During his seven years as Canada’s representative to Washington, Allan Gotlieb became famous for the remarkable collection of contacts he made for Canada in the American capital. But as he described in his private diary, making those contracts were not always easy. On February 9, 1982, for example, he had his first encounter with the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill of Boston.
Ambassador Gotlieb was none too pleased at the reception he received.
“I was escorted into one of the grand chambers of the Capitol building and waited with more than a dozen-and- a- half other individuals standing around in small groups chatting self-consciously,” he wrote. “After a while, the large and portly Speaker walks in and starts shaking hands and receiving members of the groups. He works the room, and when he comes to me, he pumps my hand. I tell him who I am. He smiles, graciously tells me what a great country I represent, and moves on.”
“The interview lasted 30 seconds,” Gotlieb’s account continued. “This was one of the more ludicrous encounters in my diplomatic career. Some Congressmen behave as if they are great satraps whose role is to receive petitions from supplicants – and sometimes gifts as well.”
What Ambassador Gotlieb forgot, however, is for O’Neill all politics was local. And, in this case, Canada wasn’t local enough! Politics after all, as the old saying goes, ain’t beanbag.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.