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JEANNETTE MENZIES ’95: DISCOVERING CANADA THROUGH DISCOURSE
JEANNETTE MENZIES ’95: DISCOVERING CANADA THROUGH DISCOURSE
Jeannette Menzies (M.A., Canadian Heritage and Development Studies) is the ambassador of Canada to Iceland. Over her career, she has held several positions with Department of Foreign Affairs, including head of the Canadian International Centre for the Arctic Region in Oslo, deputy director of Circumpolar Affairs, and deputy director of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Response. Prior to taking up her position in Iceland, she was senior adviser in the Nordic and Polar Relations Division.
TRENT Magazine: You look fondly back on studying with (founding Trent president) THB Symons, and this year is the 50th anniversary of Canadian Studies at Trent. Tell me why studying Canada is so important.
Jeannette Menzies: That’s a great question. Well, I think to know where you’re from and to know the nation that you identify with as your country, helps you to understand the world and gives you a lens on the world. Of course, it comes with its biases, but … wherever I’ve traveled, people ask about Canada and I like to be able to answer. Not just with that answer, but also with something else about Canada that they might not know.
My Trent thesis was about a part of Canada that I didn’t know—about a national park and the internment of Ukrainians during World War One.
A lot of what I’ve done in my personal life and in my professional life is to try to share those things about Canada that [as Canadians] we know, and also that which we don’t know. There are a lot of things that [Canadians] don’t know, and things about our history that we’re maybe not as proud of. I think it’s important to discuss and share these—for Canada to learn from them, but also so that other countries can learn from how we are addressing those wrongs.
TM: A lot of nations look up to Canada because of our historical role on the world stage, our standard of living, our standards of freedom. What kind of feedback do you get about Canada?
JM: It depends where you are in the world. But most places I’ve been, people are always excited to hear about Canada. They often say, “I knew about maple syrup,” or “I knew about hockey, but I didn’t know about that Or that.”
I’m in Iceland, and so I’m learning things as well, such as the fact that a third of the population of Iceland immigrated to Canada in the 1870s and ’80s to start new lives because of the challenging circumstances in Iceland at the time. A third of the population! That’s a lot of people. They had impact in terms of Southern Manitoba and societal changes.
I’m learning a lot about these connections with Canada. One continues to learn more and more about their country from the experience of immigrants in their country.
TM: How does your Trent experience continue to inform you as a person and in this ambassadorial role?
JM: I love Trent because it is a slightly smaller university and it felt like a community. And in that community, I felt that I really could have a voice, and I could have ideas. One of the things I did when I was here, working with other students and with profs, was to launch a conference called Avancer: The Student Journal of Canadian Studies. It was a Canadian Studies conference—beyond the postcard and things that we don’t know about Canada.
I don’t know that I would have done that at a big, big university. [At Trent] I had, perhaps, more courage and independence to think and to do things.
I would say in my current job in Iceland, there are a lot of parallels, because Iceland is a very dynamic, engaging society. It’s not a massively huge society; there are 380,000 people. Of course, it jumps to 2.5 million people in summer with tourism. But I feel like
in a country like Iceland, the size of Iceland, I’ve made fast friends—within the community, within government, with other embassies—and it allows for things to happen.
This year we celebrated 75 Canada-Iceland diplomatic relations and the embassy gifted 75 Canadian books to public libraries in Iceland. And we chose those books based on themes where we have a lot of commonalities, including the Arctic, climate, environment, gender equality, and diversity and inclusion.
I think it was well-received in Iceland, and a lot of people know about it; people know they can go to the library and take out all of these Canadian books. Children’s books, adult books, poetry books ... there are cookbooks. It’s a whole mix.
I think those ideas may come from Trent—to think a little bit out of the box. Instead of giving wine at an event (and I still do give wine at events—Canadian wine to promote that industry)—I love the idea of books. Icelanders are big readers and they’re big writers, and so books are an excellent way to strengthen those diplomatic relations and to share Canada with Iceland.
TM: We’re both northern nations, we’re both Arctic nations, geographically there are some similarities. But geographically they’re also vastly different. Culturally, vastly different. Tell me one thing that continues to blow your mind about Iceland.
JM: I had been to Iceland before. I had gone as a tourist and cycled around the country, about 20 ago, so I had an idea what I was getting into. The wind, the weather, the rain, the cold did not surprise me, so that’s not one of the things.
What did surprise me were the interesting innovations around food security that are going on in Iceland.
It’s a dark, dark climate. They talk about there not being seasons there. There’s daylight and there’s night.
And yet they’re doing some amazing innovations with greenhouses. Not only are they growing tomatoes, which are great tomatoes, they are also growing things like bananas and figs and coffee beans. When I walked through this greenhouse, about 30 minutes outside of Reykjavik, it was just mind-boggling to me. I felt like I was in the tropics or something. I was amazed just seeing bananas. And I ate one of them. So that has been mind-boggling. And something that is more lighthearted: for a country that’s cold a lot of the year, and, in the winter with quite challenging weather, they have ice cream stores that are open all year round. In Canada, we close our ice cream stores in the winter, or we shut them early or something. People do
not hang out at the ice cream store in the winter up here.
But in Iceland, they do. It’s an activity. You go into a big, big store and get your ice cream; and then you go sit in the car and you eat your ice cream cone. So that’s just something I never would have expected. But I’ve embraced it.
TM: What’s in the water here? [Alumnus and former Canadian ambassador to Iceland] Stewart Wheeler… you… this position?
JM: It is very interesting. Unique. Is it ironic? Canada has had an embassy in Iceland for 20 years now, and I think there’s been maybe five or six Canadian ambassadors, two of which are Trent alumni. It’s quite fascinating. I don’t know … I think there might be something in the water here. But I hope that trend continues.
