You won your recent award for your contributions to the advancement of women. Is this what you initially set out to do?
No. I finished university with an interest in international affairs and a bit by fluke I joined External Affairs. At the time my vision was not very clear. I was 23 years old and looking for a job really. I didn’t set out to be the first woman this or that. I just enjoyed my job. I enjoyed my experience at External Affairs very much. I applied myself to whatever job I was given. And I must say I didn’t have the feeling that I was breaking that many barriers in the sense that I didn’t feel I was meeting that many obstacles. My timing was particularly good, I think.

Where were you born?
I was born in Montreal.

What did you actually want to be when you grew up?
I thought I wanted to be a teacher. As I grew a little older, like in high school, I thought I wanted to be a history teacher and that’s what I took at university.

What happened?
Well, two things happened. One is that I realized that I would have to stay for post-graduate degrees in university longer than I was prepared to do. I really wanted to start working. And the other thing is I took my first trip to Europe. I took a year off at university and went on a trip, a very long trip, about a three-and-a-half month trip in Europe, and realized that I enjoyed traveling, that I was curious about the outside world. So when I came back to university for my final year I saw a little poster that said, are you interested in jobs abroad? And that’s how I took the Foreign Service exam. It was happening that night, I had nothing to do, so I went and wrote the exam, not realizing that really I was applying to become a junior diplomat. Even though I had no knowledge of the diplomatic career—never been in an embassy, there’s nobody in my family had any connection to that particular world—that’s where I landed and it was perfect for me.  

Who was your inspiration when you were growing up?
Hard to tell whether I had any role model. Certainly not in my family since I’m the first generation to go to university. I don’t think there was one person who was a role model but I think the moment in history was very important because it was the time of la révolution tranquille in Quebec. Women’s liberation, the movement, was getting strong. And suddenly the model was a woman who would do whatever she felt like doing, that she was no longer obliged to follow a particular pattern, that not getting married was okay, that you could foresee a life with a career. To me before it would have been much more difficult. There were very few women ahead of me in the Foreign Service, so it was hard to find a female role model. On the other hand, I was lucky. I had, in the course of my career, a number of bosses who were really very inspirational and were very, very supportive.

How did you get the position of Deputy Secretary General with the United Nations?
I was at the time at the Defence Department, I was deputy minister of defence, and I received a phone call from Kofi Annan who had become the Secretary General a few months before, to say he had asked for permission to create this new post, the number two post, and he was drawing up a short list and would I be interested. So I said yes. I knew him because when I was ambassador of Canada to the UN from ‘92 to the end of ‘94 Kofi Annan was the head of the peacekeeping department in the UN and because we were a big peacekeeping nation, I got to know him, I had business dealings with him. When I left the UN at the end of 94 I didn’t think Kofi Annan would be secretary general, that wasn’t in the cards at all. There again was a series of events that suddenly led to him being secretary general, deciding to create this number two post, wanting a woman and a woman from a northern country since he’s a man from the south, and that’s how I landed that job.

What have been your challenges?
I think in the Foreign Service, in particular, the challenge is the change, the variety. You have to be really quick on your feet and able to adapt quickly to totally different not only professional challenges but also life challenges. So when I arrived in Argentina as ambassador I was not yet 40 then. That was a huge challenge because being an ambassador is a big deal. You carry lots of responsibilities and I was in a country I’d never been in before, I’d just started to learn Spanish. When you’re an ambassador you’re really far away from any support system. You’re on your own, you have to make decisions, and that was challenging.

So how did you overcome that?
One step at a time, one day at a time. Spanish came fairly quickly. That was one of the joys of being in Argentina. I had some Spanish when I arrived and very quickly picked it up. And therefore was able to make Argentine friends and have activities outside the circle of ambassadors where the members tended to be quite a bit older than I was, quite frankly.  So it was nice to have friends my own age, Argentines who had nothing to do with the diplomatic service and were happy to show me their country.

How do you feel you’ve made a difference?
I find it impossible for me to answer that question. I think it’s for other people to pass that judgment. What I do know is that I think I did a fair job in whatever responsibility I was given. My superiors with the government were satisfied with my services and I guess that probably explains why I had a fairly rapid progression in my diplomatic career and public service career in Canada. And that in itself was an encouragement for younger woman because—I hate to put it this way because it makes me feel really ancient—but I was among the first. There was a smattering of women before my generation but not very many. So the fact that I could make my way up the chain was an encouragement for women... What I had not realized when I was named to the UN was how important symbolically it was for Kofi Annan to name a woman in that post. By then—it was 1998—there were plenty of women in all walks of life. I had stopped being an exception. But in a worldwide context this was still a big deal. The headlines in Canada read ‘A Canadian is Named to the Number Two Post in the UN.’ Everywhere else around the world the headline read, ‘A Woman is Named.’ And I was told by the women working inside the UN secretariat, how important for them it was to have a woman working at the top of the organization.

What continues to motivate and inspire you today?
The pursuit of knowledge. It’s not just the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake but as a basis for articulating policy recommendation. That’s what I did all my life as a public servant but even though I’m retired I still have this desire to contribute to policy thinking in Canada.