First Canadian ambassador to South Korea - John Stiles

John Stiles

Section 37, Lot 10 ½ SE

John Stiles was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick on January 26, 1918. As a child, Stiles was an active member of the Scouting movement – his father served as the assistant chief commissioner of the Boy Scouts of Canada.

As such, Stiles was fortunate enough to attend the 1929 International Scout Jamboree in England. There he met fellow scouts from around the world, and due to his father’s connections, spent a weekend in the home of the Scouting movement’s founder, Lord Baden-Powell. A little over a decade later, from 1941 until the end of WW2, Stiles served with the Canadian Army in England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

At loose ends after the war ended, on a whim he wrote exams in Belgium for the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service. Stiles’ results were quite good, and the government recruited him before he even had a chance to return home to Canada.

Over a 25-year career with the Trade Commissioner Service, Stiles was posted all over the world, in the US, Germany, Japan and Australia. He also served in Venezuela during the revolution, from 1948 to 1954.

In 1970, Stiles joined the Department of Foreign Affairs – his first posting was serving for three years as the High Commissioner to Guyana. He went on to become the first Canadian ambassador to South Korea in 1974.

This posting profoundly affected Stiles, who not only spoke passable Korean, but was also known to sing popular songs in the language. After this posting, Stiles returned to Canada, continuing to work for the government for another six years, retiring in 1984. That same year, the Korean Embassy in Ottawa asked him to help establish a Canada-Korea society to promote friendship and understanding between the two countries. Stiles went on to serve nine years as president, and remained a member of the executive until the 1999.

Stiles was also a writer, having published a book on foreign policy, Developing Canada’s Relations Abroad, in 1980, along with chapters on Korea and Guyana to various anthologies that compiled the experiences of various Canadian ambassadors.

Stiles died in Ottawa on January 9, 2000.