Candid and concerned: What former U.S. ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman thinks of Trump, Trudeau staffers
On his first trip back to Canada since leaving his Ottawa post, Heyman sits down with OpenCanada, speaking openly on the “genius” of the Trudeau team and what worries him about the state of U.S. politics.
Bruce Heyman — the United States’ most recent ambassador to Canada — hasn’t had a summer off since he was 12. Before taking up residence in Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Park following his appointment by Barack Obama in 2014, he spent 33 straight years working at Goldman Sachs. After resigning from his Ottawa post in early January (“as requested” by the incoming Donald Trump administration), Heyman was very much looking forward to “a time of rest and restoration” back in his hometown of Chicago with his wife, Vicki.
But, after more than a month, Heyman has yet to unpack half his belongings.
“Everything has changed,” Heyman told OpenCanada late last week, during his first trip back to Canada since retiring from the U.S. State Department on Jan. 20. “The last four weeks have caused an outsized number of requests for me to speak and engage in ways that I did not fully anticipate.”
He is referring, of course, to the unpredictable first month of U.S. President Trump, whose unprecedented and controversial governing tactics are causing waves of uncertainty about the future, both within the U.S. and abroad.
Unshackled from the restraints of officialdom, Heyman is free to be more candid in his assessments of American politics, its effects on the U.S.-Canada relationship and how the Americans he has been speaking to back home fee
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