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 some sleep, as evident in these photos of the Council working late into the night in 1978

In November 1983 I accompanied Mr. Trudeau, as his Foreign Policy Advisor, to UN Headquarters in New York 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 had met 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, made an official visit to Ottawa in November 1995, where they were received by Governor General, Roméo Leblanc, and his wife, my sister, Diana Fowler-Leblanc

Prime Minister Chrétien visited 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, visited the General Assembly in September 1995

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

UNSG Kofi Annan and his wife, Nane, made an official visit to Ottawa in December 1997 where they too were received by our Governor General, Roméo Leblanc, and Diana Fowler-Leblanc

Sundry UN Encounters: such as these with Kofi Annan and  Peter Hansen, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, in UNSG Annan’s Office, Mary with Yasser Arafat, President of the Palestinian National Authority, the King and Queen of Spain, Kofi at home in Ottawa, Mother Theresa, and Canadian Astronaut, Colonel Chris Hadfield

Regular meetings with the UN Group of Non Governmental Organizations

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 (those Member States which opposed proposals then under consideration to expand the membership of the Security Council)

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 four and a half months 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 that ordeal. I subsequently wrote “A Season in Hell: my 130 days in the Sahara with Al Qaeda” about that experience