A rchive Date
[ 11-01-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2003/01/07/9680-cp.html
Maurice Strong has taste for world diplomacy
By JOHN WARD
Tue, January 7, 2003
OTTAWA (CP) - Maurice Strong, the Canadian dispatched this week as a special United Nations envoy to assess the humanitarian situation in North Korea, has come a long way from a poor boyhood in rural Manitoba.
Strong, 73, a special adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, has been drawn to the world body since he took a job there as a teenage security guard in 1947. Between then and now, though, he managed to make himself wealthy as a businessman while also doing stints of public service and garnering a hatful of honours, from the Order of Canada to the Swedish Royal Order of the Polar Star.
David Runnalls, president of the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development, has known and worked with Strong on and off for more than 30 years.
He said Strong moves back and forth "between the private sector and the international public sector every decade or so."
"The thing, I think, that affected him as much as anything else is he was brought up very poor in rural Manitoba," Runnalls said.
"He ran away from home and ended up as a security guard at the UN when the UN was first getting started . . . and he got so impressed by international staff at that stage that he knew that that was where he wanted to focus his efforts."
First, though, he went home to Canada and began building his fortune as an oil trader. He went on to become president of Power Corp.
"He's very unusual," said Geoff Pearson, a veteran of Canadian diplomacy and son of former prime minister Lester Pearson.
"He was a very successful businessman who decided he wanted to be a world diplomat or a statesman, mainly interested in the environment."
Strong never attended university, but has honorary degrees from more than 40.
Lester Pearson tabbed Strong in the 1960s to run the predecessor of the Canadian International Development Agency. That job served Strong well when the UN began to organize its first conference on the environment.
The Third World scoffed at environmental concerns as "rich man's problems."
"But the developing countries trusted Maurice because of his work with CIDA," said Geoff Pearson.
The 1972 conference was a success and Strong became the first head of the UN environment program.
"Maurice persisted in not behaving like a UN bureaucrat," Runnalls recalled. "He behaved like somebody who had a direct connection with people. He directly appealed to the environmentalists almost over the heads of governments."
Then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau brought Strong back home as head of Petro Canada, a job which earned him the scorn of the Alberta oil establishment.
"I believe they kicked him out of the Petroleum Club in Calgary," Runnalls said.
Strong would later be named head of Ontario Hydro at a time when the public utility was wallowing in red ink. He managed to stabilize Hydro, but only after job cuts and layoffs which prompted anger in many quarters.
He maintained his ties to the UN, serving as an undersecretary general six times, adviser to the president of the World Bank and adviser to Annan on UN reform, earning the princely salary of $1 a year.
Along the way, he was demonized by conservative elements, especially in the United States, where he was seen by some as a leader in an effort to undermine national sovereignty in the name of environmentalism.
Strong rose to international prominence as secretary general of the 1992 Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro.
While his credentials lie mainly in the environmental arena, his mission to North Korea recalls his work in Africa as executive co-ordinator of the UN Office for Emergency Operations in Africa during the famine relief effort of 1984-86.
Runnalls also said Strong has connections in Beijing, which may help him deal with the secretive and withdrawn North Korean regime.
Pearson said Strong may be unique. There have been many philanthropists who have poured money into international causes and foundations, but Strong has always gone beyond that.
"He doesn't send money, he goes himself."'
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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