John Watkins (Canadian diplomat)

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John Watkins (1902 – 12 October 1964) educator, Canadian Ambassador to the USSR (1954–1956). Born at Norval Station, Ontario, Watkins was a Scandinavian specialist at the University of Manitoba, before joining the Department of External Affairs in 1946.

First posted to the USSR in 1948, Watkins learned Russian and developed a wide circle of Russian friends. He was allowed to travel to places barred to other foreigners. In 1955 he organized an historic meeting between Canadian External Affairs Minister Lester B. Pearson and Communist Party chief Nikita Khrushchev.

In 1964 Watkins was secretly detained in a hotel in Montreal, Quebec by the RCMP and the CIA who were concerned that he was an agent of influence. Several days into the interrogation he died. The official obituary claimed that he suffered a heart attack in the company of friends during a farewell supper celebrating his illustrious career.

The events of his death were exposed by Ian Adams in 1980. The Parti Québécois government swiftly ordered an inquest into Watkins’ death. The RCMP refused to hand over the full report, claiming it would damage national security, but finally admitted Watkins had died under police interrogation in the Montreal hotel room, that he had not given into Soviet blackmailing tactics and was not a traitor.

Years later Adams wrote Agent of Influence (1999), a detailed book that suggests the CIA was out to get Pearson (who had become Prime Minister), and tried to get Watkins to implicate him. The book was made into a movie for television, also titled Agent of Influence, in 2002.

Watkins and a friend, fellow diplomat Herbert Norman, served to inspire "Harry Raymond", the character at the centre of The Stillborn Lover (1995), a play by Timothy Findley.