European Diary, 1977-1981 (34 page)

He was tolerably relaxed about Lévesque himself, partly because he thought that his support was declining, though he surprised me by the extent to which, he said, a lot of people, particularly in the prairie states, and indeed in British Columbia, believed that he, Trudeau, was more or less hand-in-glove with Lévesque and was trying to force francophone/Papist influences on to the whole country. Speaking without great passion but with considerable resentment, Trudeau expressed himself shocked at the way Giscard and the French Government had received Lévesque, mainly, he said, because it was so different from the dismissive way (about Lévesque) in which Giscard had always spoken to him.

Then to the Department of External Affairs for an hour's meeting with Don Jamieson,
⁴²
the Newfoundlander who is the Minister and whom I had met on several occasions before and liked. At noon he and I presided jointly over the formal session of the Committee of
Cooperation between Canada and the Community. By this stage I was beginning to be struck by how strenuously anglophone Canada now attempts bilingualism. Jamieson began his speech in the most appallingly bad French, so I had quickly to change the opening of mine.

Then an official luncheon of about two hundred in a room with a good view-wide horizon, snowbound landscape, brilliant sunshine—at the top of the building. An unexpected speech by Jamieson at the end, and therefore an impromptu one from me. Next a visit to question time in the Parliament building, and was called on by the Speaker to stand up in the gallery.

Then a substantial discussion with the Defence and External Affairs Committee. Following this I went to see Jean Chrétien, the relatively new Québécois Minister of Finance. Quite a tough, impressive man, who apparently could speak no English until a few years ago, and is still not fluent. Then a visit to the Commission office and staff.

Dinner party of about twelve with Trudeau at his official residence. An agreeable, informal atmosphere. His three children were all there when we arrived and seemed friendly enough, though very resistant to Trudeau's efforts to speak French to them. ‘Aw, shucks, Pop, I wish you'd talk English,' was the reply of one of them to ‘Dis à Monsieur Jenkins quel age tu as.' Slightly high-falutin conversation, led by Trudeau, but he getting me to do most of the talking and confining himself largely to asking questions about world trends, world unemployment problems, whither the world economy, etc., all geared in a general sense to the prospects for the Summit.

THURSDAY, 9 MARCH.
Ottawa and Halifax.

Another brilliant morning, though with perhaps only about 10° of frost, and the Canadians consequently beginning to talk about spring arriving. To the Parliament building yet again for a so-called round-table breakfast, presided over once more by Jamieson, with about five or six ministers and officials present. I found myself involved (i) in making a speech for about twenty minutes which I hadn't altogether expected; and (ii) in answering a lot of moderately but not excessively difficult questions for nearly one and a half hours. Then a brief meeting with the ambassadors of the Nine. Then
an hour's meeting with the Premier of Ontario, Joe Davis. Quite an effective little man who had come up specially from Toronto, I think mainly because the Government wanted to show that Premiers were invited and that one at least would come, even if Lévesque would not.

Then rather hurriedly to call on the Governor-General, Léger, a brother of the former Cardinal Archbishop of Montreal, himself an ex-diplomat, primarily francophone clearly, who has been in office three or four years: an interesting man despite the fact that I had been warned that he was very difficult to talk to since his stroke. I did not find this, except that his stroke had the most curious effect of making it easier for him to speak English than French.

Next a rather grand lunch, about fifty, all at one table in the early nineteenth-century Residence. Léger opposite me, I flanked by Mitchell Sharp, the former Minister both of External Affairs and of Finance, who had been my chairman at the previous day's meeting in the Parliament, and whom I much liked talking to; and, on the other side, by Joe Clark, the leader of the Opposition, whom I had met in London just over a year before and whom I thought had not gained much authority meantime.

3.15 press conference. No questions at all, so quickly do issues die, about the non-visit to francophone Canada, or about Lévesque, until somebody asked me one on the way out, which I replied to without great difficulty.

Took off for Halifax at 4.30 in a Canadian Government Viscount, which seemed a little unprepossessingly antique. However, it was very comfortably fitted up, having a middle section with a few vast armchairs, in one of which I sat, opposite the Minister of Veteran Affairs, Daniel MacDonald, who came from Prince Edward Island and who had been deputed to accompany me on the Nova Scotian part of the tour. He had lost both an arm and a leg in the war, which seemed almost excessive type-casting for a Minister of Veteran Affairs, and at first I thought that he was a rather typical small-town Canadian politician. I was utterly wrong. He turned out to be an absolutely charming man with great breadth of view and interest, whom I liked enormously on the flight, at dinner that night, and subsequently.

In Halifax we were driven to Government House, built in about 1810, in good dark stone curiously reminiscent of Halifax, York
shire. Dinner at the Château Halifax, a relatively new hotel, which was made more agreeable by the fact that at least two of the six or eight local notabilities present had been enthusiastic readers of
Asquith.

FRIDAY, 10 MARCH.
Halifax and New York.

At 9.15 a meeting with Regan, the Premier, which was intended briefly to precede a long serious discussion meeting about Nova Scotia's economic problems with him and his ministers. I was not quite clear what we were going to talk about. However, this again did not prove difficult. He began by saying that he wanted to ask me a very serious question, and I thought, ‘Oh, God, what horror are we going to have about steel imports or something of the sort.' Instead of which he said, ‘Could you tell me exactly what you really think were Asquith's relations with Venetia Stanley?' There must be nothing to do in Halifax except read
Asquith.
So we gossiped around literary questions for a little time, and then proceeded to the meeting with the other ministers which again was relaxed and easy.

Then a tour of the harbour before a luncheon of 150 with speeches back at the Lieutenant Governor's residence. A press conference at 3 o'clock, again not too difficult, and then back to the old Viscount for New York. After a nice evening over Boston we flew into thick cloud as we approached New York and hovered around in this for about twenty-five minutes-before coming out of it just above the runway of what I assumed was La Guardia, where we were supposed to arrive and where we were to be met. I thought as we landed that Manhattan, which one could see in a curious orange light, looked rather far away, but took no great notice of this until Sue Besford came down the plane announcing, for some curious reason as though this was a great achievement, that we were at Kennedy and not La Guardia.

I subsequently discovered that when we were on the glide path with La Guardia about ten miles away, the control tower there had rejected us on the ground that they had no immigration facilities. This apparently is a fairly well-known New York trick with Canadian planes; they had messed up an Andreotti visit a few months before. As it was, we were more or less stuck on the tarmac
at Kennedy with no terminal anxious to take responsibility for us, quite apart from the considerable hazards which must have been involved in changing from one glide path to another in thick cloud at the busiest time of the busiest day of the week in the busiest bit of air space in North America, or indeed any other continent. However, we were eventually rather ungraciously let through Immigration and into a taxi, in which we drove off to Marietta Tree's in Sutton Place South, where both Crispin and I were staying.

SATURDAY, 11 MARCH.
New York.

After lunch to the Frick for an hour. A beautiful day, quite warm, about 45°. New York this weekend is looking better than I have known it for several years past. Later there was a large and enjoyable Schlesinger dinner party. I sat between Alexandra Schlesinger and Shirley Maclaine. There was generally a slight showbiz atmosphere, as is normal with Arthur's parties, but no Sam Spiegel for some mysterious reason. Arthur made a pretty bad speech-he is addicted to speeches-and I made an equally bad one in reply.

SUNDAY, 12 MARCH.
New York.

Marietta and I walked over to pick up the Schlesingers at 1 o'clock and then went with them to lunch at the Urquharts',
⁴³
whom after quite a long interval I was delighted to see. A large party of twelve or fourteen. To the Metropolitan Museum for an hour in the afternoon, and looked mainly at the new French furniture rooms at the back, mostly recently given by the Wrightsmans. A rather grand Marietta dinner party of about thirty people, the Kissingers, Jackie (Kennedy), Evangeline (Bruce), the Spaaks, whom I had asked up from Washington, the Schlesingers, etc. etc. The party was somewhat interrupted by the French election results, which began to come through, although very badly presented on American television, just after dinner. It looked as though, against the odds, ‘the majority' had won (a curiously tautological phrase), Giscard had escaped intact, and Schmidt's main condition for our monetary scheme had been met.

MONDAY, 13 MARCH.
New York and Paris.

10.30 Air France Concorde from Kennedy. Paris in 3 hours 24 minutes. Fast obviously, on the whole smooth, but not very agreeable: shuddered rather nastily for ten minutes when going supersonic, landed rather fast, and definitely cramped inside despite the fact that there were only 26 passengers in space for 110, which meant we each had two seats to ourselves. Food not very good. The only advantage apart from speed, and that by chance a rather striking one, was that the first edition of that day's
France Soir,
the Paris evening paper, was available at 10.00 in the morning at Kennedy, having come over by the westward Concorde. It was almost the only day in four years when I wanted to read that unimpressive newspaper for more than two minutes, for it contained all the detailed results, constituency by constituency, and I spent most of the journey studying exactly what had happened in the various French Departments.

Dined at the Coupole with Edward, Laura, Hayden and Crispin, at 10 o'clock, unfortunately only about two and a half hours after Crispin and I had finished lunch. Back to the hotel about 12.30 a.m. (7.30 p.m. New York time) not wanting to go to bed, but was restrained from calling on either Nicko or the Beaumarchais' to give them my election views.

TUESDAY, 14 MARCH.
Paris and Strasbourg.

Horrible morning, windy, wet, cloudy. Also Concorde a complete flop for the avoidance of jet-lag. I felt worse than after a normal transatlantic flight. It required a great effort to catch the 11 o'clock train from the Gare de l'Est to Strasbourg. I could not even get any pleasure out of the French countryside. Answered questions in the Parliament from 5.00 to 6.00. Later gave a dinner for parliamentarians particularly interested in economic and monetary union, during which I woke up briefly and even spoke with some animation.

WEDNESDAY, 15 MARCH.
Strasbourg and Brussels.

9 o'clock Commission meeting which, despite Concorde-lag, I got through without too much difficulty by about 10.20, and then had
a brief meeting with Ortoli and Davignon about the papers we were putting in for the European Council. Avion taxi to Brussels accompanied by Ortoli just after 12.00. Mildly disagreeable flight in bad weather, but nothing out of the way. Briefly to rue de Praetère, where I had not been for almost two weeks, and then to lunch with the group of British journalists with whom I now have this regular fixture. Although relations with them are now much better than they were, I still don't find them an immensely rewarding group, partly because I think—slightly under Palmer's
⁴⁴
leadership—they always behave so depressingly professionally. They immediately started asking detailed questions as though they were at a press conference. They seem to have no sense at all that they would get more out of me if they allowed a little general conversation to develop.

Back to the office to receive Calvo Sotelo,
⁴⁵
the new coordinating minister in the Spanish Government for relations with us, and was quite impressed by him. In particular, I think that he appreciates the link between the Spanish desire for accession and their need to work fairly closely with us both on industrial and agricultural policy and the renegotiation of the 1970 Convention, whereas previously these interlocking subjects were dealt with by the Spaniards as though they were in watertight and mutually contradictory compartments.

THURSDAY, 16 MARCH.
Brussels, Luxembourg, Liège and Brussels.

To Luxembourg by car at 10.00. By the time I arrived to lunch with Thorn I was feeling more or less human for the first time since leaving New York. He was rather late for lunch, having been to Brussels for a meeting that morning and flown down in a delayed and bumpy aircraft. It was not quite clear why we could not have lunched in Brussels. Crispin said the answer was that the Luxembourgeois attach importance to being visited in their own country, which I suppose is understandable.

Thorn quick and quite funny as usual, but deeply depressed about everything and therefore becoming too cynical and hopeless,
as at one stage I gently pointed out to him. He was even slightly sceptical about direct elections, though this is a good deal linked with his worry about Luxembourg losing the Parliament as a result of the bigger membership. He was depressed about the post-French election prospect, not about what he thought would be the outcome of the next round, but because he thought even the Giscard victory would leave a divided, weakened and hesitant France. He was fairly sceptical about any move forward from Schmidt. I hope I managed to cheer him up a bit towards the end.