Please Return all the Stuff You Have Nicked Over the Years

Dear Colleague,

As you know, over the past few years the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade has undertaken an active program of activities in Ottawa, across Canada, and at missions abroad to celebrate its Centennial. Many of our Retired Heads of Missions have participated in these events and contributed directly to their success.

As the Centennial draws to its close this spring, we thought it might be appropriate to leave behind a modest but lasting public monument to our Department’s Centennial and its storied diplomatic past. In order to do this, we have commissioned a small set of displays for the Pearson Lobby. We hope that these will remind staff and visitors, both from Canada and abroad, of the important contribution that DFAIT has made and continues to make daily to Canada’s prosperity and security.

In the short term, we plan to fill the first display cases with material and artefacts that we currently have in our possession. However, the Department has only a small number of these, and we are forced to turn to our retired officers for mementos and historic artefacts that we can fashion into displays over the longer term. We would like to encourage you to consider lending the Department any small items of historical significance that you have acquired during your career. These could be anything, and might range from a pen used to sign an important treaty, to an old “one-time pad” to old mission seals. Naturally, items chosen for display will be properly credited, protected, and insured against loss and damage.

Should you have any questions about this initiative, or should you wish to lend us an item for display, please do not hesitate to contact either the Senior Departmental Historian, Hector Mackenzie, at (613) 992-4349, or his colleague, Greg Donaghy, Head of the Historical Section, at (613) 992-6288.

Sincerely,

Leonard J. Edwards

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs