United Nations (1976 to 2009)

I was first posted to the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations in New York in the fall of 1976 as one of two additions to the Mission’s staff in advance of Canada’s anticipated election to the Security Council for the 1977/1978 term. We won that election, and as First Secretary and then Counsellor, I was assigned to assist with Third World issues before the Council and act as Mission Press Officer.

My moments of prominence on the Council were largely determined by Ambassador Bill Barton’s need to get to bed late at night, as in these photos of the Council at work late into the night in 1978

In November 1983 I accompanied Mr. Trudeau, as his Foreign Policy Advisor, to UNHQ for a meeting with Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, at the outset of the Prime Minister’s ‘Peace Initiative’

After nearly 20 years I returned to the UN as Canadian Ambassador and Permanent Representative in January 1995. A couple of months previously I met the UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros Ghali in Quebec City, who was told by our Foreign Minister, André Ouellet, I would soon be representing Canada at the UN. I had first met Boutros while accompanying PM Pierre Trudeau to Egypt in November 1980

Presenting Credentials to a profoundly interested UN Secretary General in New York on 3 Jan 1995

UNSG Boutros Boutros Ghali and his wife, Leia, make an official visit to Ottawa in November 1995

Prime Minister Chrétien visits the UN on its 50th anniversary in November 1995, eight days before the Québec Referendum

Canadian Foreign Minister, André Ouellet, and John Polanyi, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and peace activist, visit the General Assembly in September 1995

Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy visits the UN General Assembly in 1997, 1998, and 1999

UNSG Kofi Annan and his wife, Nane, make an official visit to Ottawa in December 1997

Sundry UN Encounters

Meetings with the UN NGO Group

Representing Canada before the Security Council, on the Security Council, and as President of the Council in February 1999 and again in April 2000

On Land Mines (Aug 1996) ——- & —— In May 1997

As President of the Security Council in February 1999 (6 days after an emergency appendectomy)

As President of the Security Council in April 2000

The Security Council Goes to Washington . . . . in March 2000

The Coffee Club – Security Council Expansion Refuseniks

Remembering the UN Precinct along First Avenue in Manhattan

In July 2008 I was asked by the UNSG, acting as his Special Envoy, to attempt to end the civil war in Niger. In the course of that assignment, my assistant, Louis Guay, and I were kidnapped by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb on 14 December 2008 and held captive for 130 days in the Sahara Desert. We were released in late April 2009, and in May, Mary and I called on Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at UN headquarters in New York to express our appreciation for the support and assistance he had extended to my family during this ordeal.