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Liaison Newsletter > LIAISON Vol. 1, No. 3, May 1997 - Articles
Remembering Lester B. Pearson 
April 23, 1997 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lester B. Pearson, a man whose name is synonymous with the invention of peacekeeping, and who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his initiative. Yet few Canadians know little more about this former Canadian Prime Minister than these sparse details. I have been asked to provide some of the more interesting pieces to the puzzle. Lester B. Pearson, the second son of a Methodist Minister, was born in Newtonbrook, Ontario, which was one of his father’s many parishes. Vincent Massey, also from a Methodist family and Canada’s first Canadian Governor-General, helped the young Pearson complete his secondary education at Oxford by awarding him the Massey scholarship. Pearson was to teach history at the University of Toronto for a brief time following this before Massey encouraged him, in 1928, to apply for a position in the Foreign Service. Canada was then on the threshold of establishing the Department of External Affairs and, for a young man who had already lived abroad in times of both war and peace, the chance to contribute to Canada’s coming of age was not an opportunity that Pearson was willing to miss. Posted to Geneva and London during the 1930s, Pearson witnessed at first hand the failure of the League and the approach of a Second World War that, like many others, he attributed to Britain’s policy of appeasement. It was this experience that most influenced his subsequent views on the importance of collective security. Working as Ambassador to Washington during the latter days of the Second World War, Pearson was able to put these views into practice by being "present at the creation" of the UN in 1945, and met with many of its founders. Canada’s important role in the war and its status as a major food supplier combined with Pearson’s own qualities as a diplomat to enable him to chair the early meetings which led to the founding of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), and then later, to the birth of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). His involvement in the international arena and his particular interest in the development of the UN was prevalent throughout 1948 to 1957, when he acted as Secretary of State for External Affairs. During this time, he took every opportunity to strengthen the capacity of the UN to deter aggression, as in Korea, or to keep the peace, as in the Middle East and Kashmir. The arrival of the Cold War dashed his early hopes for an agreed collective machinery to deter acts of aggression, but working with Dag Hammarskjöld and others (especially the Norwegians), he was able to turn his diplomatic skills to his advantage by converting the Suez crisis into a UN triumph. His government later built on this precedent by organizing the UN force in Cyprus. In keeping with these actions, he was never able to give full support to American policy in Vietnam (incurring President Lyndon Johnson’s wrath), as neither side was willing to accept a role for the UN in the conflict. At a time when the East and West lived on the brink of a nuclear war, Lester B. Pearson gained the confidence of world leaders, including the Russians, because he combined his idealism with a keen sense of what would work. It helped immensely that he was a Canadian, and that he never lost sight of the close link that exists between the national interest and world peace.
Geoffrey Pearson is the Vice President of UNA-Canada.
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