As an illustration of Canada’s relative irrelevance on the world stage, I always liked the story about external affairs minister Lester Pearson’s visit to president Dwight Eisenhower, an avid golfer.
Pearson emerged from a meeting in disbelief that Ike hadn’t even heard of a pressing Canadian issue. “You’d think,” he muttered to an aide, “his caddie would have mentioned it to him.”
There have been moments when Canada popped up for a day or two on American news, but by and large we’ve been a marginal force. That changed with Mark Carney’s speech in Davos.
