Canada's new face at U.N. an enigma
By Allan Thompson, Toronto Star

15 January 1995

OTTAWA – All of Bob Fowler’s faces are packed and on their way to New York.

In addition to being Canada’s new ambassador to the United Nations, the man who just finished six turbulent years as deputy minister of defence and before that was a foreign policy adviser to Pierre Trudeau is also an avid photographer.

The walls of Fowler's big office on the 13th floor of national defence headquarters in Ottawa were covered with portraits of ordinary people he had photographed over the years on world trips.

The decidedly faceless bureaucrat had filled his work space with the faces and images of others. Now the walls are mottled with sun-faded outlines where the frames used to be.

As he leaves Ottawa for his new post, the impression left by one of the quintessential survivors of Canada's byzantine federal bureaucracy is harder to discern.

Admirers and critics alike call him a brilliant and creative mind, one of the most skilled players of the Ottawa game. But the scandal that stemmed from the death of two Somalis at the hands of Canadian peacekeepers in 1993 has yet to be resolved.

The Ottawa-based military magazine Esprit de Corps has bluntly and audaciously accused Fowler of engineering a cover-up, partly to protect the political fortunes of Kim Campbell, who was then defence minister and a contender for the Tory leadership.

Fowler said he would prefer to tell his story to the civilian-led inquiry into the Somalia affair promised by Defence Minister David Collenette.

But he contends the allegation that he or others tried to cover up the March 16, 1993, beating death of Somali teenager Shidane Arone - the incident wasn't made public until March 31,1993 - doesn't add up.

"Somalia is a long way away," Fowler said. "What exactly happened, what exactly we knew here on the 18th and 19th (of March) was in bits and pieces, and the reason we dispatched police investigators (on March 19) was to see what we could find out."

As deputy to six defence ministers, Fowler oversaw 12 consecutive budget cuts and led the department through some of its most challenging days.

"It's a leaner, meaner world and it's not always a very pretty one," Fowler said in an interview last week. "However much I would love to think otherwise, the greatest challenge for me has been managing the downsizing."

Nevertheless, as someone in charge of an $11 billion budget he was one of Ottawa's most powerful mandarins, a man who managed to flourish during the Mulroney years despite his close association with Trudeau.

"More than anything, he knows how Ottawa functions," one observer noted.

A lot of people hate his guts and Fowler knows that, too.

"Career prospects have been hurt (by the defence cuts). There are disgruntled, unhappy, angry individuals," he said.

"As a deputy minister, I really did not think he was good medicine for the department," said one general who quit his job early, a move he blames partly on Fowler.

Yet others sing Fowler's praises.

Tom Axworthy, who was Trudeau's closest aide, described Fowler as "tremendously intellectually curious" and "an unstuffy diplomat" who worked well with others.

Col. Keith Coulter, Fowler's executive assistant for the past 18 months, recalled how his boss, on a visit to Rwanda last summer, spent time in a Red Cross hospital photographing homeless and orphaned children.

"That would probably surprise the people who think he's the Howard Hughes of the 13th floor," Coulter said.

"A lot of people are loyal to him, people who simply wouldn't be loyal to an evil, nasty person," said Fowler's wife Mary, a communications adviser to Christine Stewart, secretary of state for Latin America and Africa.

Fowler's background and upbringing prepared him for a career in the public service. He was born in 1944 in Ottawa, where his father, a lawyer with strong ties to the Liberal party, was working at the time.

The family moved to Montreal in 1946, and Fowler - who is bilingual - grew up there, later attending Bishops College boarding school in Quebec's Eastern Townships.

After earning a bachelor's degree in art history at Queen's University, Fowler decided to go into the public service.

He was recruited as an administrative trainee at the Canadian International Development Agency but moved within a year to the Department of External Affairs to pursue his interest in "the harder-edge policy making."

In the 1970s he served in Paris, Ottawa and at the United Nations before being hired in 1978 as executive assistant to Allan Gottlieb, then under-secretary of state at External Affairs.

"He had a remarkable ability to keep all the balls in the air all the time during those hectic days," said Gottlieb, a career diplomat who in 1980 "keenly and enthusiastically" recommended Fowler to Trudeau.

Fowler admits to having been a bit awed by Trudeau at first, but he would spend the next four years with him, accompanying the prime minister on all but one of his trips abroad during that time.

After Brian Mulroney's Conservatives swept to power in 1984, Fowler continued to advise the new prime minister on foreign policy - even staying on a year longer than expected, at Mulroney's request - before moving to the defence department in 1986.

Fowler and his wife - it's the second marriage for both - have managed to juggle chaotic work schedules to keep their weekends virtually sacrosanct - family time at a log cabin in the Laurentians. Over the years there has been a lot to get away from.

Most troubling for Fowler was the August, 1992, suicide of Denys Henrie, a defence department director general.

Esprit de Corps and the gossip magazine Frank have made out that Henrie killed himself because of undue pressure placed on him by Fowler. They say he was reprimanded by his boss after an internal investigation into contracting practices.

Ottawa police confirm that Henrie, in his suicide note, blamed Fowler and several other top defence department officials for his death.

Fowler confirmed Henrie had been reprimanded but said he didn't want to say more out of respect for Henrie's family and reputation. He added, however, Henrie's job turned out to be clearly beyond his capacity.

"He probably felt that the price of failure in his eyes was too high," Fowler said. "He probably felt that a lot of those running this department were expecting a great deal of him."

On a professional level, critics accuse Fowler of tipping the precarious balance between civilian and military responsibilities during his tenure as deputy minister.

"As an officer, I didn't like to see a civilian practically displace the chief of defence staff," one former general said. "That was very damaging to the morale of the senior leadership."

Adm. John Anderson, who was chief of defence staff for 11 months in 1993 and lost his job after the Liberals came to power, said Fowler's style clearly turned some people off.

"There were bound to be people who might have taken his, what I would call, total engagement in the department as a spillover into areas of the military as well," Anderson said from Brussels, where he is now Canada's ambassador to NATO.

But Anderson, who declined to give his personal opinion of Fowler, said the department owes its departing deputy a "debt of thanks" for providing leadership in trying times."

Asked what he considers his greatest accomplishments, Fowler said he was uncomfortable with the idea and preferred to let others speak for him.

But he did say that returning to the United Nations - "an institution coded into Canada's DNA" - is an enormously stimulating and exciting challenge for someone whose career has been spent formulating Canada's foreign and defence policy.

Fowler's secretary sat crying at her desk as her boss spoke of his warm memories of the defence department. His only regret is that some people had to suffer during his years there.

"Obviously, I regret that doing the things we've had to do has hurt some people," he said.

Some of their faces are no doubt etched in his memory as well.