Escott Reid

Book excerpt: With contributions from some of Canada's leading historians and political scientists, Escott Reid: Diplomat and Scholar offers a fresh perspective on the life and career of one of the most important public intellectuals and diplomats in twentieth-century Canada, critically exploring the tensions between Reid's progressive idealism and the world in which he lived. Jack Granatstein introduces Reid and the forces that shaped his progressive idealism in the 1920s and 1930s. Hector Mackenzie assesses Reid's contribution to the creation of the United Nations in the mid-1940s, while David Haglund and Stéphane Roussel examine Reid's crucial role in the negotiations to establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Greg Donaghy, Bruce Muirhead, and Alyson King write, respectively, about Reid as high commissioner to India, as an important influence on World Bank policy in the early 1960s, and, finally, as founding principal of York University's Glendon College. The authors challenge critics who dismiss Reid as an impractical and ineffectual idealist, demonstrating that his approach to policy-making was sophisticated and his idealism tempered by an astute grasp of the competing interests of a range of national and bureaucratic powers. Reid's reflections on Canada's place in the world remain as relevant and provocative today as when he wrote them.