Jane Margaret Laight
2006-11-12 23:05:52 UTC
A very private, modest person, Kenneth McIlwraith disliked talking
about himself almost as much as he loved playing golf after he retired
from the diplomatic service. Nevertheless, he had some extraordinary
adventures in his long life.
Although Canadian born, he served with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry,
one of the last British cavalry regiments to still use horses at the
beginning of the Second World War. He was captured by the French
Foreign Legion in the Syrian desert in 1941 and held for two months as
a prisoner-of-war of Vichy France.
After the war he had a lengthy career as a diplomat and ultimately
became Canadian ambassador to Norway and Iceland. "He was a man of
infinite courtesy and patience and he helped train his juniors in a
methodical and systematic way that was quite rare among senior officers
and heads of missions," said Roy MacLaren, a former High Commissioner
to London and one of Mr. McIlwraith's juniors at External Affairs. "The
juniors in the department greatly admired him. He would take any amount
of time helping to train us and showing us by example how to conduct
ourselves," said Mr. MacLaren. "He was a very fine person."
Kenneth Douglas McIlwraith was the younger son of William Norman
McIlwraith and his wife Ruby (née Somerville). His father, who had
left school at 16, was hired as a clerk by George Herbert Wood and
James Henry Gundy as one of their first two employees on the day they
opened their investment firm in 1905. Mr. McIlwraith became such an
adept and valued investment analyst that five years later, when he was
30, the founders asked him to open the London office of Wood Gundy
(which is now part of CIBC).
Although a decidedly anglophile couple, the McIlwraiths returned to
Canada every summer to their cottage on Centre Island in Lake Ontario
across the harbour from Toronto, and deliberately came back to Canada
in the penultimate year of the First World War so that their second
son, Kenneth, could (like his elder brother William) be born on
Canadian soil. As well, Mr. McIlwraith "did not trust the quality of
British medical treatment," said his grandson Bill McIlwraith in a
e-mail from Thailand where he owns a small resort.
Ken was sent to board at Boxgrove preparatory school in Guildford,
Surrey, from the age of 8. At 13, he went to Rugby School, near
Coventry in Warwickshire, the same school that the soldier-poet Rupert
Brooke had attended, and then went up to Cambridge where he studied
English literature at Clare College, graduating with a bachelor's
degree in 1939 and a master's the following year.
Mr. McIlwraith joined the British Army as a second lieutenant and
served with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry, a regiment that can trace its
lineage back to 1794. At the time Mr. McIlwraith enlisted, the regiment
(which had been given the honorific Royal in 1831 and designated the
Prince of Wales's Own in 1863 in tribute to the future King Edward VII)
was still a cavalry unit, a tradition that must have appealed to the
horse-loving Mr. McIlwraith. He, along with his batman, served in
Palestine, riding his own two horses (which he had shipped by train and
boat from England) on patrols. It was only at the end of 1941, two
years into the war, that the regiment was mechanized, following its
transfer to the Royal Armoured Corps.
While serving as a regimental liaison officer in the Syrian desert, Mr.
McIlwraith and his batman were captured south of Palmyra on June 2,
1941, by a French patrol (of Arab soldiers with French officers, as he
later explained in a letter to his parents). As France had fallen to
the Germans the year before and established the Vichy collaborationist
government, the French and the British were technically at war.
Mr. McIlwraith was taken to the local commandant, a captain in the
French Foreign Legion. After a noisy exchange, the commandant sent his
prisoner on his first flight by "aeroplane" to Homs, about 145
kilometres west of Palmyra. "The plane was a very ancient affair
(four-seater biplane), the air currents over the desert were
particularly active, and the pilot and navigator were more concerned
with some bottles of wine they had brought with them than with the
smooth progress of their flying chicken-crate," he wrote to his parents
in September, 1941.
Lieutenant McIlwraith was transported along with other captured British
officers to Alefsis on the outskirts of Athens. That's where he saw the
Germans for the first time. "The Jerries paid no attention to us other
than to glance with a certain bovine curiosity at the rather motley
looking party of British officers. It was obvious, however, that the
French depended on German authorization for every move they made," he
wrote.
Another "hair-raising" flight later, the prisoners reached Salonika,
where they were kept in filthy conditions in a warehouse for five days
and then interned for two weeks in the hold of a French passenger ship
in the harbour. After the Saint Jean d'Acre Armistice was signed on
July 14 between British forces in the Middle East and Vichy France
forces in Syria under General Henri Dentz, he should have been returned
to the British. The prisoners were shown the armistice and allowed to
read the clause demanding their immediate return to the British, but
they were still loaded on a train and sent across enemy-occupied Europe
and through Germany to Toulon, France - all the time in ghastly
conditions, without adequate food or water.
In Toulon, he and the other officers were finally released under the
terms of the armistice and sent back to Beirut on a French ship that
sailed through the Mediterranean, enjoying considerably better
conditions than he had endured on his outward journey. He arrived in
Cairo on Aug. 19, a little more than two months after his capture and
after 10 days leave, returned to the fighting.
The Royal Wiltshire was the first British tank regiment to engage the
German (and Italian) forces under General Erwin Rommel at the crucial
battle of El Alamein in North Africa in 1942. Mr. McIlwraith missed the
fighting because he was ill with jaundice and desert sores, (a virulent
form of impetigo that was exacerbated by sand, heat and the confined
quarters in tanks). The sergeant who took his place was killed almost
immediately, according to Mr. McIlwraith's daughter Mary.
He later served in Norway and was demobilized with the rank of captain
in 1946. Although he survived the war, many of his school friends and
army colleagues were killed and he suffered from horrible nightmares
about the horrors he had witnessed. His daughter, Mary McIlwraith, can
still remember him shouting in his sleep and waking everybody up. As a
result they rarely talked about their father's war experience.
When peace came, his father wanted him to join Wood Gundy, but he
resisted and opted instead to study Canadian history at the University
of Toronto for a year with a view to joining External Affairs (now
Foreign Affairs and International Trade), which he did on Sept. 1,
1948, after successfully writing the entrance examinations. As a
student, Mr. McIlwraith lived in a boarding house on Lonsdale Road.
That's where he met Ruth (née Keogh) Richardson, a widow one year his
senior and the mother of two little girls, Deirdre and Darragh. Her
husband Pat had fought with the Canadian forces and been killed in
Holland near the end of the War.
Although of different religions - Mr. McIlwraith was Protestant and
Mrs. Richardson was Irish Catholic - they married in 1951 just before
he received his first foreign posting to Geneva. During their three
years in Switzerland, the McIlwraiths' daughter Mary was born. The
family returned to Canada and lived in Ottawa where Mr. McIlwraith was
a member of the inspection service, charged with travelling the globe
to observe and report back on conditions in Canadian embassies and
diplomatic missions. The McIlwraith's final child, Sheila, was born in
Ottawa just before their next posting to Tokyo in 1958. They travelled
by ship, as Mrs. McIlwraith disliked flying, a trip that her daughter
Mary still remembers as the height of luxury and glamour. After a
three-year stint, the family went back again to Ottawa where Mr.
McIlwraith was head of personnel for External Affairs.
In 1964, the fluently bilingual Mr. McIlwraith was posted to Paris at
the height of the first wave of FLQ violence in Quebec and during a
troubled diplomatic period between French president Charles de Gaulle
and the Canadian government. While working in the embassy he took some
pleasure in recounting to his colleagues how an earlier French
administration had held him as a prisoner-of-war, according to his old
friend and colleague Peter Towe, former Canadian ambassador to the
United Nations. Mr. McIlwraith's final posting was to Oslo where he
served as ambassador to Norway and Iceland from 1972 until 1976.
He took early retirement at 60 and continued to live in Ottawa where he
enjoyed playing golf, meeting with old friends from External and
reading. He and his wife separated in 1990 and she returned to Toronto
where she died in 2004.
Mr. McIlwraith, who continued to live in Ottawa in the family home with
his step-daughter Darragh, was in good health, surviving prostate
cancer and melanoma, until the cancer metastasized to his urinary
tract. He died shortly after receiving the diagnosis and having refused
treatment.
Kenneth Douglas McIlwraith was born in Toronto on May 25, 1917. He died
in Ottawa on Sept. 11, 2006. He was 89. He is survived by his four
daughters, three grandchildren and his extended family.
about himself almost as much as he loved playing golf after he retired
from the diplomatic service. Nevertheless, he had some extraordinary
adventures in his long life.
Although Canadian born, he served with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry,
one of the last British cavalry regiments to still use horses at the
beginning of the Second World War. He was captured by the French
Foreign Legion in the Syrian desert in 1941 and held for two months as
a prisoner-of-war of Vichy France.
After the war he had a lengthy career as a diplomat and ultimately
became Canadian ambassador to Norway and Iceland. "He was a man of
infinite courtesy and patience and he helped train his juniors in a
methodical and systematic way that was quite rare among senior officers
and heads of missions," said Roy MacLaren, a former High Commissioner
to London and one of Mr. McIlwraith's juniors at External Affairs. "The
juniors in the department greatly admired him. He would take any amount
of time helping to train us and showing us by example how to conduct
ourselves," said Mr. MacLaren. "He was a very fine person."
Kenneth Douglas McIlwraith was the younger son of William Norman
McIlwraith and his wife Ruby (née Somerville). His father, who had
left school at 16, was hired as a clerk by George Herbert Wood and
James Henry Gundy as one of their first two employees on the day they
opened their investment firm in 1905. Mr. McIlwraith became such an
adept and valued investment analyst that five years later, when he was
30, the founders asked him to open the London office of Wood Gundy
(which is now part of CIBC).
Although a decidedly anglophile couple, the McIlwraiths returned to
Canada every summer to their cottage on Centre Island in Lake Ontario
across the harbour from Toronto, and deliberately came back to Canada
in the penultimate year of the First World War so that their second
son, Kenneth, could (like his elder brother William) be born on
Canadian soil. As well, Mr. McIlwraith "did not trust the quality of
British medical treatment," said his grandson Bill McIlwraith in a
e-mail from Thailand where he owns a small resort.
Ken was sent to board at Boxgrove preparatory school in Guildford,
Surrey, from the age of 8. At 13, he went to Rugby School, near
Coventry in Warwickshire, the same school that the soldier-poet Rupert
Brooke had attended, and then went up to Cambridge where he studied
English literature at Clare College, graduating with a bachelor's
degree in 1939 and a master's the following year.
Mr. McIlwraith joined the British Army as a second lieutenant and
served with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry, a regiment that can trace its
lineage back to 1794. At the time Mr. McIlwraith enlisted, the regiment
(which had been given the honorific Royal in 1831 and designated the
Prince of Wales's Own in 1863 in tribute to the future King Edward VII)
was still a cavalry unit, a tradition that must have appealed to the
horse-loving Mr. McIlwraith. He, along with his batman, served in
Palestine, riding his own two horses (which he had shipped by train and
boat from England) on patrols. It was only at the end of 1941, two
years into the war, that the regiment was mechanized, following its
transfer to the Royal Armoured Corps.
While serving as a regimental liaison officer in the Syrian desert, Mr.
McIlwraith and his batman were captured south of Palmyra on June 2,
1941, by a French patrol (of Arab soldiers with French officers, as he
later explained in a letter to his parents). As France had fallen to
the Germans the year before and established the Vichy collaborationist
government, the French and the British were technically at war.
Mr. McIlwraith was taken to the local commandant, a captain in the
French Foreign Legion. After a noisy exchange, the commandant sent his
prisoner on his first flight by "aeroplane" to Homs, about 145
kilometres west of Palmyra. "The plane was a very ancient affair
(four-seater biplane), the air currents over the desert were
particularly active, and the pilot and navigator were more concerned
with some bottles of wine they had brought with them than with the
smooth progress of their flying chicken-crate," he wrote to his parents
in September, 1941.
Lieutenant McIlwraith was transported along with other captured British
officers to Alefsis on the outskirts of Athens. That's where he saw the
Germans for the first time. "The Jerries paid no attention to us other
than to glance with a certain bovine curiosity at the rather motley
looking party of British officers. It was obvious, however, that the
French depended on German authorization for every move they made," he
wrote.
Another "hair-raising" flight later, the prisoners reached Salonika,
where they were kept in filthy conditions in a warehouse for five days
and then interned for two weeks in the hold of a French passenger ship
in the harbour. After the Saint Jean d'Acre Armistice was signed on
July 14 between British forces in the Middle East and Vichy France
forces in Syria under General Henri Dentz, he should have been returned
to the British. The prisoners were shown the armistice and allowed to
read the clause demanding their immediate return to the British, but
they were still loaded on a train and sent across enemy-occupied Europe
and through Germany to Toulon, France - all the time in ghastly
conditions, without adequate food or water.
In Toulon, he and the other officers were finally released under the
terms of the armistice and sent back to Beirut on a French ship that
sailed through the Mediterranean, enjoying considerably better
conditions than he had endured on his outward journey. He arrived in
Cairo on Aug. 19, a little more than two months after his capture and
after 10 days leave, returned to the fighting.
The Royal Wiltshire was the first British tank regiment to engage the
German (and Italian) forces under General Erwin Rommel at the crucial
battle of El Alamein in North Africa in 1942. Mr. McIlwraith missed the
fighting because he was ill with jaundice and desert sores, (a virulent
form of impetigo that was exacerbated by sand, heat and the confined
quarters in tanks). The sergeant who took his place was killed almost
immediately, according to Mr. McIlwraith's daughter Mary.
He later served in Norway and was demobilized with the rank of captain
in 1946. Although he survived the war, many of his school friends and
army colleagues were killed and he suffered from horrible nightmares
about the horrors he had witnessed. His daughter, Mary McIlwraith, can
still remember him shouting in his sleep and waking everybody up. As a
result they rarely talked about their father's war experience.
When peace came, his father wanted him to join Wood Gundy, but he
resisted and opted instead to study Canadian history at the University
of Toronto for a year with a view to joining External Affairs (now
Foreign Affairs and International Trade), which he did on Sept. 1,
1948, after successfully writing the entrance examinations. As a
student, Mr. McIlwraith lived in a boarding house on Lonsdale Road.
That's where he met Ruth (née Keogh) Richardson, a widow one year his
senior and the mother of two little girls, Deirdre and Darragh. Her
husband Pat had fought with the Canadian forces and been killed in
Holland near the end of the War.
Although of different religions - Mr. McIlwraith was Protestant and
Mrs. Richardson was Irish Catholic - they married in 1951 just before
he received his first foreign posting to Geneva. During their three
years in Switzerland, the McIlwraiths' daughter Mary was born. The
family returned to Canada and lived in Ottawa where Mr. McIlwraith was
a member of the inspection service, charged with travelling the globe
to observe and report back on conditions in Canadian embassies and
diplomatic missions. The McIlwraith's final child, Sheila, was born in
Ottawa just before their next posting to Tokyo in 1958. They travelled
by ship, as Mrs. McIlwraith disliked flying, a trip that her daughter
Mary still remembers as the height of luxury and glamour. After a
three-year stint, the family went back again to Ottawa where Mr.
McIlwraith was head of personnel for External Affairs.
In 1964, the fluently bilingual Mr. McIlwraith was posted to Paris at
the height of the first wave of FLQ violence in Quebec and during a
troubled diplomatic period between French president Charles de Gaulle
and the Canadian government. While working in the embassy he took some
pleasure in recounting to his colleagues how an earlier French
administration had held him as a prisoner-of-war, according to his old
friend and colleague Peter Towe, former Canadian ambassador to the
United Nations. Mr. McIlwraith's final posting was to Oslo where he
served as ambassador to Norway and Iceland from 1972 until 1976.
He took early retirement at 60 and continued to live in Ottawa where he
enjoyed playing golf, meeting with old friends from External and
reading. He and his wife separated in 1990 and she returned to Toronto
where she died in 2004.
Mr. McIlwraith, who continued to live in Ottawa in the family home with
his step-daughter Darragh, was in good health, surviving prostate
cancer and melanoma, until the cancer metastasized to his urinary
tract. He died shortly after receiving the diagnosis and having refused
treatment.
Kenneth Douglas McIlwraith was born in Toronto on May 25, 1917. He died
in Ottawa on Sept. 11, 2006. He was 89. He is survived by his four
daughters, three grandchildren and his extended family.