IAN CHRISTIE CLARK

Diplomat, arts executive, francophile, poet, outdoorsman. Our father died at the Riverpath Retirement Residence in Ottawa after a long illness. Predeceased by his wife of 62 years, Nancy Cynthia Clark (née Blachford). Survived by his children, Brenda Trenholme (Quentin Ogier) and Graeme Christie (David Ireland). Brought up in privilege in Toronto, he attended Upper Canada College and then McGill University (BA, 1952, MA 1958), where he was a published poet and wrote his graduate thesis on Ezra Pound. He entered Canada's Foreign Service in 1958, serving in Brussels (2nd Secretary and Consul), Paris (Counsellor, Information and Cultural Affairs), London (Cultural Counsellor) and again in Paris as Ambassador to UNESCO in the mid-80s. He pursued his strong interest in culture as founding Chair of the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board (CCPERB), possibly his most important contribution to the preservation of our cultural heritage as a nation; and as Secretary General of the National Museums Corporation. He left public service in 1990 to become President of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, during which time he was also Chairman of the ICOM Foundation, before returning to Ottawa for a final decade as Chair of the CCPERB, from which he retired in 2004. He was passionate about the arts and Canada's heritage, a keen outdoorsman (swimming and canoeing well into his 90's), and a convinced Francophile with fluent French acquired in mid-life. A celebration of life will held this summer.