Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant: Mackenzie King to Pierre Trudeau

Description

408 pages
Contains Photos, Maps, Bibliography, Index
$39.95
ISBN 0-8020-4445-X
DDC 971.06'092

Year

2000

Contributor

Reviewed by Barbara Robertson

Barbara Robertson is the author of Wilfrid Laurier: The Great
Conciliator and the co-author of The Well-Filled Cupboard.

Review

Gordon Robertson was born in Saskatchewan in 1917, and so was very much
alive to the miseries of the 1930s. He had a stern Scottish father from
whom he could elicit approval by getting high marks at school;
fortunately, he was able to oblige, even to the extent of winning a
Rhodes Scholarship in 1938. In Oxford, adversity persisted in that
because of the war, he had to complete his three-year degree in two
years (nonetheless, he got a first in jurisprudence). Rejected for
active service because of poor eyesight, he was called to Ottawa to work
initially in the Department of External Affairs. In Ottawa, he served as
a mandarin of distinction, at or near the centre of power, for nearly 40
years.

Naturally, his memoirs will be read with great interest for his
comments on the three prime ministers he worked most closely with. As it
happens, his comments on Mackenzie King, Louis St. Laurent, Mike
Pearson, and Pierre Trudeau are careful and discriminating, sometimes
pungent, even passionate. But it is his work as deputy minister of the
Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources that he refers to
as “the most fascinating job I would ever have.” In this vast
Canadian north, with a tiny population of nomadic Natives existing with
difficulty in a hostile environment, the task was to bring elements of
Canadian society—schools and health care—where none had previously
existed. The expectation was that hunting and trapping would decline and
economic development such as mining would take its place. Now there is
much less to hunt and more people to do it, but other forms of economic
activity are also insufficient.

The main emphasis of the memoirs is on constitutional problems arising
from the discontents of Quebec, to which was later added western
discontent. From the 1960s to his retirement in 1979, Robertson, as
clerk of the Privy Council, came increasingly to deal with
federal–provincial relations. His formerly excellent relations with
Trudeau started to go downhill when he dissented from the “power
play” of 1980–82, which secured the patriation of the Constitution
and the Charter of Rights without the agreement of Quebec. Trudeau’s
later outbursts against the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown
Accord deepened Robertson’s opposition to the former prime minister.
These are complex issues, but Robertson is perhaps right to claim that
in a complex federation like Canada settlements cannot be successfully
imposed without the assent of the nation’s main elements.

Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant is not an easy read, but it was a
deserving winner of the 2000–2001 John Wesley Dafoe Foundation Prize.

Citation

Robertson, Gordon., “Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant: Mackenzie King to Pierre Trudeau,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed November 25, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/8112.