History
Ministers holding the External Affairs and Foreign Affairs portfolios have sometimes played prominent international roles:
- Lester B. Pearson (a future Prime Minister) defused the Suez Crisis and established the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces and as a result received the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize.
- Joe Clark (a former Prime Minister) led opposition to South Africa's Apartheid system in the Commonwealth of Nations, against initial resistance from the British government of Margaret Thatcher and the United States government.
- Lloyd Axworthy brought about the Ottawa Treaty, banning anti-personnel landmines in most countries of the world.
As in Pearson's case (and that of Louis St. Laurent, his predecessor), the portfolio can be a final stepping stone to the Prime Minister's Office. Until 1946, it was customary for the office to be held by the sitting Prime Minister. John Diefenbaker would hold the portfolio on two subsequent occasions.
Read more about this topic: Minister Of Foreign Affairs (Canada)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)