I had no trouble gaining admittance to the University of Ottawa, which gave its courses in English and French, perfect for a bilingual guy like me. I also found work as a deckhand in the summers on the freighters after my dad put in a good word to a friend. During the first six months of our separation, Corinne and I wrote every day and she obtained leave from the hospital to make the fifty-mile trip from Orillia to Penetang to attend church and eat Sunday lunch with my parents, even though I wasn’t around. The following six months, we exchanged letters every week, and she cut back on her visits to my place. After that, we wrote once a month until our correspondence slowly came to an end, and she stopped visiting my family altogether. Eventually she wrote telling me she had known since the moment I told her I was going off to university that we would grow apart. Perhaps it was for the best, she said.
My parents and grandpapa were shocked at the collapse of the relationship. They were fond of her and had come to look at her as a member of the family. But Grandpapa was the only one who became visibly upset, rebuking me when I came home for the Christmas holidays. I didn’t try to defend myself. “We just grew apart,” I said.
“No,” said Grandpapa, “You think you’re too good for her now that you’re going to university.”
Perhaps it was inevitable that Corinne and I would drift apart. A new world, one I hadn’t known in my hometown, had opened up. I took advantage of everything a university could offer, the subjects on the curriculum, and the library books on French existentialism, nineteenth-century French novels, and the latest in Biblical revisionism. I read a dozen volumes of the Jesuit Relations. I was a member of ten or so clubs including the United Nations Student Association, the History club, the International Affairs club, and the Spanish club. We discussed issues Corinne and, for that matter, my own family, would never understand — or so I was convinced in my arrogance.
I didn’t even answer her letter, telling myself I would look her up during a visit home and say goodbye in person — but I never did, another example of my growing conceit. But I agreed our breakup was for the best — all the more so since Grandpapa had been right — becoming a teacher was no longer good enough for me. I decided to follow Fairbanks’s suggestion to join the Department of External Affairs and become a diplomat.
2: When Values Differ
In January 1966, my last year at the University of Ottawa, I applied to join the Department of External Affairs. To be honest, despite my bravado, I really didn’t think I’d get in. After all, thousands of university candidates, many with advanced degrees in law, economics, and history, applied for the dozen or more openings that came available each year. It was the home department of Lester Pearson, Canada’s only Nobel Peace Prize winner. Dozens of the top bureaucrats in Ottawa had emerged from its ranks. In those days, before its decline set in, it had a reputation for excellence among foreign ministries around the world and at the United Nations.
True, I had done well in my time at university, but the University of Ottawa wasn’t Oxford, Cambridge, Queens, Laval or the University of Toronto — the institutions of higher learning favoured by generations of aspiring Canadian diplomats. I wasn’t a Rhodes Scholar like a disproportionate number of the Department’s members. Moreover, I didn’t fit the mould of the typical Foreign Service officer. Most were the offspring of what was then called the two founding nations: middle-class British settler stock and French Canadians who could afford to give their children classical college educations. Today, people say the Natives are the third founding people, but they’re just trying to be politically correct.
However, I had one secret weapon — my memory. In preparing for the written examinations held in early March, I spent months in the library reading back copies of the Economist, Time Magazine, Le Monde, the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, and Le Devoir. Incredible as it may seem, I remembered almost everything I read. And when they handed out the test papers, I saw that the questions were presented in multiple choice, which made my job easier. I was able to dredge up accurate answers to each and every one of them. The people who marked my paper must have thought I was a genius.
But passing the written exam was only the first step. I next had to face a panel of senior officials, the so-called oral board, who would grill me on all manner of issues and decide whether I should be taken on. Early one Friday morning in late May, I put on the dark blue suit I had bought at a reduced price at Tip Top Tailors, straightened the tie the salesman had thrown in free of charge, and set out through streets lined with budding maple, oak, and black ash trees for the East Block of the Parliament Buildings. As I walked, I wondered what I’d do if I got a job offer. Would I be smart enough to survive among all those super intelligent and sophisticated people? Would I be up to the challenge of living in strange countries with exotic cultures? But would I ever forgive myself if I turned down a job that might lead me to do great things with my life?
Arriving at my destination, I walked up the steps of the imposing stone High Gothic–style building which housed the offices of senators and the minister of External Affairs, and made my way to the conference room where the oral board was conducting its interviews. The chairman, Theodore Longshaft, I knew by reputation. He was the highly respected and feared director general of Security and Intelligence. After a cordial welcome, he pointed me to a seat with his pipe and invited the other five board members to ask questions. There was a shuffling of papers as they searched for my file among the overflowing ashtrays and papers piled in front of them. I heard someone say in an irritated voice, “Let’s get this over with as soon as possible….”
An older, florid-faced, white-haired board member, sweat dripping from his chin, his tie askew, peered at a picture in front of him, looked at me to confirm I was really Luc Cadotte, smiled, and introduced himself.
“My name is Milton Burump, director general of the bureau of United Nations and Global Affairs. Appearances to the contrary, I don’t eat junior Foreign Service officers or individuals hoping to become one.” After waiting for a second to see if his sally would elicit a chuckle — it didn’t — he asked the first question.
“Dear Boy, I hope you don’t mind me calling you ‘Dear Boy.’ I call everyone under the age of forty, Dear Boy. No offense meant. Please relax. Speaking for the others — if the others don’t mind — all our questions are going to be as easy ones. Now I see from your file you have the distinction of being the first candidate for the position of Foreign Service officer since the establishment of the Department to have registered a perfect score on the written examination. Did you cheat? If so, tell us now, Dear Boy, for we don’t want cheats in the Department.”
“No I didn’t cheat,” I said, too surprised to be insulted, and left it at that.
Burump looked at me and shook his head as if he didn’t believe me. He then made a great show of removing his glasses and polishing them with his tie, like an eccentric university professor. “I’m going to give you another chance to answer, Dear Boy. In the Department, we always take the word of a gentleman. Are you a gentleman, Dear Boy?”
I’ve never been afraid to speak my mind and let my irritation show. “Probably not,” I said, “but I have a special memory and can remember most things I read or hear. That accounts for my score.”
“Oh I see. That must mean you’re an idiot savant,” he said, smiling condescendingly, “like the people who perform in circus sideshows. But isn’t using those powers a form of cheating?”
“I’m neither an idiot nor a cheat,” I said, somewhat defensively. “I’m no more intelligent than anyone else but I have an ability to remember things.”
I wasn’t sure if he was some sort of malicious jokester who liked to humiliate people he had just met, or whether he had put his questions in good faith. Whatever it was, I didn’t like it. To make it worse, the others had laughed when he asked me if I was an idiot savant. I felt they were all putting me down. They probably knew I was a Métis — my name would have given me away —and wanted to have some fun at my expense before dismissing me out of hand. I’ve always had a problem with my temper and I now wanted to tell Burump to go to hell, to tell