Life in a Canadian Foreign Policy generation long ago: The early evolution of a professorial sample of one

Abstract

In response to the editors’ request, this article attempts to identify the developmental factors that have influenced the way the author has approached the study of Canadian Foreign Policy. It begins with some comments on the post-World War II international environment and on how it was regarded within his family household. His later exposures to the study of international affairs while an undergraduate at Dalhousie and subsequently at Oxford are then described, the pedagogical emphasis in both cases being focused on historical material. This was less true in the case of his graduate work at the University of Toronto, but even there the sense that historical understanding was essential was reinforced. The author’s overall conclusion has not been that more explicitly theoretical work has no value—quite the contrary—but rather that a knowledge of the detailed particulars, both past and present, cannot be neglected if the application of theoretical ideas to the analysis of specific international problems is to facilitate the cultivation of good judgment and the making of sound policy.