Foreign Service

D.M.L. Farr is professor emeritus of history at Carleton University in
Ottawa and the co-author of Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

In the past year, Canadian diplomats and their wives have been rushing
into print to describe their lives and work. There was Christine
Hantel-Fraser with No Fixed Address, David Reece with A Rich Broth, and
Arthur Andrew with The Rise and Fall of a Middle Power. Reece and Andrew
wrote from the perspective of retirement; Foreign Service concerns a
diplomat in mid-career.

John Kneale’s account contains points of comparison with its
counterparts. Like the Hantel-Fraser, it carefully describes the
practical work of a Canadian foreign-service officer abroad; like the
Reece, it is rich in the events of a diplomat’s life; like the Andrew,
it is a critique of the way the foreign service operates. Where it goes
beyond the other accounts is in its portraits of the places in which
Kneale served: Algeria, Mexico, Iran (during the American hostage
crisis), Ecuador, and, finally, New York. These portraits are drawn with
insight and imagination. Particularly effective is the description of
the mood of “mean sullenness” that permeated newly independent
Algeria in the mid-1970s.

Kneale, who was a trade commissioner, makes a strong case for more
specialized knowledge in the Canadian foreign service. His criticism of
the workings of External Affairs and International Trade Canada is drawn
from his own experience. The author writes clearly, sometimes even
poetically, and is fair and detached in his observations. He favors the
establishment of an independent institute to train foreign-service
officers and others going into “internationalist” positions in
business, journalism, and the universities. Happily Kneale is now
teaching in such a school, the Canadian Foreign Service Institute.
Judging by his book, he should be an effective teacher.

The publisher should pay more attention to the quality of its products.
The book is printed on paper that resembles newsprint (the cover curls
up when the volume is opened), and the few illustrations, when not the
size of postage stamps, are smudgy. There is no index and only a
scattering of footnotes to lead the reader to further information.
Foreign Service is too good a book to be given such shoddy clothes.