Unsung Hero

I have always thought of the late John Wendell Homes, a distinguished Canadian diplomat turned scholar and teacher, as Canada’s equivalent to the late George Kennan, a U.S. diplomat and scholar who was the author of the doctrine of containment, which charted a course for the United States on how to deal with the former Soviet Union during the early days of the Cold War. Both men have become larger-than-life iconic figures in the annals of modern diplomacy. Much like Kennan, Holmes served as a diplomat and head of the mission in Moscow in the early, bleak days of the Cold War. Like Kennan, Holmes was intellectually brilliant and greatly admired, if not revered, by his contemporaries. Like Kennan, Holmes had a meteoric career in the foreign service, but left it to pursue a career of writing and teaching. Kennan went to the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, Holmes to the Canadian Institute of International Affairs and the University of Toronto. Kennan wrote a series of important tomes on U.S. foreign policy and U.S.-Soviet relations. Holmes wrote a series of highly influential essays and books that both defined and shaped Canada’s image of itself in the post-war world. And like Kennan’s, Holmes’s pen was much more trenchant, witty, mellifluent and acerbic than the person, which made him a beguiling personality in spite of his shyness and somewhat WASPish reserve.

Canada’s Voice: The Public Life of John Wendell Holmes, Adam Chapnick’s biography, offers a warm, sympathetic and extremely well-informed portrait of Holmes the diplomat and teacher. Chapnick is a gifted writer and historian. With this book he moves to the top ranks of the new generation of diplomatic historians. He brings to life a challenging and somewhat enigmatic figure with grace and sensitivity. Holmes left a vast paper trail behind him when he died on August 12, 1988. But this intensely private man would have been a difficult subject to capture and portray, even by those who knew him well, which Chapnick did not. However, Chapnick has shed more than a little light on this remarkable man. Holmes’s strengths and weaknesses are appraised with an even hand. And we are all the better for it as this somewhat inscrutable individual comes into sharper focus.

The research that went into the book is impressive. Chapnick not only conducted extensive archival work, but also interviewed a large number of Holmes’s contemporaries, including many of his former students. The book follows Holmes’s life in chronological order, beginning with his strict Methodist upbringing in southwestern Ontario, his studies at the University of Western Ontario and his failed attempt to complete his PhD at the University of London. Like many an academic manqué, Holmes gravitated toward what was then called the Department of External Affairs, landing his first job as a special wartime assistant.

Charting Holmes’s fast-tracked career at External Affairs (now called the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade) and his early postings in London, Moscow and New York after the war, Chapnick does an admirable job of capturing the complex interpersonal dynamics of the department in those early years and Holmes’s remarkable ability to navigate seemingly unscathed through the personal rivalries and philosophic differences among the likes of Hume Wrong, Norman Robertson, Escott Reid, Dana Wilgress, Lester Pearson and the other figures of the so-called “Golden Age” of Canadian diplomacy. Unlike some of the recent potted histories of this period, which wrongly imply that there was something of a consensus at the time about Canada’s emerging place in the world, Chapnick shows that there was much ferment and disagreement in the corridors of the East Block where External Affairs was housed. The department was populated with hardliners, pragmatists, realists, idealists and even the faint of heart, who had very different ideas about what Canada could and should do in a world riven by Cold War rivalries. Nor was there any great love for the United Nations among many Canadian diplomats, Holmes included, as the world’s international organization became twin hostage to U.S.-Soviet divisions in the Security Council and an increasingly assertive group of independently minded developing countries in the General Assembly. Chapnick correctly, I think, puts Holmes in Pearson’s camp. Like Pearson, Holmes believed that Canada should strive for common ground through its diplomacy by seeking accommodation among the great powers and bridging growing divisions between East and West and North and South that threatened the global order.

Chapnick argues that Holmes’s diplomatic career reached its pinnacle in the mid to late 1950s. He was a key player on Pearson’s team during the 1956–57 Suez crisis that almost destroyed the NATO alliance, when British and French forces along with Israel, and unbeknownst to the United States, invaded Egypt by taking over the Suez Canal. Holmes was “the primary intermediary” between the authors of “the forthcoming proposal” for a peacekeeping force and British and French representatives; his “mediatory and diplomatic abilities, along with his drafting skills,” contributed enormously to “Pearson’s ultimate success.” Holmes also drafted Pearson’s famous speech at the UN that officially launched the idea of a UN peacekeeping force for Suez. He subsequently played a key role in convincing the Egyptian government to accept Canadian military peacekeepers, who “still wore British uniforms and therefore evoked in Colonel Nasser images of great power imperialism.” If Pearson was the poster boy for Canada’s newfound role as the “helpful fixer” par excellence in international affairs, Holmes was Canada’s unsung hero behind the scenes. But that was vintage Holmes. He never sought the political limelight, and his own genuine modesty, uncompromising loyalty and sense of professionalism meant that others took all of the glory. As Chapnick acutely observes, “the Suez story is told differently today in large part because John Holmes wanted it that way.”

Holmes’s fortunes took a swift downward turn when John Diefenbaker came to power in June 1957. The department was on the outs with the new prime minister, who referred to many of its senior officials as “Pearsonalities.” Although Diefenbaker had a healthy respect for and actually liked Holmes, this did not make the diplomat’s life any easier. He soon found himself overwhelmed with his professional duties, and a series of personal losses, including the death of his father and a close friend, affected him deeply. Holmes also became embroiled in controversy for his views on China. He was deeply at odds with some of his senior department colleagues and the prime minister on the issue of recognition of the People’s Republic of China. Holmes was keen to see Canada support China’s accession to the United Nations; Diefenbaker was not. Holmes then broke one of the cardinal rules of a public servant. He crossed the boundary between detachment and political advocacy by suggesting that the Department of External Affairs and not the government should take the lead in initiating a change in Canada’s policy. As Holmes became increasingly overworked and tired, his own judgement on a number of other key files faltered. Late in 1959, following a period of sick leave for stress and exhaustion, he tendered his resignation.

After a brief period of rest and recuperation that was followed by a visiting fellowship at Duke University, Holmes joined the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, becoming its president in 1960. The CIIA was Canada’s premier non-governmental organization for international affairs. Its headquarters were based in Toronto, although it had a national membership and branch offices that were scattered across the country. With Holmes at the helm, the organization flourished. It became “a globally recognized think tank” and a key force “in the development and discussion of Canadian foreign policy at home and around the world.” Holmes played a key role in supporting the inclusion of francophones in what had essentially been an anglophone body. In 1967, he worked with Paul Painchaud, a distinguished scholar at Laval University, and Jacques Parizeau, the French Canadian nationalist who subsequently became premier of Quebec, to host a major conference on the world economy in Quebec City. The event cemented relations between Painchaud and his colleagues in the CIIA. Painchaud became the CIIA’s first directeur pour le Québec.

In 1970 McClelland and Stewart published Holmes’s first book, a group of essays on Canadian diplomacy that appeared under the excellent Shakespearian title, The Better Part of Valour, discretion being the good diplomat’s long suit. Although Holmes wrote much afterward, his first book was probably his best because it defined the core of his thinking about Canada’s role in world affairs. The essays underscore Holmes’s belief in the importance of negotiations as the key instrument of diplomacy and the need to use this tool strategically and wisely. Holmes was also the consummate pragmatist. He knew that bold initiatives (which he did not shy away from) would only be successful if the groundwork was well laid beforehand and the resources and political will marshalled before such initiatives were launched. He rightly believed that the world abounds with contradictions. Unless the statesperson and the diplomat learn to accept paradox, they will not succeed. The “recognition of contradiction and the acceptance of paradox” was, as Chapnick notes, a “phrase that was forever to be associated with John Holmes.”

The final chapters of Chapnick’s book review Holmes’s life as a teacher, friend, cousin, commentator and writer. In some ways, it is a sad story. The CIIA fell into decline after Holmes stepped down from the presidency. Although he continued to serve as its research director, he disengaged from the management of the organization. Lack of funding and declining membership lay at the core of the CIIA’s problems. It never really fully recovered as an organization. Many years later, the CIIA would morph into an entity called the Canadian International Council as a result of a large infusion of cash raised by Research in Motion co-founder James Balsillie. In Holmes’s later years, he became something of a roving teacher, dividing his time between Glendon College at York University and the University of Toronto where he taught a series of highly popular courses to undergraduates and graduates and for which he was poorly paid.

As I was one of John Holmes’s former students myself, I was eager to read Adam Chapnick’s new biography of the man. I had taken Holmes’s graduate seminar in my final year as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto and was lucky to have been admitted to what was widely viewed as one of the best courses in Toronto’s political science department. Holmes was a gifted teacher but not because he was a brilliant lecturer. He was not in fact one of those dazzling “sages on the stage.” What he was good at was guiding his students so that they acquired a newfound confidence in presenting their own ideas while developing a passionate interest in Canada’s role in world affairs. He did this by introducing his year-long course with six weeks focused on his own work, a series of essays on key episodes in Canadian foreign policy. They were drafts of what I recall was a new book he was working on at the time. By laying his own thoughts on the table for criticism and discussion, he soon engaged all of us. The debates were intense. Another feature of the seminar was the veritable parade of diplomatic luminaries, many of them close friends of Holmes, who were guest lecturers in the seminar and fascinated us with their stories and amusing tales of diplomatic heroism and disappointment.

Holmes also taught many of us how to write. He encouraged us to submit the rough drafts of our papers to the scrutiny of fellow students who were not nearly as charitable as the great man himself. He used an HB pencil to mark our papers, carefully correcting grammar and spelling, offering praise where it was warranted and not hesitating to indicate when he disagreed. I ran into Holmes on a number of occasions in subsequent years— once when he gave a lecture at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, and then at the University of Toronto and the offices of the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security in Ottawa. Each time he was his usual gracious, genial and, I would also say, ageless self. He always seemed to be exceptionally well informed on what the various members of his seminar were up to. If he was Canada’s Kennan in one sense, he was Mr. Chips in another—a gentle, convivial man who took a keen, lifelong interest in his students. To the last one, we were all part of his flock.

Many of Holmes’s students went on to pursue highly successful careers in public service, journalism or academe, among them Jill Sinclair, Paul Meyer, Paul Robertson, Chantal Hébert, Christopher Hume and Kim Richard Nossal. Such was the appreciation of his doctoral students that in 1980 they presented him with a book of essays they had written in his honour under a title that must have surely warmed his heart, An Acceptance of Paradox: Essays on Canadian Diplomacy in Honour of John W. Holmes, edited by Nossal.

Chapnick treads gently on some delicate subjects in Holmes’s life. These include his reasons for leaving government when he fell under suspicion by the RCMP, allegedly because he had a brief affair with a Russian when he was posted to Moscow in the late 1940s, and his longstanding relationship with a widow who lived in his apartment building in Toronto in later years. Mercifully, the tidbits of gossip that Chapnick serves up do not distract from the central story line, Holmes’s public life and his contributions to Canadian foreign policy as diplomat, educator and essayist.

Those who knew the late John Holmes will delight in the very fine portrait Chapnick renders of the man and his ideas. But for those who did not, they will learn much about a great Canadian who for many years was Canada’s “voice” in international affairs.