Trafford Publishing: Distaff Diplomacy or My Elegant Life As a Diplomat's Wife

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Distaff Diplomacy or My Elegant Life As a Diplomat's Wife

by Rae Hardy

166 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0104; ISBN 1-55212-705-2; US$18.00, C$20.50, EUR15.00, £10.50

Memoirs of the wife of a Canadian Foreign Service Oficer from 1953 (when the department was a scant 6 years old) to her husband's retirement in 1980. The book covers postings to New York city, Vienna, Austria, Helsinki, Finland, TelAviv, Israel, and Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Sample Excerpt

Chapter Three

   At every foreign, non-English-speaking post, the most important things to me were the Information Offices of the British and American Embassies. In a democratic country like Finland where the West bumped squarely against not only the Iron Curtain but Russia itself, efforts to spread the influence of democracy were intensified, so I counted myself lucky to have access to the two huge libraries and reading rooms of those culturally-rich, English- speaking countries.
   The Finns worked very closely with the British in many aspects. The Finnish-British Society was an offshoot of the British Information Office, where Finnish and British wives met each month to further the English language and culture in Finland generally. It fell to my lot to represent Canada in this organization. George may have had his Western Foreign Press Club -I had the "Finn-Brit" Society.
   At our meetings we spoke entirely in English, we had lectures on everything from antique silver to travels in Timbuktu, we had cakes and tea, and then went home. We did useful things, too, like Christmas parties for local orphanages and donations to local charities.
   One thing I did notice, however, was that the Finn-Brit Society would not tolerate any English-speaking person on its executive who was not British-born -an effort, I surmised, to prevent Finns from being exposed to the wrong accents, like mine. Not being an avid "club person" myself, I felt overjoyed rather than slighted by this rule even though it succeeded in excluding people who, I felt, could have contributed a great deal to the organization, including the Lebanese wife of their own British Cultural Attaché.
   Be that as it may, Canada and other members of the Commonwealth joined Britain in the spread of English culture and to this end, George and I were slated to travel to all the outlying branches of the Finn-Brit Society, lecturing on Canada's greatest show of the decade, Expo '67 -that is, George did the lecturing while I handled the slides.
   We took two preliminary trips in February to Lahti and Kouvola, towns some 3 hours away from Helsinki by car. It was quite a revelation to leave the gloomy overcast skies of the southern coast and plunge into the icy cold brilliant sunshine of the interior. It was the clean, dry snow and frigid temperatures of an Alberta winter, except that the days were even shorter than I remembered in my home province. These sorties gave us an idea of what to expect on the lecture tour itself.
   In both towns, we arrived at our hotel on schedule at noon, were met by a Finn-Brit official, taken to lunch and then on a tour of the town. Back to our hotel and we were met by another Society member and taken on a tour of a factory (in Kouvola it was plastics). Back to the hotel and we met more people for a drink, then were taken to dinner, then to a hall where we gave the lecture, then an interview by the local newspaper, after which we all repaired to a coffee house and relaxed over sandwiches, coffee and conversation and a great deal of laughter far into the night. An exhausting yet stimulating series of events.
   In the middle of March we were ready to embark on the tour proper. By this time the days were getting longer and the weather was warmer along the coast, but as the snow on the roads alternately thawed and froze, it wasn't particularly easy driving. Our route took us almost straight northwest to the coastal towns of Vaasa, Pietarsaari, Kokkola and Oulu.
   The first two of these towns are called Vasa and Jakobstad in Swedish and I mention this only because the population there is predominantly Swedo-Finnish -a fact made evident to us by the Swedish-speaking hotel and restaurant staff. They are also, if you wish to consult your map, about as close as you can get to Sweden across that arm of the Baltic Sea called the Gulf of Bothnia. I ran across an ancient map of Finland which showed sleighs being driven across this strip of water in the dead of winter, but was told, on inquiring, that this was the product of someone's over-active imagination. "The Gulf of Bothnia has never frozen over sufficiently to carry such a weight -at least not in man's memory," the man stated flatly. And I believed him too. Even though he was a newspaper correspondent and looked all of sixteen years old.
   Our visits to these towns were somewhat the same as described at Lahti and Kouvola. We saw enough city halls, hospitals, legitimate theatres, indoor swimming pools, libraries and modern housing to convince us that the Finnish people living anywhere in Finland should not lack for sound minds in sound bodies. We toured a pulp and paper mill, an umbrella factory, tobacco factory, steel factory and a pharmaceutical company, most of which were heavy exporters. We saw a production of "Aida" in a town of 20,000 that would have done credit to a city ten times its size.
   We gave press interviews in small towns that had as many as three newspapers -one group of which included a Communist paper with such a dour-looking correspondent I could have sworn he came straight from Central Casting in Hollywood; and another with a rather intense young blond girl who asked among other things if there would be any jobs in Canada for Finnish-speaking girl reporters.
   The members of the Finnish-British Society seemed to have an insatiable interest in Canada. We were royally wined and dined in restaurants and entertained at afternoon teas, lunches and even the odd dinner at Finnish homes. In the evening our lectures were given to enthusiastic audiences and after each session they would order food and drink and, as we munched on sandwiches, the wine and beer and conversation flowed freely for hours on end. Never once did I get to bed before midnight.
   On the last leg of our tour we woke to a snowy, blizzardy, overcast day to find that the three-inch slush that George had parked the car in the night before had frozen solid, as had the hand brakes he so thoughtlessly set. I told him crossly he'd have to deal with it himself as I sat glumly in the lounge with a head so full of cold my voice sounded like it was coming out of an echo chamber.
   Our host from the night before appeared, so I tried to look wide awake as I went out to greet him. He had come down to say goodbye and when he saw our predicament he soon had several muscular Finns pushing, pulling and prying at our car but to no avail. Finally one of the men went to his apartment which happened to be just across the street, and returned with a pail of hot water which he proceeded to pour over the back wheel to thaw the brake. A passer-by stopped and looked at this filthy car, mud- spattered from top to bottom, being attended to by a man pouring water over a back wheel. He observed this phenomenon with amusement for some moments and then suddenly stepped forward and said:"Why don't you wash the whole car?" It was so unexpected that we were all left helpless with laughter. How typical of the Finns to send us on our way in high spirits.
   We left the flat prairie-like coastline for the rocks, lakes and trees of the hinterland as we headed for Kuopio, our final stop. There was none of this overcast stuff here -just clear, crisp sunshine with piles of fresh snow and we arrived at our hotel with just enough time to freshen up and get to the opening cocktails at 5 pm. Our lectures and slides and coffee chats were behind us. All that remained now was representing Canada at the Winter Games.
   Of course a large number of the diplomatic corps were there, the British and Americans being especially well represented, and we ran into a British Officer, Patrick Towers-Picton and his wife, Daphne, who said they had our evening all arranged. We were to go out to the ski jump and then on to a dinner to a friend of theirs, Mr. Allman. We discovered later that our invitation from Mr. Allman was at the hotel desk -a minor point we had missed on our way in.
   Back up in the room I put on all the warm clothes I had -black leotards, wool suit, thick red boots, fur coat and cap, packed my nose drops and a box of tissues and I was ready. We were taken out to the ski jump in one of Allman's private liveried motor cars; ushered to the front row of seats; wrapped around with warm blankets; and given hot spiced wine from a huge thermos, all courtesy of Allman. The fact that the British Ambassador, Sir David, was one of our group undoubtedly had everything to do with all this attention. I gathered Mr. Allman was one of the more wealthy men in Kuopio.
   I am not a sports enthusiast but I did enjoy the ski jumps under artificial lights, and the warm blankets and the spiced wine and the fact that the whole thing was mercifully short. When the lights were put out we saw a glorious fireworks display ending up with a burst in the sky directly above us so huge it seemed to cover the whole crowd.
   We drove back to the hotel where I divested myself of winter clothing and dressed for dinner. George and I were pleased to discover that Allmans lived only two blocks from the hotel, so it was a pleasant walk, especially since Patrick, Daphne and Sir David had joined us in the hotel lobby.
   The Allmans proved to be a most hospitable couple (as if this needed emphasizing)and they did, indeed, have a bit of money. They had renovated an old historic town house in beautiful taste, right down to the period wallpaper. The sofas were deep and comfy -no foam rubber here -and the mahogany furniture shone with the rich patina of age. We relaxed in the drawing room over a light red Finnish aperitif made from lingonberries, called Mesimeri, then adjourned to the dining room for dinner. By now it was ten o'clock and I would have eaten anything, which is probably why I remember the entire menu.
   The first thing offered was a bowl piled high with about two quarts of fresh caviar flown in from Russia especially for the occasion. I must have eaten about a cup of it. We heaped it on small slices of crisp toast and washed it down with iced vodka as smooth as velvet. Then came a clear bouillon with hot cheese pastry twists accompanied by dry sherry. Veal noisettes were served with creamed mushroom sauce, plain boiled potatoes, pickled baby beets and small green tomatoes with thin cucumber slices and a green salad. This was accompanied by a red wine. Then came one of my favorite cheeses, a Stilton as big as my head, with various biscuits and lastly, ice cream with a sweet dessert wine.
   We repaired to the bar in the basement for coffee, brandy and liqueurs and even in my tired, semi-conscious state I could not help but notice the entire wall across one side of the room stacked with shelf upon shelf of bottles. The conversation was spirited and lively, with George regaling the audience about his recent brilliant lectures and Patrick being equally entertaining with stories of his first posting to Finland when he first met the Allmans, his initiation into the rites of the sauna, and so on. Everyone had finished coffee and brandy and Patrick went behind the bar to mix tall ones for all around. By now it was well past midnight and I was so tired I barely had enough strength to shake my head.
   Finally the British Ambassador left which meant the rest of us minions were permitted to depart, so George and I took off shortly afterward. We staggered out into the street by about 2:00 am and George was so tired he almost hailed a cab, forgetting we had only two blocks to walk to our hotel.
   The next day I stayed in bed nursing my cold. George went out to the Games and represented Canada all over the place including a short meeting with President Kekkonen. He came back late in the afternoon filled with such good humor and enthusiasm, you'd think he hadn't missed a minute's sleep over the past week. I stared at him balefully, barely having had the strength to wash my hair and polish my nails.
   By 7:30 we were dressed and ready to walk to a nearby hotel to the Mayor's dinner. We were to be in our places at the table by 7:50, since President Kekkonen was arriving at 8:00. We went through the reception line and entered a large practically empty banquet hall. The head table was immense, stretching the length of the hall with three shorter tables branching out from it like a capital E. Our places were situated at the first shorter table, at the top of the E, and we stood idly by our placecards reading the names of our dinner partners and wondering who they could be.
   "At least I recognize one of them," I said to George.
   "Allman is seated on my left. "
   "I don't recognize anybody," George said, standing behind his place across the table from me.
   It turned out that a Mr. Pekuri of the Finnish Foreign Office sat on my right and George was seated between Mr. Pekuri's wife and a charming man who owned the company that made Mesimeri. Several other Finnish couples joined our ranks, occupying the seats to the end of our table, and, when we introduced ourselves I was pleased to hear they all spoke English.
   Everyone quieted down as the mayor rose and gave a long- winded speech broken in the middle by a bit of English, and President Kekkonen gave a very short unrehearsed response in which he stated that Canada was defeating Finland 5-1 in the world hockey. Two very muted cheers were heard at our end of the table.
   The dinner progressed quite soberly course by course and our Finnish acquaintances, on finding we were from Canada, asked all the polite questions. In those days it was de rigueur to pass around cigarettes after the main course of a dinner, presumably so that everyone could sit back and relax before tackling the dessert, coffee and liqueurs. At this particular banquet they passed a large tray of cigarettes in packets and just as the waiter reached George a whole pack, quite by accident, slid under the table. After the tray went by, George lifted the tablecloth and peered at the floor, then solemnly stood up and marked X on the tablecloth in front of Mr. Pekuri. Mr. Pekuri, immediately seizing upon the humor of the situation, repeated George's actions, marking an X with his finger on the tablecloth in front of George. By now everyone at our table was watching this little pantomime with some amusement since they all knew that somewhere beneath that table lay a full packet of cigarettes. Finally, when George lifted the cloth once more, looked at the floor, shook his head seriously, then stood and marked a definite X with his finger squarely in the middle of the table and set the candelabra on it, all formality at our table disappeared and our small audience dissolved in laughter.
   At this point, President Kekkonen gave his after dinner speech and when he announced that Canada had won the hockey game 7-1 our whole table cheered.
   After the President and his retinue left, George and I were mingling with some of our friends when the British Ambassador joined our group. George remarked how pleasant the dinner had been and that Protocol Division had been thoughtful in surrounding us with English-speaking people.
   "I wish I could say the same," complained Sir David. "I was seated beside a woman who spoke no known language and after several futile attempts, I discovered that the gentleman seated beyond her not only spoke English but was a most amiable and affable person with whom I shook hands and became most friendly. Guess who he was?"
   "The Minister from Esthonia," said George, this being the one person in the entire room that all countries, both Eastern and Western, save Finland, were avoiding because they didn't "recognize" him, or his government in exile.
   "Right!" said His Excellency.
   A few minutes later I found myself discussing with Sir David, a book popular at the time entitled "Philby" about the infamous Cambridge trio Burgess, Maclean and Philby, who had been Soviet spies in the 1930s and who had later defected to the Soviet Union.
   "I find it absolutely shocking," I said, "to think that people so highly placed in British Intelligence should be working against their own country."
   The British Ambassador agreed heartily.
   Now today, with the recent publication of the KGB archives, I find newspapers reporting that Oxford too had its group of moles led by none other than (it is strongly suspected) the very ambassador I was talking to. I just may have got closer to spies and intrigue than I realized.
   But to get back to Expo '67 -there was one small postscript to that event. A day or so after French President Charles de Gaulle made his famous "Vive le Quebec Libre!" remark in Canada, creating such a sensation that he had to return immediately to France, I heard a timid knock at my door. There stood Major Gallé, the French Military Attaché, who lived on the next floor of our apartment block, looking rather apprehensive.
   "You are still coming to my dinner party tomorrow night?" he asked plaintively. I knew immediately what he meant.
   "If you think that anything Charles de Gaulle says is going to prevent me from enjoying French cuisine," I said, "you'd better think again!" whereupon he threw back his head and laughed.
   "You're right," he agreed. "It's better we let our governments do the fighting."
   So thereafter, whenever he met either George or me -in the hallway, on the street, in other people's homes -we would greet each other with "Vive le Quebec libre!"

*****
   Since the word "sauna"is almost synonymous with Finland, George and I were not surprised when we found ourselves driving out to a friend's summer cottage for a "sauna and barbecue" about three days after our arrival. Our friend, Paavo, had told us that every summer cottage and every country home in Finland had a sauna by a lake and after a cursory glance at the countryside I felt there was no need to argue this point. Certainly there were more than enough lakes to go around.
   "This is the stupidist idea I ever heard of," George muttered as he carefully navigated a small bridge. "You get all dressed up to attend a barbecue, sit down to relax over a welcoming drink and some lively conversation and your host stands up, rubs his hands together and says: "Now, what say we all go and have a bath?"
   "It's not a bath," I explained. "According to Paavo it is a soothing balm, a ritual, a ceremony. . . you have to try it to understand."
   "A likely story. And then I suppose you'll spend another two hours re-doing your face and your hair," George argued. "These things you do before you leave home, not after you arrive at a party, for heaven's sake."
   "My hair and makeup will look just as good as anyone else's," I countered. "Why don't you just stop whining and look upon this as another new experience?"
   However, I began to have second thoughts about an hour later as I stood stark naked, bucket in hand, with my hostess, Rista, and her three girls similarly unclad, and tried to look nonchalant as I entered a room hot enough to boil water.
   "Make yourself comfortable," Rista said, indicating a wooden platform where I sat and proceeded to melt.
   When I was about half liquified, one of the children decided it was time for the second phase of my initiation so she began flicking me briskly with birch branches. This, she explained, would increase the circulation of my blood which, judging from the pounding in my ears, I thought had been doing quite well on its own. But in a few minutes the sauna was filled with such a wonderful scent of green leaves that I was actually beginning to enjoy myself. Then just as I felt I was becoming acclimatized, the oldest girl threw her pailful of water on the hot stones, bringing the temperature up to something that would fuse steel ingots.
   "Now you jump in the lake," Rista said, which was something I would have said to her earlier if I'd thought of it. As it was, I followed her down a short path to the shoreline, thanking God it was a reasonably warm September. Hot as I was, the thought of the usual Finnish run through the snow and a jump through ice did not sound appealing. Even in September the lake would be cold enough, I thought, and if I survive this I'm never going to take another sauna as long as I live. A run. . . and a jump. . . and to my complete astonishment I was enveloped in water that seemed as warm and silky as the Mediterranean.
   A few minutes later, as we women sat washed and clothed, lounging on the cottage porch waiting for Paavo and George to wrestle with the sauna somewhere down there on the lakeshore, I gave way to such a wonderfully refreshed and rejuvenated feeling that I had to admit the Finns had a point. When it came to physical and mental relaxation, the sauna was way ahead of valium.
   Of course most Finns spent their summers at a cottage on a lake, but winter vacations were usually a flight to the Mediterranean -sunny Spain being a favorite. However, George, Mother and I decided that what we wanted was to take three weeks; leave the children with our au pair; fly to Zurich; rent a car and visit friends in both Switzerland and Austria. All went well until the end of our second week when we caught ourselves toying with our Sacher Torte over the dinner table and saying almost in unison: "Let's go home." It's a good thing we did, too.
   It turned out that two-and-a-half-year-old Elizabeth had been pining away because she felt abandoned. The maid was worried and had called the doctor but there was little he could do. Our daughter stoutly refused to do anything for the au pair so that by the time we got home she had lost about 3 pounds, her hair was filthy and her feet and legs were black right up to the knees. Fortunately one-year-old John was too young to notice our absence, but I decided then and there that I would never leave the children alone again.
   The following year we flew to Milan, Italy, complete with Mother, children and our new maid, Johanna -six people and eleven bags -where we rented a car and drove to Lido de Jesolo. This is a beautiful beach on the Adriatic that we used to visit when we lived in Vienna. It is well located, being close to many tourist attractions and you can drive south on a spit of land to Punta Sabbioni, catch a boat and be in Venice in an hour.
   Our idea here was to leave Johanna with the children playing on the beach while Mother, George and I went sightseeing and shopping -the latter mostly of the window variety. Just a few days into this holiday and Elizabeth seemed to be getting downright puzzled. Finally one morning at breakfast she said: "What are we doing here?" which seemed a good question since Italy had turned almost as cold and blustery as Finland.
   "We're here on a holiday to have fun." I explained.
   "When are we going home?"
   Our waiter, a portly man with a ready smile, who spoke excellent English, thought Elizabeth was a riot and he would go off into gales of laughter every time she spoke. Her next observation was about our maid.
   "Johanna always says 'mustn't use fingers! mustn't use fingers!'" she said picking up her breakfast roll. "You know," slight pause while she thought this over, "she shouldn't come in here!"
   At this remark our waiter practically expired, but managed to wipe his eyes, compose himself, and assume a reasonably sober expression to ask us if we had heard that Bobby Kennedy had been shot. Well, no, we acknowledged, we hadn't heard this news -being unable to either understand or read Italian.
   The following day he rushed over to our breakfast table with an anxious look telling us that Bobby Kennedy had died. We sat discussing this tragedy with him, when a few Italians who were leaving the restaurant, stopped by our table and commiserated with us in halting English, thinking we were Americans. We were slightly taken aback but we thanked them realizing it was an honest mistake. Their concern had been genuine and it would be unfair to tell them we were Canadians.
   But we were not quite prepared for the reaction of a museum guide later that day, when George talked to him in English as the man was selling us our tickets. "Oh signore," he said, obviously upset. "Bobby Kennedy. I'm so sorry." Then being quite overcome, he threw his arms around George, leaned his forehead on my husband's chest and burst into tears.
*****
   The next January we took another flight to Italy only this time there was only our immediate family of five, and our stopover was Rome, and it was not a holiday. We were on our way to our new posting in Israel.

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