As Alberta gears up to host leaders from some of the world’s most powerful nations at the upcoming G7 summit, we’re looking back at the most newsworthy headlines from the last time the high-profile event was held in Kananaskis, 23 years ago.
Former prime minister Jean Chrétien met with world leaders at the 2002 G8 summit, when the group still included Russia. The leaders met to discuss a variety of topics, including the central agenda item of African aid, while also squeezing in beers, golf and souvenir shopping.
Despite the recent Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S. looming over the event, and the recent memory of out-of-control protests at the summit in Italy a year prior, Canada managed to deliver a safe and secluded event in the mountains, said John Kirton, director of the G7 research group at the University of Toronto.
The move away from metropolitan host cities marked a return to what the meeting between the leading industrial nations was originally intended to be: a “fireside chat” between world leaders.
“At the worst possible times, when the United States was really at its most vulnerable… Jean Chrétien and Canada’s Kananaskis summit delivered,” said Kirton.
“Yes for security, yes against terrorism, but [also] for Africa and the Global South, and for Canadians and its economic agenda and in advancing the Canadian concern for protecting the world’s natural environment all at the same time, and [Canada] proved it could all be done in complete peace.”
Kirton described it as “a mark for subsequent summits to meet.”
Upon arrival in Calgary, then-mayor Dave Bronconnier greeted the world leaders with a white Smithbilt hat, a tradition symbolizing the city’s hospitality.
U.S. president George W. Bush donned his cowboy hat for a quick moment and then held it to his heart. The Ottawa Citizen reported him saying to Bronconnier, “You don’t look old enough to be a mayor.”
According to the Globe and Mail‘s reporting, French president Jacques Chirac refused to put on his hat.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also shied away from modelling his gift, but did show curiosity, inspecting it closer.
The Globe and Mail also reported few leaders did the ceremonial “yahoo” cheer after receiving their white hat.
A Calgary Herald story from April 24, 2002 teed up how the G8 summit looked to change the world’s perception of Canada with a “high-tech” showcase of non-stereotypical Canadiana in the form of a CD-ROM to be given to international delegates and journalists.
“Before they arrive, they’ll be thinking of beavers, igloos, red-coated police on horseback and toothless hockey goons,” wrote Kerry Williamson of the Herald.
“When they leave, they’ll be reading Mordecai Richler and Will Ferguson, admiring Robert Bateman’s paintings, talking of teepees and listening to David Foster’s music.”
Besides the nation’s ambitions for recrafting its image to the world, the very presence of the U.S. president at the summit conveyed a sign of trust in Canada, said Kirton, as there were doubts about whether Bush would make the trip after the events of 9/11.
At the Delta Lodge in Kananaskis, chef Jeff O’Neill served up a regional cuisine with food that was “uniquely Canadian,” he told the Calgary Herald.
“He says it is safest to stay true to what he’s best at and he is making sure to steer clear of anything like Borscht for Russian dignitaries,” wrote the paper’s Maureen DePatie.
Later, the Herald confirmed leaders and delegates dined on smoked Bow River trout, Yukon Gold potato and charbroiled High Plains buffalo tenderloin during their stay.
During the two-day summit, leaders stayed busy with a packed agenda tackling issues of nuclear disarmament, the Middle East, terrorism and, most centrally, African aid.
With al-Qaeda and other terror threats top of mind, Bush insisted that security be a more prominent subject on the docket, while Chrétien was committed to the agenda that was set at the last summit in Italy, which centred on African issues.
“Mr. Chrétien said yesterday that he would not let the Middle East discussion sideline his plan for a full-day discussion on Africa tomorrow,” the Globe and Mail reported at the time.
Bush and Putin had some similar interests according to their profiles in the Ottawa Citizen. Russia seemed in agreement with the U.S. to push for discussions on terrorism in Kananaskis.
Four African leaders – Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria — as well as UN secretary general Kofi Annan joined the G8 heads, participating in a joint meeting on the Africa Action Plan.
The leaders would eventually sign what Chrétien called a “landmark document for Africa,” focused on reducing African nations’ debt, helping to end regional wars, opening western markets and supporting education.
The leaders’ launch of the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction was another major takeaway from the summit. The partnership made a $20 billion US commitment to dismantle aging nuclear weapons in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.
2002 G8 Summit devises ‘landmark document for Africa’
“Vladimir Putin agreed to let inspectors from his old Cold War rivals – the other G7 countries – enter Russia’s most secret nuclear facilities, chemical weapons, biological, radiological ones, to inspect them to see what was there and then to dismantle them so they could not be used,” said Kirton.
Squeezing many discussions into the two-day summit, Chrétien explained to reporters how busy the leaders were keeping.
“You all watch me having a beer with [Jacques] Chirac in front of the hotel for 10 minutes,” Chrétien told reporters. “And I didn’t have the time to finish the beer.”
While leaders were mostly occupied with business during their short foray into K-country, news stories show their agenda wasn’t all business.
The Calgary Herald reported Chrétien snuck in four holes of golf just hours before the first official G8 meeting got underway. The word was he hit a birdie on the par-4 third hole, wrote Williamson.
Chirac was reportedly drawn to buying several souvenir Canada T-shirts, and “in one store purchased a child’s sweater with a moose embroidered on the front – worth $23 – and a Kananaskis golf cap.”
Putin also left with a piece of Canada: a large $150 dreamcatcher made near Vancouver.
Bush and U.K. prime minister Tony Blair “shared 20 sweaty minutes at the gym in what aides dubbed the first ever ‘aerobic bilat,'” wrote Reuters.
After walking in on Blair’s workout, Bush remarked on his “impressive regime.” Blair said Bush “looked in pretty good shape” himself.
While world leaders received white hats on the eve of the summit, earlier that same morning, protestors were baring it all outside a Gap store on Stephen Avenue to protest the company’s exploitation of workers.
The 2002 G8 summit ushered in a more peaceful protesting format, said Kirton. The previous summit in Italy was marked by clashes between police and protestors that resulted in a demonstrator being shot and killed by police.
Designated protest areas in Calgary contained much of the demonstrations, which included anti-globalization protests in the form of more traditional marches, as well as the more unique mud dance and knit-in demonstrations.
“Defence in depth,” is how Kirton remembered it.
“Yes, you did have to have heavy police, right? They looked like imperial stormtroopers… with their masks and their clubs and their shields. But they were kept hidden inside nearby buildings,” he said.
Protesters at the Kananaskis G8
“On the front lines, they put local Calgary police officers. They were on bikes… not in tanks or police cars.”
Ultimately, Kirton said, the relatively peaceful 2002 G8 in Kananaskis “certainly put Canada on the world stage, in a way – more centrally, more prominently – than it had ever done before.”
