Downright Friendly

Although it was Ottawa's turn to play host to the U.S.-Canadian Cabinet-level trade and economic meeting, Canadian Finance Minister Donald Fleming and his delegation journeyed to Washington last week as a concession to the Kennedy Administration's busy schedule. Canada's thoughtful gesture, as it turned out, was just right. The visitors found President Kennedy and his New Frontiersmen eager to demonstrate that if Republicans could be receptive, Democrats could be downright friendly.

Flowers & Baseballs. Opening proceedings. Secretary of State Dean Rusk droned through a few sentences of a prepared welcoming statement, then discarded it and began some amiable ad-libbing.

"As any householder knows," Rusk said, "it takes a bit of doing to get along with the people next door when the dog rolls in the flower bed too often, the kids break windows with their baseballs, and the garbage can becomes a problem." During the seven hours of rambling discussion that followed, the delegates and their platoons of advisers got around to practically all topics of neighborly interest except unruly dogs and garbage cans.

The conferees talked at length about the effects of the recession on both Canada and the U.S. and the impact of new European trading areas on traditional North American export markets. Each nation presented a bill of complaint and in reply got amiable, if diplomatically vague, reassurances and explanations. U.S. delegates wanted to know about pending Canadian tariff revisions, Fleming's withdrawal of tax concessions for U.S. investors in Canada, and the probable recommendations of Canada's Royal Commission on Publications concerning the importation of U.S. magazines. Canada renewed a perennial request for removal of U.S. restrictions on lead and zinc imports and, pointing to Canada's imbalance of tourist trade with the U.S., asked that duty-free allowances permitted to U.S.

travelers returning from Canada be left as they are. Fleming and team praised the humanitarian aspects of the new Administration's Food for Peace program but registered clear Canadian reservations about its possible adverse effect on foreign sales of Canadian wheat.

"I Know .You." As the delegates met for a leisurely dinner in the Shera-ton-Carlton Hotel, Host Rusk suddenly jabbed a finger in the direction of Canadian Trade and Commerce Minister George Hees. "I know you," he told Hees.

"You're the fellow who made my life miserable in that lacrosse game." Hees, who studied at Britain's Cambridge, and Rusk, a former Rhodes scholar, then lapsed into reminiscing about the afternoon in 1934 when they played against each other. Hees even recalled the score --Cambridge defeated Oxford 6-5 by a goal scored in the last 30 seconds--and something else: "I remember throwing a couple of good body checks at Dean."

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