DYMOND o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-03 published
DYMOND,
Elizabeth
Jane
(Betty)
Died peacefully after a brief illness on Sunday, June 1, 2003
a Briton House at age 77. Betty
DYMOND the wife of the Late Desmond.
Loving mother of Jan and her husband Romeo
WORNER,
Eric,
Pat
and her husband Gary
IRVING.
Beloved
Grammie of Chris and his
wife Jen, Erica, Graeme and Heather. Dear sister in law of Rosemary
DYMOND.
Resting at the Murray E. Newbigging Funeral Home, 733
Mt. Pleasant Road (at Eglinton) on Tuesday from 7-9 p.m.. Funeral
and Committal Service in the chapel on Wednesday at 2 p.m. If
desired donations may be made to The Crohn's and Colitis Foundation
of Canada, 60 St. Clair Ave East, Suite 600, Toronto, Ontario
M4T 1N5.
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DYMOND o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-07 published
Bureaucrat 'invaluable' to ministers
Analyst was a key negotiator in talks that led to the formation
of the World Trade Organization in 1995
By Bill GLADSTONE
Special to The Globe and Mail Saturday, June
7, 2003 - Page F11
Gerry SHANNON could have been a professional hockey player like
his father, but decided instead to play in a much bigger arena.
Mr. SHANNON went on to become a top career public servant who
helped to formulate the federal government's policies on international
trade. At one time, he held the No. 2 posting in the Canadian
embassy in Washington and was a key negotiator in the talks known
as the Uruguay Round, which led to the formation of the World
Trade Organization in 1995.
Mr. SHANNON, who died recently in Vancouver at the age of 67,
is remembered as a fair, tough and passionate trade-policy analyst
who was a trusted adviser to ministers in the successive cabinets
of Pierre TRUDEAU and Brian
MULRONEY in the 1980s.
"Gerry was a larger-than-life character," said Peter
SUTHERLAND,
a former director-general of the World Trade Organization. "He
played a crucial role in the conclusion of the Uruguay Round.
He had a belief in the multilateral system that he combined with
an intense Canadian patriotism. His personality was also a factor
in bringing peaceful resolution to difficult negotiations."
"He was a straightforward guy -- you always knew where you stood
with him," said Marc Lalonde, a former Liberal finance minister.
"He was a man with a very solid judgment. He was a good team
player in that regard, the kind of guy you would want to have
as a senior public servant."
Born in Ottawa in 1935, Mr.
SHANNON received an early lesson
from his father -- hockey player Jerry
SHANNON, who played for
the Montreal Canadiens, Boston Bruins and other National Hockey
League teams -- on the necessity of appearing strong, no matter
what. Once, after a puck knocked out the boy's two front teeth,
his father shouted, "Get up, son, shake it off!" Young Gerry
did so and stayed in the game.
The same spirit of toughness also probably helped him cope with
the death of his mother when he was 10.
Despite an offer to try out for the Bruins, Mr.
SHANNON took
his father's advice and went to university. Graduating from Carleton
University's school of journalism, he worked as a reporter for
the Sudbury Star for several years before lifting his sights
once again. He wrote a foreign-service exam and was accepted
as a diplomat in 1963. "He realized that being a small-town reporter
was great and he enjoyed it, but he wanted to be involved in
the big world," said his wife, Anne Park
SHANNON.
His first posting was in Washington, where, despite any formal
training as an economist, he handled matters of trade and economic
policy. "He was good at pursuing Canadian interests with the
Americans.
They liked him," Ms. Park
SHANNON said. "He was very
affable and very good at just getting to the essence of things."
He also served as Canada's senior foreign affairs representative
in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia, and as ambassador to Korea,
one of Canada's youngest ambassadors at the time.
In the mid-1970s, at the height of the Trudeau era, he became
director of commercial policy for the department of external
affairs. After several years, he returned to Washington as the
embassy's second-in-command at a time when Canada's national
energy program generated heated discussions.
Recalled to Ottawa about 1982, he became the assistant deputy
minister of finance for the Liberals, then deputy minister of
international trade for the Progressive Conservatives. In these
capacities, he advised Mr.
LALONDE and Tory ministers Michael
WILSON and Barbara
McDOUGALL.
"He was a very professional public servant, he had a sense of
professionalism, he had a very good mind, he was tough, and he
understood very well the role of the senior public servant, "
Ms. McDOUGALL said. "He never tried to be the minister and he
was a straight shooter, which many of us appreciated when we
realized that this was the exception and not the rule.
"I worked with a lot of great public servants, but he was certainly
right up at the top," she said.
Anne Marie
DOYLE, who worked extensively with Mr.
SHANNON in
various government departments, recalls that he would go out
on a limb for employees when he thought that they were in the
right, and he possessed "iron in his spine" that made his superiors
respect him as steadfast and trustworthy.
"He had this phenomenal gift -- the ability to take a very complex
problem, see to its core and express it in just two or three
very articulate sentences so that someone like a minister or
prime minister would have found him just invaluable," she said.
"They would have his complex briefing and he would say, 'Well,
Minister, what it boils down to is just this, ' and it would
be just brilliant."
Mr. SHANNON was "one of the giants of Canadian trade policy of
the '80s and '90s," said Bill
DYMOND, executive director of
the Centre for Trade Policy and Law at Carleton University. "The
politicians trusted him because he was blunt, honest and loyal
to the government."
Known for his enthusiasm and for being indefatigable on the job,
Mr. SHANNON performed an astonishing array of official duties
while in Geneva from 1989 to 1995. As Canada's chief negotiator
for the Uruguay Round, he developed a binding dispute-settlement
system that was hailed as a major breakthrough. He was Canada's
first ambassador to the World Trade Organization as he had been
to its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
As an occasional ambassador to the United Nations, he gave to
its committee on disarmament the "
SHANNON mandate," a significant
negotiating protocol still in use today.
Mr. SHANNON was known as a loyal defender of Canadian interests.
Soon after leaving government in 1995 to work as an international
trade policy consultant, he wrote an article for The Globe and
Mail on Canada's seemingly never-ending softwood-lumber dispute
with the United States.
"We always get roughed up in dealing alone with the Americans
on issues they deem to be critical to them," he observed. "They
simply have too many guns and they persevere until they win."
Mr. SHANNON enjoyed hiking, gardening, opera, travelling, dogs,
crossword puzzles and playing hockey.
He and his wife moved from Ottawa to Victoria about a year ago
with the intent of retiring there. He was sick only a few weeks
before he died on April 26.
He leaves his wife, Anne Park
SHANNON, and sons Michael and Steven
from a previous marriage. He also leaves a sister, Carol
SCHWARZ,
of Ottawa.
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