When Eugene Whelan passed away in 2013, a Windsor Star editorial observed, “He was folksy, flamboyant, and colourful. He was the farmer in the iconic green Stetson. He was blunt and rough around the edges. At times he was the antithesis of all things politically correct. And, while nobody said it in so many words, he was also the guy who made being minister of agriculture seem almost sexy.”
Over his 12-year run (with a brief break during Joe Clark’s short-lived government) overseeing Canadian agricultural policy, Whelan’s most significant moment in world history may have come when he hosted a Soviet delegation for dinner at his Amherstburg home on May 19, 1983. His delay in getting out of Ottawa that day allowed two of his guests — his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev and ambassador to Canada Alexander Yakovlev — to take a long walk at the back of his property. The conversation they had then would shape the destiny of the Soviet Union.
At the time of the visit, 52-year-old Gorbachev was a rising star. Two years after he’d been named to head the Soviet Central Committee’s agricultural portfolio in 1978, he received full member status within the ruling Politburo. Ailing General Secretary Yuri Andropov saw Gorbachev as a lieutenant who could fight the corruption that had stifled the country during the later years of Leonid Brezhnev’s reign. Gorbachev would be only the second member of the Politburo to visit Canada (former premier Alexei Kosygin travelled here in 1971).
A conversation with Mikhail Gorbachev (2005)
Yakovlev played a major role in arranging the visit. His ambassadorship, which stretched back to 1973, was a form of exile: he’d been stripped of his duties as propaganda chief for publishing an article criticizing antisemitic Russian nationalism. His reformist views deepened as the USSR stagnated, and he worried about the over-militarization of Soviet society.
Following Pierre Trudeau’s return to power in 1980, Yakovlev lobbied senior Canadian government officials to visit the Soviet Union, even though relations between the countries had soured following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1978. He focused his efforts on Whelan and succeeded in arranging a trip in 1981. During an hour-and-a-half-long discussion, Whelan was impressed by Gorbachev’s ideas for improving Soviet agriculture practices and policy. An invitation to bring Gorbachev to Canada in the spring of 1983 was accepted.
Prior to the visit, Yakovlev spent over a week in Moscow preparing Gorbachev for every contingency he might face in Canada. The trip would occur in the aftermath of two historic speeches delivered by United States president Ronald Reagan in March 1983: one described the USSR as an “evil empire,” and the other introduced the concept for the lasers-on-satellites defence proposal that became known as “Star Wars.”
Photo from the May 21, 1983, edition of the Windsor Star of one of Eugene Whelan and Mikhail Gorbachev's stops.
The Soviet delegation landed in Ottawa during the afternoon of May 16. “On the tarmac,” Whelan recalled, “Mikhail greeted me with a great big Russian bear hug.” The next day began with Gorbachev addressing a meeting of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and National Defence. He attempted to humanize the Soviet side of the Cold War, blamed the Americans for repeatedly raising the temperature, and proposed closer relations between Canada and the Soviet Union. “The distance between the continents,” he declared, “should not be measured by the minutes of flight of ballistic missiles but by the closeness of our human values, the most basic of which is life itself.”
He avoided the mistakes of previous Soviet officials, who’d wallowed in dogma and bragged about the superiority of their form of Communism. During the Q&A session, Durham-Northumberland MP Allan Lawrence, who had served as solicitor general in Clark’s short-lived government, asked why the Soviets planted so many spies in their embassies, noting that 40 diplomats and staff had been expelled from Canada since the end of the Second World War. Gorbachev responded by declaring that Lawrence was “a victim of the spy mania disseminated by the U.S.A.”
On May 18, Gorbachev had a two-and-a-half-hour meeting with Trudeau, during which they discussed the rising tensions with the Americans, arms control, and disarmament. Yakovlev biographer Christopher Shulgan describes their conversation as having been testy but frank — “the sort of a dialogue East and West needed to have more often.” Gorbachev also met separately with interim opposition leader Erik Nielsen and NDP leader Ed Broadbent. He attended that day’s question period, a spectacle he compared to a circus. In a rare courtesy, translation of the debate was provided in Russian instead of the usual English or French.
Photo from the May 20, 1985, Windsor Star of Liz Whelan greeting Gorbachev at her home .
The original plan for May 19 was for Whelan to fly to Windsor with the delegation and then travel with them to his home for dinner. But Whelan was tied up with government business, so the others flew ahead without him. The delegation arrived in Windsor at 6 p.m. To avoid drawing attention, the procession (a limo for Gorbachev and a bus for the rest) took dirt roads through Anderdon Township to the Whelan home on Front Road. The RCMP kept reporters away from the delegation when they arrived, then barred them from the driveway. “They just want to relax,” RCMP officer Mike Kenny told the Windsor Star. “There’s nothing heavy duty going on here.”
Whelan’s wife, Liz, greeted the delegation and directed them, along with other local guests, into the basement. Yakovlev asked whether he and Gorbachev could go outside for some air. “I don’t remember what I said, but I know I was polite,” Liz told the Toronto Star in 2010. “They were glad to be here, but they wanted to go for a walk.” She directed them to the backyard, where they followed a laneway bordering corn and soybean fields. During their walk, the men shared their frustrations with the Soviet system, ranging from diplomatic mistakes to the long-term consequences of suppressing the public’s freedoms. “We took a long walk on that minister’s farm and,” Yakovlev later recalled. “Both of us were just kind of flooded and let go. I somehow, for some reason, threw caution to the wind and started telling him about what I considered to be utter stupidities in the area of foreign affairs.”
As Yakovlev opened up, so, too, did Gorbachev. “He frankly talked about the problems in the internal situation in Russia,” Yakovlev observed. “He was saying that under these conditions, the conditions of dictatorship and the absence of freedom, the country would simply perish.” They discussed their sense of how backward the Soviet Union was compared to the West in most areas, how the country could benefit from elements such as an independent judiciary, how dissidents should be allowed to speak more freely, and how to reform the agricultural system to allow for private ownership. “It was a conversation about the Canadian experience — about using it as an example,” Gorbachev told the CBC years later.
Whelan finally arrived around 8 p.m. Previewing the dinner, the Windsor Star noted that the Whelans tended to serve unpretentious meals to dignitaries. “When guests drop in for dinner at Liz Whelan’s table,” the paper observed, “they’d better not expect anything TOO fancy — even if they are top ranking officials of the Soviet government.” As there were 60 people to feed, including local politicians and residents, meal prep was left to caterers. “There’s no household that has dishes for that many people,” Liz Whelan told the Windsor Star. “I can’t very well use paper plates.” Their daughters (one of whom, Susan, would later become federal minister of international co-operation) performed serving duties. The menu consisted of prime rib, local vegetables, baked potatoes, salad, soup, Canadian cheeses, and assorted desserts. Guests could sip locally produced beverages from Amherstburg (Seagram’s), Harrow (Colio wines), and Windsor (Hiram Walker).
During his toast, Whelan predicted that Gorbachev would become the next Soviet leader. The move, according to Shulgan, was “quite a gaffe, given the Politburo’s sensitivity to any sign of disloyalty or ambition.”
The delegation spent the night at the Holiday Inn on Windsor’s waterfront — although, for security reasons, that fact was not publicly disclosed. (The hotel, nicknamed the “Plywood Palace” by locals for its flimsy wooden construction, burned down prior to its expected demolition in 1999.)
A plaque at the King's Navy Yard Park in Amherstburg honours Eugene Whelan for his general accomplishments. (Jamie Bradburn)
May 20 saw a full schedule of stops, starting with a tour of the Hiram Walker plant in Windsor. From there, it was off to Leamington to visit the Sun Parlour Greenhouse Growers Co-Operative. According to Whelan, that stop stuck in Gorbachev’s mind throughout the rest of the trip. “As Gorbachev was leaving, [greenhouse owner Gino] Pannunzio shook his hand and said, ‘I’m just a little tomato farmer, and I know you’re from a big country, but I don’t think my wishes are any different from yours or those of your people. I hope and pray for peace for you and your people.’” They also visited the Heinz plant in Leamington, lunched at the Roma Club, and stopped at a dairy farm near Woodslee before flying to Toronto for a dinner hosted by the provincial government.
The next day’s itinerary included stops at the Schneider’s meat plant in Kitchener and Bright’s Winery in Niagara Region. When Gorbachev wondered whether his hosts were showing him premier production facilities rather than regular plants, Whelan showed him a supermarket flyer to prove that the items he saw being made were not just for the wealthy. When this failed to convince Gorbachev, Whelan asked their bus driver to pull into the next supermarket along their route and got the store manager to provide a full tour. After another night in Toronto, the delegation flew to Alberta to wind down the trip.
At all stops, Gorbachev had no shortage of questions, especially concerning expenses and revenue. “Dapper, soft-spoken and completely at ease with farmers and businessmen he encountered on the day-long tour, Gorbachev soaked up a wealth of information on area food production,” the Windsor Star observed.
Interviewing Mikhail Gorbachev
As for how the trip affected Gorbachev, Shulgan concluded that “he realized how far ahead the Western world was, and he saw how the personal ownership of land and the proceeds of labour could motivate a work force.” By watching how Canadian society and production worked, he could consider how elements of the West could be used to reform the Soviet Union.
Near the end of the trip, Gorbachev asked Yakovlev whether he wanted to return home after a decade away. Shortly after, the ambassador was appointed the head of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations think-tank. When Gorbachev assumed power in 1985, Yakovlev was a key adviser and seen as the architect of policies such as non-intervention in Eastern Europe.
Though there have been efforts to place a historical plaque on or near the former Whelan property to commemorate the evening, none has yet been installed. Summing up the visit a few weeks later in an interview with the Windsor Star, Whelan noted how astounded Gorbachev had been by the efficiency and productivity of Canadian agriculture and how “he couldn’t get over the warmth that was in our house” during dinner. “You can’t live in isolation. You can’t live without understanding and you can’t understand if you live in isolation.”
Sources: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman (Toronto: Doubleday, 2009); The Soviet Ambassador: The Making of the Radical Behind Perestroika by Christopher Shulgan (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2008); Whelan: The Man in the Green Stetson by Eugene Whelan and Rick Archbold (Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 1986); the March 28, 2010, edition of the Toronto Star; and the May 18, 1983, May 19, 1983, May 20, 1983, June 4, 1983, and February 20, 2013, editions of the Windsor Star.