The driving force behind creating an association of retired Canadian Heads of Mission was Jim Nutt, a former RCAF veteran, Queen’s Counsel, and career diplomat. Nutt had served in Rio de Janeiro, Washington, New York, and finally as Canada’s Consul General in San Francisco in the early 1980s. In 1986, he floated the idea of creating such an association with three of his colleagues, Bill Barton, Harry Jay, and Russ McKinney. Together, they sent a letter in February 1987 to former Heads of Mission, inviting expressions of interest. A founding Directing Group was established, with Jim Nutt as Chairman. After some discussion of possible names—including the Persona Grata Association—they agreed on RHOMA, for Retired Heads of Mission Association, or ACMAR for Association de chefs de mission à la retraite. Inevitably, members of this new club began referring to themselves as “RHOMANs”. 

The first meeting of RHOMA took place on June 16, 1987 at the Country Club on Aylmer Road in Gatineau. In its inaugural year, 110 former Heads of Mission joined the nascent organization. By the end of 1988, the Association had 140 RHOMANs, four of whom were women: Pam McDougall, Irene Johnson, Margaret Meagher, and Jean Wadds. 

Chairman Nutt kept RHOMA’s widely dispersed membership abreast of developments by writing detailed monthly letters in his own distinctive style. For example, his end-of-year report for 1993 concluded with a wish that remains apt today: May the Hubble Telescope reveal nothing to add to the plethora of worries the media spreads before us daily, although knowledge of a pending invasion from outer space might conceivably bring earthlings to concentrate their focus on more celestial objects rather than how to more effectively do in their fellow earthlings.

RHOMA soon established a regular rhythm of meetings. These included monthly luncheons in Ottawa from September through May, featuring an invited speaker, and an annual reception hosted with the permission of External Affairs on the 9th Floor of the Pearson Building. Milestone events included a black-tie dinner to mark the 10th anniversary of RHOMA at the Chateau Laurier in June 1997, and a dinner dance at the Royal Ottawa Golf Club in June 2002 for the 15th anniversary. Special memorial gatherings were organized to celebrate the lives of two distinguished members: Robert Ford in May 1998 and Ed Ritchie in October 2001. 

The Association also established an annual prize for the best article written by a Canadian foreign service officer in the magazine, bout de papier, published by the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSO). The initial RHOMA prize was awarded by Charles Ritchie at the first Canadian Foreign Service Officer Awards reception in 1990 and continued until bout’s publishing schedule was interrupted in 2020.

The majority of members of RHOMA resided in the National Capital Region, but from the start there were significant constituencies in Quebec (largely in Montreal and Quebec City), Toronto, and Victoria. Informal chapters were formed in each location to convene periodic lunches and social events, often with other retired members of the foreign service in their region. In the early years, the Association charged a reduced fee for members who lived outside of the National Capital and thus could not attend most events. Despite some protest, it was eventually decided to have a flat rate for all members across Canada and abroad. 

In an effort to make the Association less Ottawa-centric, a meeting for all RHOMA members was organized in Montreal in 2003, followed by two special gatherings in Victoria in 2004 and 2015. One hundred and twenty members and spouses attended the 2015 gathering in Victoria for three days of panel discussions, site visits, a reception at the Lieutenant Governor’s Residence, and a keynote speech delivered by former Prime Minister and Head of Mission, Kim Campbell. It was a hugely successful event, which no one has attempted to replicate since. 

Beginning in 2005, John Noble started compiling a daily digest of international news in the anglophone Canadian media, which was circulated to all members. Jean-Paul Hubert followed with a daily compendium of articles from the francophone media. The two digests were merged into one, which was sent out daily until 2015. When no one stepped forward to continue this labour of love, a new initiative emerged: a compendium of articles and pieces written by members, called Members Reach Out. Until 2022, this was produced on a volunteer basis by Charles Court. Since then, Members Reach Out has been compiled monthly by our Office Manager based on contributions sent in by members. The range of media has expanded, so that Members Reach Out now covers video clips, podcasts, and books, in addition to articles and op eds. 

Since 2015, the Association has organized an annual writers’ luncheon to highlight recent books written by our members. The works presented have ranged from historical novels to family memoirs, from serious policy studies to playful accounts of diplomatic life. You can watch the presentations by our authors at recent luncheons on our YouTube channel. AmbCanada has also produced two books of diplomatic stories by our members, compiled by Robin Higham: DECLASSIFIED (2016) and Not Mentioned in Dispatches (2019). Details about both can be found under Publications on this website. 

One of the advantages of retirement is that former diplomats are free to express their own views on policy to the media, and many do. From time to time, the Association itself has faced pressures from members to take a stand on foreign policy issues before the government. Jim Nutt was clear when founding RHOMA that its ends should be purely social, not political. Jacques Roy, when he was President, insisted that RHOMA should “always be neutral”. This stance was tested in 2011 when over a hundred members signed a letter to Prime Minister Harper over the treatment of Richard Colvin, a foreign service officer at the time who spoke out about the torture of Afghan detainees. It was tested again in 2020, when many members felt the Association should urge the government of Prime Minister Trudeau to do more to secure the release of “the two Michaels”, while many others disagreed. In response, RHOMA formulated a policy which enabled the Board to issue a public pronouncement on a policy matter if it had the support of two-thirds of the Board. To date, this policy has yet to be used. 

Instead, in recent times the Board has encouraged members to draft their own public letters and seek other co-signers among the membership, writing in their individual capacities. This approach was taken in July 2025, when 173 members of AmbCanada signed a letter to Prime Minister Carney about the situation in Gaza, which proposed that the Canadian government recognize a Palestinian state under certain conditions. The Prime Minister announced Canada’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state the day after the letter was made public. 

The Association does take a keen interest in the management of the foreign service and regularly engages Global Affairs Canada on specific management issues. In 2022, Michael Small and Abbie Dann, the current and former Presidents of AmbCanada, were asked to testify before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee during its study on strengthening Canada’s diplomatic capacity. In 2023, AmbCanada was invited by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs to provide advice to Minister Melanie Joly’s Renewal of Diplomacy Initiative. We also respond selectively to requests for comment by Canadian media on issues relating to the management of the foreign service. 

A signature initiative of RHOMA was the launch in 2018 of Ambassadors of Note – a commemoration of some of the most consequential figures who have advanced Canadian diplomacy. The program was intended to serve as an educational resource and a tool for raising public awareness of the contributions made by Canadian diplomats. Nominations were solicited from the entire membership, and a small committee of the Board was formed to make the final selections. A number of the honourees noted the significance of being chosen for this distinction by their peers. Profiles of each Ambassador were commissioned from Canadian diplomatic historians Steve Marti and Brendan Kelly. Thirty Ambassadors of Note were announced in two rounds, the first held in Ottawa in December 2019, and the second online in February 2021. Short biographies of each honouree can be found under the Canadian Diplomacy menu on this site. 

The Association has also supported initiatives by Global Affairs Canada to recognize foreign service personnel who were killed while on duty overseas. President Gilles Rivard spoke at the unveiling of the Memorial Wall to the Fallen in the lobby of the Lester Pearson Building in June 2018. President Abbie Dann served on the committee that selected the design for a more public monument to foreign service officers who lost their lives in the line of duty. The monument will be located on the grounds of 111 Sussex Drive and is expected to be completed in 2026. 

Since its founding, the Association has supported scholarships related to international relations. One of Jim Nutt’s most impressive early achievements was raising $150,000 from RHOMA members for Pearson College on Vancouver Island, to match a bequest from Maryon Pearson. RHOMA subsequently supported for many years a graduate scholarship at Université Laval established in the name of Senator Raoul Dandurand, who represented Canada at the League of Nations in the 1920s and 1930s. AmbCanada has also contributed to scholarships at the University of Ottawa, the University of Victoria, and to the Glynn Berry Scholarship at Dalhousie University. 

In 2020, AmbCanada established the Deborah Chatsis Indigenous Scholarship in International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School at Carleton University. Named in honour of the first Indigenous female career diplomat to be appointed a Canadian Head of Mission, the scholarship has received generous contributions from AmbCanada members and now has a permanent endowment. More details on the Chatsis Scholarship can be found under the Partnerships menu on this site.

Although our Association has always valued engagement with outside experts, until recently our speaker events were restricted to members only. In May 2025, AmbCanada co-hosted its first public policy conference on Canada’s international relations. In collaboration with the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa, the conference was held on the theme Finding Canada’s Place in a Disordered World. More than 400 interested members of the public participated in person and online, and the event was subsequently broadcast by CPAC. Universities are natural partners for us when convening public events and we plan to do this more often in the future. 

In 2019 and 2020, the Board took a series of important steps to renew the Association and modernize its governance. Several standing committees, dealing with governance, communications, programs, and management, were established to streamline the agenda of the Board. A membership task force was struck to examine strategies to recruit new members in response to declining numbers, and to improve membership services. Three Life Members were named in recognition of their years of service to the organization: John Noble, Jean-Paul Hubert, and Rick Kohler. 

The most visible change made was in the Association’s name. The Board concluded that using the bureaucratic term ‘Head of Mission’ in its name made it hard for the public to understand what we do. So, a survey of the membership was conducted on options for changing the name and expanding the membership criteria. Based on a strong consensus that emerged from the survey, the Association became the Canadian Ambassadors Alumni Association / Association des anciens ambassadeurs du Canada, or AmbCanada for short in both official languages. 

More governance reforms followed in 2021. The Association’s seven overarching objectives were simplified and consolidated into two: one inward-facing, focusing on building a community among our members; the other outward-facing, focusing on promoting greater public understanding of the value of diplomacy. For the first time, the Board drafted a set of by-laws for the Association, and the decision was made to convene an Annual General Meeting. AmbCanada’s first AGM was held in June 2022, which ratified the new by-laws and approved new Board members, giving the Board for the first time a mandate directly from the membership. The by-laws also established term limits for the Board, enabling new Board members to be recruited on a predictable annual cycle. 

Perhaps the biggest change for AmbCanada in this period was the most unexpected. Like many other organizations, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the AmbCanada Board to cease meeting in person and to start meeting over Zoom. This made serving on the Board far more appealing for members living outside the National Capital Region. More importantly, it encouraged the Association to start live-streaming its speaker events. Even after in-person lunches resumed in Ottawa in the autumn of 2022, AmbCanada continued live-streaming its events, making them far more accessible to the entire membership across Canada and around the world. 

No organization can stand without solid administration supporting it. For its first twenty-five years, RHOMA relied on the PAFSO office for these essential services. Debra Hulley and Susan Courville typed letters, mailed invitations to the monthly luncheons, organized the annual Christmas Reception, maintained the membership roll, compiled the RHOMA Directory, recorded payment of annual dues, and arranged monthly Board meetings. Their dedicated support was crucial to maintaining RHOMA as a viable organization. This arrangement lasted until 2013 when the PAFSO Executive concluded that it was not meeting its needs. RHOMA then shifted to employing a part-time virtual Office Manager – first Cristina Warren, followed by Diane Godard, and most recently, Karin Reinecke. The Association has always counted on their excellent support to keep operations running smoothly. 

The Association’s administrative processes have evolved, albeit gradually, with technology. Until 2005, all correspondence with members was managed using regular mail, at considerable cost. That year, email was introduced, with provisions made allowing members to receive important correspondence by post – a practice that continued until 2022. RHOMA’s first website was launched in 2004 and has been redesigned several times, most recently in 2026. Administrative tasks that were once handled laboriously via multiple emails and phone calls are now managed entirely through the Ottawa-based software company, Membership365. Applications to join the Association, which once took weeks to process, can now be turned around in less than 24 hours. 

Since its foundation, the question periodically arises whether the Association should expand its membership criteria beyond former Heads of Mission. This issue was last considered in detail in 2021, after the membership survey indicated support for a new “General Associates” category. A Membership Task Force of the Board carefully examined options for defining this category. In the end, a majority of the Board decided that AmbCanada should continue to use appointment as a Head of Mission or Deputy Head of Mission as its criterion for membership. At the same time, AmbCanada committed to collaborating actively on initiatives with PAFSO, which represents serving and retired foreign service (FS) officers, and the Canadian Foreign Service Alumni Forum, which represents anyone who has worked in the foreign service. Many of the Association’s recent initiatives—such as the Chatsis Scholarship, the Coat of Arms, our annual authors lunches and our trans-Atlantic dialogues—have been implemented in collaboration with these close partners. 

In sum, the Association has evolved over time while remaining remarkably faithful to its original objectives. As a purely volunteer-driven association, AmbCanada’s survival and success across two generations and successive leadership changes are something to celebrate.