Ambassador helped end last great smallpox epidemic

Achievement Page 18

James Karl Bartleman, as Canada's current High Commissioner to the Republic of South Africa, has done little in his 33-year public service career that isn't a matter of record. And what a stellar record it is.

In the thick of foreign policy implementation in Cuba, Israel and a host of other hot spots for years now, in 1994 Bartleman was picked as foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Chretien and assistant secretary to the Cabinet for foreign and defence policy, Privy Council office. Then last year, he was posted to South Africa, where he will serve two more years in the role of ambassador.

What is not widely known, however, is that Bartleman holds the highest foreign service rank of any Canadian Aboriginal person. He is also at the top rank of a foreign service career. These facts alone are reason enough for Bartleman to receive the 1999 National Aboriginal Achievement Award in the Public Service category. But there is a lot more about the member of the Minjikang First Nation in Ontario (Chippewas of Rama) that should inspire pride in Aboriginal people.

Windspeaker spoke to Bartleman at his home in Pretoria, South Africa, at the end of a 36-hour trip following the presentation of the award to him in Regina on March 12. Despite the late hour, Bartleman was more than ready to talk about what the award means to him. Aware as he is, too, that living in other countries most of his working life means a lot of Aboriginal people have never heard of him, Bartleman also spoke at length about his connection to the people of Rama.

"It's the greatest honor I have ever received in my life," Bartleman said of the award. He explained that it gives him a real sense of belonging to the community in which he has his roots. There is no greater reward than receiving the approval of his people, he said.

"For me, it's very, very important culturally and personally to receive this award, for the sense of cultural identity.

"I'm a Bill C-31 Indian; my mother (an Indian from Rama) lost her status when she married my father, so we could not live on the reserve."

He then talked of his family's origins.

"The Indians in Rama had their hunting grounds in the Muskoka area, and they still have a small reserve in Port Carling. They share that reserve today with the Mohawks from Gibson, and so it's a kind of combined Mohawk, Chippewa, Ojibway reserve. My mother spent her youth travelling back and forth between Rama . . . and the Village of Port Carling. I was born in Orillia, which is right beside Rama, but raised in Port Carling, which is north of [the reserve]." His father learned the Ojibway language, Bartleman added, but the children did not.

"I still have one uncle left on the reserve . . . and property, and in a small reserve like that with only 400 or 500 people, you know you're related to virtually everybody there." He said he is happy to be able to go home for major community events, as he has done at least twice in the last five years or so.

"I've spent 33 years in the public service as a foreign service officer. This is my fourth assignment as an ambassador," he said.

He noted there have been a lot of changes at home over the years, and the wide-spread poverty that used to be evident in Rama is gone.

"Rama is one of the most progressive and industrious reserves in Canada," Bartleman said.

"[There is] pride in home ownership, nice houses, well-paved streets and progressive band management - even before the casino, they had excellent industrial parks and a big marina. I'm very proud to be associated with Rama, although I live in South Africa," Bartleman said.

Bartleman got a break when a wealthy American he worked for as a teenager helped him with a scholarship in Grade 13. He went on to complete an honors BA in history at the University of Western Ontario in 1963.

Bartleman says he taught after that - just long enough to save for a trip to Europe. He quickly got a taste for life abroad and decided to write the oreign service exam. He joined the Department of External Affairs in 1966, and was subsequently posted to Bogota, Dhaka, Bangkok and the North Atlantic council in Brussels.

From 1981 to 1990, Bartleman served as ambassador to Cuba, then ambassador to Israel. Next came a posting back in Belgium, where he served as permanent representative and ambassador to the Canadian joint delegations to the North Atlantic Council.

Returning to Ottawa, Bartleman was appointed director general of the bureau of intelligence analysis and security and he serve also as director general of the economic intelligence bureau. All that responsibility didn't leave much time for recreation, but Bartleman says he did manage to find time for tennis and rebuilding an 18th century home he bought in Belgium.

When he started working with the prime minister, though, Bartleman had only 22 days off in five years. He took it in stride; he says of that time that he was serving the country, not a political party. It also helped that he had, and still does have, a good rapport with Jean Chretien, Bartleman added.

His favorite job, however, was in 1972. Then he opened the Canadian mission in Bangladesh and had a direct hand in preventing illness and starvation of millions of people.

"At a very early age I was put in charge of an enormous aid program," Bartleman recalls, "and brought in the large volumes of smallpox vaccine which put an end to the world's last great smallpox epidemic. I was asked by the [World Health Organiztion] îf I would allocate the funds, and I had the authority in those day to do it, so I just did it, and 75 million people were inoculated. . . . Also we rented the supertanker Manhattan and used it as a floating grain terminal and sent teams out to Singapore . . . to bring the grain upriver to help combat the enormous starvation."