Lester B Pearson Essay

Lester B Pearson was a Canadian scholar who was a very active, informed and purposeful man in the Canadian society. He was a diplomat, who later went on to serve as the Prime Minister and was very sucessful in office. Pearson was also nominated and sucessfully won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for organizing the United Nations Emergency Force to assist in the ressolving of the Suez Canal Crisis.

Lester B. Pearson was a politician, diplomat, and a Prime Minister from 1963-1968. He was as prominent as a mediator in international disputes. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1957.Pearson served in World War I (1914–18) and lectured in history at the University of Toronto (1924–28), after studying there and at the University of Oxford.

He was profoundly influenced by what he saw and thereafter attached great importance to collective defence in the face of dictatorships and aggression. In 1941 Pearson returned to Canada. He was sent to Washington as second-in-command at the Canadian Legation in 1942, where his easygoing personality and personal charm made him a great success, particularly with the press. In 1945, he was named Canadian ambassador to the United States and attended the founding conference of the United Nations (UN) at San Francisco.By the time NATO was in place, Pearson had left the civil service for politics. In September 1948, he became minister of external affairs and subsequently represented Algoma East, Ontario, in the House of Commons. As minister, he helped lead Canada into the Korean War as a contributor to the UN army and, in 1952, served as president of the UN General Assembly, where he tried to find a solution to the conflict. His efforts displeased the Americans, who considered him too inclined to compromise on difficult points of principle. His greatest diplomatic achievement came in 1956, when he proposed a UN peacekeeping force as means for easing the British and French out of Egypt during the Suez Crisis. His plan was implemented, and as a reward he received the Nobel Peace Prize in

His government was expected to be more businesslike than past Prime Ministers, such as Diefenbaker. Much of Parliament's time was spent in the dispute about the Danadian flag in 1964. In 1965, Pearson called a general election but again failed to secure a majority. In the next year, the Munsinger scandal erupted with even more partisan bitterness.For all its superficial chaos, the Pearson government left behind a notable legacy of legislation: a Canada Pension Plan, a universal medicare system, a unified armed force, and a new flag. However, its approach to the problem of Canada's economically disadvantaged regions was less successful and its legacy, which included the Glace Bay heavy-water plant, was decidedly mixed. Not all of these initiatives proved fruitful and some were costly, but they represented the high point of the Canadian welfare state that generations of social thinkers had dreamed about. In retirement, Pearson worked on his memoirs and on a study of international aid for the World