Envoys Extraordinary: Women of the Canadian Foreign Service

J.L. Granatstein is a professor of history at York University, the
co-author of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Empire to
Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s, and the author of The Good
Fight.

For far too many years, the Department of External Affairs discriminated
against women. Women could not be foreign-service officers for years,
they could not be married and serve abroad, and there was the usual
petty harassment and discrimination that bedevil all workplaces. But
this changed eventually, and Weiers’s book is the first to look at the
women of the Canadian foreign service. The result is generally
satisfying, though the author’s grasp of the Canadian history is less
good than one might wish. Still, her account of the early women in the
Department adds much to our knowledge.

Marjorie McKenzie and Agnes McCloskey ran the administrative side of
External Affairs for years. Both were tough-minded; McCloskey drove
officers crazy with her tightfisted penny pinching, and both made
extraordinary contributions to External’s growth, arguably the equal
of those of the better-known male founding fathers (Skelton, Pearson,
Robertson, and Wrong). Once women could serve abroad as diplomats, an
able group emerged. Elizabeth MacCallum, for example, was the undoubted
expert on the Middle East, a tough foe of Zionist claims, while Margaret
Meagher negotiated Canada’s agreement on recognition of Beijing. Now
women serve at every level and in virtually every post, their numbers
amounting to 20 percent of the officer strength. Some of the present-day
high-flyers still boil with resentment at petty discrimination, but
there can be little doubt that Weiers’s study documents a success
story.