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As Canada emerged from the shelter of the British Empire after
the Second World War, its foreign policy wore the sunny smile of
Lester B. Pearson. Pearson’s amiable nickname was Mike, his
boyish looks and breezy personality conveying the enthusiasm and
innovation of a country coming into its own in the world.
Canada’s tenacious post-1945 international engagement became
forever linked to Mike Pearson, Canada’s Ambassador to the
United States as the Second World War came to an end; deputy
foreign minister and then foreign minister from 1946 to 1957;
and prime minister (1963-1968) when the country celebrated its
100 birthday.
In the lobby of the Lester B. Pearson Building, the headquarters
of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa, is
Pearson’s 1957 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded for his imaginative
diplomacy in arranging a United Nations peacekeeping mission to
defuse the Suez Crisis.
Canada had seemed so small and limited before 1939. The
Mackenzie King government was a good citizen of the British
Empire, but also a careful one, fearful of international
commitments that would divide Canadians. Aside from Britain, Canada was represented by a diplomat
in only three major foreign countries — the United States,
Canada’s closest neighbour and main trading partner; France, the
ancient mother country of French Canadians; and Japan, covering
Canadian interests in the Pacific Ocean. Everywhere else British
ambassadors did Canada’s work.
A decade later, Pearson’s Canada was very different: wealthy,
united, confident, and strong when so many other countries had
been devastated by the Second World War. Pearson and his
diplomats called Canada a middle power, closer in their view to
a great power than an insignificant one. They valued
international commitments as a way to offset the power of the
United States.
The Canadian government was one of the chief architects of the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1947, and
played a vital role in the formation of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), the 1949 Western security alliance
against a possible Soviet attack. Canada contributed to United
Nations forces in the Korean War from 1950–1953, and built a
sophisticated military to serve with NATO in Europe.
Canadian mediation skills were crucial in building a multiracial
Commonwealth of Nations out of the dying British Empire. Canada
forged relationships with the developing world, and was soon
launching foreign aid programs in Asia, Africa, and the
Caribbean.
The Department of External Affairs, as the foreign office that
Pearson led was known, was widely thought one of the world’s
best. Young Canadians wanted to be like Mike Pearson, making a
global impact.
By the time that Pierre Trudeau succeeded him as prime minister
in 1968, Pearson’s internationalism was out of fashion in
Ottawa. Trudeau slashed Canada’s commitment to NATO, and
downgraded the Department of External Affairs. Canada was a
modest power, not a middle power.
Trudeau emphasized economic growth as the prime goal of his
early foreign policy. The potential of a large Chinese market
for Canadian products was a motive in Canada’s diplomatic
recognition of the People’s Republic of China in 1970.
Soon enough Trudeau edged back in Pearson’s direction. NATO, the
Commonwealth, and the new organization of French-speaking
countries were important parts of Trudeau’s international
policies as they evolved in the 1970s and into the 1980s.
The 1984-1993 government of Brian Mulroney gave its greatest
attention to good relations with the United States. Yet it was
also deeply committed to constructive involvement in
multilateral institutions, where Mulroney became a respected
figure. Canada condemned apartheid in South Africa at the United
Nations and elsewhere, and in the aftermath of the Cold War
participated in the coalition that defeated Iraq in the First
Gulf War and sent peacekeepers in the thousands all over the
globe.
Prime minister Jean Chrétien (1993-2003) and the most important
of his foreign ministers, Lloyd Axworthy, carried the Pearson
legacy forward with successful campaigns for the establishment
of the International Criminal Court and an international ban on
landmines.
Pearson was remembered in another way as the 1990s came to an
end. Critics said that Canada’s power and importance in the
world had dwindled away. What a stunning contrast that was, they
complained, with Canadian leadership in the years after the
Second World War, when Pearson’s activist diplomacy and his
Nobel Prize had made Canadians proud.
When early 21st century prime ministers Paul Martin and Stephen
Harper pledged that they would restore the country’s
international influence, they were promising that they would
return to a time when the world listened to Canadians, as it had
listened to Pearson. Mike Pearson’s internationalism smiles much
less often than it once did, but it remains deeply ingrained in
Canadians as the standard by which their place in the world is
judged.
Norman Hillmer is Professor of History and International Affairs
at Carleton University. Readers interested in L. B. Pearson can
follow up on this article with his three volume memoir, Mike
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972-1975), and John
English’s two volume biography, The Life of Lester Pearson
(Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1989 and Knopf Canada, 1992).
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#44 Canada’s World, Pearson’s World
