Gordon Robertson - Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant

Gordon Robertson

Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant: Mackenzie King to Pierre Trudeau  

Toronto; University of Toronto Press, 2000,

pp. xvi + 408, £25 hb).

By the standards of political memoirs, this is an unusual book, and the reviewer's grouping of themes differs a little from those adopted by the author. Its first part is mainstream autobiography, dealing with youth, Saskatchewan, Oxford, marriage. This leads into career, and the first decade in Ottawa. Gordon Robertson joined the Canadian civil service during the Second World War. In 1945, he moved to the Prime Minister's Office, to become right-hand bureaucrat first to Mackenzie King and then to Louis St Laurent. Although Robertson admired King and ostensibly defends him against his detractors, he also subtly paints a negative picture of petty petulance, in contrast to his unrestrained admiration for St Laurent. The book's third narrative focuses upon the Canadian North, which Robertson ran during the decade from 1953. Section four sees Robertson at the heart of government, the innocuous title of Clerk to the Privy Council cloaking a classic Sir Humphrey role, first for Pearson and then, until 1979, with Trudeau. Finally, we see Robertson as a concerned private citizen, campaigning for the Meech Lake Accord and working to safeguard Canada's future. The combined result is an amalgam of several different books, itself a reflection of an influential life. One consistent theme is that difficulty of distancing administrative decision-making from raw politics. It is striking to learn that Robertson was present, and even commented, during a discussion of the 1968 election date ("even public servants are entitled to opinions") and that he counselled Pierre Trudeau not to revoke is announced retirement from politics in 1979 - although in this case, Robertson was within days of clearing his own desk for the last time. Trudeau emerges as the central figure of the second half of the book. Robertson confirms the importance of Trudeau's brief experience as an Ottawa civil servant from 1949 to 1951 as a foundation for later relationships. He conveys something of the excitement of Trudeaumania of the late sixties, with more than a hint of the problems that his philosopher-king style caused for the bureaucracy. It is possible to suspect that the flower-power Trudeau is so favourably portrayed partly to point up Robertson's disillusionment with the way his one-time subordinate and eventual boss monstered the attempt to change his 1982 constitution through the Meech Lake amendments. Yet although roundly condemned, Trudeau remains the lost leader. The books closes with a poignant expression of hope that "in spite of all that has passed, Pierre Trudeau, the statesman" might make "a supreme final act of leadership" to solve Canada's regional and cultural tensions through constitutional change. Alas, Trudeau was already gravely ill and died soon afterwards.