12 January 1967; BANQ/P776/2001-01-006/3 – Morin to Chapdelaine, 2 June 1966; BANQ/E42, 1995-02-001/147 – Chapdelaine to Morin, 1 December 1966; BANQ/E42/1990-09-002/405 – Chapdelaine to Daniel Johnson, 14 February 1967; BANQ/P422/S2/1995-01-008/2 – Jean Vallerand, “Action culturelle à Paris du gouvernement central du Canada et du gouvernement du Québec,” undated but circa 24 October 1967. 124 Allan Gotlieb, interview with the author, Toronto, 11 April 2013; Allan Gotlieb, interview with the author, Toronto, 8 February 2013.

422

Government is not willing or able to cater to the cultural requirements of French Canadians. It removes one of the objections which the Separatists advance against Quebec remaining in Confederation and removes also one of the arguments advanced by Separatists and Nationalists that as Ottawa does nothing, Quebec should intervene abroad and provide for the cultural requirements of Canadians in France.125

Such powerful arguments ensured that when the centre was inaugurated in 1970, it was named the Centre culturel canadien. Put simply, cultural diplomacy had arrived in Ottawa with a vengeance. This was no small achievement for a DEA whose budget for cultural affairs in 1963 had been only $8,000.126

As the above passage suggests, by 1967 Cadieux was at war with Quebec nationalists and separatists, two groups it was sometimes hard to tell apart. Take, for example, the case of Claude

Morin, who that spring became deputy minister of the new Department of Intergovernmental

Affairs. Around the same time, Cadieux read an account of a tape-recorded conversation between Morin and a journalist that literally made him ill. For one, it captured how obsessed the

Quebec official was with power. As Cadieux wrote, “Ce Morin, ni fédéraliste ni anti-fédéraliste, ni pour Lesage ni pour Johnson, tient à manipuler les ficelles et à devenir l’influence dominante au sein du Gouvernement provincial.” It also convinced him that Morin wanted nothing less than

Quebec’s independence: “Il n’est pas pressé. Il va choisir le moment et le sujet mais son intention est d’avancer, sans désemparer, vers cet objectif.” Finally, it confirmed that Morin, who in the conversation seemed unscrupulous, intended to attack, to keep on the defensive, and to embarrass Ottawa every chance he got. While Cadieux was upset by what he read, he was not surprised:

… je suis encouragé par le fait que depuis longtemps j’étais sans illusion sur Morin. Je n’avais aucune confiance en lui et je savais qu’il cherchait à nous manœuvrer. En second lieu, j’ai constaté avec plaisir que les tactiques que je préconise depuis deux ans, d’être ferme, de concéder des facilités au Québec sur la substance mais de ne pas permettre aux autorités du Québec de changer la Constitution, semblent tout à fait justifiées. Morin se fait des illusions sur notre naïveté et sur notre faiblesse.127

125 LAC/DEA/10514/55-8-1-FR-CC/2 – Cadieux to Charles Drury, 12 June 1967. 126 Meren, With Friends Like These, 74. 127 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 21 March 1967.

423

As Cadieux later observed, it had taken him months to convince Gordon Robertson that Morin was trying to manoeuvre Quebec into a situation where separatism would seem easy and logical.

He had also been concerned about the presence in the Privy Council Office (PCO) of Ghislain

“Gerry” Hardy, its Assistant Clerk between 1963 and 1966, who both had taken a permissive approach to Quebec and used his proximity to Pearson to frustrate Cadieux’s attempts to counter every provincial move. Rightly or wrongly, Cadieux (and others) came to suspect that Hardy, on loan to the PCO from the DEA, was under Morin’s sway and so the under-secretary had him sent where he could do no harm: abroad.128

While Morin was formidable, clever and tenacious, a comment he made in this period to

Jean Chrétien, then a junior Liberal MP, suggests that he was also indiscreet. “I remember being told by Claude Morin,” Chrétien recalled, “we’ll separate from Canada the same way that

Canada separated from England: we’ll cut the links one at a time, a concession here and a concession there, and eventually there’ll be nothing left.”129 Seen in this light, Cadieux’s strategy of making international relations non-negotiable in the constitutional debate underway was truly wise. No doubt as a result, Morin, as Cadieux reminisced, denounced him to his colleagues in

Ottawa: “Il leur racontait que j’étais un dur à cuire, qu’il s’entendait avec les autres. Bien entendu, il suggérait que tout pourrait s’arranger si je déguerpissais.”130 The two mandarins had clearly become each other’s greatest adversaries.

While the attitude of Morin, André Patry, and the Quebec government in the first half of

1967 clearly galled Cadieux, their reaction to the signing in Ottawa of a cultural agreement between Canada and Belgium on 8 May in the presence of that country’s visiting prince and

128 LAC/MC/13/1 – Journal intime, 25 May 1972. While Cadieux states in this diary entry that he had Hardy sent to Madrid, this is incorrect. In 1966 Hardy was appointed Minister to the North Atlantic Council. Only in 1969, after a stint as deputy High Commissioner in London, was he sent to Spain as ambassador. 129 Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 245; English, The Wordly Years, 325. 130 LAC/MC/13/1 – Journal intime, 25 May 1972.

424 princess profoundly disturbed him. The day before its signature, Patry and then Morin contacted the Belgian ambassador to prevent it. When the DEA got wind of this from his counsellor,

Cadieux had him told that Ottawa had nothing to hear from Quebec through the intermediary of

Belgium’s embassy. Later that day Daniel Johnson informed Pearson by telegram that his province was disassociating itself from an agreement about which it had not been consulted and which affected its jurisdiction. When one considers how Quebec deliberately kept Ottawa in the dark about many of its own international initiatives – indeed, the original approach to Belgium had come from Gaston Cholette, who in 1964 had been “most emphatic” about wanting the federal government kept out of the picture – any complaint about consultation rings hollow.

Nevertheless, in a speech in Montreal on 7 May 1967, Johnson declared his opposition to

Ottawa’s signing international agreements on matters of provincial concern without first consulting Quebec. “Tout se passe au Québec comme si la constitution avait été amendée et la théorie des états associés pleinement acceptée,” remarked Cadieux in disbelief.131

The trouble had only begun. The next day, two hours after Canada and Belgium concluded their cultural agreement, Ottawa received a one-line telegram from Patry announcing that the presence of Paul Tremblay, Canada’s ambassador to Belgium, would not be “desirable” when the Belgian royal couple visited Quebec City. “Il est clair que les gens du Québec attachent une importance fondamentale à l’affirmation de la personnalité internationale du Québec,”

Cadieux wrote in his diary, “et qu’ils sont prêts à recourir aux mesures les plus extrêmes pour intimider le Gouvernement fédéral et mettre en œuvre leurs théories.” While Cadieux was adamant that the visit be cancelled unless Quebec relented, Martin hesitated until he consulted

Jean Marchand and Pierre Trudeau and learned that they agreed. What was new in the provincial thesis, Cadieux noted, was that Ottawa was now forbidden to exercise its treaty-making power

131 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 8 May 1967. For the original approach from Quebec to Belgium see LAC/DEA/10041/20-1-2-BELG/1 – Cadieux, memorandum, 1 July 1964. For the Quebec view of this controversy see Morin, L’Art de l’impossible, 95-100.

425 abroad in any area conceivably under provincial jurisdiction at home without first obtaining

Quebec’s fiat.132 This was a serious challenge to federal authority. In response, Cadieux made three arguments. First, because the agreement with Belgium was a federal one, involving only federal cultural agencies, consultation with the provinces had been unnecessary. Second, while the provinces were welcome to participate in the agreement, nothing in it committed them or their resources. Third, if the provinces wanted to develop their cultural relations with Belgium they would have to do so through the federal government, something Cadieux knew was

“repugnant” to those “Quebec technocrats,” as he now began calling its bureaucrats, enamoured of the associate states theory. On the issue of Tremblay being barred from the provincial capital,

Cadieux said this: “Quebec is behaving as a sovereign power over its territory, admitting or denying access to federal representatives as if they were foreigners.”133 Now was not a time for weakness.

Meeting on 9 May to discuss Quebec’s reaction to the Belgian cultural agreement, the

Pearson cabinet adopted a firm stand. As a relieved Cadieux noted, “Si le Gouvernement d’Ottawa cède et laisse Québec et ses technocrates mettre en œuvre leurs conceptions, dans un an, dans deux ans, à toutes fins pratiques, au point de vue constitutionnel et sur la scène internationale, Québec aura tous les attributs d’un état souverain.”134 That evening Marc

Lalonde, a tough lawyer who had joined Pearson’s office earlier that year, personally delivered two letters from the prime minister to Johnson. One warned him that, unless Tremblay accompanied the Belgian royal couple to Quebec City, the visit would be cancelled; the other stressed that the cultural agreement with Belgium involved only the federal government and thus had not required prior consultation with the provinces. While Johnson informed Lalonde that

Tremblay would be permitted in Quebec City, of greater interest to the federal emissary was a

132 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 8 May 1967. 133 LAC/DEA/11644/30-14-QUE/2 – Cadieux to Martin, 9 May 1967. 134 LAC/MC/12/9 – Jounal intime, 9 May 1967.

426 remarkable conversation he had with Morin, one he summed up as follows:

Ma conversation avec M. Morin semble confirmer que ce dernier va poursuivre une politique de pression continuelle en rapport avec les relations internationales du Québec, tant que le Québec n’obtiendra pas dans ce domaine une sorte de statut particulier. Il n’hésitera pas à faire suivre au gouvernement du Québec une politique de “brinkmanship” si nécessaire. A cette fin, M. Morin, je crois, n’hésitera pas à nous mentir et à recourir à des formes de chantage plus ou moins déguisées.135

While Quebec had blinked first in this most recent confrontation with Ottawa, prompting Martin to praise Cadieux for his crucial role in safeguarding national interests, the incident further embittered relations between the provincial and federal governments less than three months before de Gaulle’s arrival in Canada for Expo 67.

IV – Le cri du balcon

The president’s visit had concerned Cadieux since late 1966, when he told Tremblay that, given de Gaulle’s mood, he was inclined to try to prevent it.136 This being beyond his power, he tried at least to control it. While no answer was expected from de Gaulle to the separate invitations he had received from the Governor General and Premier Johnson to attend Expo until after the French legislative elections in March 1967, early that year Cadieux and his colleagues seized the initiative in planning his visit. In particular, the under-secretary wanted de Gaulle’s program to keep him in Ottawa – instead of Quebec – for as long as possible, to reflect Canada’s federal nature, and to be discussed between the Canadian and French authorities before the provincial ones. He even hoped to “educate” de Gaulle about the French reality in Canada by having him meet francophones from Ottawa, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Manitoba, as well as

English Canadians interested in French language and culture. By mid-February 1967 federal

135 LAC/DEA/11644/30-14-QUE/2 – Marc Lalonde, “Mémoire concernant le voyage de Marc Lalonde à Québec le 9 mai, 1967 en rapport avec la visite à Québec du Prince Albert et de la Princesse Paola de Belgique,” 11 May 1967. 136 LAC/PT/4/11 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 5 December 1966.

427 planning for the visit was well advanced.137

But de Gaulle, as he informed Jean Chapdelaine on 13 February, had plans of his own.

Instead of beginning his trip in Ottawa, as the rules for world leaders visiting Expo and diplomatic courtesy prescribed, he would sail up the St. Lawrence River by warship, stopping in

Quebec City, moving on to Montreal, and then finally arriving by plane in Ottawa. While de

Gaulle asked Chapdelaine to keep his plans secret, the latter shared some of this information with

Léger, who in turn told the DEA.138 “The only person who sails up the St. Lawrence in a goddamn warship is the Queen!” an incensed Cadieux exclaimed.139 In addition to discussing his visit, de Gaulle had also raised with Chapdelaine the prospects of a prior visit to Paris by

Johnson and of a French loan to Quebec, prompting Cadieux to write three times in a row at the top of Léger’s telegram that the DEA now had “proof” that France and its leader were dealing directly with Quebec.140 Be that as it may, the Canadian government kept silent as it anxiously awaited official word from de Gaulle on his travel plans.

Meanwhile, Canada’s relations with France got worse. In late February 1967 Ottawa learned that de Gaulle was opposed to the presence of Prince Philip at the Canadian ceremonies in April commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, Canada’s greatest military triumph, on the grounds that it would detract from their Franco-Canadian character.

Meeting in Cadieux’s office, senior officials were unanimous that Canada could not agree without provoking a serious crisis both within the country and with England. It was clear,

Cadieux observed privately, that war would soon be declared between Ottawa and the Elysée.

While the federal government, he went on, would have to be very rigid on constitutional

137 LAC/DEA/10078/20-FR-9/2.2 – Cadieux to J.S. Hodgson, 4 January 1967; LAC/DEA/10078/20-FR-9/2.2 – Cadieux to Martin, 23 January 1967; LAC/DEA/10078/20-FR-9/2.2 – Cadieux to Hodgson, 13 February 1967; Cadieux marginal note on LAC/DEA/10078/20-FR-9/2.2 – Hodgson to Cadieux, 8 February 1967. 138 BANQ/E42/1990-09-002/405 – Chapdelaine to Morin, 14 February 1967; LAC/DEA/10045/20-1-2-FR/5 – Léger to DEA, 15 February 1967. 139 Deborah Fraser, interview with the author, telephone, 17 May 2013. I am grateful to Dr. Greg Donaghy for first bringing to my attention the existence of this anecdote. 140 Cadieux marginal note on LAC/DEA/10045/20-1-2-FR/5 – Léger to DEA, 15 February 1967.

428 principles, it would also have to continue developing its relations with France, given Quebec’s interest in the matter. As Cadieux wrote, “La partie va être difficile et délicate.” Intriguingly, de

Gaulle’s Vimy gambit had brought the under-secretary some relief:

Avant, je me demandais avec anxiété si nos soupçons à son endroit étaient justifiés. J’étais porté à croire, avec le Ministre, que je voyais des Indiens derrière tous les arbres. Je me blâmais aussi pour certaines erreurs de manœuvre. Maintenant, je sens bien que notre instinct a été juste depuis le commencement. Le général a mis cartes sur table. Et, si nous ne voulons pas qu’il nous écrase à volonté, nous devons faire preuve de la force morale et de l’esprit de décision qui nous ont malheureusement trop souvent manqué dans cette matière.

As it turned out, Cadieux would be disappointed by Ottawa’s lack of moral strength and decisiveness in the months ahead. After the Vimy news, he noted, the planning for de Gaulle’s visit would become extremely difficult, if such a visit occurred at all. He hoped it would not, fearing that it would divide, not unify, Canada.141

After Governor General Vanier’s death in early March, and his widow Pauline’s bitter comments to de Gaulle’s special envoy to the funeral that her husband had died offended that de

Gaulle had refused to receive him as a head of state, Cadieux believed that the French president would probably not visit Canada, especially now that his plans to travel up the St. Lawrence by warship were publicly known. In a front-page story in The Ottawa Journal, Peter C. Newman, basing himself on information provided by Claude Morin, had broken the news, writing, “If de

Gaulle has his way, his entry into Canada will be only slightly less dramatic than the arrival of

Cleopatra at the feet of Caesar.” As Cadieux observed, “Je crois bien qu’aucun Gouvernement

Canadien qui accepterait de se plier aux exigences du Général ne pourrait survivre.”142 In an effort to control the situation, having learned that André Patry was heading to Paris to await

Johnson, Cadieux prevailed upon Martin to inform the premier, and to have the French authorities reminded that, once de Gaulle accepted his invitation to Expo, the federal government

141 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 27 February 1967. 142 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 20 March 1967; Peter Newman, “Cabinet in Tizzy: Cleopatra Entry for de Gaulle?,” The Ottawa Journal, 1.

429 would submit to him a program based on the assumption that his Canadian visit would begin in

Ottawa. There was something pathetic about these entreaties, but Cadieux believed that, by making its position perfectly clear to de Gaulle, Canada would be better placed to reject his plans when they finally became official.143

Unfortunately, Cadieux’s resolve was not shared in high places. After a restful Easter weekend in Cape Cod, he returned to Ottawa to discover that the prime minister had been telling people that he, Pearson, attached little importance to where de Gaulle began his trip. Disturbed,

Cadieux convoked Gordon Robertson, Marc Lalonde, and others in his office to point out that if

Pearson made decisions affecting Quebec without first consulting his French-Canadian ministers and officials, national unity would be compromised. As for de Gaulle, Cadieux thought he might be enticed to visit Ottawa first if his program there were as impressive as those planned for the

British prime minister and the American president and if Pearson could meet with and convince

Johnson to back the federal government.144 These were good ideas, but a few days later François

Leduc put paid to Cadieux’s optimism by informing Martin that de Gaulle still intended to begin in Quebec City. As Cadieux returned home that night, he suddenly had an idea: if both Pearson and the Governor General were on the dock to greet de Gaulle, then surely Johnson would prefer that he go to Ottawa first so that Quebec could welcome him alone. Even if the premier refused to budge, Cadieux thought, Pearson’s key role in the welcoming ceremony would frustrate de

Gaulle and the province’s attempts to make the headlines. While Martin and others found the idea inspired, Pearson had his doubts, fearing, quite rightly in retrospect, that de Gaulle would ignore him after shaking his hand.145

As of 11 April, Cadieux wrote to Léger, Pearson’s decision was “Ottawa de préférence

143 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 21 March 1967; LAC/DEA/10078/20-FR-9/3 – Cadieux to Martin, 21 March 1967. 144 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 31 March 1967. 145 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 6 April 1967; LAC/MC/12/9 – Cadieux to Léger, 11 April 1967.

430 mais Québec si nécessaire” if Johnson refused to play ball or if de Gaulle insisted. Making matters worse, while Le Devoir was reporting that Johnson would be “the official guest of France in May,” the French had made no effort to warn or to consult Ottawa beforehand. Exploiting a constitutional crisis that prevented Ottawa from controlling Quebec, Cadieux observed, de

Gaulle was intervening in Canadian affairs. “Nous ne pouvons pas protester sans faire le jeu des séparatistes,” he told Léger, “ni coopérer à une manœuvre qui les encourage.” The federal authorities had no choice but to retreat: “En somme, nous reculons. Lentement. En cédant le terrain le plus chèrement possible.” The rapprochement with France was undermining, not strengthening, as had been hoped in 1963, Canadian unity. As Cadieux ended his letter to Léger,

“Quelle tristesse. Quelle déception. Et combien tout ceci est inutile!”146 In mid-April Johnson told Pearson that he expected de Gaulle to visit Quebec City before Ottawa. Days later, the Quai d’Orsay informed Léger that the president, who was finally ready to accept his invitations to

Expo, would arrive by boat, stopping first in either Quebec City or Montreal. The federal government, for its part, opened discussions with the French embassy on a program beginning in

Ottawa.

While Ottawa was ill placed to fight both Johnson and de Gaulle on this issue, it did win one battle. Without consulting the DEA, Pearson had agreed to Johnson’s request that mention of the fact that Quebec’s Expo invitation to de Gaulle had been made with Ottawa’s “consent” be removed from the federal communiqué announcing the visit. Yet a draft of the communiqué had already been submitted to de Gaulle, who simply changed “consent” to “in accord.” The result,

Cadieux learned, had been a “combat homérique” between Lalonde and Morin, who threatened to publish the correspondence between Johnson and Pearson. Unimpressed by such blackmail, the prime minister refused to ask France to alter the communiqué. “Ces chicanes paraissent enfantines,” Cadieux observed, but he knew that the day Quebec issued direct invitations to

146 Ibid.

431 sovereign leaders it would also demand the right to plan their programs on its territory.

Moreover, when both invitations and programs were arranged without Ottawa’s consent, it went without saying that Quebec’s Chief of Protocol and foreign ambassadors could communicate directly outside federal control. While Pearson ultimately stood his ground, his instinct was clearly to have peace with Johnson at all costs. Cadieux knew that the job of every prime minister was to hold the country together, but he rightly observed that, not being a lawyer,

Pearson failed to appreciate that the concessions he made to Quebec in the constitutional and international legal fields risked removing it from Confederation.147 What was needed were not compromises worthy of Sir Wilfrid Laurier or William Lyon Mackenzie King, but firmness.

While Ottawa, against all odds, continued in late April and early May to push for de

Gaulle to begin his visit in that city, François Leduc stressed that this was unacceptable to the president and thus a waste of time. As a result, by mid-month Cadieux grudgingly agreed that, provided a strong federal presence was arranged, the trip could begin in Montreal. That said, to offset any pressure Quebec put on de Gaulle to drop anchor in the provincial capital first,

Cadieux wanted Ottawa’s original preference reiterated to the French.148 As he learned a day later from Jack Hodgson of the PMO, however, there was just one problem: Pearson had seen

Johnson and told him that he would not object if the premier insisted on de Gaulle starting in

Quebec City. Cadieux was livid. If this news were true, he told Hodgson and Gordon Robertson,

Pearson had once again undercut his advisers: “J’ai dit sans ambages que si le PM continuait à faire des concessions et à nous ridiculiser aux yeux de Québec, il finirait par ne plus avoir de conseillers canadiens-français. Il se retrouverait en dernier lieu avec les séparatistes qu’il

147 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 28 April 1967. For a heavily censored summary of Lalonde’s conversation with Morin see LAC/DEA/10078/20-FR-9/3 – Lalonde, memorandum, 26 April 1967. At the end of the memo Lalonde alludes to Morin’s threat: “Our conversation ended on a reasonably friendly way but with a clear understanding that our views were different. I ended by telling him [Morin] that we could not prevent them from doing anything they wished on this matter but that, in my opinion, nobody would gain anything by a row on that subject.” 148 LAC/10078/20-FR-9/4 – R.W. Moncel to J.S. Hodgson; LAC/10078/20-FR-9 – Cadieux to Hodgson, 15 May 1967.

432 semblait favoriser en toute circonstances et les ennemis acharnés des canadiens-français.” These bitter words are even more striking when one considers that, as Cadieux surely knew, they could be carried back to Pearson. Everything depended on exactly what the prime minister had said to the premier. “Si Johnson peut dire à Paris que M. Pearson est d’accord pour que la visite commence à Québec ou que M. Pearson ne fera pas d’objection si le Président de Gaulle change d’idée,” Cadieux noted, “la bataille est perdue.”149

He was right. Meeting de Gaulle for the first time, Johnson convinced him to visit

Quebec City, his plan all along, by saying that he had obtained Pearson’s agreement on this point.150 “Mon général,” Johnson is alleged to have declared, “le Québec a besoin de vous.” As he added dramatically, “C’est maintenant ou jamais.”151 Early in June 1967 Pearson finally accepted the Quebec City-Montreal-Ottawa itinerary, disappointing Cadieux yet again. As a bureaucrat and federalist, he wanted to wage war on every front. But politics is the art of the possible. Indeed, he conceded that Pearson may have been right to yield on an issue of no constitutional significance. As Cadieux observed, however, the lesson would not be lost on de

Gaulle that, in cases of federal-provincial conflict, Quebec could triumph. This was unfortunate, since exploiting vulnerability was a speciality of General de Gaulle’s, his military training having coloured his approach to politics. As brilliant a strategist as the French president was,

Cadieux felt that he had made a false move. If he had cooperated with Ottawa, all of Canada would have been open to French influence and the possibilities for diplomatic cooperation between the two countries might have been significant. Instead, faithful to his nationalist credo, de Gaulle had decided to play the sentimental card and to deal narrowly with Quebec. “En somme, de Gaulle aurait pu être reçu honorablement par la maîtresse de la maison dans les grands appartements,” wrote Cadieux. “Il préfère,” he added vulgarly but evocatively, “entrer par

149 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 17 May 1967. 150 MAE/324 – Bruno de Leusse to Leduc, 26 May 1967. 151 Anne and Pierre Rouanet, Les trois derniers chagrins du général de Gaulle (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1980), 61.

433 la porte de service et peloter la bonne,” that is, grope the maid. If, as Cadieux hoped, Canada weathered the storm, French influence would be confined to Quebec nationalists and separatists, two groups he predicted would be ultimately defeated and have no influence on the country’s future.152

As de Gaulle’s visit loomed, Cadieux braced himself for the worst. Eleven days before it was to begin, he was alarmed that his minister, encouraged by a friendly encounter with the

French president the previous month, remained strangely in denial: “Le seul qui ne comprend pas encore de quoi il retourne est M. Martin. Il n’est pas persuadé que le Général de Gaulle ait de mauvaises intentions. Il continue de faire et d’appuyer toutes les concessions que l’Ambassadeur de France lui réclame.” While Greg Donaghy argues that Martin “shared none of Cadieux’s righteous sense of victimhood” vis-à-vis France, it was not victimhood that characterized the under-secretary’s stance but pure, unadulterated anger, itself a symptom of how seriously he took

France’s intervention.153 As Cadieux bluntly told Martin, he could continue to close his eyes and to plug his ears, but the French were up to no good.154 As it turned out, he was right.

The story of de Gaulle’s controversial visit to Canada in late July 1967, from his dramatic arrival at Quebec City on board the warship Colbert to his abrupt departure from Montreal three days later, is well known. In the provincial capital, and then during his triumphant motorcade to

Montreal the next day, de Gaulle spoke of the quasi-miraculous survival of French Canadians in

Quebec, of their new desire to be masters of their own destiny, and of their irreversible progress towards self-determination. While his comments were equivocal, they were also inappropriate and provocative. As a result, some politicians and officials decided not to attend the reception planned for de Gaulle in Ottawa by the French embassy. “Il m’aurait été impossible de lui sourire et de lui serrer la main dans les salons de l’Ambassade,” Cadieux later recalled, “comme

152 LAC/MC/12/9 – Journal intime, 5 June 1967. 153 Greg Donaghy, Grit, 287. 154 LAC/DEA/LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 12 July 1967.

434 s’il ne s’employait pas à détruire le pays et la cause à laquelle j’avais consacré ma vie.” On the evening of Wednesday 24 July, as de Gaulle stepped out on the balcony of Montreal City Hall shortly after 7:30 p.m. to address the boisterous crowd below, Cadieux was fishing on the lake in the Gatineau where he had a cottage. “Je m’attriste du cours désastreux que prend la visite,” he reminisced. Suddenly, a bell rang out, his wife’s way of signalling to him either that supper was ready or, as was presently the case, that there was an emergency. The scene was symbolically appropriate. Since 1964 Cadieux had consistently sounded the alarm in Ottawa about French interference. When he returned to his cottage, Anita gave him the bad news: de Gaulle had shouted “Vive le Québec libre!”155

Shortly thereafter Cadieux received a call from Martin, who was in Montreal. With his wife and an aide, he had listened to de Gaulle’s speech on the radio in a private railway car.

While Martin’s immediate reaction to the phrase “Québec Libre” had been to see in it “innocent connotations,” by the time he phoned Cadieux, whose own reaction he termed “violent,” he knew that he was wrong.156 Cadieux told him that he had to phone Pearson at once and that he was not sure de Gaulle could be received in Ottawa. “A mon avis,” Cadieux told Martin, “le

Gouvernement devrait prier le Général de Gaulle de cesser d’intervenir dans nos affaires, en lui disant que s’il recommence, il va être invité à quitter le pays immédiatement.” All that evening and well into the night in Ottawa, Cadieux and his colleagues debated the next step. As for

Martin, unable to reach Couve de Murville, he expressed his and his government’s concern to

François Leduc. For the very first time, Cadieux sensed, “M. Martin prenait conscience du danger et ressentait de l’inquiétude.”157

The next morning, 25 July, Cadieux felt that it was best if de Gaulle were simply asked to go home. Any other response, he feared, would be used by the French leader as a pretext to

155 Cadieux, Le Général et la campagne du Québec, 226. 156 LAC/DEA/10045/20-1-2-FR/7 – John Hadwen, memorandum, 14 August 1967. 157 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 25 July 1967; Cadieux, Le Général et la campagne du Québec, 227.

435 cancel his visit to Ottawa, allowing him to win on all fronts. As Cadieux anxiously awaited word on the government’s plans, he vented his frustration in his diary:

Cette catastrophe nous est arrivée d’abord à cause de M. Diefenbaker qui pendant des années a comprimé l’élément canadien-français. Ensuite, je blâme l’infantilisme, l’irresponsabilité de Lesage et Johnson, qui ont ouvert toute grande les portes de la bergerie. Et finalement, il y a l’ineffable faiblesse de M. Pearson. … Par son ineptie, le gouvernement fédéral a encouragé Québec et le Président de Gaulle à croire que tout leur était permis. La crise est maintenant arrivée. Dieu sait que nous ne l’avons pas cherchée. Si le Gouvernement Pearson ne réagit pas, il va être honni par le reste du pays et il aura même droit, en supplément, au mépris de la majorité des canadiens-français qui ne veulent pas du séparatisme et qui ne sont pas prêt à laisser le chef d’un pays, même ami, leur dire ce qu’ils doivent faire. Je suppose que, comme d’habitude, M. Pearson ne fera rien et va accuser ceux qui ont essayé d’empêcher cette catastrophe. J’ai bien hâte de voir ce que va faire notre Gouvernement de fantoche mais je ne suis pas très optimiste. En mettant les choses au mieux, ils vont prendre tellement de temps à faire leur idée qu’encore une fois ils vont être dépassés par les événements.158

While this statement may seem exaggerated, it was essentially true. The anglophile Diefenbaker had sidelined French Canadians, Lesage and Johnson had acted irresponsibly, and Pearson had been weak in dealing with Quebec and France. The brutally candid passage above also captured

Cadieux’s visceral anger and his unique passion. Having tried so hard and for so long to prevent the disaster that had befallen Canada the night before, no one was more entitled to vent than he.

When Cadieux learned that cabinet was to meet that morning to discuss its response to the crisis, he advised Martin that consideration be given to cancelling de Gaulle’s visit. If, as the deputy feared, the government declined to do so, he recommended issuing strong statements, cancelling a rather worrisome event planned for de Gaulle in Hull by the Quebec government, criticizing Daniel Johnson, and reducing attendance at the reception of the French embassy. In short, Cadieux wanted a tough response. To a lesser extent so did Pearson, who was surprisingly angry with de Gaulle, though Martin, rejecting Cadieux’s advice, pressed for restraint in cabinet.

What seems especially to have enraged Pearson was de Gaulle’s implied comparison of English

Canada’s relations with Quebec to the Nazi occupation of France, which de Gaulle, according to his own legend, had overcome. Now he was back on the “liberation” trail. A decision was made

158 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 25 July 1967.

436 to release a statement, but Cadieux soon learned that Martin, along with Minister of Trade and

Commerce Robert Winters, preferred that nothing be said at all until de Gaulle arrived in Ottawa.

The angry telegrams and phone calls from across Canada which flooded Ottawa made this impossible. Assisted by a clutch of ministers and officials, who scrutinized his every word,

Pearson drafted and re-drafted his government’s response to de Gaulle, one Cadieux was convinced (as he told Martin throughout the day) would necessarily lead the French leader to take the initiative in cancelling his visit.159 After a second cabinet meeting that afternoon, and almost twenty-four hours after the cri du balcon in Montreal, Pearson addressed the nation and termed de Gaulle’s comments “unacceptable,” adding tersely, “The people of Canada are free.

Every Province of Canada is free. Canadians do not need to be liberated.” Rebuked, what would de Gaulle do? The answer came after midnight when Léger informed Cadieux that the French leader refused to come to Ottawa. While Martin desperately tried to salvage the visit, going so far as to mislead Cadieux by claiming that Pearson had been devastated by de Gaulle’s cancellation and thus approved of Léger’s telling Couve de Murville that the invitation to Ottawa still stood, it was unsalvageable.160 Having completed his mission in Quebec, de Gaulle flew home. The problem he left behind in Canada dated from 1763, but he had profoundly exacerbated it.

159 Ibid. 160 Ibid. As Cadieux learned from J.S. Hodgson, the truth was that Pearson felt that de Gaulle’s decision to cancel his visit was the best possible one in the circumstances and that nothing should be done to get him to reconsider it. “Encore une fois,” Cadieux wrote, “M. Martin ne m’a pas dit la vérité.” He added, “Il devient vraiment très difficile de travailler avec cet homme qui nous présente les choses le plus souvent sous un jour complètement faux.” Upon learning what had happened, Gordon Robertson told Cadieux that he would suggest to Pearson that he keep him (Robertson) informed of his conversations with Martin so that the under-secretary could have two pieces of information to cross-check. Although the possibility was admittedly remote, Cadieux observed that if de Gaulle had come to Ottawa and said, “Je suis venu à la prière du Premier [m]inistre,” Pearson would have been put in a very embarassing situation by Martin.

Chapter Seven The Under-Secretary, Nationalist Quebec, and Gaullist France: 1967-1970

After de Gaulle’s dramatic visit, Cadieux felt the need to get out of Ottawa. In August, he and his family spent twelve days in Montreal touring Expo before returning to their cabin until

Labour Day. It had taken him some time to recover from the shock of events. As he wrote to

Paul Tremblay, “C’était une véritable obsession qui me poursuivait même la nuit.” Returning to work, he tried to be sanguine about the state of the country, but there was much cause for concern, starting with Pearson, who at the end of his regime, Cadieux noted, was more hesitant and more conciliatory than ever: “Le résultat est qu’il fait concession sur concession et que la situation est en train de pourrir.” Making matters worse, federal ministers, particularly Martin, sensing the prime minister’s imminent retirement, were busy promoting themselves in order to succeed him. It was thus almost impossible, Cadieux observed, to coordinate federal-provincial policy: “Aucun des ministres ne veut prendre de responsabilité ni laisser un de ses collègues prendre la vedette.” Federal representatives, he added, were also “empoisonnés” by their minority government, which by definition, he wrote, was “faible, vacillant, vivant au jour le jour.” Paradoxically, Cadieux remarked, the situation was similar in Quebec, where Daniel

Johnson also headed a weak government and where both he and Jean Lesage courted nationalists by making Ottawa their whipping boy. In such conditions, de Gaulle’s “Vive le Québec libre” risked having terrible consequences since separatists and extremists, once weakened by Canada’s centennial celebrations, had taken heart and were redoubling their efforts. (Indeed, Cadieux surprised one visiting British mandarin by raising with him the spectre of a “coup d’état” in

Quebec followed by a proclamation of independence.)1 Clearly, as he told Tremblay, he was

“littéralement torturé” by the constitutional question and the problem of relations with France:

1 UKNA/FCO/23/113 – Saville Garner to Sir M. James, 5 October 1967. The British mandarin was Sir Burke Trend, Secretary to the Cabinet from 1963 to 1973. 437

438

“Surtout pour un Canadien-français, la situation est déchirante. En somme, il faut se crever le jour pour déplacer d’un côté à l’autre de son bureau la paperasse habituelle et délibérer la nuit dans l’anxiété la plus lancinante au sujet d’options qui mettent en cause l’existence même du pays.” Nor could Cadieux expect leadership on this file from Martin, whose reluctance to get involved, singular focus on his personal publicity, and incessant talk to the DEA about his

“maudites initiatives” Cadieux bemoaned.2

I – The Aftermath of le cri du balcon

As he had been since 1963, Cadieux remained the driving force behind Ottawa’s policy towards Quebec and France. While on vacation he had come to the conclusion that the federal government had to engage with the non-separatist majority in Quebec by taking a clear and positive stand on the question of constitutional reform. As he vividly put it, French-Canadian deputies and ministers in Ottawa could either be slaughtered like sheep or take action. In many ways his argument harkened back to the one he had made as a junior officer during the war: national unity demanded a major federal effort in Quebec; the alternative, refusing to challenge its nationalists, was to court disaster. As we have seen, Cadieux’s strategy as under-secretary had been to divorce the issue of Quebec’s international activities from the larger one of constitutional reform by a series of ad hoc solutions. While he still refused to countenance even a limited provincial international personality, he now realized that Ottawa would only have peace on that front if Quebec were given some satisfaction on the other. If not, its unholy alliance with foreigners would continue.3

Throughout the fall of 1967 Cadieux, supported by allies in the PMO like Marc Lalonde and Jean Beetz, another hard-nosed lawyer from Montreal, was arguably the strongest voice in

Ottawa calling for action on the constitution. Whether it was language rights, Senate reform, or

2 LAC/PT/4/12 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 19 September 1967. 3 Ibid.

439 changes to the Supreme Court, among other issues, he was willing to talk. As he told Pearson,

Ottawa had “little to fear by expressing a readiness to examine ideas for the reform of any part of the Constitution and to discuss any reasonable proposal with the provinces.”4 By mid-October a more optimistic Cadieux felt that the situation in Canada had changed for the better. Federal ministers were taking a more open position on constitutional reform than Pierre Trudeau, now

Minister of Justice, had originally proposed with his suggestion of a declaration of human rights.

In Quebec, de Gaulle’s visit clarified the province’s politics, though not quite as the

French president intended. The provincial Liberals split, one faction following René Lévesque into “sovereignty-association,” and the rest – the majority – following Lesage, whose federalist tendencies were thereby reinforced. Separatism was for the moment the doctrine of an ex-Liberal fringe. While Cadieux knew that the Liberals would still make unreasonable demands on Ottawa, they had taken “l’option fondamentale,” choosing federalism. Sensing which way the wind was blowing, Daniel Johnson, as he so often did, changed his stance. He now spoke, Cadieux noted, of establishing a true Canadian federalism in which the two main ethnic groups were equal and admitted that the Union Nationale had no mandate to build “une muraille de Chine” around

Quebec. The under-secretary was also encouraged by the fact that other provincial premiers, including Manitoba’s Duff Roblin and Ontario’s John Robarts, along with new federal

Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield, the former premier of Nova Scotia, all recognized that French Canadians outside Quebec deserved better treatment. As Cadieux noted with satisfaction, the thesis that Canada was a bicultural country was about to be accepted. If, as he fervently believed, Quebec’s future was within Confederation, it followed that the province could not have its own foreign policy. “Il y aura sans doute des défaites locales, des hauts et des bas, des nuages, des tunnels à traverser,” Cadieux hopefully told Tremblay, “mais j’ai l’impression que la victoire est en vue.” The danger, he added, was that federal politicians might

4 LAC/MC/8/15 – Cadieux to Pearson, 27 September 1967.

440 feel they had been unduly scared and return to their laissez-faire policy:

Tu peux compter que je vais continuer à sonner l’alarme vigoureusement et à pousser de toutes mes forces pour que les problèmes constitutionnels soient réglés. Lorsque la majorité des Canadiens-Français sera convaincue que la question a été longuement et min[u]tieusement débattue et qu’un arrangement raiso[n]nable a été conclu avec les autres provinces et le Gouvernement fédéral, sa loyauté à l’Etat canadien sera acquise et les Morins, les Patrys et autres traîtres de la même eau pourront continuer à s’agiter, ils n’en mèneront pas large.5

Of course, opinion on what constituted a “reasonable” arrangement varied widely. Many years of hard federal-provincial bargaining potentially lay ahead.

This is no doubt why Cadieux pushed for more than just constitutional reform. As he told

Pearson, bilingualism in the civil service had to move “further and faster,” a goal on which the

DEA took the lead. He also continued to champion those measures designed to promote biculturalism in foreign affairs, including new missions in French-speaking Africa, a development assistance that reflected the interests of both English and French Canada, and various cultural and information activities with other francophone countries that would soon have their own division in the DEA. The problem was that the Pearson government’s ambitious welfare state was straining the federal budget and forcing departments to tighten their belts.

While the DEA was no exception, its under-secretary was able to maintain spending related to the defence of national unity. Where provincial involvement in foreign affairs was concerned, he and his officials developed new procedures for increasing the participation of provinces in international organizations and conferences, the signing of international agreements, and development assistance. Always prepared to reshape his department to meet the challenge from

Quebec, Cadieux also created a “Task Force on International Aspects of Federal-Provincial

Relations” and a Coordination Division, which had previously been a section of the Legal

Division. In addition to Allan Gotlieb, whom he now promoted to Legal Adviser and assistant under-secretary, Cadieux also relied heavily on Max Yalden, a forceful bilingual Torontonian

5 LAC/PT/4/12 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 12 October 1967.

441 recently recalled from the Canadian embassy in Paris to serve as his special assistant. On

Cadieux’s orders, Yalden immediately began drafting a White Paper on federalism and international relations, one that would publicly set out Ottawa’s policy in this controversial area.6

Whether it was constitutional reform, biculturalism in Canadian foreign policy, or the provincial challenge to the DEA, Cadieux was not content to stand pat in the aftermath of de

Gaulle’s visit to Canada. As it turned out, neither was France. It spectacularly increased cultural, economic, and technical aid to Quebec in August. In September, French Ministers Alain

Peyrefitte and then François Missoffe went to Quebec City to discuss new areas of cooperation with provincial authorities but, on de Gaulle’s orders, avoided Ottawa. A Quebec-France intergovernmental organization, established on a basis of parity, was created and it was announced that there would be regular ministerial meetings between the two governments at the

“highest level,” an arrangement de Gaulle had resisted with Canada when Pearson had proposed it in 1964. Plans were also made for a Quebec-France office for youth exchanges, another federal scheme originally, and both sides agreed to explore joint action in the economic and telecommunications field. In short, the two provincial ententes that Ottawa had approved in

1965, to which these (and future) initiatives were carefully if sometimes tenuously tied, were now being exploited by Quebec and France to legitimize the former’s request for an international personality. Such conduct, by an allied country no less, was outrageous, but it could not easily be stopped. As Cadieux observed, the French were acting like “des cochons,” but Canada could not break diplomatic relations with France or recall its ambassador from Paris without leaving

Quebec a free hand there. The federal government, he noted, faced an unenviable dilemma: “Ou bien il ne fait rien et alors Québec et les Français braquent la situation selon les vœux du Québec.

6 LAC/MC/8/15 – Cadieux to Pearson, 27 September 1967.

442

Ou bien [il] proteste, veut exercer ses droits et à toutes fins pratiques c’est la rupture ouverte et proclamée avec la France. Et Québec gagne encore.”7

Confronted, as it were, by Scylla and Charybdis, Cadieux doggedly steered a middle course ahead. Basing its position on Pearson’s rejection of outside interference in his public response to de Gaulle’s speech in Montreal, the DEA put firm but discreet pressure on France by increasingly making its displeasure known to the French embassy, to the Quai d’Orsay, and, when Martin met with him, to Couve de Murville. These approaches essentially took the form of a series of questions. Would France continue to interpret unilaterally what it could and could not do with Quebec? Would it continue to flout international practice and protocol by sending its ministers to a sub-division of a country without informing its national government about goals and programs? Would it continue to keep Ottawa in the dark about its relations with Quebec, even when those relations exceeded prescribed limits or encroached on areas of federal jurisdiction?8 Despite the diplomatic wording of these tough queries, French answers were largely unsatisfying. But that was beside the point. Having been put in an intolerable situation by

France, Canada had to protect its legal position by asserting it.

This strategy annoyed Jules Léger who urged Ottawa to bide its time until the meddlesome French president left the stage. But what if by then the constitution were in shreds?

When Martin scribbled beneath one memo, “My view is that when the General ‘goes’ so will the problems,” Cadieux answered with a note of his own: “Yes, but until he goes the damage to our constitutional position is frightful.”9 Clearly, France’s provocative policy towards Canada could not last, but as long as it did it was incumbent upon Ottawa to voice its concerns, a point Cadieux

7 LAC/MC/4/12 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 19 September 1967. 8 For examples of this approach see LAC/PT/4/12 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 12 October 1964; MAE/200 – Note given to Couve de Murville by Martin, 4 December 1967. 9 Cadieux and Martin marginal notes on LAC/DEA/10045/20-1-2-FR/8 – Martin to Pearson, 2 October 1967.

443 made to Léger that fall over two days of occasionally heated discussion in Paris.10 Cadieux had always understood that far more was at stake here than the relatively narrow relationship between Quebec and France. The Gérin-Lajoie doctrine, after all, applied to every foreign country, not just France. It became imperative, then, to protest, if only for the record, as silence implied acquiescence in the broader provincial campaign. In this way Cadieux sent a message to

Quebec, to any country willing to deal with it directly, and to France, many of whose diplomats he knew opposed Gaullist policy towards Canada and might soften it.

The sharp edges of de Gaulle’s thinking were evident in late November 1967 at one of his grandiose bi-annual press conferences. Addressing about a thousand journalists in the glittering salle des fêtes in the Elysée, assembled as always on these occasions not to ask tough questions but simply to provide the French leader with an audience, de Gaulle spoke emotionally of the

“enfants abandonnés,” of the “nation française, morceau de notre peuple” across the sea and called for “l’avènement du Québec au rang d’un [É]tat souverain,” a brash intervention that embarrassed the provincial government as Johnson met in Toronto with his counterparts to discuss the “Confederation of Tomorrow.”11 In Ottawa, Cadieux warned Martin that de Gaulle was “not content to prophesy” but sought “to influence and to speed up the process of Canada’s disintegration.” He was struck by two contradictions in his statements. First, while de Gaulle pushed for a sovereign Quebec, he expected it at once to join a French-speaking community, one presumably led by France. “In naked terms,” Cadieux observed, Quebec was to “switch its allegiance from Ottawa to Paris.” Second, de Gaulle based his criticism of the federal government on the fact that French Canadians had never been treated fairly and that they were threatened with cultural extinction. How was it, then, Cadieux asked, that the 60,000 French

10 LAC/DEA/10046/20-1-2-FR/10 – Cadieux to Martin, 11 November 1967. 11 For the full transcript of de Gaulle’s press conference see http://fresques.ina.fr/de-gaulle/impression/fiche- media/Gaulle00139/conference-de-presse-du-27-novembre-1967.html. One member of the Quebec delegation to the Confederation of Tomorrow conference exclaimed before the press, “Save us from our friends!” See Granatstein and Bothwell, Pirouette, 120.

444

Canadians present at the time of the Conquest in 1763 had grown to 6,500,000 and that, by de

Gaulle’s own admission, they were now “more French than ever”?12 In any case, the under- secretary was fed up with the French leader. No doubt seeing in his most recent performance manifestations of the onset of political senility, he would come to refer in his diary to de Gaulle as “ce vieux bandit,” “ce vieux fanatique,” and “ce vieux fou,” to say nothing of the choice epithets that passed his lips.13

De Gaulle’s unequivocal stand on Quebec sovereignty added to Cadieux’s already considerable reputation as Ottawa’s Cassandra. The month before Peter Towe, until recently the

Deputy Director General of the EAO, had told an American diplomat that on “every occasion in the past several years [Cadieux had] predicted exactly what both de Gaulle and Quebec would do.”14 From a member of the PCO Cadieux learned that Martin had sung his praises in cabinet the day after de Gaulle’s press conference, saying that Cadieux’s warnings over the last three years about the French leader had been vindicated, that even when he had been a voice crying in the wilderness he had tried to put the federal government on guard, and that unfortunately for

Canada his advice had not been followed. Pearson agreed and the cabinet banged their fists on the table in vigorous praise of Cadieux. While the compliment pleased him, he knew that Martin had not been entirely disinterested in making it. “Sans se rendre compte qu’il avait été réfractaire lui-même le plus souvent,” Cadieux observed, “ce qu’il disait à ses collègues c’est que nous ne serions pas dans la panade [in trouble] si le Premier [m]inistre m’avait écouté.” What especially frustrated Cadieux was that, in calling de Gaulle’s statement “intolerable,” Pearson had ignored the DEA’s advice to address his response to French Canadians, a failure that had allowed Daniel

Johnson to say in Toronto that he wanted no part of a private fight between the two world

12 LAC/DEA/10046/20-1-2-FR/10 – Cadieux to Martin, 27 November 1967. 13 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 28 June 1968; LAC/MC/4/10 – Journal intime, 21 August 1968; LAC/MC/12/12 – Journal intime, 31 January 1969; Bosher, The Gaullist Attack on Canada, 92. 14 NARA/RG59/1967-1969/1936/POL CAN – Memorandum of conversation between Peter M. Towe and Rufus Z. Smith, 7 October 1967.

445 leaders. “Autrement dit,” wrote Cadieux with bitter humour, “je suis joli, je sens bon, je suis intelligent mais on ne m’écoute pas.” On the whole, however, Ottawa had played its cards well.

In an alarming Reuters report from Paris the day after de Gaulle’s press conference, France was said to be considering signing a friendship treaty with Quebec similar to the Franco-German

Friendship Treaty of 1963, a bold move that would have given tangible expression to the French president’s call for sovereignty. Indeed, Cadieux felt that de Gaulle had hoped to provoke

Canada into breaking diplomatic relations with France so that Paris could have retaliated with the friendship treaty. “En refusant hier de rappeler notre Ambassadeur,” Cadieux wrote, “je crois que nous avons déjoué sa manœuvre.”15

II – A New Theatre of Conflict: the Gabon Affair

The DEA and its under-secretary were less successful in dodging another French move, this one in la Francophonie. Once again, Cadieux had foreseen the danger. In a letter to Paul

Tremblay in September 1967 he had observed that France was using the embryonic international organization to manipulate other francophone countries and to favour Quebec. “La prochaine offensive dans ce domaine,” he warned, “aura comme effet de créer une réunion des Ministres de l’Éducation et c’est Québec sans doute qui représentera le Canada.”16 In fact, France did not need to create such a meeting since one already existed: the Franco-African conference of

Education Ministers, the annual successor to similar gatherings held in colonial times. In mid-

November the Canadian embassy in Paris learned from Philippe Rossillon, the most zealous of the Quebec lobby members, that the province wished to attend as an observer the conference set

15 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 29 November 1967; LAC/DEA/11644/30-14-QUE/2 – “Reuters Report from Paris, Nov. 28, 1967.” 16 LAC/PT/4/12 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 19 September 1967.

446 for February 1968 in Gabon (a tiny republic of 550,000 on the west coast of Africa which had retained close connections to France) and that its request would be difficult to turn down.17

While this news did not surprise Cadieux, it did disturb him. The presence of Quebec at an international conference, even as an observer, greatly increased the stakes in the debate over its external jurisdiction by risking the setting of an unacceptable precedent for the federal government. As a result, the DEA immediately launched a two-pronged campaign. At home, it attempted to convince Quebec to attend the Gabon conference as part of a Canadian delegation, one the provincial minister of education, Jean-Guy Cardinal, would be allowed to lead. This federal offer was made to Cardinal by Marc Lalonde and then reiterated in general terms to

Johnson in a letter from Pearson in early December 1967. As Quebec so often did in this period when it had the upper hand, it simply ignored the missive. The second part of the DEA’s campaign was conducted abroad, where it attempted to dissuade France and French-speaking

Africa from allowing Quebec to attend the Gabon conference. The DEA made démarches stressing federal support for la Francophonie, federal jurisdiction over foreign affairs, and federal interest in attending the conference of education ministers to African countries through their embassies in Washington, their delegations at the United Nations, and their home governments.

Cadieux hoped that Canada’s growing development assistance program in the region would predispose it towards Ottawa. Thus, when Maurice Strong’s EAO, for reasons of administrative efficiency, sought to concentrate Canada’s admittedly diffuse aid on the continent by eliminating nine francophone African countries from the list of recipients, Cadieux loudly (and successfully) denounced the proposal, which he termed both “inopportune” and “imbécile.”18 While French- speaking Africa was generally sympathetic to the Canadian stance, France, which massively

17 LAC/DEA/10689/26-4-CME-1968/1 – Canadian Embassy Paris to DEA, 10 November 1967. 18 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 6 December 1967. As Cadieux wrote, “Il est tout de même étonnant que l’esprit du système rende les agents du Bureau de l’Aide extérieure aveugles au point où ils n’aperçoivent pas les importants facteurs politiques qui sont en cause.” See as well Gendron, Towards a Francophone Community, 134-135.

447 supplied its former colonies with aid and thus occupied a prestigious position among them, decidedly was not, observing disingenuously that it was not Paris but Libreville, the capital of

Gabon, to which Ottawa should address itself.19

As Cadieux desperately tried to head off the looming disaster, he had to do so without the help of his minister. This was because in mid-December 1967 Pearson finally announced his intention to retire, beginning a race to succeed him that would involve no fewer than eight federal cabinet ministers. The immediate effect on the most senior of them was vividly captured by his deputy: “Le Ministre ne veut plus nous voir ni nous entendre. Son cœur est ailleurs. Les premiers polls l’ont favorisé. Il n’en devient que plus frénétique.”20 While Martin’s frantic attitude was understandable, this being his third and final chance to fulfill his dream to be prime minister, the concentration of his energies on the leadership weakened the DEA as Canada headed towards its greatest confrontation with Quebec and France. That said, it also gave

Cadieux an unprecedented opportunity to communicate directly with Pearson, who himself disapproved of Martin’s “subordinating everything, including his work at External Affairs, to his campaign.”21 Sensing in late 1967 that events in Gabon might not go Ottawa’s way, Cadieux urged Pearson to consider what the federal reaction should be if Quebec received a separate invitation to the conference, offering this personal opinion: “I must say that my own inclination would be to let the French and the world know that there is some life left us, and that we will react with all the vigour and strength at our command to protect ourselves against external intervention.”22

19 For a useful chronology of Ottawa’s efforts to prevent a separate Quebec presence at the Gabon conference see LAC/DEA/10690/26-4-CME-1968/3 – “Libreville Meeting – Invitation to Quebec: Chronological Study of this event,” 7 March 1968. 20 LAC/PT/4/12 – Cadieux to Paul and Gertrude Tremblay, 22 December 1967. 21 Lester B. Pearson, Mike: The Memoirs of the Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson, vol. 3: 1957-1968 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 313. 22 LAC/DEA/10690/26-4-CME-1968/2 – Cadieux to Pearson, 27 December 1967.

448

Cadieux’s determination to stand up to France increased early in the New Year upon learning that de Gaulle had invited four Acadian leaders to Paris to discuss cultural relations. As he noted, whereas in the case of Quebec de Gaulle was bypassing the federal government, in the case of the Acadians he was ignoring the government of New Brunswick and dealing directly with its minority group. When Louis Robichaud, the premier of the province and the first

Acadian to hold that position, failed to protest, a disappointed Cadieux attributed his silence to the fact that “Little Louis,” as he was affectionately known, had yet to do much for his compatriots. While Cadieux quickly dispatched the head of his Cultural Affairs Division to

Moncton to see what Ottawa could do, he privately lamented the inability of Canada to solve its great national problem:

Il n’y a aucun doute qu’encore une fois le Général de Gaulle intervient dans nos affaires. Encore une fois, il ne réussit dans ses entreprises que parce que le Canada n’a pas trouvé le moyen, après cent ans, d’être juste envers ses minorités françaises. Il est extrêmement émouvant et triste que les chefs des minorités francophones aient abandonné l’espoir d’obtenir satisfaction de leur gouvernement provincial et de leur gouvernement fédéral et qu’en désespoir de cause ils se tournent vers l’étranger pour obtenir les appuis dont ils ont besoin pour survivre. L’invitation de de Gaulle a obtenu une réaction qui est à la mesure de notre échec au Canada à régler nos problèmes nous-mêmes.23

Since the 1930s Cadieux had championed the equality of English and French Canadians from coast to coast. Never could he have predicted that Canada’s glaring failure to realize it would one day be exploited to such great effect by a foreign leader.

Never one to be a defeatist, Cadieux focused his energy on the most pressing problem facing Ottawa: the potential presence of Quebec at an international conference within a month.

After receiving Pearson’s permission to do so, he took the extraordinary step in early January

1968 of meeting personally with Daniel Johnson in Montreal in a bid to reach a modus vivendi on both the specific issue of Gabon and the wider one of the province’s international relations.

The conversation, which lasted three-and-a-half hours, was typical of Johnson’s evasiveness.

23 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 8 January 1968.

449

When the two former classmates discussed Gabon, for example, Johnson admitted that he had found Pearson’s offer to appoint Cardinal head of the Canadian delegation “embarrassing” since

Quebec wanted a direct and separate invitation to the conference, prompting Cadieux to reply that, if this were the case, the premier “would be taking a further and very significant step towards external independence.” Later Johnson offered a glimmer of hope when he told Cadieux that he had drawn Claude Morin’s attention to the “positive elements” in Pearson’s approach.

Yet in characteristic fashion Johnson remained non-committal on Gabon, simply telling Cadieux that Ottawa would be hearing from him soon. When the conversation turned to more general questions, Johnson seemed “intrigued” by federal efforts to involve the provinces in a bicultural foreign policy and appeared “surprised and impressed” when reminded that Quebec was permitted its own development assistance projects. As he so often did with federal representatives, Johnson repeatedly stressed his opposition to separatism, which he noted would lead to economic ruin and to Quebec workers shooting those responsible for the debacle. The premier’s comments on de Gaulle and relations with France were particularly revealing of the dangerous game Johnson was playing. While praising de Gaulle’s remarkable command of the

Quebec file, he confided in Cadieux that he had been embarrassed by his cri du balcon and that he had told the president so at the time. What Johnson said next is worth quoting:

Mr. Johnson said that unfortunately General de Gaulle has been persuaded by some of his experts and, Mr. Johnson was fully aware of this, by some Quebec technocrats who were in secret communication with de Gaulle, that Quebec would secede. On the information available to Mr. Johnson, French Canadians are not prepared to be treated or labelled as Frenchmen and they resent de Gaulle’s interventions in our affairs.

While clearly aware of the perils of closer relations with Paris, Johnson went on to speak emotionally of Quebec’s great need for cultural assistance from France and its refusal to accept any interference in it. To this Cadieux replied that Ottawa had never been against such links, as the accord cadre showed, but that their exclusiveness was undermining both a truly national policy and the constitutional negotiations set to begin. Open to talks between federal and

450 provincial officials to settle the dispute over external affairs, Johnson asked Cadieux about his relationship with Morin. Cadieux answered that, while he could deal with him, Johnson should follow their talks closely since he believed that “Mr. Morin was wedded to the associated states theory” and “expected, in negotiations, federal officials to behave as if [it] had been accepted by the country and the Constitution had been amended accordingly.” When Cadieux left Johnson, the latter warmly expressed his desire to see him again and his wish that the under-secretary

“work out a solution.” The whole performance was trademark Johnson: much had been said, but almost nothing had been decided.24

While sensing that it was perhaps misplaced, Cadieux nevertheless inclined towards optimism, telling Pearson that, as a result of his meeting with Johnson, the federal offer to

Quebec regarding Gabon might not be rejected. “Au moment où je dicte ces mots,” Cadieux nervously informed Tremblay, “je ne sais pas encore ce que le Gouvernement du Québec va décider au sujet de la francophonie.” Noting that he had not slept the night before, he added that if the province chose the right path the DEA’s long battle with it was likely won.25 Days later, however, Cadieux learned that a direct invitation to Cardinal to attend the conference of education ministers in a “personal capacity” was en route from Gabon. The under-secretary briefed Pearson who phoned Johnson who, still refusing to be pinned down, declared that he would not make a decision until he had received the invitation and spoken to Pearson again. “Il ne comprend pas, semble-t-il,” wrote a frustrated Cadieux, “que si nous nous entendions, nous aurions l’invitation que nous voulons plutôt que celle que la France voudra nous envoyer.”26 At a press conference on 17 January 1968 Johnson announced that Quebec had received and accepted an invitation to the conference in Gabon. Despite having taken a moderate line with Pearson by

24 LAC/MC/8/15 – Cadieux to Pearson, 10 January 1968. 25 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 10 January 1968. 26 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 15 January 1968.

451 telephone earlier that day, the premier made no effort to stress the personal nature of the invitation or to downplay its constitutional significance.27

To Cadieux this outcome was simply “désastrueux.” As he surmised, “Il semble que

Johnson veut combattre René Lévesque aux frais d’Ottawa.” The lesson was that Ottawa faced a

Quebec-France “alliance” in la Francophonie: “Nous pouvons contenir peut-être la situation mais il est évident que nous allons subir des revers. Il faudra combattre vigoureusement et n’abandonner le terrain que pas à pas et provisoirement, c’est-à-dire jusqu’à ce que de Gaulle crève ou que la Province de Québec opte clairement et finalement pour la Confédération.” Where

Quebec was concerned, Cadieux vowed to delay negotiations with it on its international relations. “Il faut faire comprendre à Johnson,” he observed, “que s’il ne coopère pas, il a quelque chose à perdre.” As for Gabon and France, Cadieux was determined to protest. “Il est clair que le vieillard, maléfique et rancunier, est intervenu,” he correctly remarked of de Gaulle,

“mais il est non moins clair que nous ne sommes pas obligés d’accepter sans rien dire ses mauvais coups.”28

While Cadieux was anxious for Ottawa to denounce Quebec, Gabon, and France, Pearson waited until Joseph Thibault, Canada’s ambassador to Cameroon and its non-resident ambassador to Gabon, went to Libreville to request both the text of its invitation to Cardinal and an explanation of why, despite their earlier assurances to the contrary, the Gabonese had dealt with Quebec directly. Visibly uneasy, Gabon’s acting foreign minister informed Thibault that the text had gone missing and that the fact that it had been sent directly to Quebec, rather than to

Ottawa, was due to a “stupid mistake” by his secretary. Days later, on 26 January, Pearson, acting on Cadieux’s advice, asked Thibault to return to Gabon and to seek a last-minute invitation for Canada to attend the conference alongside Quebec. Exploiting the fact that the

27 LAC/DEA/10690/26-4-CME-1968/2 – Martin to Pearson, 18 January 1968. 28 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 18 January 1968. When his approval was sought for the Gabon affair, de Gaulle was “enchanté” with the “bonne farce” at Ottawa’s expense. See Meren, With Friends Like These, 176.

452 ambassador was not yet accredited to the Gabonese government, the latter refused to consider any official communication from him, insisting that it would only deal with his chargé d’affaires, who unfortunately had left Cameroon for a posting in Turkey. Martin responded by immediately appointing Thibault interim Chargé d’Affaires, but Gabon still refused to see him, this time on the grounds that he could not wear two hats. Around the same time the African country sent from its embassy in Washington a letter to Ottawa confirming that the invitation to Cardinal was strictly personal but adding that Quebec, given its representation in Paris by a Delegate General, possessed “cultural autonomy,” a bizarre but no less irritating attempt to interpret the Canadian constitution. While Cadieux found the conduct of Gabon scandalous, he understood that it had been dictated by France, which bankrolled the country and even supplied its government with a small garrison.29 The presence of Quebec between 5 and 10 February 1968 at the Franco-African conference of education ministers in Libreville, where its provincial flag defiantly flew next to those of independent countries, contradicting Cardinal’s supposedly “personal” invitation to the gathering, was the most dramatic achievement of the Quebec-France alliance. Yet for the time being the federal government kept silent.

The reason for this perplexing response was that, on the same day as the Gabon event, a far more important and unprecedented conference for Canada was opening in Ottawa. There, in the Confederation Room of the historic West Block, the prime minister, the premiers, and their advisers assembled, under the relentless glare of television cameras broadcasting live to the nation, to discuss constitutional change. “Here the road forks,” Pearson announced dramatically

“if we choose wrongly, we will leave to our children and our children’s children a country in fragments, and we ourselves [will] have become the failures of Confederation.”30 While Cadieux favoured reasonable constitutional reform, he was struck by the fact that Quebec was

29 See files on LAC/DEA/10689/26-4-CME-1968/1; LAC/DEA/10690/26-4-CME/1968/2. 30 John Saywell, ed., Canadian Annual Review for 1968 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 73.

453 jeopardizing the whole process by presenting Canada with a fait accompli 10,000 kilometres away in Africa. Thus, when Morin, no doubt hoping to exploit what he believed was Quebec’s advantageous bargaining position, suggested to him on the first day of the conference that they meet to consider the province’s demands in the field of external affairs, Cadieux refused. Going straight to the heart of the matter, he bluntly asked Morin a simple question: did Quebec consider itself part of Canada? Spurned, Morin rushed off to tell one of Cadieux’s colleagues that the under-secretary had erred in not negotiating, that Quebec’s demands would only increase, and that Ottawa could only lose by waiting. “La tactique de Morin est toujours la même,” Cadieux shrewdly observed: “Il fait des menaces et nous demande de faire des concessions qui lui servent de tremplin pour des nouvelles demandes.”31

Having recognized Morin’s strategy long ago, Cadieux was unintimidated by it. Since

1964 he had been the fiercest opponent of an international personality for Quebec. In early

February 1968, on the last day of the constitutional conference, his philosophy became formal government doctrine with the release of Federalism and International Relations, a White Paper that he, Marc Lalonde, and Gordon Robertson had first proposed to the government the previous spring. Recognizing that Quebec was constantly challenging Ottawa in this field – indeed, André

Patry and Jacques Brossard, a former officer in the DEA, had just published an entire book on the alleged provincial competence abroad – Cadieux pressed for a public and vigorous assertion of the federal position in what, for most Canadians, was a rather arcane area of constitutional and international law. Whether it was the treaty-making power, membership and participation in international organizations, communication with diplomatic envoys and missions, or development assistance, among other issues, Ottawa’s exclusive jurisdiction was explained and reaffirmed in Federalism and International Relations. The White Paper serves as a reminder that, however impressive the Quebec-France alliance was in this period, Ottawa had not ceded a

31 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 7 February 1968.

454 legal inch to the province in what was unquestionably a much broader debate. The booklet also explored the many ways Cadieux’s DEA had tried to accommodate the international interests of the provinces, tacitly contrasting the federal approach of “Harmony through Cooperation” with

Quebec’s often discordant unilateralism.32 While Martin’s name graced the cover of Federalism and International Relations, he had initially tried to delay its printing. As Cadieux soon discovered, his minister was not eager to add to the importance of the constitutional conference by releasing the White Paper there. Cadieux, on the other hand, wanted it introduced where it would achieve maximum effect. So did Pearson. As Martin hemmed and hawed over what to do, the prime minister simply ordered its distribution.33

This was a nod to the man the prime minister had conspicuously seated at his side during the conference and whom he would come to favour to succeed him: Pierre Trudeau.34 The defining event of the conference came on its second day when Trudeau, whose “chiselled face and striking eyes” were accentuated by the television lights, boldly confronted Johnson over special status for Quebec, the former’s “tone ever more biting, his voice metallic.”35 The effect was sensational. Johnson, to borrow a line from his biographer, was “entre les griffes de

Trudeau.” While Cadieux wondered whether the timing of his prise de position had not been premature, he heartily approved of the strong message that it sent:

Trudeau a fait preuve de sa lucidité et de son courage habituels. Du point de vue d’un agent fédéral, son intervention est certainement bienvenue. … [D]epuis des années le public québ[é]cois n’entend qu’un son de cloche. Les hommes politiques du Québec n’ont aucune difficulté à se persuader et à persuader leurs auditoires québ[é]cois que le Québec devrait obtenir davantage. Il se fait même à cet égard, entre politiciens québ[é]cois, une surenchère qui les amène à prendre des positions qui ne semblent guère négociables en autant que le reste du pays est concerné. Le résultat de cette escalade est

32 Paul Martin, Federalism and International Relations (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1968). See as well André Patry, Jacques Brossard, and Elisabeth Weiser, Les pouvoirs extérieurs du Québec (Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1967). 33 LAC/DEA/11583/30-4-1/2 – Cadieux to Martin, 23 January 1968; LAC/DEA/11583/30-4-1/2 – A.S. McGill to Martin, 25 January 1968; LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 2 February 1968; LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 7 February 1968. 34 Pearson, who wanted a francophone successor, preferred Jean Marchand, but Marchand declined to run and suggested Trudeau instead, a choice Pearson supported. See English, The Worldly Years, 382-384. 35 English, Citizen of the World, 457.

455

que le sentiment nationaliste finit à la longue par être exaspéré. Il est donc nécessaire, si le pays doit éviter l’éclatement, que certains hommes politiques comme Trudeau aient le courage de présenter au Québec les choses objectivement et de permettre ainsi un dialogue fructueux entre le Québec et le reste du pays.

Moreover, it seemed to Cadieux that every time the rest of Canada gave French Canadians satisfaction, Quebec asked for more. This “chantage perpétuel et croissant,” he observed, could not last. He also noted that at least one federalist at the constitutional conference had not been impressed by Trudeau’s performance: “Autre détail au sujet de cher monsieur Martin. Hier, après l’intervention courageuse de Trudeau, il se promenait à droite et à gauche, tout excité, en disant

‘Trudeau a fait une gaffe, cette intervention n’aidera pas sa candidature.’”36 In fact, Trudeau instantly became a media sensation in English Canada, where he was portrayed as the man who would finally stand up to Quebec. Ten days later, riding a wave of popularity, he officially declared his candidacy for the leadership of the Liberal Party.

In the immediate aftermath of the constitutional conference, Cadieux used all his influence to try to persuade Pearson to react firmly to the Gabon affair. The under-secretary recognized that the deafening silence from Ottawa on this matter could have disastrous political and constitutional consequences and so he wanted to protest to France and to Gabon as well as to make public the federal offer to Quebec concerning representation at the meeting in Libreville.

As Cadieux told Lalonde, who he hoped could convince Pearson to re-open the file, “vigorous action” was required “to uphold the integrity of this country.” Two days after the constitutional conference Cadieux got his wish. At the foot of the letter from Gabon justifying its conduct

Pearson scrawled, “We should reject this excuse and, [sic] also suspend, if not break, diplomatic relations with this country.” In his diary Cadieux noted with satisfaction that, faced with such a

36 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 7 February 1968.

456 response, it would be difficult for Quebec to claim that its actions abroad had no repercussions on Canadian foreign policy.37

As Ottawa readied its protest, Cadieux acknowledged that, in this period of national uncertainty, the francophones in his department were undergoing “une crise psychologique et morale très pénible” as they wondered about their future should Quebec eventually secede. “Pour les vieux comme moi,” he observed, “l’option fondamentale a été faite”: “Nous ne retournerons pas au Québec. Nous aurons été vaincus. Nous ne serions pas acceptables très probablement.”

The situation for younger officers, however, was less clear-cut. Some of them, Cadieux noted, were leaving the DEA for the Quebec bureaucracy or for academia: “Ceux-là sont protégés. S’il

[y] a sécession, ils sont en place. Si le pays survit, ils savent qu’ils peuvent revenir à Ottawa où les bilingues seront accueillis à bras ouverts.” Then there were those who remained in the DEA but who were either genuinely confused about what position to take or hesitated to adopt a strong one for fear of being unwelcome in an independent Quebec. Finally, Cadieux added, there were those of his subordinates who played both sides: “Ils servent le Ministère tant bien que mal mais ils cultivent leurs amis du Québec. Au mieux ils se dissocient des politiques d’Ottawa. Au pire ils trahissent. Ils préviennent Québec de ce qui se prépare à Ottawa. Ils refilent nos secrets, nos projets, nos faiblesses.” So long as the federal administration was weak, lacking leadership, cohesion, and a majority government, Cadieux knew that the morale of his francophone troops would be adversely affected.38

What he ignored was his own influence on them. In the lexicon of the day, the under- secretary was a hawk on Quebec and France while his francophone officers were mostly doves.

Yet none opposed him, at least openly, for fear of getting caught in his talons. Nor would it have been wise since Cadieux controlled their fate, something he hinted at when he wrote, “Et gare à

37 LAC/DEA/10689/26-4-CME-1968/1 – Cadieux to London, 9 January [sic] 1968; LAC/10690/26-4-CME-1968/2 – Mary E. Macdonald to McGill, 9 February 1968; LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 13 February 1968. 38 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 17 February 1968.

457 ceux qui seront déçus, qui n’auront pas le poste, le grade qu’ils désirent mais qu’ils ne méritent pas toujours!”39 As Marc Baudouin, one of several francophones whom Cadieux made head of division in this period, recalled years later, it was almost as if his boss had been “at war” with

Quebec.40 In fact, he was at war, and while it was heart-breaking for him, he had no sympathy for those who opposed his approach. The threat to Canada was simply too great. It was no coincidence that his two most trusted collaborators in this period, Allan Gotlieb and Max Yalden, were anglophones. Cadieux’s fight also took its toll at home where his Québécoise wife, while fully supporting him, was fed up with a political atmosphere in Ottawa her husband termed

“sombre” and “empoisonnée.” As Cadieux remarked to Paul Tremblay, “La chose est différente pour moi, je suis dans l’arène, je reçois et je donne des coups tandis qu’Anita est plutôt spectatrice et doit se sentir à l’occasion bien frustrée.”41

Cadieux was a fighting diplomat, the likes of which the DEA had never seen and probably never would again. If anything, the Gabon affair made him only more combative. As he observed, since General de Gaulle, faithful to his military training, sought to sap Ottawa’s will to resist, it was important to strike back. “J’ai l’intention,” he resolved, “de faire en sorte que notre program ne soit pas simplement organisé autour d’une résistance en profondeur mais qu’il comporte aussi des possibilités de contre-attaque.” Just days after the Gabon conference, for example, he personally informed François Leduc of the federal plan to renegotiate the Canada-

France commercial agreement of 1933. While Cadieux recognized that, given the relatively small amount of trade between the two countries, this decision would not cause riots in French cities or do much to worry the Elysée, it was nevertheless a first step. As he added, “Certains groupes, l’industrie du champagne par exemple, vont avoir des raisons bien précises de regretter que le

Général ait entrepris de ‘libérer’ le Québec et l’Acadie.” Nor did Cadieux stop there. In an effort

39 Ibid. 40 Marc Baudouin, interview with the author, Ottawa, 12 October 2012. 41 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 19 February 1968.

458 to influence public opinion, he wanted to brief and furnish documentation to sympathetic journalists about Gaullist actions in Canada and in la Francophonie. Similarly, he looked for opportunities to invite to Canada French opposition leaders and anti-Gaullist journalists like

Jean-Jacques Servan Schreiber and J.R. Tournoux, the author of the best-selling La tragédie du général (1967). Realizing that if Quebec were to separate its fate would be an “aventure autoritaire et marxiste” inimical to the future of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada, Cadieux explored with the Apostolic Delegate of the Vatican in Ottawa the idea of asking the Canadian church to see if the French one could pressure de Gaulle, who after all was a devout Catholic. As well, Cadieux considered getting tougher with France in negotiations over the continental shelf off St. Pierre and Miquelon, the tiny French islands south of Newfoundland. Intrigued by unrest on Guadeloupe and Martinique in the French West Indies, he wondered if Canada could add to

France’s unease by establishing consulates there. Indeed, Cadieux ordered the Canadian embassy in Paris to send one of its members to the islands to see what trouble, if any, Canada could benefit from there. While finding this mission faintly ridiculous, the officer in question kept silent upon realizing that he was getting a “glorious” three-week vacation in the Caribbean.

Finally, Cadieux even asked that consideration be given to whether Canada had cause to take

France to the International Court of Justice.42 It must be said that Cadieux was under no illusion as to the success or even the practicality of the above measures. “Ni les Anglais, ni les

Américains, ni les Allemands n’ont trouvé le secret de contrôler mon Général,” he wrote. How could Canada succeed where other, more powerful countries had failed? Yet he insisted that

Ottawa at least consider trying.43 By this point, there was little to lose and much to gain.

The Gabon affair also strengthened Cadieux’s resolve to find out what French agents,

42 LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 18 January 1968; LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 19 February 1968; LAC/JL/1/11 – Cadieux to Léger, 11 March 1968; LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 14 March 1968; LAC/MC/8/15 – Journal intime, 26 December 1967. The anecdote about the Canadian embassy officer being sent to Guadeloupe and Martinique is based on a confidential interview with the author. 43 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 19 February 1968; LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 19 February 1968.

459 both official and unofficial, were up to in Canada, a concern of his since 1964. After de Gaulle’s cri du balcon, he had read in Le canard enchaîné, a French satirical magazine known for its investigative journalism, that France had sent to Canada “des barbou[z]es,” that is, undercover agents “chargé d’argent et qui ont dû se livrer à des besognes pas très catholiques.”44 While this may seem farfetched, consider the fact that in 1970 Jean-Daniel Jurgensen, a key Quebec lobby member and now associate political director at the Quai d’Orsay, would offer the separatist (and cash-strapped) Parti Québécois around $300,000, money an irate René Lévesque immediately

(and quite wisely) declined.45 If one of the most senior diplomats in France was to engage in this kind of activity, is it not conceivable that its secret service had as well? Cadieux thought so. With his usual logic, he made his case to the Royal Commission on Security in late February 1968:

He gave the Commissioners a variety of examples of improper political approaches from France to Quebec, and of French actions to undermine the authority of Ottawa in the eyes of the Quebec people. Since such influence and pressure was being exerted openly to achieve their disruptive ends, Mr. Cadieux thought it was very unlikely that efforts were not also being made on a covert level. However, he added that even though suspicions on this score appeared convincing to him, he did not have any firm or precise evidence of covert subversive operations being mounted by the French.46

This balanced statement impressed the commissioners, all of whom agreed that it would be

“miraculeux” if France were not engaged in Canada, as it was in other countries, in secret activities.47 The root of the problem in Cadieux’s view was that the federal government lacked a counter-intelligence service and thus was fighting “les yeux bandés” and “les oreilles bouchés.”48

A corollary of this weakness, though he did not say it, was that alleged French operations may have seemed more fearsome than they really were simply because so little was known about them. Cadieux lamented the lack of Canadian counter-intelligence in these years, later writing

44 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 19 February 1968. 45 Pierre Duchesne, Jacques Parizeau, vol. 1: Le Croisé 1930-1970 (Montreal: Éditions Québec Amérique, 2001), 599-602. Years later Jacques Parizeau recalled Lévesque’s exclaiming of the French, “Quelle bande d’emmerdeurs. Ils sont fous! Ils nous font courir un risque mortel!” 46 Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) request A-2013-00080 – “Royal Commission on Security: 138th Meeting of Commissioners Held on 27 February 1968 at 3:00 p.m. at 150 Kent Street, Ottawa,” 6 March 1968. 47 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 28 February 1968. 48 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 19 February 1968.

460 unabashedly of how he wished he could have tapped the phones of France’s embassy and consulates in Quebec, a practice he was convinced occurred to Canada’s detriment in hotel rooms in Paris, and had the French Consul General in Quebec City, who served improperly as a kind of ambassador to the province, followed. “Nous avons dû combattre les assauts de la France tout en étant privés des moyens qu’un service moderne d’intelligence aurait pu nous donner,”

Cadieux recalled bitterly.49

While Cadieux got tougher after the Gabon affair, the Pearson government, increasingly divided by the ongoing leadership race, got weaker. As Cadieux observed, Martin was absent from his job, Pearson was losing authority by the day, and the cabinet was splintering. “Je ne puis te dire à quel point nous sommes démoralisés ici par cette situation,” he wrote Tremblay, “et combien nous souhaitons que nous finissions par en sortir.”50 Federal decisions were slow in coming, when they came at all, but thanks in part to Cadieux’s persistence Canada suspended diplomatic relations with Gabon on 19 February and protested orally to France the next day. Yet the most important feature of Ottawa’s response, the public statement announcing and justifying its actions vis-à-vis Libreville, was delayed when the government, asleep at the switch, lost a parliamentary vote on a tax bill, an unexpected defeat that should have led to its fall. Rushing back from Jamaica, where he had been vacationing, Pearson persuaded opposition leader Robert

Stanfield who, fortunately for the Liberals, was not a ruthless politician, to grant him a twenty- four-hour adjournment. On 28 February, after more than a week of political wrangling over exactly what constituted a motion of non-confidence, the Pearson government survived a clear one in the House of Commons.

In the East Block Cadieux chafed at this new delay in Canada’s public response to the

Gabon affair. His frustration only increased when Jules Léger, having learned that a follow-up

49 LAC/MC/13/2 – Journal intime, 20 November 1970. 50 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 19 February 1968.

461 conference of francophone education ministers was planned for April in France, once again pleaded for restraint in telegrams Cadieux felt were becoming shrill, bordering on hysteria. As he told Tremblay, the position of the Canadian embassy in Paris – that Ottawa reach an agreement with Quebec and wait for de Gaulle to leave power – failed to take into account the essential fact that, since France fully supported the provincial government, Daniel Johnson was “maître de la situation.” Nor, as Cadieux trenchantly observed, did the premier’s maddening personality make things easier:

… il oscille sans cesse entre les deux positions que tu connais, fédéralisme et indépendantisme. Comme Duplessis, il est maître de l’équivoque. Il dit des choses en privé qu’il ne répète pas en public, il dit des choses à Toronto qu’il ne dit pas à Ottawa, il fait des choses le lundi et le mardi qu’il contredit le mercredi et le jeudi. Il ne répond pas aux lettres. Il prend des engagements verbaux en parlant au Premier [m]inistre mais laisse ses ministres poser des gestes, faire des déclarations, entreprendre des voyages qui sont en conflit avec ce qu’il nous dit.

While Léger felt that agreement with Quebec was simply a matter of federal goodwill, Cadieux knew that this would only be true if Ottawa were prepared to acquiesce in the province’s external sovereignty before the constitutional negotiations began. As for tolerating de Gaulle, the

Americans could afford to be patient since for them it was not a question “de vie ou de mort.”

But if Canada let France sign agreements with Quebec or let the province replace it at international conferences, the federal cause was lost. “D’autant plus,” Cadieux remarked, “que ces pas qu’effectue le Québec sont pris par la suite de l’encouragement d’un pays qui veut l’éclatement du nôtre avec la complicité de ministres et de fonctionnaires québécois qui sont, nous le savons, des séparatistes convaincus.” What Ottawa needed, Cadieux insisted, were leaders with more than “de l’eau bénite dans le ventre.” He had learned over the last two years that the most important thing was not to predict what would happen but rather to have political superiors with the courage and the means to be firm. As Cadieux saw it, federal interests would be more secure no matter who succeeded Pearson, about whose legacy he speculated: “L’histoire dira peut-être que M. Pearson a sauvé les meubles. Il a sacrifié toutes les dépendances et le

462 bâtiment principal est très sérieusement ébranlé. Si nous arrivons à rétablir les choses, peut-être que l’histoire dira de lui qu’il nous a assuré la chance de le faire. Si nous échouons, l’histoire dira sûrement qu’il a été trop faible et qu’il aurait dû avoir le courage de résister bien avant maintenant.”51

On 4 March 1968, almost a full month after the Gabon conference, Pearson publicly announced Ottawa’s suspension of relations with Libreville, mentioning the federal offer that would have seen Quebec head a Canadian delegation there. Criticizing this statement as

“inopportune and premature,” Johnson sought refuge in a technicality by claiming that neither he nor Cardinal had received an “official communication” from Ottawa of such an offer, prompting

Pearson to reply that the record would bear him out. “L’affaire du Gabon a éclaté comme une bombe,” observed Cadieux with satisfaction. “Il y a des rebondissements d’heure en heure,” he added, “et il est assez difficile de prévoir ou tout cela va finir.”52

The pace of events now quickened as Pearson’s bombshell became an issue among

Liberal leadership contenders and their allies. On 6 March Maurice Sauvé, the minister of forestry and rural development and the lone cabinet member backing Martin, phoned Cadieux to complain bitterly that he had not been consulted on the move and that the outgoing prime minister was only heeding the hard liners. What Sauvé did not know was that Cadieux, who along with Lalonde, Trudeau, Marchand and others considered him a gossip and soon would come to distrust his close friendship with Claude Morin, had tried to keep him in the dark about what was going on.53 That evening in Quebec City, in what Cadieux called a new “explosion,”

Trudeau, with Marchand at his side, declared to the press that if France acted like Gabon and excluded Ottawa from the forthcoming meeting of education ministers in Paris, Canada would

51 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 29 February 1968. 52 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 6 March 1968. 53 Ibid. That Lalonde, Trudeau, and Marchand shared Cadieux’s view of Sauvé is confirmed by Marc Lalonde, interview with the author, Montreal, 30 September 2013.

463 have to break off relations with Paris too. While Cadieux’s first reaction to the news was that

Trudeau had been rash, his second was that he had been courageous and logical and that his intervention might prove beneficial after all.54 In the short-term, however, it raised a question of ministerial solidarity, one Pearson answered the next day when he told the House of Commons that in these matters Canada made no distinction between countries by size. Yet days later in

Moncton, as Cadieux had feared he might, Martin declared that the Gabon affair had been overblown and that there could no question of breaking with France. While Martin understandably sought to differentiate himself from Trudeau’s aggressive position, he was also distancing himself from the government and thus weakening its stance. Pearson was indignant.

When Martin returned to Ottawa, the prime minister made him promise that if a question were asked in the House of Commons on the subject, he would toe the party line. To Cadieux’s regret, the question never came.55

Fearing Martin might sacrifice Ottawa’s policy to fight Trudeau, and suspecting the

“influence néfaste de M. Sauvé,” who favoured concessions, Cadieux stressed to his minister that firmness was working. For one, Johnson was resisting an invitation from de Gaulle to visit Paris.

The premier was also on record as having said that he was open to discussing the issue of delegations to international conferences. While Johnson’s attitude on negotiating international agreements in areas of provincial jurisdiction was less helpful, there was already an accord cadre with France, one its diplomats had recently agreed with the DEA they could not act outside, and

Belgium and Switzerland would not deal with Quebec behind Ottawa’s back. As Cadieux reminded Martin, other francophone countries could do little to help the province. This was especially true since in the aid field Canada enjoyed “considerable leverage” thanks to its growing programs, to its missions in recipient countries, and to Lionel Chevrier, the former

54 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 7 March 1968. 55 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 10 March 1968; LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 14 March 1968; NARA/RG59/1967-1969/1949/POL CAN-GABON – Walt Butterworth to Secretary of State, 18 March 1968.

464 federal cabinet minister and current High Commissioner to the United Kingdom who was touring

French-speaking Africa and offering both millions of dollars in development assistance and federal constitutional advice.56 Making similar points to Tremblay, Cadieux wrote that Ottawa was gaining ground. Everything depended on whether Johnson would negotiate. The uncertainty meanwhile was almost unbearable: “En attendant, mon Dieu que de tracas, que de nuits blanches. Pas de Ministre. Un P.M. qui est moribond et qui branle. Et un Cabinet en mille morceaux.”57

In fairness, Pearson was sometimes stronger than Cadieux let on. When they met at 24

Sussex Drive in mid-March, for example, the prime minister expressed the view that the federal response to Gabon was paying off. Indeed, he had just asked the DEA to prepare a White Paper on the whole affair, a piece he now told Cadieux was magnificent and would be brought before cabinet. In a vivid aside, Cadieux informed Pearson how the document’s introductory argument, that while Canadian foreign policy was indivisible it could reflect the interests of all Canadians, had come to him: “Je lui ai expliqué que le raisonnement essentiel m’était venu à l’esprit dans la nuit de vendredi à samedi, entre 4 et 5 heures à la grande indignation de mon épouse qui n’aimait pas beaucoup qu’on la réveille au milieu de la nuit pour lui crier ‘eurêka.’”58

In advance of the cabinet discussion on the new White Paper, Cadieux tried to strengthen

Martin’s resolve. First, all the “soft” approach of the last few years had done, Cadieux argued, was to whet the appetite of Quebec for more concessions. Second, this was now a problem since, in the field of external affairs, there was no room left for Ottawa to compromise. Third, Quebec leaders had often been treated in the past as “representatives of a sovereign unit, speaking exclusively for a whole nation,” a dangerous approach that had made federal leaders seem like outsiders. Finally, using his most persuasive argument, Cadieux stressed that there was currently

56 LAC/MC/8/14 – Cadieux to Martin, 11 March 1968. 57 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 11 March 1968. 58 LAC/MC/8/14 – Journal intime, 12 March 1968.

465 no anti-nationalist voice in Quebec. The two main provincial parties were locked in a struggle for the nationalist swing vote and thus were not being “rational or objective.” Business was largely controlled by anglophones and thus “suspect.” The Church was “divided” and mired in a “deep crisis” and therefore could not play “its traditional moderating role.” Nor were academics, “too obsessed with nationalism,” of any help. The result, Cadieux felt, was that unless Ottawa intervened and pleaded with Quebeckers, the province would “yield to its demons” and eventually “accept the irreparable.” As he warned Martin, “There will be a gradual escalation which nobody except the separatists really wants and, it seems to me, nobody but the federalists can avert.” These were cogent arguments, but when the memo that contained them was returned to Cadieux with the comment that Martin thought the whole affair should be “played down” and

“the less said about it the better,” the under-secretary became angry. Cheekily, he scribbled this note on it: “From what standpoint? I do not agree. But then I am not a candidate.”59 He was even more caustic when he learned that cabinet, whose weaker members he amusingly called “des bananes mures” and “des poires molles,” had deferred its decision on the White Paper: “Bande de c...... Pendant ce temps-là, à Québec, tu crois qu’on se gêne!”60

As Canada headed towards a new confrontation with Quebec and France over the conference of education ministers scheduled for April in Paris, Cadieux had no patience for weakness, much less dishonesty. A case in point was the news in mid-March that Martin had declared at a press conference in Montreal that Canada’s difficulties with Gabon would be settled soon and that he would be having talks on this subject in Ottawa with someone from the African country.61 While this falsehood can be chalked up to the tight leadership race Martin was in with

Trudeau, Cadieux recognized that his “petite politique” carried the big risk that neither the

Africans, nor the French, nor the Quebeckers would take seriously the federal response to the

59 McGill and Cadieux marginal notes on LAC/MC/8/14 – Cadieux to Martin, 13 March 1968. 60 LAC/PT/413 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 14 March 1968. 61 Lewis Seale, “Settlement on Gabon expected by Martin,” The Globe and Mail, 18 March 1968.

466

Gabon affair and thus that the incident would repeat itself in Paris. Seated at a desk in front of

Martin in the House of Commons for the debate on the DEA’s estimates, Cadieux could not resist sending him a note asking who from Gabon was coming to Ottawa and why, adding that he was deeply concerned about the effect of his statements. Martin replied that he had no plans to speak to anyone. In other words, he had simply fabricated a Gabonese emissary and the idea of resuming diplomatic relations. The minister also made clear to his deputy that what happened after 6 April 1968, the date set for the Liberal leadership vote, mattered much less to him than what transpired before it. “En d’autres termes,” Cadieux wrote, “me faire élire d’abord, après que le déluge vienne, on verra toujours.”62 While there was nothing wrong with Martin’s chasing the prize that had eluded him in the past, that he was willing to undermine vital federal policy in his quest to secure it was disturbing. Indeed, when Cadieux learned from a PCO official that Martin had told cabinet that no conference was planned for Paris and thus that there was thus no point in pursuing the Gabon affair, he was “bouleversé”: “Apparemment cet homme n’hésite pas à mentir effrontément même à ses collègues du Cabinet. Pour arriver à ses fins, il semble n’avoir aucun scrupule quant aux moyens à s’employer.”63 Cadieux’s words serve as a reminder that

Martin’s games as minister in these years sometimes went far beyond those that any ambitious politician might play. In a revealing aside, the U.S. embassy reported that it was “small wonder” that even among his own officials Martin was “nobody’s candidate.”64

As their minister pretended that there was no conference of education ministers planned for Paris, Cadieux and the DEA laboured throughout March to prevent a repeat there of the

Libreville incident. Early in the month, for example, Pearson sent Johnson a new letter reiterating the federal offer that Quebec, and occasionally provinces with large French-speaking minorities, could chair Canadian delegations to meetings of francophone education ministers.

62 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 19 March 1968. 63 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 21 March 1968. 64 NARA/RG59/1967-1969/1949/POL CAN-GABON – Butterworth to Secretary of State, 18 March 1968.

467

Once again, there was no reply. As Cadieux observed, the situation with the premier was “au point mort,” since Johnson was waiting to see whom in Ottawa he would be dealing with after 6

April. “Je prends pour acquis,” Cadieux rightly assumed, “qu’il va vouloir recommencer le coup de Libreville.”

Since Quebec refused to budge, neither would France, arguing instead that the issue was a Canadian one best solved in Canada. What Paris was really saying, Cadieux noted, was that it supported Quebec and that Ottawa should reach an agreement on provincial terms. “C’est une violation de toutes les règles de conduite acceptées par les pays civilisés,” he added.65 Cadieux found it significant that every time he met Pierre Carraud and other French diplomats, they made rather forced jokes about what Canada planned to do with their embassy when they vacated it and which foreign country would serve as the protecting power, hints that Ottawa and Paris were approaching a point of no return.66

As for the Africans, Cadieux came up with the idea of Canadian ambassadors calling in

Pearson’s name on the presidents of Cameroun, Ivory Coast, and Senegal, key leaders in French- speaking Africa who had influence on France, to stress Canada’s rapidly growing aid to their countries and to request that they try to dissuade the French from seating Quebec at the conference table in Paris. The “manoeuvre africaine,” as Cadieux called it, was admittedly bold, so much so that Pearson refused to authorize it. Indeed, not wanting to commit his successor to anything, he even refrained from signing an amended telegram instructing ambassadors to re- state the usual federal position on la Francophonie, preferring that Martin send it instead.

Reminding Pearson that Martin had long ceased to take an interest in the DEA or any responsibility in delicate matters, Cadieux received permission to sign off on the telegram himself. He knew, however, that Canada could not spark an African revolt against de Gaulle. All

65 LAC/JL/1/11 – Cadieux to Léger, 28 March 1968. 66 LAC/DEA/10046/20-1-2-FR/13 – Cadieux to Halstead, 27 March 1968.

468 it could hope to do was to increase the costs for “mon Général” by showing French-speaking

Africa that he was violating its newly-won independence and using la Francophonie for rather shady ends.67

By late March, no further ahead in preventing what increasingly seemed like the inevitable, Cadieux felt discouraged: “Cette confrontation avec Québec et la France nous est imposée à un moment où nous sommes divisés et faibles. … Il faut peut-être voir dans notre faiblesse une des causes plutôt que les conséquences de cette douloureuse situation.

J’appréhende les semaines qui vont suivre. Nous sommes à jouer une partie décisive et les cartes dont nous disposons sont malheureusement d’une qualité plutôt douteuse.”68 Playing the last good card it had left, Ottawa asked New Brunswick and Ontario, two provinces with sizable

French-speaking populations, to approach Quebec about attending meetings of francophone education ministers. The move was a clever ploy designed to subsume what would have been three provincial delegations at an international conference within one national delegation. “Il y a du bon,” Cadieux wrote upon learning Premier Robichaud had told Pearson that France could be informed of New Brunswick’s wish to be present in Paris and that he would personally write to

Johnson about his decision.69 Next, Carl Goldenberg, an Anglo-Montrealer serving as special federal counsel on the constitution, travelled to Toronto to speak to Premier Robarts, who while concerned that his approach to Johnson might be construed as ganging up, nevertheless indicated that he would “probably” phone him. Before he did, however, he rang up Pearson who, sensing his unease and urged on by a concerned Gerry Stoner, Acting Clerk of the Privy Council, quickly assured Robarts that “he was not being asked to do “anything.”70 Cadieux was aghast. He knew

67 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 14 March 1968; LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 25 March 1968; LAC/JL/1/11 – Cadieux to Léger, 28 March 1968. For the original telegram Cadieux wanted Pearson to send to Cameroun, Ivory Coast, and Senegal see LAC/JL/1/11 – Cadieux to Léger, undated [circa 22 March 1968]. 68 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 25 March 1968. 69 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 30 March 1968. 70 LAC/DEA/10690/26-4-CME-1968/4 – Allan E. Gotlieb (for Cadieux) to Pearson, 2 April 1968; LAC/DEA/10690/26-4-CME/4 – Macdonald to Cadieux, 3 April 1968 [emphasis in the original].

469 that Stoner was an Ontarian who was not enthusiastic about bilingualism, but his “petits scrupules” about Robarts’ problems paled in comparison to what was at stake. As Cadieux scathingly wrote in his diary, “Je m’étonne toujours de l’inconscience, de l’aveuglement de certains de mes compatriotes de langue anglaise qui veulent bien assurer la survivance du pays mais qui semblent incapables d’en concevoir et d’en vouloir les moyens.”71 Nor, in a letter to

Tremblay, did he forgive Pearson:

Comme tu vois, la tragédie reste la même. Tu te décarcasses pour inventer des manœuvres. Tu imagines cette chose farfelue qui consiste à demander aux premiers ministres des provinces s’ils veulent bien appuyer la politique du Gouvernement fédéral. Or, il arrive qu’un [P]remier ministre, grâce à nous, finit par s’adresser au Premier [m]inistre du Canada pour lui demander ce qu’il en pense. Le Premier [m]inistre du Canada ne trouve rien de mieux que de l’encourager à ne rien faire. Comme disait M. Pearson dans son discours à la Jamaïque “c’est à faire pleurer les anges.”72

It was one of the last times Cadieux would have cause to complain about what he saw as the weakness of Pearson as prime minister. This was because, as he wrote the above lines, the federal Liberal leadership convention was underway.

As a boisterous and sweltering crowd of ten thousand, including about 2,350 voting delegates, packed the Ottawa Civic Centre on the final day of the convention, the atmosphere was electric, the suspense palpable. For the countless other Canadians watching at home in the novel medium of colour television, boom microphones and television cameras served up an auditory and visual feast as candidates nervously awaited the result of the first ballot amidst a sea of supporters and placards. The initial tally certainly provided drama: shockingly, Martin had finished tied for fourth with John Turner (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs) with 277 votes, behind Trudeau with 752, Paul Hellyer (Minister of Transport) with 330, and Robert

Winters (Minister of Trade and Commerce) with 293. With no chance of winning, Martin gracefully withdrew from the race, a disappointing but dignified end to his decades-long quest.

71 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 4 April 1968. 72 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 5 April 1968.

470

The event went three more ballots before the final result was announced: Trudeau with 1,203 votes, Winters with 954, and Turner with 195. The crowd roared. In the much quieter confines of a comfortable house at 2047 Chalmers Road, just a five-minute drive from the Ottawa Civic

Centre, there was rejoicing too. As they watched on television their preferred candidate mobbed as he struggled to make his way towards the podium, Cadieux and Max Yalden toasted a new era in Canadian politics with wine.73

The transition from the old to the new, of course, would take time. Over the next few days, Cadieux had several conversations with Martin, who confided in him that he was starting to feel tired and somewhat discouraged. He blamed his defeat at the leadership convention on the television media, which had intervened overwhelmingly for Trudeau against him. He was also critical of Pearson. Repeatedly, Cadieux wrote, Martin stressed “l’hostilité et l’incompréhension de M. et Mme Pearson à l’endroit de tout ce qui est canadien-français et catholique,” showing particular bitterness towards Maryon Pearson, whom he considered “la plus fanatique des deux et comme ayant eu une influence nocive sur son mari.” On that issue, Cadieux felt much the same way. While Martin informed him that he would not run in the next election, he wished to keep his portfolio until then.74 In fact, he wanted to go to Paris to speak to his “ami” Couve de

Murville, a manoeuvre Cadieux felt would fail unless Ottawa had something concrete, such as an agreement with Quebec, to offer de Gaulle. “Dans tout ceci, je crois que M. Martin joue son jeu habituel,” wrote Cadieux, who suspected his minister was using him and the influence he believed he had upon Marc Lalonde, Trudeau’s right-hand man, as well as his alleged friendship with Couve de Murville, to show the incoming prime minister his usefulness in External

Affairs.75 Instead, Trudeau offered him Justice, which Martin rejected, and then Leader of the

73 Yalden recalled Cadieux’s mood years later: “He was ecstatic. No doubt about it. He was excited. We were knocking back the wine.” Max Yalden, interview with the author, Ottawa, 30 October 2012. 74 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 8 April 1968. 75 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 9 April 1968.

471

Government in the Senate, which he accepted. As Cadieux knew, Trudeau wanted to project a new image in foreign affairs; moreover, Martin’s style was incompatible with Trudeau’s frank one. “J’ai passé des heures désagréables hier à tenter de persuader M. Martin que l’heure n’est plus aux compromis avec Québec,” wrote Cadieux. As he added, “Le moment est arrivé, maintenant que le fédéralisme a plus de force, de la défendre pendant qu’il en est encore temps.”76

Cadieux was right, but for the time being Ottawa remained at a disadvantage vis-à-vis

Quebec. Finally answering one of Pearson’s letters, and knowing he had France’s full support,

Johnson took the line that the conference of education ministers set for Paris from 22 to 26 April was simply the second session of the meeting that had begun in Gabon and thus that it was perfectly normal and logical for Quebec to participate. While Cadieux hoped that Pearson and

Trudeau could meet in person with Johnson to dissuade him, this plan fell through when the premier, in ill health and needing rest, escaped to the Bahamas for a short vacation. In mid-April

Lalonde and Jules Léger, who had been recalled from Paris for consultations, met in Montreal with Marcel Faribault, Johnson’s constitutional adviser and an avowed proponent of the two- nation thesis, in an attempt to secure Quebec’s agreement to a public statement that Jean-Guy

Cardinal would attend the conference in a personal capacity. As Cadieux noted, Faribault had been rather conciliatory, that is, until matters had gotten down to brass tacks.77

Subsequently summoned to Trudeau’s office, Cadieux learned that the prime minister- designate, Marchand, and Lalonde intended to wage “une guerre fantasmorique [sic]” against

Johnson and thus the DEA was to revise its still-unpublished second White Paper by making of it

“un document fracassant.” Needless to say, Léger was very unhappy about what all this portended for relations with France, but Cadieux told him not to worry since the Trudeau

76 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 10 April 1968. 77 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 2 May 1968; LAC/10690/26-4-CME-1968/4 – Gotlieb (for Léger) to Pearson, 18 April 1968.

472 government, made up of the same men who had been in Pearson’s, including several notoriously indecisive ministers, would not follow through. As Cadieux later colourfully explained to

Tremblay, his prediction was borne out:

Nous avons passé l’avant midi à expliquer à un groupe de Ministres divisés, ignorants et apeurés, que depuis trois ans la poule mouillé[e] fédérale perd toutes ses plumes une à une et qu’on commence un peu malencontreusement à voir son derrière. Tu vois un peu le truc. Les Ministres veulent bien se battre mais à condition qu’ils ne reçoivent pas de coups. Ils veulent bien un papier qui soit dur mais qui ne provoque personne. En somme, il s’agit d’aller à droite, à gauche en même temps, de faire et de ne pas faire quelque chose.78

In the meantime, Ottawa sent Léger back to Paris with a relatively mild note verbale for the

French, who had refrained from playing up Quebec’s presence at the recent conference of education ministers. As for the White Paper, it was decided that it would be used to inform

Canadians of the federal position without provoking France, which could always sign a treaty with Quebec or even move to recognize it as a sovereign state, though when Trudeau read the most recent version in early May he was annoyed not to find in it all the previous blows that had been aimed at the French. “Encore une fois,” Cadieux wrote, “on veut un document qui attaque et qui n’attaque pas la France.” As he added with exasperation, “C’est à n’y rien comprendre.” In his view, the constant delays were undermining Ottawa’s authority: “Je suis à peu près certain qu’avec toutes ces manœuvres nous allons finir encore une fois par ne rien faire et encourager les

Français et M. Johnson dans leur conviction qu’ils peuvent nous faire n’importe quoi et que nous sommes incapables de réagir.” What infuriated Cadieux even more was that, with Sauvé in the federal cabinet, Quebec and France knew exactly why there was no federal reaction. “Il y a aussi de maudissant dans cette histoire,” he bitterly complained to Tremblay, “que nous sommes accusés par une moitié du Cabinet d’être des anti-Français, des fanatiques, de manquer de

78 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 2 May 1968.

473 souplesse, de vouloir démolir la baraque.”79 Clearly, the change of prime minister from Pearson to Trudeau had not yet produced the desired results.

Yet several days later, much to Cadieux’s relief, Ottawa published Federalism and

International Conferences of Education. He was pleased with the achievement, noting that the federal government had managed to make its case to the country without engaging in a noisy fight with France, a reminder that however tough Cadieux was, he remained a diplomat at heart.80 He also observed that this second White Paper had been much better received throughout

Canada than the first, a possible explanation being that Ottawa’s suspension of relations with

Gabon had heightened, as Cadieux had hoped, public awareness of the gravity of Quebec’s actions abroad. Only in his home province, whose French-language press he deplored for its lack of good sense, was the White Paper less welcome. In particular, Le Devoir and its editor

Claude Ryan, who had been spotted at the Liberal leadership convention reacting with rage when

Trudeau’s vote count had been read out, were becoming increasingly hostile towards the DEA.

As Cadieux trenchantly observed, “Ils s’accrochent désespérément à l’idée de deux nations, une idée folle qui ruinerait le pays.”81

The stakes in the battle against Quebec nationalism were higher than ever in the spring of

1968. One day after being sworn in as the fifteenth prime minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau called a snap election for 25 June. In response, Johnson mobilized his electoral machine against the federal Liberal Party in Quebec and released Faribault, who the year before had persuaded the Progressive Conservative Party to accept that the country was “two nations,” to run as Robert

Stanfield’s lieutenant in the province. The Tories clearly hoped for a breakthrough there akin to the fifty seats they had won, with major help from the Union Nationale, in the 1958 election.

Early campaign statements by Stanfield on the provincial role abroad annoyed Cadieux, who

79 Ibid. 80 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 16 May 1968. 81 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 13 May 1968.

474 noted that while they tried to please both sides, they were highly contradictory. The Tory leader did not seem to understand, he observed, that unless the classic procedure governing international conferences were followed, any country could invite any province to any conference with the result that the Canadian presence there would not be decided in Canada but outside of it. What Cadieux interpreted as Stanfield’s ignorance and incomprehension of international law prompted this outburst:

Au début, je croyais que M. Stanfield était un homme intelligent mais prudent et qu’il parlait avec la lenteur typique d’un politicien anglo-saxon astucieux. De plus en plus, je viens à la conclusion que ce M. Stanfield parle peu et lentement parce qu’il a peu d’idées et qu’il a du mal à les exprimer. Dans le cas particulier qui nous préoccupe, il faut dire qu’il s’exprime avec la lenteur, la bêtise, les incertitudes et les contradictions d’un sombre imbécile.82

These lines were overly critical of Stanfield, whose reticence should not have been mistaken for stupidity, but they captured, as his vehemently written diary so often did, something about

Cadieux himself: in this case how invested he was in the election. Although he was too professional a civil servant to reveal, even in his private journal, for whom he was voting, he strongly preferred the centralized federalism championed by Trudeau over Stanfield’s ambiguous one. If Canadian federalism were to survive it needed to be reinvigorated, something Cadieux stressed by contrasting the Pearson approach of doing nothing and buying time with Trudeau’s openly raising the question and offering a clear and constructive alternative. As Cadieux opined,

“Cette ligne de conduite me semble préférable à l’autre parce que à mon avis elle nous amène à choisir entre la certitude d’une défaite qui sort inéluctablement d’une politique de passivité et courir le risque d’obtenir un mandat du Québec et voir la position fédérale considérablement renforcée.” The key question was whether Trudeau would win such a mandate. “Pour la première fois de ma vie,” Cadieux confessed to Tremblay, “je vois venir ces élections avec de grands espoirs mais aussi des craintes sérieuses au sujet de ce qui pourrait survenir en cas d’insuccès.”

82 Ibid.

475

In a rhetorical flourish he added, “Quel est l’imbécile qui a eu l’idée de soutenir que les fonctionnaires ne font pas de politique.”83 Cadieux had done everything he could to fight Quebec nationalism behind the scenes. It was now up to Trudeau to do so publicly.

In May 1968 Cadieux not only watched the unfolding Canadian election campaign but also France, where student demonstrations at the Sorbonne and in the Latin Quarter of Paris had sparked what would become a month of volatile civil unrest. Students occupied universities, workers seized control of factories, and a general strike paralyzed the country. France seemed on the brink of revolution. De Gaulle had focused on grandeur abroad to the neglect of the most urgent needs of his citizens. Events in France of course had potential consequences for Canada.

“Je ne souhaite pas de mal à la France mais si de Gaulle tombait notre affaire serait singulièrement simplifiée,” Cadieux remarked in his diary.84 “Les nouvelles de France continuent d’être sensationnelles,” he wrote twelve days later, on 29 May. Amidst widespread rumours of his imminent resignation, de Gaulle had left the Elysée, apparently for Colombey-les-

Deux-Églises, his country home and refuge from 1946 to 1956. An excited Cadieux believed that

Johnson was about to lose his main ally abroad: “Finies petites visites à l’Elysée. Finies les correspondances avec le Président de la France par l’intermédiaire de la Délégation du Québec.

Surtout finies les invitations aux conférences internationales avec l’appui des pays africains satellisés.”85 He was wrong. Instead of going straight to Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, de Gaulle briefly disappeared, leaving France for Baden-Baden, the headquarters of the French army in

Germany. His motives for doing so are still debated, but one thing is clear: when de Gaulle returned to Paris the next day, he was a changed man. In an impassioned speech, he refused to step down and instead dissolved the National Assembly for elections, warning that if law and order were not soon restored he would use other means at his disposal to save France from the

83 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 16 May 1968. 84 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 17 May 1968. 85 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 29 May 1968.

476 threat of communist dictatorship. The ploy worked. The events of May 1968 fizzled out in June and the aptly-named Union pour la défense de la République, a right-wing Gaullist coalition, won a smashing victory in the elections.

The Gaullists were not the only ones to win a resounding electoral victory in June 1968.

The Canadian election campaign, which has been described as a “coronation” rather than a

“contest,” was dominated by one man and his remarkable personality: Pierre Trudeau.86 Much of his appeal in English Canada came from his tough stand on Quebec. He was certainly not going to be intimidated on home soil. In Montreal to attend the St. Jean Baptiste day parade on the eve of the election, Trudeau defiantly remained seated while other dignitaries rushed for cover as separatists threw rocks and bottles at the reviewing stand and chanted “Tru-deau au po-teau!”

(“Trudeau to the gallows!”) The result of the vote the next day was definitive: for the first time in a decade, Canadians had elected a majority government.

Cadieux was thrilled. Despite “certains moments de pessimisme noir,” he had remained optimistic about Canada’s future. His hopes now seemed vindicated. In a lengthy letter to

Tremblay two days after the election, he could hardly contain himself: “Ici le Gouvernement, comme tu le sais, a remporté une victoire fantastique. Les provincialistes sont les dindons de la farce. Non seulement Marcel Faribault a été battu à plates coutures mais tous les tenants du statu[t] spécial et en particulier les avocats des activités gouvernementales provinciales à l’étranger ont été reculés.” He was right. The Liberals had held strong in Quebec at fifty-six seats, and increased their share of the popular vote from forty-six percent to fifty-four, a notable achievement given Trudeau’s strong opposition to special status. While Cadieux conceded that

Trudeau’s mandate was not specific, as Ryan was already arguing in Le Devoir, and that

86 Andrew Cohen and J.L. Granatstein, eds., Trudeau’s Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1999), 1.

477 nationalist aspirations were not quenched, he told Tremblay that “un air nouveau” was circulating in Quebec:

J’ai le sentiment, quoique je ne puisse pas démontrer ceci en détail, que la majorité des Canadiens Français qui n’est pas séparatiste accepte l’idée que si on ne leur fait pas d’injustice dans le reste du pays, que si dans la mesure de ce qui est possible et raisonnable on tient compte de leurs intérêts et de leurs aspirations dans la politique nationale, il serait idiot, il serait catastrophique pour eux de renoncer à la vie plus large qui peut être la leur dans le Canada de demain. Après tout, quand on regarde ce qui se passe ailleurs [dans le monde], … on s’aperçoit que les Canadiens Français, comme les autres Canadiens ont un pays extraordinaire, un pays d’avenir, un pays de liberté. En refusant la gageure canadienne, les Canadiens Français sentent confusément qu’ils se livreraient à leurs pires démons et qu’ils se condamneraient à vivre dans une réserve, en dessous d’eux-mêmes. Trudeau les invite à se préoccuper des grands problèmes nationaux et internationaux; assurer les droits individuels y compris les droits culturels, éliminer les disparités économiques régionales, moderniser notre économie, refaire notre Constitution, améliorer notre gouvernement, aider les pays moins favorisés. Voilà autant de préoccupations qui sont à la hauteur de l’homme et qui je le crois sincèrement vont intéresser les Canadiens Français de la jeune génération.

This passage captured Cadieux’s lifelong conviction that being both a Quebecker and a Canadian offered a far richer and more promising future than being only a Quebecker. His hope was always that his compatriots would resist the urge to turn inwards and instead embrace the truly national experience that awaited them in Canada.

Another sign of what was in the air, Cadieux remarked to Tremblay, was that in his view the provincial Liberals were realizing that the policies of Gérin-Lajoie would keep them perpetually in the opposition. Indeed, Pierre Laporte had recently taken the initiative of criticizing the excesses of nationalism. Since Johnson, now more than ever, did not speak exclusively for French Canadians, Cadieux felt that the opposition would not focus on the additional powers the premier sought from Ottawa but rather on those he already had but was not putting to good use. In this vein, Cadieux had found rather eloquent this comment, by the disgruntled president of the provincial association of farmers, about Johnson’s attitude: “Un coq au Gabon, une poule mouillée au Québec.” As Cadieux joked to Tremblay, “Le thème est rentable!” Beneath his humour, however, lay an important point: Quebeckers had never shared their government’s enthusiasm for an international presence, remaining more concerned with the

478 bread-and-butter issues that affected their daily lives. As Cadieux sensed, Quebec’s international adventures were beginning to pall in a province whose economic and financial situation was worsening. In this sense, there was an interesting parallel between de Gaulle and Johnson: both had bet on prestige abroad and both had ignored glaring problems at home. While Cadieux was disappointed that “ce vieux bandit” had once again managed to cling to power, he took solace in the fact that de Gaulle’s domestic troubles were already mitigating his policy of grandeur.

Trudeau’s election win re-energized Cadieux. As he informed Tremblay, he planned to find ways of drawing international attention to the fact that Canada was now led by a francophone prime minister. It would be impossible for de Gaulle and Johnson to dismiss the federal government as anglophone. French power had arrived in Ottawa with a vengeance. While

Cadieux’s own arrival in the nation’s capital had preceded it by a quarter century, its coming was no less sweet. Moreover, whether it was development assistance, the recruitment of bilingual officers, the opening of new missions, or initiatives in la Francophonie, among other measures, he and the DEA had no intention of resting on their laurels. As Cadieux told Tremblay, “Nous allons poursuivre et développer notre action de façon à ne jamais fournir un prétexte aux technocrates du Québec de se substituer au Gouvernement canadien parce que celui-ci est inadéquat ou inexistant à l’endroit des Canadiens français.” All the elements were in place.

“Nous n’avons qu’à poursuivre et à augmenter le volume et le rythme des opérations,” he wrote.

Though Cadieux did not say it, both he and his nationalist foes knew that the financial means at the disposal of the federal government in this area would always be far greater than those available to provincial ones. In a revealing and eloquent passage, Cadieux ended his letter to

Tremblay in this way: “Même comme Canadien Français, j’ai le sentiment que les nôtres sont en voie d’échapper à un péril qui aurait été pour eux calamiteux. Leur avenir culturel, leur prospérité matérielle et leur liberté politique sont mieux assurés dans un Canada qui sera peut-

479

être toujours imparfait mais qui est en train de devenir valable plutôt que dans un Québec séparé et idéalisé.” For Cadieux, what the historian Susan Mann Trofimenkoff has called “the dream of nation” was always Canada, not Quebec. While he did not know what the future held for him, his feelings in the radiant aftermath of the June 1968 election were unmistakable:

Nous repartons, raffermis dans nos convictions, d’un pied allègre, vers des objectifs qui nous apparaissent de plus en plus clairement et de plus en plus réalisables. Je ne sais pas s’il me sera donné de poursuivre longtemps ici les tâches déjà commencées mais que je parte maintenant ou plus tard, je partirai avec le sentiment d’avoir évité le pire et ménagé aux nôtres des lendemains supérieurs à ceux que peut offrir aucun autre pays.87

Whether Cadieux sensed it or not, he had reached the high point of his involvement in the

Canada-Quebec-France triangle. His final year-and-a-half as under-secretary would not be the culmination of his efforts to defend national unity, but rather frustratingly anti-climactic.

III – On the Periphery

It is one of the ironies of Marcel Cadieux’s career that the June 1968 election that so strengthened the federal government also reduced his hitherto crucial role in the struggle against nationalist Quebec and Gaullist France. The change was not immediate. As a key member of a committee of senior officials tasked with advising the government on constitutional reform,

Cadieux was well placed to oversee Ottawa’s position on provincial involvement in foreign affairs. Still, his importance in the day-to-day fight against Quebec was decreasing. The first reason for this, as Cadieux recognized several months into the life of the new government, was

Trudeau himself:

Pour ce qui est des questions canadien[ne]s françaises il est bien clair que mon rôle devient beaucoup moins important lorsque le Premier [m]inistre est un Québécois comme moi. Tandis que M. Pearson et M. Martin et M. Robertson, qui ne connaissaient pas grand choses des Canadiens-Français, s’en remettaient bien souvent à mes avis au sujet de ces questions, le Premier [m]inistre n’éprouve pas le même besoin. Il prend conseil de lui-même et prend ses propres décisions.88

Of course, Trudeau was not just any prime minister from Quebec – he was also an

87 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 27 June 1968. 88 LAC/MC/4/9 – Journal intime, 5 December 1968.

480 uncompromising federalist and a dominant personality, so he needed Cadieux even less. While the latter could take comfort in the fact that the tough approach towards Quebec and France that he had long urged on Martin and Pearson had finally been accepted by Trudeau, he was ironically less influential now than he had been before.

The second reason for Cadieux’s reduced importance was that, with the advent of the

Trudeau government, he had much less time to devote to Quebec and France. As we shall see, his chief concern became shepherding the DEA through a difficult transition, including a new governmental system, a series of defence and foreign policy reviews, and a heart-wrenching cut to its budget. It is no coincidence that when in 1980 Cadieux wrote an unpublished history of the

Canada-Quebec-France triangle in these years, the narrative ended in 1968. Similarly, whereas about seventy-five percent of his diary entries on Quebec and France as under-secretary were recorded in the tense period from January 1967 to June 1968, only fifteen percent of the total was written between July 1968 and January 1970. Indeed, it is highly revealing that Cadieux gave little attention in his diary to the conference of francophone education ministers held in the

Congo (Kinshasa) in January 1969 and almost none to the conference that met in Niger in

February 1969 to study institutionalizing la Francophonie. Both meetings marked an improvement in Ottawa’s position vis-à-vis Quebec. Unlike the meetings in Libreville and Paris, the federal government received an invitation to Kinshasa and Niamey and, after difficult negotiations with Quebec, agreed on a pan-Canadian delegation that included separate and duly identified sections from Ontario, New Brunswick, and Quebec, which was allowed to speak for itself on matters of provincial jurisdiction. At Niamey the Canadian delegation was headed for the first time by a federal chairman, Gérard Pelletier, the Secretary of State. But what did

Cadieux think of the arrangements for the conferences in Kinshasa and Niamey? One of the few clear indications we have is a brief comment in his diary that Ottawa had managed to “sauver

481 l’essentiel” in its negotiations with Quebec.89 In short, while Cadieux was still engaged in the struggle with the province, he was no longer its dominant federal force.

Later Cadieux put some of the blame on Claude Morin for this state of affairs. As he wrote in 1973, “Sans aucun doute, Morin m’a fait tout le mal possible auprès de l’équipe

Trudeau: à la fin, il feignait de ne pouvoir pas négocier avec moi.”90 This was no surprise. As

Cadieux knew at the time, he was Morin’s “bête noire”: “Il m’en veut à mort parce que jusqu’à maintenant j’ai réussi à bloquer la plupart de ses initiatives.”91 What is surprising, however, is that some in Ottawa fell into Morin’s trap. After all, by mid-1968 he was viewed with great suspicion in federal circles. For instance, a DEA official returned from Quebec that summer with the news that former francophone members of the department who were nationalists and now in

Morin’s employ saw that he was going much further than provincial interests required and that, using the two-nations theory as a cover, he was really, in Cadieux’s words, a fanatical separatist and radical.92 A month later Cadieux learned that Eric Kierans, who had been a minister under

Lesage and who now served under Trudeau, had warned cabinet against making concessions to

Morin on the grounds that he spoke neither for the Quebec people nor, more often than not, for its government.93 This was certainly the view of Marc Lalonde, who as Trudeau’s principal secretary often handled negotiations with Quebec in this period. Seen in this light, Cadieux may have exaggerated the damage Morin did to him. That Trudeau was a tough French-Canadian prime minister and that the DEA was struggling to adapt to his government remain the most convincing explanations for Cadieux’s reduced role in the Canada-Quebec-France triangle.

It would be a mistake to assume, however, that Cadieux was any less passionate about countering the threat to Canadian unity. In an evocative literary allusion, a colleague close to him

89 LAC/MC/12/12 – Journal intime, 31 January 1969. 90 LAC/MC/13/1 – Journal intime, 25 May 1972. 91 LAC/MC/8/13 – Journal intime, 22 March 1968. 92 LAC/MC/4/10 – Journal intime, 21 August 1968. 93 LAC/MC/4/9 – Journal intime, 19 September 1968.

482 during his final year-and-a-half as under-secretary recalled that he was like Herman Melville’s

Captain Ahab and de Gaulle the great white whale.94 The image was all the more appropriate when one remembers how, upon meeting de Gaulle in January 1964, Cadieux’s first impression had been of an enormous and powerful animal. In 1968 he still burned with indignation at the

General’s destructive work in Canada. He was especially angered by the fact that, as the official

French embassy in Ottawa tried to lull the federal government to sleep, its unofficial embassy in

Quebec, that is, the French consulate general in Quebec City, was pursuing its subversive ends with the provincial government. As Cadieux observed, “Nous sommes revenus aux beaux jours de Richelieu.” He noted that whereas the Machiavellian French Cardinal-cum-statesman had at least been of his century, the same could not be said of de Gaulle: “Il semble en train de faire renaître les mœurs les plus scandaleuses de la Renaissance dans le domaine politique.”95 Above all, Cadieux never lost his will to resist de Gaulle’s intervention. In London in January 1969 for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, Cadieux had a revealing conversation with

Paul Gore-Booth, the permanent under-secretary of the Foreign Office, who summarized it in this way:

My Canadian opposite number, M. Marcel Cadieux, gave me a graphic description last night of his war against General de Gaulle. He said there was constant activity on the front of separating Quebec in every possible way from the confederation and this needed constant and very time-consuming vigilance. Fortunately, he said, the French had a streak of legalism about them which made it well worthwhile to question at frequent intervals whether the practice they were indulging in were in fact compatible with the Conventions and documentary instruments covering Canadian/French relations. … The French would never admit a mistake immediately but in the end they found that they had to do so and this or that detailed item of separatist activity would be checked. … M. Cadieux underlined that the only way to counteract this campaign was simply not to let anything pass. I said I thought he seemed ideally suited for this because I rather doubted whether the Anglo-Saxon temperament would have quite the patience and eye for detail that was needed for a campaign of this kind in response to the French. It was interesting that the only unbelieving participant in the conversation was the third man – a British Canadian lawyer who found it hard to admit that it was all true.96

94 Bothwell, Alliance and Illusion, 377. 95 LAC/MC/4/10 – Journal intime, 6 September 1968. 96 UKNA/FCO/63/25 – P.H. Gore-Booth to North American and Caribbean Department, 7 January 1969.

483

Even in January 1969, as he and the DEA struggled to give the Trudeau government satisfaction in other areas, Cadieux was “at war” with de Gaulle. While recent scholarship has rightly criticized the “de Gaulle-centric” focus of the federal government, this comment should be qualified when discussing Cadieux. What made his campaign of resistance so striking was precisely his refusal, based on constitutional and international law, “to let anything pass,” whether the intervention came from de Gaulle himself or from the Quebec lobby in Paris. Unlike

Léger, who had also been fixated on de Gaulle, Cadieux believed in resisting until the day France ceased to interfere in Canadian affairs.97

Unfortunately, as under-secretary he would not see that long-awaited day. Starting with

Trudeau’s promising election victory in June 1968, Cadieux’s final year-and-a-half in Ottawa would be marked by both hope and disappointment where Quebec and France were concerned.

There was hope in September 1968 when Daniel Johnson died of a heart attack, saving the federal government from having to deal with his oft-delayed reunion with de Gaulle in Paris and decapitating a Union Nationale party that was already badly divided between federalists and a coterie of ultra-nationalist ministers like Jean-Guy Cardinal, Marcel Masse, and Jean-Noël

Tremblay. Cadieux dared to hope that the provincial Liberal party would return to power in

Quebec within the year, that there would be agreement in both Ottawa and Quebec City on the nature of relations with France, and that the only ally de Gaulle would have left in Quebec would be René Lévesque.98

There was hope mixed with disappointment when Johnson was succeeded by his minister of justice, Jean-Jacques Bertrand. The new premier was a committed federalist who preferred compromise over confrontation with Ottawa, but Cadieux was dismayed to learn that with

Trudeau he had taken the line that, in the field of foreign affairs, the federal government was

97 On the federal de Gaulle-centric analysis see Meren, With Friends like These, 252. 98 LAC/MC/4/9 – Journal intime, 20 September 1968.

484 rather inflexible and overly insistent on what seemed to him matters of protocol and appearances.

Once again, Cadieux lamented in his diary, Quebec leaders failed to see that what was at stake was the very existence of the country, something their official advisers, whom he labelled crypto-separatists, knew very well.99

A more cheerful prospect appeared in early 1969, as it became increasingly clear to

Cadieux that, except in the cultural domain, cooperation between Quebec and France did not promise much. In the crucial areas of investment and the economy, for instance, France would be a non-factor in the evolution of Quebec, whose future lay in cooperation with the rest of

Canada.100 Cadieux’s spirits rose again in late April 1969 when, following his defeat on a referendum calling for regional reorganization and reform of the French Senate, de Gaulle finally resigned as president, prompting Cadieux to express relief to Tremblay: “En somme, nous avons tenu un secteur du front à un moment très difficile. Nous n’avons pas subi de pertes trop graves.

Le départ du Général arrive au bon moment. S’il était resté encore un an ou deux, les conséquences pour nous auraient pu être très sérieuses.”101

On the same day de Gaulle left the stage Canada achieved a major legal victory, largely overlooked in the secondary literature, at the Vienna Conference on the Law of the Treaties.

After a prolonged and vigorous lobbying campaign undertaken by the DEA on Cadieux’s direct orders, counties voted by a margin of two to one to reject the second paragraph of Article 5 of the International Law Commission’s draft convention. This paragraph, which, as we have seen, dated from the 1962 session of the ILC attended by Cadieux (when it had been part of Article 3), posited that members of federations could have treaty-making capacity if that capacity was admitted under the federal constitution. The Quebec government had seized on Article 5 in its working paper of February 1969 to the standing committee of officials of the constitutional

99 LAC/MC/4/9 – Journal intime, 29 October 1968. 100 LAC/MC/4/9 – Journal intime, 31 January 1969. 101 LAC/PT/4/14 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 5 May 1969.

485 conference as proof that its activities abroad did not conflict with international law.102 The other problem with the article from the federal perspective was that it threatened to allow foreign governments to interpret the Canadian constitution, which is precisely what France had been doing in recent years. The deletion of the second paragraph of Article 5 was thus a crucial victory for Canadian federalism. For the first time as prime minister, Trudeau praised the

DEA.103 Cadieux made sure that Quebec learned of the federal success by having Le Soleil’s

Ottawa correspondent describe it in detail.104 As Cadieux told Tremblay, “J’ai pensé que nos amis du Ministère des Affairs intergouvernementales à Québec seraient heureux que nous informions la population du Québec des résultats que nous avons obtenu au sujet d’une de leurs thèses favorites, à savoir que le droit international n’empêche pas de conclure des traités avec d’autres pays.” After all, Cadieux concluded, their “amis” did not hesitate to boast about their own triumphs.105

But there was disappointment again when Cadieux’s prediction that Canadian relations with France would become more normal and that Ottawa’s troubles in la Francophonie were over now that de Gaulle had abandoned power did not come true. While Georges Pompidou, the president’s successor, declared that Jacques Cartier and Montcalm were dead and that France had no designs on Quebec, he proved in no hurry to change Gaullist policy towards the province. In

October 1969 French secretary of state for foreign affairs Jean de Lipkowski visited Quebec – but, on Pompidou’s orders, not Ottawa – and publicly endorsed the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine, prompting Trudeau to respond in kind by dismissing him as an unimportant minister who had no right to interpret the Canadian constitution, least of all in Canada. Calling in the French ambassador, who was no longer François Leduc but Pierre Siraud, Cadieux told him this

102 BANQ/P776/2001-01-006/3 – “Document de travail sur les relations avec l’étranger,” 5 February 1969. 103 LAC/MC/12/1 – Journal intime, 15 May 1969. 104 Amédée Gaudreault, “Décision de l’ONU à Vienne sur le droit des traités,” Le Soleil, 15 May 1969. 105 LAC/PT/4/14 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 16 May 1969.

486 cautionary tale: “I said that if anybody went to a man who was a cuckold, known to be one and who knew that he was and took it upon himself to advance the thesis that it was a good thing to sleep with other men’s wives, he could not be surprised if the man in question decided instantly to punch him in the nose. This was indeed unbearable provocation.”106 Ironically, de Lipkowski was the one who felt provoked and so his office told a newly arrived Canadian journalist in Paris that during the recent presidential election campaign Eldon Black, the minister at the Canadian embassy, had threatened to open the file on Canada-Quebec-France relations to Alain Poher,

Pompidou’s opponent, and that this explained why de Lipkowski had avoided Ottawa. Seeking to make a name for himself, and incorrectly claiming that his source was a spokesperson for the

Quai d’Orsay, the ambitious journalist reported the story, which briefly made waves in Canada.

Privately deploring such “character assassination,” Black stressed that it showed just how far the

Gaullists would go to preserve their policies.107 Cadieux put it more eloquently when he remarked in his diary, “Il arrive que les Français sont prisonniers de leurs erreurs passées et qu’il leur est bien pénible d’en sortir.” Indeed, after six years, nothing surprised him any more:

Je suis attristé, mais pas surpris, de constater que la France gaulliste se conduise d’une façon aussi peu scrupuleuse. Il est bien acquis pour quiconque connaît les démarches des gaullistes que ceux-ci ne s’embarrassent jamais trop de légalité et de protocole. Au contraire, ils agissent avec brutalité et leurs méthodes sont plutôt celles de véritables gangsters que d’hommes d’état européens civilisés comme on pourrait le croire à prime abord.108

As it turned out, this was the last time Cadieux would refer to Gaullist France in his diary as under-secretary. It was time for him to abandon the fight and to move on.

106 LAC/DEA/8647/20-1-2-FR/25 – Cadieux to European Division, 18 October 1969. 107 LAC/DEA/8647/20-1-2-FR/25 – Black to Halstead, 25 October 1969. See as well Eldon Black, Direct Intervention: Canada-France Relations 1967-1974 (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1996), 119-121. The origin of the story went back to the “Laurent affair” of late spring 1969, when Ottawa had insisted to the French through its embassy in Paris that Pierre Laurent, the new Director General of Cultural, Scientific, and Technical Relations at the Quai d’Orsay, visit Ottawa, and not just Quebec, during his upcoming trip to Canada. While France ultimately cancelled Laurent’s visit, it deeply resented Ottawa’s stand. As a result, de Lipkowski’s office and the Quebec Delegation General circulated a story that the Canadian embassy had interfered during the French presidential election campaign. Since the press did not take the bait, nothing was printed. After de Lipkowski’s controversial visit to Canada in the autumn, however, the tale was embellished by de Lipkowski’s office and reported by the over- eager Canadian journalist. See ibid. 108 LAC/MC/12/11 – Journal intime, 25 October 1969.

487

Confronted by the increasingly overt alliance of nationalist Quebec and Gaullist France between 1963 and 1970, the Canadian government was fortunate to have Marcel Cadieux as its under-secretary of state for external affairs. Even if he had accomplished nothing else in that position, his remarkable and sometimes lonely defence of national unity was the greatest achievement in a career full of them. As Cadieux understood, every other Canadian political issue in the 1960s paled in comparison to the question of Quebec’s future in Canada. To him those four words in 1967 – Vive le Québec libre! – were a call to arms. In 1973 he told a former

French ambassador to Canada that Pearson should have thrown de Gaulle in jail and demanded an apology.109 Did he mean it? Of course not, but he was always passionate about his convictions and often hyperbolic in expressing them. Faced with a Quebec-France alliance he saw as both narrow and dangerous, Cadieux spared no effort to defend Canada and its constitution. His fight was often desperate. Not surprisingly, his diary in these years is suffused with military language about resisting, holding the front, and retreating slowly, contesting every inch. Cadieux knew that France’s policy towards Canada could not endure, but as long as it did he fought back.

Strengthened by his iron will, and much to the disappointment of the Quebec government which had hoped ultimately to pressure Ottawa into changing the constitution, the federal government refused to concede that the province possessed an international personality. Even Quebec’s greatest achievement in these years, its accession in 1970 to the Agence de coopération culturelle et technique (ACCT) as a “participating government,” was carefully qualified so as not to imply that the province was in any way sovereign. Moreover, as the historians J.L. Granatstein and

Robert Bothwell rightly observe, the ACCT itself was a “marginal organization”: “If, as Daniel

Johnson once said, francophonie was as essential to Quebec as oxygen, then francophonie afforded pretty thin air.”110 Moreover, the concessions the DEA was forced to accept in that

109 LAC/MC/13/4 – Journal intime, 15 March 1973. 110 Granatstein and Bothwell, Pirouette, 157.

488 narrow field would not be extended to the broader one, despite Quebec’s hope to achieve a distinct presence and voice on Canadian delegations to such bodies as the World Health

Organization, the International Labour Organization, and UNESCO.111 While it cannot be denied that Quebec has increased its engagement with the world since 1970, it is equally true that the federal government remains as opposed today to the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine as it was in 1965.

What is more, Ottawa continues to base its rejection of it on constitutional and international law.

This is because, as Cadieux always recognized, the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine is incompatible with

Canadian sovereignty. When some of the doctrine’s original bureaucratic supporters in the

1960s, particularly Claude Morin, joined the separatist Parti Québécois in the 1970s, Cadieux felt vindicated.

But his war against Quebec and France had left him with deep scars that would never heal. For one, it had brought him into conflict with the foreign country he loved most. As a colleague later wrote, “J’avais déjà entendu dire que Marcel Cadieux éprouvait envers la France les sentiments d’un amant trompé par sa maîtresse.”112 Even after 1970, when the French adopted towards Canada and Quebec the deliberately ambiguous policy of “non ingérence, non indifférence,” Cadieux never forgave France for its intervention. Needless to say, he would not serve as Canadian ambassador to Paris, the posting abroad he coveted most and believed was almost his by right as a senior French-Canadian diplomat who for years had served in the trenches at home. Above all, his battle had brought him into conflict with Quebec, the very province he had left in 1941 to represent in Ottawa. It is one of the sad twists of fate in Cadieux’s career that after two decades as Quebec’s greatest champion in the federal civil service, by 1970

111 On this Quebec goal see BANQ/P776/2001-01-006/3 – Jean Chapdelaine to Morin, 8 January 1969; BANQ/P776/2001-01-006/3 – Maurice Héroux to Morin, 24 November 1969. As Cadieux had remarked in 1966, “If it cannot be fully understood in advance with the provinces and with provincial participants in Canadian delegations that they will not be taking part as representatives of provincial governments but as representatives of the Canadian Government, there will be no provincial participation in those delegations.” See LAC/DEA/11572/30-1-5/2 – Cadieux to A.E. Ritchie, 15 February 1966. 112 Dupuy, Diplomate de père en fils, 483.

489 he had acquired an unfair reputation as its greatest enemy. While Cadieux was a proud

Quebecker, he was an even prouder Canadian. The great tragedy of these years is that for some in Quebec those two identities became mutually exclusive. As Cadieux told Paul Tremblay, there was a reason older Quebeckers like themselves did not identify as “Québécois” but rather as

“Canayens”: “C’est, je suppose, que les Canadiens Français ont souvenance du vaste empire que fut le leur avant que les séparatistes et les nationalistes aux visières ne cherchent à les enfermer dans la réserve québécoise.”113 Simply put, Cadieux’s struggle as under-secretary was ultimately about more than the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine: it was about what it meant to be Canadian. By successfully promoting such initiatives as a development assistance program to French-speaking

Africa, cultural relations with francophone Europe, and an expansion of Canada’s diplomatic network in French-language countries, Cadieux and the federal government he served, prompted by the passionate advocacy of Quebec nationalists, offered tangible proof that Canada could represent its bicultural heritage to the world. Canadian foreign policy would never be the same.

Between 1963 and 1968 Cadieux was the indispensable man in Ottawa. If his role in the Canada-

Quebec-France triangle decreased during his last year-and-a-half as under-secretary it was because his country suddenly needed him less than his department.

113 LAC/PT/4/13 – Cadieux to Tremblay, 8 July 1968.

Conclusion

While this study of Marcel Cadieux’s career formally ends with his involvement in the

Canada-Quebec-France triangle, his last twelve years as a diplomat were not uneventful. From

1968 to 1970, for example, he tried to shepherd the DEA through a difficult transition under the

Trudeau government. Then, from 1970 to 1975, Cadieux was Canada’s first francophone ambassador to the United States. His tenure was fraught with difficulties: personal tension between Richard Nixon and Pierre Trudeau, the Nixon Shock of August 1971, and a turn towards nationalism (with its anti-American component) between 1972 and 1974 by a minority

Liberal government. From Washington Cadieux moved to Brussels between 1975 and 1978 to serve as the head of the Canadian mission to the European Economic Community. It was a journeyman post, but he approached it with his trademark dedication and industry. The unification of Western Europe was of major international importance and so he studied it carefully. He also had ideas about the Third Option and Canada’s quest for an economic

“Contractual Link” with the EEC. While the victory of the Parti Québécois in the November

1976 Quebec election disturbed him, he noted how the trend in Europe, which Quebec separatists often cited in support of their goal of “sovereignty-association” with Canada, was towards rather than away from federation. When his efforts in Europe seemed to have gone as far as they could go, Cadieux leaped at the opportunity to represent Canada in high-stakes negotiations with the

United States over fisheries and maritime boundaries. The talks lasted from August 1977 to

March 1979, but the resulting treaty was never passed by the United States Senate. In 1980

Cadieux was an adviser on the Quebec referendum, but he seems to have had a falling out with

Jean Chrétien, the minister in charge of the federal “no campaign.” The incident may explain why Pierre Trudeau, informed on 8 May (twelve days before the referendum) that Cadieux was retiring from the civil service, was given a highly complimentary letter of thanks to sign. The

490

491 prime minister did so on referendum day, when Quebeckers voted against secession by a margin of 59.56 percent to 40.44 percent.

For the first time in four decades, Cadieux was once again a private citizen. It must have been a strange feeling. What would he do? While today many retired senior officials seek lucrative consulting jobs for themselves in the private sector, Cadieux would have objected to such conduct. Instead, he found an outlet for his energies in the writing of a book. The idea for it came from Jules Léger, who by chance had been in Paris in February 1980 when Anne and

Pierre Rouanet had published their popular history Les trois derniers chagrins du général de

Gaulle. As Léger told Cadieux, that book led him to reflect on how Canadian history had been written, or in this case not written: “Le voyage de de Gaulle au Canada est présenté par des

écrivains français qui donnent la version française du drame seulement, et notre point de vue n’est pas mis de l’avant. Comme ton action et la mienne sont citées par les auteurs, j’aimerais parler avec toi de la façon dont on pourrait redresser la situation.”1

Within three days Cadieux had an outline and a working title for a book that would present the Canadian version of events.2 As he knew, parts of the Quebec narrative had already been advanced, most notably by Claude Morin in Le pouvoir Québécois . . . en négociation

(1972) and Le combat québécois (1973). As he may also have known, André Patry was preparing to publish his interpretation of what had happened in Le Québec dans le monde (1980). It was high time for a federalist perspective. Retirement freed Cadieux to give it. He would now express as a private citizen what he had been unable to say as a civil servant. He began writing in June.

As his eldest son, François, later recalled, his father’s passion was “intense, fulminating”: “I remember him getting quite worked up during drafting sessions at the kitchen table, with [the tip of his tongue] sticking out of the corner of his mouth, squinting intently as he wrote furiously in

1 LAC/JL/17/14 – Léger to Cadieux, 27 March 1980. 2 LAC/JL/17/14 – “De Gaulle et le Canada: L’Intervention brutale et systématique,” 31 March 1980 [left with Léger by Cadieux on 2 April 1980].

492 pencil on his yellow legal pads.”3 By August Cadieux had a first draft of the book. His initial title, De Gaulle et le Canada: L’intervention brutale et systématique, he exchanged for the pithier Le Général et la campagne du Québec. Even in its admittedly rough early incarnation it is a remarkable work, comprising twelve chapters and running close to three-hundred pages. While it is more history than memoir, the book is written from an unapologetically federalist point of view and constitutes a scathing attack on the Gaullist intervention in Canada and on the coterie of Quebec politicians and senior officials who welcomed and exploited it.4 Had it ever been published it would have caused a sensation, especially in the aftermath of the Quebec referendum and in the midst of the constitutional negotiations then underway between Ottawa and the provinces. In October 1980 Cadieux received the nihil obstat from the DEA to publish the manuscript. Noting that nothing in it constituted an unauthorized use of DEA files, Harry

Carter, the head of the Historical Division, observed that it was a timely and relevant study: “Un exposé véridique des faits dans une perspective fédéraliste s’imposait afin de dissiper les mythes engendrés par ceux qui s’étaient fait de la division un objectif.”5 Cadieux was free to find a publisher. On 19 March 1981, however, he died of a heart attack in Pompano Beach, Florida.

While Marcel Cadieux’s book never saw the light of day, his decades of service were not passed over in silence. In recognition of his work in the Department of External Affairs, a wake for him was held in what is now the Marcel Cadieux auditorium of the Lester B. Pearson building, the headquarters of the DEA since 1973. His funeral was held just a few blocks away, at Notre Dame Basilica. The Mass opened with Italian composer Lorenzo Perosi’s Requiem. The first reading was from the Book of Wisdom and began, “The souls of the just are in the hand of

God, and no torment shall touch them.” Not surprisingly, the Gospel was the story of Christ’s

3 François Cadieux to Robert Bothwell, 4 December 2008. I am grateful to Marcel Cadieux’s sons for sharing with me this document as well as the ones cited in the next two footnotes. 4 Cadieux, Le Général et la campagne du Québec (1963-1968). 5 H.H. Carter to Cadieux, 15 October 1980.

493 raising Lazarus from the dead.6 But if the funeral was in many ways typical, the two eulogies, the first, in English, by Allan Gotlieb and the second, in French, by Paul Tremblay, showed that

Cadieux was anything but.

Gotlieb’s encomium opened with a keynote statement: “Marcel Cadieux was an exceptional man.” In particular, he was pronounced exceptional in his dedication: “Faced with a committed Marcel,” Gotlieb asked, “what colleague was not moved by the enormous sense of personal involvement, by the outpouring of his concern, by the passion that could arouse people, change things and events?” He was also saluted for his exceptional courage. “When he believed he was right – and Marcel Cadieux was usually right – he could stand alone,” Gotlieb observed.

“And sometimes he did stand alone, or with very few others, at critical points in our history.” He was exceptional in his vision of Canada as a strong and united country at home and a defender of democratic values in the world at large. He was exceptional as a diplomat, as a lawyer, and as a negotiator. He was exceptional as a person, in “[his] sense of humour – so special that no one can describe or imitate it – and his capacity for friendship, his gaiety, his sense of fun.” He was also exceptional as a family man: “. . . there was in him a deep organic centre, at the core of which there was his family, and the traditional values and principles that he loved and respected, that gave him his stability and strength and the strength to give the same to others.” Gotlieb ended by noting that Cadieux brought all these qualities to his work in both the DEA and the civil service.

He had come to Ottawa with little English, but his efforts earned him a place among the select group of mandarins who had served Canada with such distinction during and after the war.

Commenting on how Cadieux had found inspiration in Norman Robertson, Gotlieb stressed that many came to look to Cadieux himself for the same sterling qualities: “I am one who looked and found that inspiration in him. And in future years, there will be many who will look, and there will be many who will find what they are searching for – a great and selfless public servant, an

6 LAC/PT/5/13 – “Marcel Cadieux 1915-1981 [funeral programme],” Notre Dame Basilica, Ottawa, 25 March 1981.

494 outstanding foreign service officer and diplomat, an outstanding human being who will continue to provide a model for generations of young men and women in the years ahead.”7

Paul Tremblay’s tribute was equally moving. It began by quoting a statement by Cadieux that the moral calibre of his predecessors as under-secretary had been far more important in shaping the DEA than either their professional activities or their policies. This philosophy led

Cadieux to champion the concept of the senior civil servant and to promote the satisfaction and honour associated with serving the state. “A cette remarquable élévation de pensée,” Tremblay observed, “Marcel joignait la grandeur des desseins qu’il poursuivait.” As we have seen, he believed that the DEA embodied Canadian nationalism. He had also reflected carefully on the practice of Canadian diplomacy, his books on the subject having filled a gap in the literature which consisted mainly of autobiographical accounts. As Tremblay knew better than anyone,

Cadieux had been proud of his origins without ever letting them limit him or divide his loyalties:

“Il disait que ceux d’entre nous qui représentent le Québec dans l’administration fédérale, demeurent fidèles à la devise de leur province: ils se souviennent.” If Cadieux had sometimes been impetuous and demanding, he was also compassionate, as evidenced by his agonizing over decisions that affected the future of colleagues or by his renowned generosity towards them. Like

Norman Robertson, Cadieux was cultured and intensely curious intellectually. He also had a contemplative side, one which prompted him to revel in the beauty of a sunset on Parliament

Hill, the damascening of a Moroccan dagger, or the architectural purity of the Chartres cathedral.

It was appropriate, Tremblay informed his listeners, that the last thing Cadieux saw before he died was a painting he had just finished which depicted the breaking of the waves: “La mer, la mer toujours recommencée, symbole de l’infini . . . Dernière image qui l’ait habité.” In bidding farewell to his best friend, Tremblay quoted the Quebec writer Jean-Ethier Blais: “Toute société,

7 LAC/PT/5/13 – Allan Gotlieb, “Eulogy: Funeral of Marcel Cadieux,” 25 March 1981.”

495 dans la mesure o[ù] elle s’épanouit en culture, donne naissance à des hommes qui illustrent, et lui permettent, sans fausse honte, avec fierté d’espérer dans l’avenir.”8

Gotlieb and Tremblay were not impartial observers. Marcel Cadieux’s passion could and did lead him to set an unreasonable standard of excellence for his subordinates (one thinks of his fierce comments to some French-Canadian diplomats), and he could be uncomprehending in his idealism of the necessary pragmatism of the politicians he served. Still, his eulogists were right to judge his contributions as extraordinary. It is significant that Cadieux’s last act was as a painter. One recalls his opining to the British Consul General in Hanoi that the qualities of the good diplomat were analogous to those of the creative artist, in that both professionals produced something that was both valuable and rare. Viewed as a work of art Cadieux’s career, while not without its blemishes, was marked by originality, passion, and flair. At the centre of his oeuvre were three dominant themes: his firm anti-communism, his proud French-Canadian nationalism, and his passionate belief in his work as both diplomat and civil servant. To this day, he remains the department’s archetypal cold warrior, French-Canadian nationalist, and professional diplomat and civil servant. Only in the third case did he have any real rivals and they were none other than the distinguished O.D. Skelton and Norman Robertson, his models as under-secretary. As a colleague and friend once remarked of Cadieux, having too many convictions can be a dangerous thing for a diplomat, a profession which requires accommodation and finding the grey area between the black and the white.9 Throughout his career, however, Cadieux refused to compromise on the principles he cared most about. He largely succeeded, not in spite of his convictions, but because of them.

8 LAC/PT/5/13 – Paul Tremblay, “Éloge funèbre de Marcel Cadieux,” 25 March 1981. 9 YUA/JLG/1989-036-009/146 – Robert Bothwell interview with Michel Gauvin, 12 April 1988.

Bibliography

ARCHIVAL SOURCES

Archives du Ministère des Affaires étrangères (MAE)

Séries B, Amérique, Sous-séries Canada, 1952-1963 Séries B, Amérique, Sous-séries Canada, 1964-1970

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BANQ)

Fonds Jean Chapdelaine Fonds Claude Morin Fonds André Patry Fonds Ministère des Relations internationales

Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections, York University (YUA)

Fonds J.L. Granatstein

Library and Archives Canada (LAC)

Fonds Marcel Cadieux Fonds Brooke Claxton Fonds Walter L. Gordon Fonds William Lyon Mackenzie King Fonds Jules Léger Fonds Paul Joseph Martin Fonds Lester B. Pearson Fonds Escott Meredith Reid Fonds Albert Edgar Ritchie Fonds Norman A. Robertson Fonds H. Basil Robinson Fonds Paul Tremblay Records of the Civil Service Commission Records of the Department of External Affairs Records of the Library of Parliament Records of the Privy Council Office

Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library (LBJ)

National Security Files

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

Department of State files (Central files and Lot files)

496 497

North Atlantic Treaty Organization Archives (NATO)

Series C – North Atlantic Council, Council Memoranda

Trinity College Archives (TCA)

Fonds John W. Holmes Fonds George Ignatieff

United Kingdom National Archives (UKNA)

Cabinet Office files Dominion Office files Foreign and Commonwealth Office files Foreign Office files

University of Saskatchewan Archives & Special Collections (UOS)

Fonds John G. Diefenbaker

University of Toronto Archives (UTA)

Fonds Robert Bothwell Fonds Massey family

INTERVIEWS

Stephen L. Abrahams Léopold Amyot P.E.J. Banning Marc Baudouin Richard Beliveau Eric Bergbusch Fred Bild Robert Blackburn François Cadieux René Cadieux Jim Coutts André Couvrette Thomas Delworth Peter C. Dobell Duncan Edmonds J.R. (Ross) Francis Deborah Fraser James George Randolph Gherson Jacques Gignac Allan Gotlieb

498

John Graham Robert Hage Ingrid Hall John Hilliker Alan B. Hockin James E. Hyndman Jean-Pierre Juneau David Kirkwood Richard Kroft Marc Lalonde James C. Langley Paul Lapointe Claude Laverdure Peter David Lee Léonard Legault Mary MacKay Normand Mailhot De Montigny Marchand Arthur Mathewson Gilles Mathieu Allan McGill Richard O’Hagan Angus Robertson Judith Robertson Raymond Roy Pauline Sabourin James Blair Seaborn Michael Shenstone Doug Small Gordon S. Smith Larry Smith John Starnes Maurice Strong Veronica Tait Fernand Tanguay Peter Towe James (Si) H. Taylor Gertrude Tremblay Vernon G. Turner Max Yalden

NEWSPAPERS

Le Devoir Le Droit Le Nouveau Journal Le Soleil La Patrie

499

La Presse Ottawa Citizen The Globe and Mail The Ottawa Journal

SECONDARY SOURCES

Ackroyd, Peter. London: The Biography. London: Chatto & Windus, 2000.

Aird, Robert. André Patry et la présence du Québec dans le monde. Montreal: VLB éditeur, 2005.

Andrew, Arthur. The Rise and Fall of a Middle Power: Canadian Diplomacy from King to Mulroney. Toronto: James Lorimer and Co., 1993.

Bastien, Hervé. “Malraux et le Québec au service du Général.” In André Malraux et le rayonnement culturel de la France, edited by Charles-Louis Foulon. Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 2004, 191-200.

Bentwich, Norman. “The Paris Peace Conference July-October 1946, Part One: The Scene.” History Today 17, no. 11 (November 1967): 727-734.

Bercuson, David J. “‘A People So Ruthless as the Soviets’: Canadian Images of the Cold War and the Soviet Union, 1946-1950.” In Canada and the Soviet Experiment, edited by David Davie. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 1994, 89-103.

– – –. “Canada, NATO, and Rearmament, 1950-1954: Why Canada Made a Difference (But Not for Very Long).” In Making a Difference? Canada’s Foreign Policy in a Changing World Order, edited by John English and Norman Hillmer. Toronto: Lester Publishing Limited, 1992, 103-124.

Bergbusch, Eric, and Michael D. Stevenson. “Howard Green, Public Opinion and the Politics of Disarmament.” In Architects and Innovators: Building the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909-2009, edited by Greg Donaghy and Kim Richard Nossal. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009, 191-206.

Berinsky, Adam J. In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Best, Geoffrey. Churchill: A Study in Greatness. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006.

Betcherman, Lita-Rose. Ernest Lapointe: Mackenzie King’s Great Quebec Lieutenant. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002.

Black, Eldon. Direct Intervention: Canada-France Relations, 1967-1974. Carleton: University Press, 1996.

“Brilliance Written with a Quill Pen.” Time Magazine. 27 April 1964.

500

Boog, Horst, Gerhard Krebs, and Detlef Vogel. The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia 1943-1944/5. Translated by Derry Cook-Radmore et al. Vol. 7 of Germany and the Second World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Bosher, J.F. The Gaullist Attack on Canada, 1967-1997. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 1999.

Bothwell, Robert. “Allan Gotlieb: A Mind in Action.” In Diplomacy in the Digital Age: Essays in Honour of Ambassador Allan Gotlieb, edited by Janice Gross Stein. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2011, 13-29.

– – –. “Marcel Cadieux: The Ultimate Professional.” In Architects and Innovators: Building the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909-2009, edited by Greg Donaghy and Kim Richard Nossal. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009, 207-222.

– – –. Alliance and Illusion: Canada and the World, 1945-1984. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007.

– – –. Canada and Quebec: One Country, Two Histories, revised ed. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998.

– – –. Nucleus: The History of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.

– – –. The Big Chill: Canada and the Cold War. Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 1988.

– – –. Eldorado: Canada’s National Uranium Company. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.

Buckley, Brian. Canada’s Early Nuclear Policy: Fate, Chance, and Character. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000.

Cadieux, Marcel. Le Général et la campagne du Québec [unpublished]. 1980.

– – –. “La Tâche du Sous-Secrétaire d’Etat aux Affaires extérieures.” International Journal 22, no. 3 (Summer 1967): 512.

– – –. “An Inside View.” In Legal Advisers and Foreign Affairs, edited by H.C.L. Merillat. New York: Oceana Publications, 1964.

– – –. “La coexistence pacifique et le droit international.” La Revue du Barreau de la Province de Québec 23, no. 9 (November 1963): 501-520.

– – –. Le diplomate canadien: éléments d’une définition. Paris: Fides, 1962.

– – –. “Découverte de Paris.” La nouvelle revue canadienne 1, no. 1 (February-March 1951): 67 -72.

– – –. Premières Armes. Ottawa: Le Cercle du Livre de France, 1951.

501

– – –. Embruns. Ottawa: Le Cercle du Livre de France, 1951.

– – –. Le Ministère des Affaires Extérieures: Conseils aux étudiants qui se destinent à la carrière. Montreal: Éditions Variétés, 1949.

– – –. “Débuts dans la carrière diplomatique.” L’action universitaire 14, no. 4 (July 1948): 291- 302.

Cadieux, Marcel, and Paul Tremblay. “Le Canada et la guerre du Pacifique.” Revue Dominicaine 48, no. 1 (February 1942): 116-119.

Calder, Angus. The Myth of the Blitz. London: Jonathan Cape, 1991.

Campbell, Isabel. Unlikely Diplomats: The Canadian Brigade in Germany, 1951-64. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013.

Carroll, Michael K. Pearson’s Peacekeepers: Canada and the United Nations Emergency Force, 1956-1967. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009.

Chapnick, Adam. Canada’s Voice: The Public Life of John Wendell Holmes. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009.

Cohen, Andrew, and J.L. Granatstein., eds. Trudeau’s Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1999.

Coutts, James A. “An insider’s review of the Pearson Government.” 1 May 2013. http://www.thepearsoncentre.ca/progressive-memos/an-insiders-review-of-the-pearson- government.

Couvrette, André. Il n’y a plus d’étranger. http://www.plusdetranger.blogspot.ca. 1995.

Donaghy, Greg. Grit: The Life and Politics of Paul Martin Sr. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015.

– – –. ‘“A Sad, General Decline?’: The Canadian Diplomat in the 20th Century.” In Canada Among Nations 2008: 100 Years of Canadian Foreign Policy, edited by Robert Bothwell and Jean Daudelin. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009.

– – –. Tolerant Allies: Canada and the United States 1963-1968. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002.

– – –. “Minding the Minister: Pearson, Martin and American Policy in Asia, 1963-1967.” In Pearson: The Unlikely Gladiator, edited by Norman Hillmer. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999, 131-149.

– – –. “Domesticating NATO: Canada and the North Atlantic Alliance, 1963-1968.” International Journal 52, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 445-463.

502

Donaghy, Greg, and Donald Barry. “Our Man from Windsor: Paul Martin and the New Members Question, 1955.” In Paul Martin & Canadian Diplomacy, edited by Ryan Touhey. Waterloo: Centre on Foreign Policy and Federalism, 2001, 3-20.

Djilas, Milovan. Conversations with Stalin. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962.

Drake, Earl G. A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants: Memoirs of a Prairie Diplomat. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.

Duchesne, Pierre. Jacques Parizeau: Le Croisé 1930-1970. Montreal: Éditions Québec Amérique, 2001.

Dupuy, Michel. Diplomate de père en fils. Montreal: Carte Blanche, 2012.

Eighth Census of Canada, 1941. Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1950.

English, John. Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1919-1968. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2007.

– – –. “Pearson.” Policy Options 24, no. 6 (June-July 2003): 63-69.

– – –. “Problems in Middle Life.” In Canada and NATO: Uneasy Past, Uncertain Future, edited by Margaret O. MacMillan and David S. Sorenson. Waterloo: University of Waterloo Press, 1990, 47-66.

– – –. The Worldly Years: The Life of Lester Pearson, 1949-1972. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1989.

– – –. Shadow of Heaven: The Life of Lester Pearson, 1897-1948. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1989.

Evans, Brian L. The Remarkable Chester Ronning: Proud Son of China. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 2013.

Fleck, Egon W, and Edward A. Tenenbaum. “Buchenwald: A Preliminary Report.” 24 April 1945. Warwick Digital Library. http://contentdm.warwick.ac.uk/cdm/ref/collection/tav/id/1348

Fournier, Jean-Pierre, and Paul-André Comeau. Le Lobby du Québec à Paris: les précurseurs du Général de Gaulle. Montreal: Québec-Amérique, 2002.

Gaddis, John Lewis. George F. Kennan: An American Life. New York: The Penguin Press, 2011.

Gendron, Robin S. “Canada’s University: Father Lévesque, Canadian Aid, and the National University of Rwanda. Historical Studies 73 (2007): 63-86.

– – –. Towards a Francophone Community: Canada’s Relations with France and French Africa, 1945-1968. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006.

503

Gérin-Lajoie, Paul. Combats d’un révolutionnaire tranquille. Monteral: Centre éducatif et culturel, 1989.

German, Lindsey, and John Rees. A People’s History of London. London: Verso, 2012.

Godin, Pierre. Daniel Johnson: la difficile recherche de l’égalité, 1964-1968. Montreal: Éditions de l’homme 1980.

– – –. Daniel Johnson: la passion du pouvoir, 1946-1964. Montreal: Éditions de l’homme, 1980.

Gordon, Walter L. A Political Memoir. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977.

Gotlieb, Allan. “Romanticism and Realism in Canada’s Foreign Policy.” C.D. Howe Institute Benefactors Lecture. Toronto. 3 November 2004.

Granatstein, J.L. A Man of Influence: Norman A. Robertson and Canadian Statecraft, 1929-68. Ottawa: Deneau, 1981.

– – –. The Ottawa Men: The Civil Service Mandarins, 1935-1957. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1982.

– – –. “The Anglocentrism of Canadian Diplomacy.” In Canadian Culture: International Dimensions, edited by Andrew Fenton Cooper. Waterloo: Centre on Foreign Policy and Federalism, 1985, 27-43.

Granatstein, J.L., and Robert Bothwell. Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.

Hatzivassilio, Evanthis. “Images of the Adversary: NATO Assessments of the Soviet Union, 1953-1964.” Journal of Cold War Studies 11, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 89-116.

Heeney, Arnold. The Things That Are Caesar’s: Memoirs of a Canadian Public Servant. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989.

Heeney, Arnold, and Livingston T. Merchant. Canada and the United States: Principles for Partnership. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1965.

Hellyer, Paul. Damn the Torpedoes: My Fight to Unify Canada’s Armed Forces. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990.

Herring, George C. The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The Negotiating Volumes of the Pentagon Papers. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983.

Hershberg, James G. Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam. Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012.

504

Hilliker, John. Canada’s Department of External Affairs: The Early Years, 1909-1946. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990.

Hilliker, John, and Donald Barry. Canada’s Department of External Affairs: Coming of Age, 1946-1968. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995.

Hillmer, Norman. O.D. Skelton: A Portrait of Canadian Ambition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.

Hodgetts, J.E. Pioneer Public Service: An Administrative History of the United Canadas, 1841- 1867. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1955.

House of Commons Debates.

House of Commons Standing Committee on External Affairs. Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence.

Ignatieff, George. The Making of a Peacemonger. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985.

James, Alan. Keeping the Peace in the Cyprus Crisis of 1963-64. New York: Palgrave, 2002.

Laurendeau, André. Journal tenu pendant la Commission royale d’enquête sur le bilinguisme et le biculturalisme. Outremont: VLB Éditeur, 1990.

Leduc, Lawrence, et al. Dynasties and Interludes: Past and Present in Canadian Electoral Politics. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2010.

Legault, Albert, and Michel Fortmann. A Diplomacy of Hope: Canada and Disarmament, 1945 -1988. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992.

Levant, Victor. Quiet Complicity: Canadian Involvement in the Vietnam War. Toronto: Between the Lines, 1986.

Lumbers, Michael. Piercing the Bamboo Curtain: Tentative Bridge-Building to China during the Johnson Years. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008.

Macdonald, R. St. J. “An Historical Introduction to the Teaching of International Law in Canada: Part II.” The Canadian Yearbook of Inernational Law (1975): 255-280.

Martel, Marcel. French Canada: An Account of its Creation and Break-up, 1850-1967. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1998.

Martin, Lawrence. The Presidents and the Prime Ministers. Toronto: Doubleday, 1982.

Martin Sr., Paul. A Very Public Life: So Many Worlds. Toronto: Deneau, 1985.

– – –. A Very Public Life: Far From Home. Ottawa: Deneau, 1983.

505

– – –. Federalism and International Relations. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1968.

Martin Jr., Paul. Hell or High Water: My Life In and Out of Politics. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2008.

Mastny, Vojtech. “Did NATO Win the Cold War? Looking over the Wall.” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 3 (May-June 1999): 176-189.

McGill, Allan S. My Life as I Remember It. Vancouver: Granville Island Publishing, 2004.

McKenzie, Francine. “A.D.P. Heeney: The Orderly Undersecretary.” In Architects and Innovators: Building the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909- 2009, edited by Greg Donaghy and Kim Richard Nossal. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009, 155-168.

McMahon, Patricia I. Essence of Indecision: Diefenbaker’s Nuclear Policy, 1957-1963. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009.

Ménalque [Cadieux]. “Le Père Leloir,” Revue Dominicaine 54, no. 2 (July-August 1948): 41-44.

Meren, David. With Friends Like These: Entangled Nationalisms and the Canada-Quebec -France Triangle, 1944-1970. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012.

Morin, Claude. L’art de l’impossible: la diplomatie québécoise depuis 1960. Montreal: Boréal, 1987.

Newman, Peter C. The Distemper of Our Times. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1968.

Olson, Lynne. Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941. New York: Random House, 2013.

Oren, Michael. Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. New York: Rosetta Books, 2010.

Page, Don. “The Representation of China in the United Nations: Canadian Perspectives and Initiatives, 1949-1971.” In Reluctant Adversaries: Canada and the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1970, edited by Paul M. Evans and B. Michael Frolic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991, 73-105.

– – – . “Tommy Stone and Psychological Warfare in World War Two: Transforming a POW Liability into an Asset.” Journal of Canadian Studies 16, nos. 3-4 (Fall-Winter 1981): 110-120.

Page, Don, and Don Munton. “Canadian Images of the Cold War, 1946-47.” International Journal 32, no. 3 (Summer 1977): 577-604.

Parsons, L.S. Management of Marine Fisheries in Canada. Ottawa: National Research Council of Canada and Department of Fisheries and Oceans, 1993.

506

Patry, André, Jacques Brossard, and Elisabeth Weiser. Les pouvoirs extérieurs du Québec. Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1967.

Pearson, Lester B. Mike: The Memoirs of the Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson. Vol. 3. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975.

– – –. Words and Occasions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970.

Pelley, Patricia. Postcolonial Vietnam: New Histories of the National Past. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.

Peyrefitte, Alain. C’était de Gaulle. Vol. 3. Paris: Editions de Fallois, 2000.

Pharand, A. Donat. “Analysis of the Opinion of the International Court of Justice on Certain Expenses of the United Nations.” The Canadian Yearbook of International Law (1963): 272-297.

Pickersgill, J.W. Seeing Canada Whole: A Memoir. Markham, On.: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1994.

Reid, Escott. Radical Mandarin: The Memoirs of Escott Reid. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989.

Rikhye, Maj.-Gen. Indar Jit. The Sinai Blunder: Withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force leading to the Six-Day War of June 1967. London: Frank Cass, 1980.

Ritchie, Charles. Storm Signals: More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1962-1971. Toronto: Macmillan, 1983.

Rooth, Tim. “Britain, Europe, and Diefenbaker’s Trade Diversion Proposals, 1957-58.” In Canada and the End of Empire, edited by Philip Alfred Buckner. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005, 117-132.

Ross, Douglas A. In the Interests of Peace: Canada and Vietnam, 1954-1973. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.

Rouanet, Anne, and Pierre. Les trois derniers chagrins du général de Gaulle. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1980.

Roussel, Eric. De Gaulle. Paris: Gallimard, 2002.

Roy, Reginald H. Sherwood Lett: His Life and Times. Vancouver: UBC Alumni Association, 1991.

Saywell, John., ed. “Parliament and Politics.” In Canadian Annual Review for 1967. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968.

– – –. Canadian Annual Review for 1968. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969.

507

Schwebel, Stephen M. Justice in International Law: Selected Writings of Stephen M. Schwebel, Judge of the International Court of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Schiff, Stacy. Saint-Exupéry: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

Sheppard, Francis. London: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Sjolander, Claire Turenne. “Margaret Meagher and the Role of Women in the Foreign Service: Groundbreaking or Housekeeping?” In Architects and Innovators: Building the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909-2009, edited by Greg Donaghy and Kim Richard Nossal. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009, 223-236.

Smith, Denis. Rogue Tory: The Life and Legend of John G. Diefenbaker. Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1995.

Stephens, L.A.D. “Study of Canadian Government Information Abroad 1942-1972: The Development of the Information, Cultural and Academic Divisions and their Policies.” March 1977. http://dfait-aeci.canadiana.ca/view/ooe.b2462904E/1?r=0&s=1.

Stevenson, Michael D. Documents on Canadian External Relations (DCER) 1957-1958, Part 1. Vol. 24. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 2003.

Stockdale, Peter. “Pearsonian Internationalism in Practice: The International Development Research Centre.” Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 1995.

Stursberg, Peter. Lester Pearson and the American Dilemma. Toronto: Doubleday, 1980.

– – –. Diefenbaker: Leadership Gained, 1956-1962. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975.

– – –. Agreement in Principle. Toronto: Longmans, 1961.

Tanaka, Yoshifumi. The International Law of the Sea, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Taylor, John H. Ottawa: An Illustrated History. Toronto: Lorimer, 1986.

Thant, U. View from the UN. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1978.

“The Late Norman A. Robertson.” External Affairs: A Monthly Bulletin of the Department of External Affairs 20, no. 9 (September 1968): 346-357.

The Work World. Vol. 3 of Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1969.

Thomson, Dale C. Vive le Québec Libre. Toronto: Deneau, 1998.

508

Touhey, Ryan. Conflicting Visions: Canada and India in the Cold War World, 1946-1976. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015.

Vaïsse, Maurice. La grandeur: politique étrangère du général de Gaulle 1958-1969. Paris: Fayard, 1998.

Wasserstein, Bernard. Barbarism and Civilization: A History of Europe in Our Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Watts, Arthur. The International Law Commission 1949-1988, Volume One: The Treaties, Part 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Weber, Mark. “Buchenwald: Legend and Reality.” The Journal of Historical Review 7, no. 4 (Winter 1986-87): 405-417.

Weiers, Margaret K. Envoys Extraordinary: Women of the Canadian Foreign Service. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1995.

Wilgress, Leolyn Dana. Memoirs. Toronto: Ryerson, 1967.

Woods, Shirley E. Ottawa: The Capital of Canada. Toronto: Doubleday, 1980.

Yalden, Max. Transforming Rights: Reflections from the Front Lines. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.

Yearbook of the International Law Commission 1962, Volume 1, Summary Records of the Fourteenth Session: 24 April-29 June 1962. New York: United Nations, 1964.

Ziegler, Philip. London at War, 1939-1945. Toronto: Alfred Knopf, 1995.