It might surprise you how often I request the release of historical records that I already possess. Don’t worry. This was puzzling for me, too.
Most of my research these days is in records from Canada’s Cold War era. This was also the great age of the carbon copy — the real carbon copy, not the “CC” of e-mails today. There were no shared drives or cloud storage solutions. If you wanted more than one person to read your memo, you needed to make more than one copy.
For my current research project, relevant carbon copies of key memoranda were regularly sent to (or from) the Department of External Affairs, Department of National Defence, and the Privy Council Office.
Because these documents are scattered throughout the archives, they often get reviewed for release separately, by different people and at different times. And sometimes a decision will be made to withhold information in a document even when a previous, separate decision has been made to release the carbon copy (or the original) in another department’s files. (For a great/awful list of examples, see here.)
My colleague Susie Colbourn (who is now substack-ing over at Transatlantic Antics) and I have written about a fairly easy solution to this problem: Use digital tools to track and compare what records have been released.
But I am still conscious of the over-riding incongruity here. Why ask for copies of documents that I already have?
It is not (just) a matter of principle.
And it is not the result of a childhood spent collecting baseball cards and the accompanying need to collect that I still feel today. (I mean, sure, the baseball card collecting is a factor here, but I like to think it is a minor one.)
It is because documents from the pre-digital age also served as notepads for thoughts and ideas and comments that were rarely written anywhere else.
Let me show you an example. Have a quick look at this document (you don’t need to read it if you don’t want — just look at it).
Now have a quick look at this one:
You can see the similarities - it is the same memorandum. But look at all that scrawl! And the scrawl is very important in this case.
In 1992, Canada was preparing to withdraw the Canadian Forces from Germany. Canadian troops had been in NATO Europe for over four decades.
The front page of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung featured a front page editorial with an overwrought title: “A Maple Leaf in the Wind.” (That’s a translation from the German.) The article criticized the upcoming Canadian withdrawal and finished with some purple prose:
“The flag with the red maple leaf against a white background is being taken down in Germany. On the other side of the Atlantic, it may never again have the same character it once had.”
A translation of the article was cabled back to Ottawa over the signature of the Canadian Ambassador in Bonn (and future Provost of Trinity College), Thomas Delworth.
This article seems to have caught the attention of Paul Heinbecker, who was then in the Privy Council Office. He asked for more information and what he got back was the memorandum in question.
Look at this part of the original version again. This is from the file copy — the copy that was kept on file while another copy was sent to Heinbecker at PCO.
“Official reaction to our decision to remove our troops from Germany has been understanding but very unhappy at the lack of consultation …”
And here’s the second version:
“This, of course, is Bullshit. The Chancellor has spoken three times to the PM this Spring without mentioning the issue. Nor have the foreign ministers. So what constitutes official German reaction, a desk officer?”
And at the top, for good measure:
“The point I was making was that Canadian Government policy was criticized on the front (?) page of a German newspaper. The job of an Embassy is to explain/defend Canadian policy, not merely report it. I assume the Embassy did write to the editor setting out our views. I just wanted to see the text of the reply. If there was no reply I would be surprised.”
There are a couple of other margin notes, substantive and with perhaps a touch of snark.
These notes transform the value and meaning of the original memorandum, and a historian dealing with the withdrawal issue is far better served by having access to the marginalia. (This does not mean marginalia is always right. But marginalia, without a doubt, offers the juiciest bits of diplomatic history.)
By the way, if you are keeping score at home, it seems like there had been no letter to the editor, at least not before the gentle suggestion from Ottawa.
Marginalia then, is one of the primary reasons that historians want to see the carbon copies, or the photocopies, or whatever copy it is that we haven’t seen yet. Because there might be something there that we can’t learn anywhere else.
And the big arrow at the bottom of the marked-up memo? This means the document should be returned to the memo author. It was the “e-mail forward” of its day.
Pretty slick.
***
These copies were both in RG25, 27-1-1-EUR, “Defence - Policy and Plans - Between Canada and Other Countries or Area - Europe,” at Library and Archives Canada. It is a strange bit of happenstance that these ended up in the same folder. The reason is that Heinbecker had turned Bell’s memo into a note back to Bell. In many other cases, the memo recipient made a marginal note and keep it on a file in the recipient’s office or department, rather than sending it back to the author.
These files are available at Canada Declassified, here. This is a big file so if you want to see the whole PDF, click on the “Other Media” link.
I mentioned Susie’s substack. Here’s how to sign up: