Michel Gauvin, troubleshooting diplomat
Hyfler/Rosner
politically and physically, Gauvin did things his way
SOURCE: The Montreal GAzette
BYLINE: ALAN HUSTAK
Michel Gauvin, the bluff, chain- smoking Canadian career diplomat who helped
oversee the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam after they lost the war
there in 1973, died in Ottawa on Aug. 29 after a lengthy illness. He was 84.
Gauvin was a well-known troubleshooter, who was also Canada's ambassador to
Ethiopia, Portugal, Greece, Morocco and to the People's Republic of China.
As well, he was the queen's Canadian secretary when she came to Montreal for
Expo '67 and the 1976 Olympics.
"Confident, decisive, brave and determined, he could handle difficult
assignments and be expected to acquit himself with
assurance and indeed panache," Vernon G. Turner, a former Canadian
ambassador to the U.S.S.R. and longtime friend told mourners at the funeral
in Ottawa on Wednesday
"Michel was always prepared to take risks, both physical and political, but
he was not reckless."
Michel Gauvin was born in Quebec City April 7, 1919. He was educated at
College Charles Garnier and at Universite Laval.
In 1940 he enlisted with Le Regiment de la Chaudiere and during the Second
World War took part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. One
month later he was wounded in a battle near near Caen. Sent to England to
recuperate, he returned to the front as a major, and commanded the infantry
company that is thought to have made the first Allied thrust into Germany.
He later wrote a history of his regiment, La Geste du Regiment de la
Chaudiere.
When the war ended Gauvin became Prime Minister Mackenzie King's
French-language secretary and shared an office with a then-unknown civil
servant, Pierre Elliot Trudeau.
While working for King he earned a bachelor's degree in public
administration at Carleton University. When King was replaced as prime
minister by Louis St. Laurent, Gauvin switched to External Affairs and was
posted to Ankara, Lisbon and Saigon.
During the 1964 crisis in the Belgian Congo it was Gauvin who negotiated the
release of 35 Canadian missionaries who had been held hostage. The following
year he was in Santo Domingo when civil war broke out in the Dominican
Republic.
In 1966 he was appointed Canadian ambassador to Ethiopia. As an ambassador,
he sometimes took risks that alarmed his staff. He would periodically drive
off alone in a Land Rover to observe fighting along the disputed border with
Somalia, where he could have easily been shot.
"I am very fatalistic. I never asked for a specific posting, and I have
never refused an assignment," Gauvin once told a reporter.
He was sent off to more tranquil posts for a while, serving as ambassador to
Portgugal, then Greece.
In 1973 he was dispatched to Vietnam as head of the Canadian delegation
where he was elected chairman of the International Commission of Control and
Supervision, which included Hungary, Indonesia, and Poland. He worked
16-hour days, seven days a week, in what was a frustrating excercise. "We
are not here to enforce a peace, not to watch a war. We are here to observe
the implementation of the ceasefire agreed to. We are here to mediate if
required, to assist," Gauvin said.
In his recollections of the Canadian peacekeeping experience in Indo-China,
Arthur Blanchette wrote, "Gauvin was under instructions from Ottawa to be
open and public about what went on, and he was regularly seen on the world's
television screens saying what was going on.
. . . This was not popular with his Hungarian and Polish colleagues, nor was
it agreeable to the U.S. because it created a series of unsettling
impressions."
Canada withdrew from the commission after six months because the Trudeau
government saw no reason for Canada alone to shoulder the responsibility for
peace.
Gauvin became something of a diplomatic celebrity at the time. Time magazine
profiled him as The Unquiet Canadian.
"He was not a typical Ottawa mandarin. He much preferred postings abroad
where he could be his own boss, and he didn't hesitate to question
authority. He wasn't bound by the rule book," Arthur Menzies, a lifelong
friend and former Canadian ambassador to China, told The Gazette.
"He was a straight talker, and had a great deal of self- assurance. If he
didn't like instructions from Ottawa, he either sidestepped them or picked
up the phone and dealt directly with the prime minister to straighten things
out."
After Gauvin retired in 1984, he worked for the United Nations with the
Commission on Human Rights in Haiti.
Gauvin was appointed an officer of the Order of Canada in 1973 and in 1995
was invested as a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour.
He was twice married, first to Patricia McNeil, with whom he had two sons,
and then to Nguyen Thi Minh Huong Deriancourt with whom he had a daughter.