Canada's Voice

The first comprehensive biography of a diplomat and scholar who shaped foreign policy during Canada’s golden age as a middle power.

It is hard to imagine a person who embodied the ideals of postwar Canadian foreign policy more than diplomat and scholar John Wendell Holmes. Holmes joined the foreign service in 1943, headed the Canadian Institute of International Affairs from 1960 to 1973, and, as a professor of international relations, mentored a generation of students and scholars.

Canada’s Voice draws upon family letters, archival records, and more than 150 personal interviews to chronicle how Holmes influenced the way diplomats, scholars, and statespeople abroad viewed Canada and its citizens and how Canadians saw themselves on the world stage. Accessible and engrossing, this is the only comprehensive biography of a man who helped shape foreign policy during Canada’s golden age as a middle power.