Seize the Day: Lester B Pearson and Crisis Diplomacy

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.

This elegant little book describes Lester Pearson’s handling of
Canada’s foreign policy from 1948 to 1957, when he served as Secretary
of State for External Affairs. Written by his son, a former diplomat
himself, it joins a number of other “inside views” of Pearsonian
diplomacy.

Geoffrey Pearson shows how his father met the crises that confronted
him during the early years of the Cold War: the emergent Soviet empire
in eastern Europe, the invasion of Korea, the scare over Quemoy and
Matsu, the conflict in Vietnam, the shock of the Suez invasion of 1956.
Seven chapters describe Pearson’s methods for meeting these
challenges; three others examine the attitudes of Pearson’s
colleagues, the shape of the postwar world, and the outlines of what
might be called the “Pearsonian consensus” in Canadian foreign
policy.

Seize the Day identifies, in a clear and succinct manner, the elements
in Pearson’s thinking as a “practical idealist.” There was the
attachment to the goal of world order as a constructive legacy from
World War II; the distrust of untrammeled national sovereignty; the need
for a distinctive Canadian image in world affairs; the importance of
distinguishing between communism as a faith and aggression as an
unacceptable practice; the commitment to the United Nations as the most
expedient vehicle for Canadian diplomacy; and the necessity of keeping
the United States actively engaged in the West’s system of collective
security. All of these themes are touched on in Seize the Day, an act of
filial piety that is also a detached commentary on the diplomat who
embodied so many of the aspirations of Canada in world affairs in the
immediate postwar years.

Fully documented, and enhanced by nine pages of illustrations, this
book is recommended for the student, the specialist, and the serious
general reader.