The Washington Diaries, 1981–1989

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

Allan Gotlieb headed Canada’s embassy in Washington during the
presidency of Ronald Reagan. Days before his first visit to Ottawa,
Reagan withdrew a bilateral fishing treaty from the Senate, thereby
killing it. Paul Robinson, Reagan’s ambassador to Canada, dispensed
unsolicited advice on domestic Canadian affairs. Top Reaganauts
threatened retaliation against Canada’s National Energy Programs (NEP)
and the Foreign Investment Review Act (FIRA). Reagan disliked
Trudeau’s “peace offensive” and invaded Grenada without prior
notice to Ottawa, even though Canada (like Grenada) belonged to the
Commonwealth. Even the Mulroney government had differences with
Reagan’s Washington over acid rain, the Northwest Passage, and
conflict in Central America.

Gotlieb explains in day-by-day entries how he coped. He lobbied
Congress and the media. He threw parties and invited important people.
He travelled throughout the United States and made speeches. He met
thousands of important and prominent people and records their strengths
and weaknesses. The ignorance and narrow-mindedness of President Reagan
and many of his advisers appalled him.

There are some surprises. When a fire-breathing delegation of
high-level Reaganauts visited Ottawa, Finance Minister Allan MacEachan
promised that there would be “no more NEPs” and hinted that despite
the Speech from the Throne, the government would not strengthen FIRA.
Commented Gotlieb, “That’s quite an undertaking for a sovereign
state to make to a foreign power.” Gotlieb admired Mark MacGuigan, the
Minister of External Affairs who sent him to Washington, but strongly
disliked MacGuigan’s predecessor, Flora MacDonald. Once when he was
advising her not to move Canada’s Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem and she was rejecting his advice, he slammed shut his briefing
book and stormed out of the room. Prime Minister Joe Clark, he said,
“protected me from the talons of Flora ... Not because he liked me.
Far from it. It was simply that he liked Flora even less.” Perhaps
less surprisingly, Canada meant so little to the Reagan White House that
Gotlieb presented his credentials alongside new ambassadors from Gabon,
Ireland, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Tunisia, and Upper Volta. The
Washington Diaries is a fascinating primary source.