Two members of our Canadian Network of the History of Humanitarian Aid organized this lunch talk today.   Click HERE to listen (47 mn).

Dr. Kevin Brushett, Assistant Professor of History and Chair of the Military and Strategic Studies Programme at Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston,  spoke on the early history of the Canadian International Development Agency.  He was introduced by Greg Donaghy, Head of the Historical Section at Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada.

The talk was held at DFADT, Sussex Drive, Ottawa on January 15, 2015.

Thanks to Will Tait, PhD candidate and Contract Instructor in History at Carleton University for the recording.

Here is what Dr. Donaghy wrote in advance of the talk:

Bruschett works gives “a glimpse at the struggle to define Canada’s international development program during the 1960s and early 1970s. Professor Brushett explores the interactions between government officials from External Affairs, the foreign aid bureaucracy, and young activists from Canada’s emerging non-governmental sector as they tangled during this foundational “golden age” over the nature and evolution of Canadian aid policy. Focused on recurring tensions in aid policy, this study helps illuminate persistent debates over the direction and form of Canadian international development assistance by grounding them in their historical context.

A graduate of Queen’s University, Dr. Brushett is an Assistant Professor of History at Royal Military College where he teaches modern Canadian and American history. He is currently completing a manuscript on the Company of Young Canadians, a community development program established by then Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson’s government in 1965. The present talk is drawn from a new research project examining the growth and performance of Canadian international development policies between 1965 and 1995 through the lens of the Canadian International Development Agency’s Non-Governmental Organization Branch.”