On New Year’s Eve 1953, Georges Philéas Vanier and his wife, Pauline, arrived at the Quai d’Orsay to be fêted by the French government. At the reception, Mme. Vanier received the Légion d’honneur from the French Foreign Minister, Georges Bidault, who told her, “You will always be the Canadian ambassadress.”

Government policy of the day forbade granting a similar honour to Georges (although ironically he had already received the Légion d’honneur for bravery in 1918), but he accepted a painting and was extolled for his years of service spent as Canada’s ambassador to France, a post he originally had assumed in January 1939. Forced to flee after France’s surrender in 1940, he returned as ambassador in September 1944, just weeks after Pauline’s cousin, General Jacques Phillipe Leclerc, and his Free French Army had liberated Paris.

Ambassador Vanier was 65 when relieved of his post in 1953. Many thought his career was over. Six years later, however, he became Canada’s first Québec-born Governor General, an appointment he held for more than seven years.

Born in 1888, Georges the first son of Irish-born Margaret Maloney and Philéas Vanier, a Montréal businessman whose ancestors had settled in Québec in 1681. The young Georges learned both French and English and graduated with a B.A. from Loyola and, in 1911, with a law degree from Laval University. After a tour of Europe, he joined a Montréal law firm until late 1914 when he enlisted as a lieutenant and became a founding officer of Québec’s Royal 22e Regiment, the famed Van Doos’.

After serving with distinction in France from 1915 to August 1918, he was decorated with the Military Cross and Bar for bravery and a DSO for leading his battalion in an attack during which an exploding shell shattered his right leg; this necessitated amputation above the knee. After recuperating in England, he was decorated by King George V.

In 1919, Georges resumed practising law and met 22-year-old Pauline Archer, daughter of a Québec judge. After they were married in 1921, Georges convinced the army to reenlist him as an officer with the Van Doos’. He also was named aide-de-camp to the newly appointed Governor General of Canada, Lord Byng. A close friendship developed between Lord and Lady Byng and the Vaniers, Byng arranging for his young A.D.C. to attend officers’ college in Camberley, England. Shortly after returning home in 1925, Vanier was made commanding officer of the Royal 22e, a position he held until February 1928 when he became military representative for the Canadian delegation to the League of Nations in Geneva.

During the 1930s, Georges served in several capacities in addition to his appointment as first secretary at Canada House in London. He was a member of the War Graves Commission, technical advisor to the Canadian delegation at the League of Nations Assembly in 1936, and a member of the Commonwealth Commission for the Coronation of George V1. Then, in December 1938, he was appointed Minister of the Legation in France.
 

Viewed as commanding officer of Québec’s Royal 22e Regiment in the late 1920s, Georges Philéas Vanier lost his right leg in 1918 when Canadian armed forces, during World War I, assaulted the formidable Hindenberg Line. More than 6000 Canadians lost their lives in this historic offence. A future Governor General of Canada, Vanier won the Military Cross and a DSO for his bravery at the Fresnes-Rouvroy section of this attack. [Photo, courtesy National Archives of Canada]

Madame Vanier remained in Paris until May 1940 when the German bombardment of Paris forced her and the youngest children to leave for London where she immediately joined the Red Cross. She also visited wounded French soldiers who had been evacuated from Dunkirk. As she said, “I found I could be particularly helpful to those who spoke no English since only rarely did the hospital staff speak French.”

Georges remained in France, but, by mid-June, he had twice moved the Legation to escape capture. Eventually reaching the French seacoast along with the British Ambassador to France and some of their staff, they boarded a sardine fishing boat that put out to sea in a raging storm. Several hours later they were rescued by the Canadian destroyer Fraser and arrived in London the following evening. Vanier, interviewed by the London Times, deplored the cruelty and assassination of women and children, a theme both he and Pauline repeated in numerous speeches upon returning to Canada in 1941. They urged the government to pass a more liberal immigration policy to allow refugees into Canada.

In Canada, Vanier served as a member of the Canada-United States Joint Board of Defence and was appointed brigadier in command of the army’s Québec district with headquarters in Québec. There he urged the participation of French-Canadians in the war effort. By 1943, he had returned to London as Minister to represent five of the countries overrun by Germany. Shortly after the successful landing of troops in North Africa and the establishment of the French Committee of National Liberation under Charles de Gaulle, the Vaniers moved to De Gaulle’s African headquarters at Algiers, where he became a strong supporter of the French general.

Returning to Paris following liberation, Georges renewed his attempts to have refugees accepted in Canada while Madame Vanier spent countless hours organizing services that provided temporary shelter for refugees and that attempted reunification of families separated by the war. At train stations, displaced people were greeted with drinks, refreshments, clothes, and survival kits. Photos were taken and placed on the walls of the station “in hopes,” she exclaimed, “that someone in the crowd would recognize the name or picture of a long lost relative or friend.” She also raised funds from Canada to purchase everything from a cow to provide milk for one village and a tractor for use at a boys’ town farm established near the ruins of Caen. Her interest and devotion resulted in the owner of a nursery in Lyon naming a rose the “Madame Vanier.” Hundreds of grateful letters were received at the Embassy.

Weeks after Germany surrendered, Vanier joined a delegation to visit the Buchenwald Concentration Camp and broadcast to Canada a commentary about the holocaust that was described as “superbly drafted and perfectly delivered.” He served as Canadian delegate to the Paris Peace Conference where he helped draft and sign, on behalf of Canada, treaties with Italy, Romania, Hungary, and Finland before serving as Canadian delegate to the United Nations General Assembly in Paris in 1948.

In 1952 he was appointed honorary colonel of the Van Doos’. That, he said, “crowns my lifelong attachment to the regiment.” When his diplomatic career came to an end in 1953, it was suggested he enter the Senate, an appointment unappealing both to him and to Mme. Vanier. He asked to remain in France or be considered for the post of high commissioner to Great Britain, but his request was turned down. Even when the French foreign minister, Georges Bidault, took the unusual step of writing to Ottawa urging that Vanier remain in Paris, the appeal was rejected and Bidault wired back, “General Vanier will carry away with him our affection, our esteem, and something over and above. He will be difficult to replace.”
 

Governor General Georges Vanier and Mme. Vanier visit the northern Ontario Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories in 1966. To left stands world-famous physicist D.A. Keys, who held Ph.D.s from both Cambridge and Harvard. Standing between the Vaniers is former Atomic Energy of Canada president, J.L. Gray. [Photo, courtesy Atomic Energy of Canada Limited]

The Vaniers settled in an apartment in Montréal where Georges joined the board of directors of several companies. He returned to France in 1955 to be made an “Honorary Citizen of Paris.” He also received an honorary degree from the University of Montréal but considered his greatest honour being asked to serve as Canada’s second Canadian-born Governor General. “I think I have found you a house,” he said to Pauline upon his appointment.

It was to be their home for longer than anticipated, for, at the end of the normal five-year term, he was asked to continue and did so for another two and a half years. As Separatist sentiment in Québec grew, Canadian unity became the theme of many of his talks. In Edmonton in 1965, he declared, “If any part of Canada were to contemplate going its separate way, could the rest of us long remain united?” Later that year, this profoundly religious man commented on Canada’s vast resources and described Canadians as the “most fortunate people in the world. We ought to be ashamed to admit what we have – unless we do something with it.”

Mme. Vanier often travelled with him and, despite a fear of flying, boarded every kind of aircraft including bush planes to work beside her husband. She also found time to pursue her own interests by helping to establish the Vanier Institute for the Family. She also became Chancellor of Ottawa University. Their devotion to Canada and to each other caused the government to name two islands in Canada’s north, Île-Vanier and Île-Pauline.

Time, however, was running out for General Vanier. A heart attack in 1966 seriously depleted his strength and by early 1967, it was obvious that he could no longer carry on the duties of Governor General. The night before he died he watched part of a hockey game with his old friend, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson and, next morning, March 5, 1967, after attending a private mass at Rideau Hall, he died of heart failure at 11.25 A.M.

Some 15,000 messages of condolence arrived at Government House in Ottawa. Lord Louis Mountbatten of Burma called him “the greatest Canadian of his time.” A woman who had represented the wives of Canadian servicemen killed in Italy during World War II wrote to Madame Vanier, “One does not often see Christ in a general or in a statesman. But I saw him in General Vanier.” The wife of the former British Ambassador to France and Algiers wrote, “He was the dearest man ever to be given to a generation craving for something finer and nobler than themselves.” A schoolboy from Grimsby, Ontario, was succinct. “The flags are low today because a good man has died.”

Mel James