was born in 1897, the son of a Methodist minister in the small town of Newtonbrook, Ontario, just north of Toronto. The spirit of his Methodist upbringing stayed with him, even if an attachment to formal religion did not. He studied history at the University of Toronto from 1913 to 1915. Then, like many Canadians of his generation, he hurried off to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force in its struggle against Germany. After serving in Macedonia he joined the Royal Flying Corps, where he was given his lifelong nickname of "Mike"; "Lester" was thought unsuitable for an aspiring fighter pilot. In 1919, recovering from a nervous breakdown caused by wartime stresses, Pearson was demobilized and returned to Canada. In the years to come, the memory of the First World War would profoundly shape his approach to international affairs and diplomacy.
A diplomatic
O.D. Skelton and Pearson on the Berengaria in the 1930s.
career, however, was still a long way off. On his return to Canada, Pearson worked briefly in private business before resuming studies at Oxford University, where he remained from 1921 to 1923. Subsequently, he joined the staff at the University of Toronto as a professor of history.
Pearson found
Pearson with Georges Vanier (lower left), Vincent Massey (lower right), and Ross McLean (upper right) in London just before the war.
his true métier in 1927, when he wrote the entrance examination for the Canadian Foreign Service, which Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs O.D. Skelton was building up into a highly skilled and professional bureaucracy. All who met him were impressed with the affable and jaunty Mike Pearson; the lone exception may have been Vincent Massey, then the newly appointed Minister in Washington. Massey wrote that there was "something curiously loose-jointed and sloppy about his mental make-up which, as a matter of fact, is reflected in some measure in his physical bearing." Nevertheless, Pearson did extremely well in the exam and impressed the redoubtable Dr. Skelton, who felt the young recruit had "very distinct capacity." The most brilliant career in Canadian diplomacy was about to begin.
Pearson
Ambassador to the United States L.B. Pearson signs the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1945.
learned his craft in Ottawa as a junior officer and in London as a member of the High Commissioner's staff—the High Commissioner in question being Vincent Massey, whose opinion of Pearson's qualities rose dramatically. By 1941, he was one of the most experienced officers in the service, and when Skelton suddenly died he expected to succeed him as Under-Secretary. Instead, he was recalled to Ottawa as the number two man under Norman Robertson; this was a sharp disappointment for Pearson and one of the few setbacks in a golden career. After a year in Canada as Assistant Under-Secretary, he was posted to Washington in spring 1942. He flourished in the American capital, becoming one of its best-connected diplomats. He participated in many of the conferences that constructed the institutional framework for the postwar world, particularly the United Nations and its auxiliary organizations; the experience strengthened his belief in multilateralism. In recognition of his efforts, in 1945 Prime Minister Mackenzie King appointed him Ambassador to the United States. Well known on the world diplomatic scene, Pearson might have become the first Secretary-General of the new United Nations but for the opposition of the Soviet Union, already suspicious of its former allies.
Instead, in
Defence Minister Brooke Claxton (left), Pearson, and Permanent Representative Arnold Heeney at a meeting of the North Atlantic Council at Paris in 1953.
1946 Pearson returned to Ottawa to take on the top job in the Department of External Affairs at last. Here he formed a close partnership with his Minister, Louis St. Laurent, who took over the portfolio from a tired Mackenzie King. With his Minister's full backing, Pearson and his eager staff at External Affairs made Canada an active player on the postwar world stage, taking initiatives and making commitments that horrified the ageing Prime Minister. In 1948 St. Laurent succeeded King as Prime Minister and Pearson made the jump to the political level, joining the Cabinet as Secretary of State for External Affairs. The St. Laurent–Pearson partnership remained intact for almost a decade; with the total confidence of his chief, Pearson was virtually free to run Canada's diplomacy as he saw fit.
There were
Pearson in his capacity as President of the United Nations General Assembly in 1952 during the Korean War.
important issues to be dealt with during these years. Relations between Russia and the West were cooling, particularly after the communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948. Pearson oversaw Canada's entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the multilateral alliance that would shield the Western democracies from the Soviet threat. He never doubted the need for military preparedness, but he sought an alliance that would go further to ensure economic and cultural unity as well. In contrast, the Americans saw NATO as a military alliance and nothing more; they were not interested in what they dismissed as typical Canadian naïveté.
For his
Pearson visits with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1955.
part, Pearson did not believe that being an ally of the United States necessarily meant knee-jerk acceptance of American policy. Much of his Cold War diplomacy was aimed at ensuring that the Americans did not act unilaterally or too rashly. This was the case particularly during the Korean War. As a member of the United Nations contingent, Canada fought to repel North Korea's assault on its southern neighbour; at the same time, Canada sought to restrain the American response, including any U.S. temptation to employ nuclear weapons. In the fall of 1950, Pearson cautioned against moving UN forces through North Korea up to the border with China, an action he thought might provoke the communist Chinese. The warning went unheeded by General Douglas MacArthur, the American in charge of the UN campaign; and when he ordered UN troops to approach the border, Chinese forces entered the war. The world was thus plunged into a period of dangerous confrontation.
While many
Pearson receives his Nobel Peace Prize from Dr. Gunnar Jahn of the Nobel Committee in 1957.
tended to see the East–West confrontation in black-and-white terms, Pearson favoured shades of grey. He recognized the value of maintaining lines of communication with the Third World and decried the Americans' assumption that those who were not with them were against them. He forged particularly close bonds with India, perhaps the most important of the developing countries, whose neutralism frustrated and angered Washington. Above all, Pearson sought accommodation, not conflict, and pursued that goal with the multilateral tools at his disposal.
Perhaps
Louis St. Laurent with L.B. Pearson (left) and Paul Martin (right) at the 1958 Liberal leadership convention.
his greatest moment as Secretary of State for External Affairs came during the crisis precipitated by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's decision to nationalize the Suez Canal. On October 29, 1956, France, Britain and Israel attacked Egypt in an effort to reverse Nasser's action. International opinion was outraged, and it appeared likely that Britain and France would be censured by the United Nations. To end the Suez crisis and save two of Canada's closest allies—Britain and France—from the ignominy of international condemnation, Pearson suggested that the United Nations create a peacekeeping force under its auspices to separate the combatants. During November and December he strove to bring this new force into being. His effort won him the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize. It also set a standard of conduct for Canadian diplomacy that holds to this day. To meet that standard, over the years Canada has participated in countless peacekeeping missions.
By 1957 the Liberal Party had held power for twenty-two years. In the election that year it was defeated by John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservatives, who formed a minority government. Ironically, Pearson's success in resolving the Suez crisis was a liability with the voters, alienating those who felt that Canada should have stood by Mother England, right or wrong. A spent St. Laurent resigned and Pearson succeeded to the post of Liberal leader. Despite his years in Cabinet, he was no match for the wily and charismatic Diefenbaker in the realm of partisan politics, and in 1958 the Liberals suffered a crushing electoral defeat. Pearson learned quickly, however, becoming an effective Opposition Leader. He formed a strong team that revitalized the party and regained power in 1963, albeit with a minority in Parliament.
As
Prime Minister Pearson with President John F. Kennedy at Hyannis Port in 1963.
Prime Minister, Pearson could not immerse himself in the day-to-day running of foreign policy, which he left in the very experienced hands of Paul Martin. There were, however, some areas in which he played a leading role. After assuming office, one of his first acts was to visit U.S. President John F. Kennedy to repair the Canadian–American relationship that had been so badly strained under Diefenbaker. But the good relationship he established with the young president did not survive for long after Kennedy's assassination; instead it deteriorated as the United States became drawn into the quagmire of Vietnam under Lyndon Johnson, who was extremely sensitive to criticism of his war policy. The nadir was reached in April 1965, after Pearson used a speech in Philadelphia to openly call for a pause in the American bombing of North Vietnam. Infuriated that Pearson had spoken out while on U.S. soil, Johnson gave him a brutal dressing down. Pearson's action reflected his approach during the earlier Korean War: in both cases he had tried to dissuade the Americans from escalating a regional conflict into a far more serious crisis.
Pearson naturally played a leading role in Commonwealth affairs, participating in the biannual meetings of heads of government. He was particularly involved in the crisis that followed Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence in November 1965. His skilful diplomacy helped bridge the gap between London and the African
Commonwealth Prime Ministers with Queen Elizabeth in 1966. Prime Minister Pearson is the farthest on the right.
members of the Commonwealth, who wanted much stronger action against the breakaway regime than the British were at first prepared to take. In reconciling the two sides, Pearson may have prevented the breakup of the Commonwealth itself.
Pearson left office in 1968, worn out by years of vicious political infighting. He was active in retirement, particularly on the world scene, where he played the role of elder international statesman. He prepared a report for the World Bank on relations with developing countries, lectured at universities around the world, and completed an elegant first volume of memoirs. He died on December 27, 1972. Appropriately, shortly before his death, the government named the new headquarters building of the Department of External Affairs in his honour.
