WILKINS IN ‘08

Wilkins's first year as ambassador brings tumult, triumph and tears (Robert Russo, Canadian Press, May 23rd, 2006)

U.S. ambassador David Wilkins has developed a whole riff on enduring his first lengthy Canadian winter and he delivers it in a drawl that just drips Dixie.

"I never thought dirt would look so good," he said of the March mud that signals spring in Canada's capital. Wilkins has learned enough about Canadians in the year since he arrived here to know they love to hear about Americans struggle with winter.

So when he delivers the line in front of an audience, he obliges by laying on the low-country patois.

"Ah nevuh thawt duht wud luk suh good," is how it comes out. Canadian crowds eat it up.

What they might not realize is how cannily he's using it to disarm a country that might not otherwise be as receptive to the representative of an unpopular U.S. president.

Nor would he necessarily want them to know how effectively he used that style to help deliver an elusive softwood lumber agreement into the hands of a new prime minister who happens to be a conservative cousin.

"It's not a put-on," said Frank McKenna, who served as Wilkins's counterpart as ambassador to Washington. "It's real. He's a modest, humble and engaging person - and it is disarming."

During the election last winter, I was present when he turned a cynical, hostile crowd into applauding admirers in thirty minutes. Not only did he talk openly about his faith in very un-Canadian terms, he managed to intimate to the crowd they were international shirkers who couldn’t hold a candle to George Bush intellectually, all the while telling them how much he loved them and their country. The man is a master.