James Byron Bissett is a former Canadian diplomat. He was High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago and later Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria.
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James Bissett joined the Canadian government in 1956. He spent the next 36 years as a public servant in the Departments of Citizenship and Immigration and Foreign Affairs. In 1974 he was appointed head of the Immigration Foreign services. During the early 1970s he served at the Canadian High Commission in London, England. In 1980 he became the assistant undersecretary of state for social affairs in the Department of External Affairs. Two years later he was appointed the Canadian High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago, where he remained until 1985. He was then seconded to the Department of Employment and Immigration as executive director, to help steer new immigration and refugee legislation through the Parliament of Canada. In 1990 he was then appointed Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia ,Bulgaria and Albania. In the summer of 1992 he was recalled from there and retired from foreign service, to accept a job as the head of the International Organization for Migration in Moscow, helping the Russian government establish a new immigration agency and implementing settlement programs for Russians returning to Russia from other parts of the former Soviet Union.
James Bissett appears in two Canadian documentary films by Boris Malagurski: Kosovo: Can You Imagine? (2009) and The Weight of Chains (2011).
Bissett was born in Deloraine, Manitoba, a small village in the southwest of the province. During World War II his family moved to Winnipeg, where he received his secondary and university education. It was at that time he became interested in Eastern European history. After pursuing postgraduate studies in history and political science he won a fellowship to complete his masters degree in public administration at Carleton University in Ottawa.
Upon leaving Moscow in 1997 he returned to Ottawa where he now resides. He continues to contribute articles in newspapers and journals and appears frequently on television discussing Balkan affairs and immigration and refugee issues. He is also the chairman of the Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies. He has four sons and one daughter and eleven grandchildren.
| Diplomatic posts | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Paul-Eugène Laberge |
High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago 1982-1985 |
Succeeded by James Calbert Best |
| Preceded by Terence Charles Bacon |
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Yugoslavia 1990-1992 |
Succeeded by Dennis Snider |
| Preceded by Terence Charles Bacon |
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Albania 1990-1992 |
Succeeded by Rodney Irwin |
| Preceded by Terence Charles Bacon |
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Bulgaria 1990-1992 |
Succeeded by Rodney Irwin |