Welcome to our special issue of Policy Dispatches — our features combining travel, policy and political writing. Like the rest of the world, we came out of pandemic lockdown with a dose of wanderlust and a whole new appreciation for human connection of the non-viral variety. These pieces celebrate both while sharing the political and policy insights of the authors. Our many thanks to the contributors to this issue who’ve written so well about their experiences of seeing the world and for taking us along. 

In This Issue:

Our first Policy Dispatch comes from Bob Rae, whose role as Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations since 2020 has provided the rest of the world with a sense of a public servant for whom the word “politician” always seemed a little inadequate. Rae’s Tell Them We’re Human: With the Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh brings us behind the headlines of his time as special envoy to Myanmar during the peak of the Rohingya refugee crisis.

Kathy Gannon’s decades covering Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Associated Press made her one of the world’s pre-eminent journalists long before the tragic shooting by an Afghan police officer in 2014 that killed her friend, AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus, and nearly killed Kathy. Gannon’s Kabul: Capital of Afghanistan’s Tragic Symmetry provides a window on the history of both a crucial region and the woman who has told its story so well to the rest of the world.

Their Excellencies Mary Simon and Whit Fraser/MCpl Anis Assari, Rideau Hall © OSGG

Whit Fraser’s transition from veteran CBC national reporter and northern correspondent to Viceregal Consort has been among the most fascinating encores of Canadian public life. Fraser’s piece This One’s for Tuk: With the German President on the Front Line of Climate Change, beautifully combines both roles for a look behind Governor General Mary Simon’s recent trip North for a tour de force of climate diplomacy.

The Parliamentary Black Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus/Courtesy Sen. Moodie

For a magazine that takes a special interest in both bilateral relations and the state of democracy, the story of the historic meeting in May between Canada’s Parliamentary Black Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus was an irresistible Dispatch. PBC Chair Senator Rosemary Moodie and her director of parliamentary affairs, Josh Dadjo, delivered expertly with Making Black History in Washington: Founding the Overground Railroad.

If you follow Historica Canada President Anthony Wilson Smith on Twitter (and if you don’t, you should), you’ll have been entranced by his recent trip to Ogema, Saskatchewan, to shoot the upcoming Heritage Minute about Mary Bonnie Baker, the 1940s and 50s professional baseball catcher played by Geena Davis in A League of Their Own. Tony’s dispatch from and about Ogema, A Small Saskatchewan Town’s Heritage Minute Close-Up, will have you wishing you were there.

For our longstanding contributor Robin Sears — whose work as an advisor to leaders from German Chancellor Willy Brandt to Ed Broadbent might have made him blasé about travel — one trip to China in 1993 with former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Power Corp. President Paul Desmarais stands out as a privileged glimpse into a watershed moment. Here’s Robin with China In-Between: Ensconced in the Diaoyutai and Meeting an ‘Immortal’.

Former US diplomat Sarah Goldfeder has been a valued Policy contributing writer for years on everything from Canada-US relations to the auto industry. Her lyrical Dispatch about going from a childhood in a military family to grown-up life as an equally peripatetic diplomat reveals a whole new level of storytelling talent. Here’s the wonderful Travel as Life: Cultivating Roots and Wings.

Since those early days of the Brexit story when David Cameron’s epic miscalculation vaulted Boris Johnson into the role of first Brexiteer, Policy contributing writer Jeremy Kinsman has been enlightening and regaling us with his Brexit analysis. In this issue, he updates the saga from the English market town of Marlborough. Here’s Bucolic and a Little Less Barmy: Seeking Respite in Post-Brexit Wiltshire.

Courtesy of Aftab Ahmed

The Max Bell’s School’s Aftab Ahmed (above left, with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, founding father of Bangladesh) first came to us through Policy’s Emerging Voices student op-ed platform. Ahmed’s Dispatchfrom a visit home to Dakha, Revisiting Bangladesh: Politics, Economics and Competitive Authoritarianism, attests to why he’s recently made the jump to our masthead as a contributing writer.

Speaking of great second acts, longtime Maclean’s editor Patricia Treble is now the pen behind the WriteRoyalty Substack, and has filed us a colourful accounting of her whereabouts during Coronation weekend in London. Here’s Pomp, Pubs and a Staggering Amount of Champagne: Covering the Coronation.

Former principal secretary to Pierre Trudeau and current Public Policy Chair at Massey College Tom Axworthy filed one of our first Dispatches from London last December, and his piece for this issue is a splendid follow, this time from the rock, or as Newfoundlanders might say, the other rock. Here’s War, Peace and a Canadian Knight: With the InterAction Council on Malta.

For our regular Policy columnist, Don Newman, one diplomatic dinner in Sweden stood out among an exhaustive list of visited datelines for a quip about Canada from a nonplussed Swede. Here’s Stockholm Syndrome: An Epiphany About Canada at a Faraway Dinner.

Visit us at Policy Online, where you’ll find our latest Policy Specials, Columns, Dispatches, Analysis, Book Reviews and Verbatim sections, plus The Week in Policy and all our posted print issues.