Michael Small, President of AMBCANADA
Welcome to the home page of the Canadian Ambassadors Alumni Association, or AmbCanada. We are a voluntary association of over 350 former Canadian Ambassadors, High Commissioners and Consuls-General – known collectively as Heads of Mission – who have led Canada’s diplomatic posts around the world.
Our organization was founded in 1988 by a small group of retired senior diplomats who wanted to maintain the social and professional networks that they had established during their diplomatic careers. Our original name was the Retired Heads of Mission Association (or RHOMA for short), which we changed in 2020 to AmbCanada in order to have a single name that works in both official languages.
AmbCanada has two overarching objectives, as established in our by-laws. The first is to increase public awareness of the value of diplomacy and the contributions to Canada of a professional foreign service. The second is to maintain a community among our members. This webpage is meant to serve both objectives. In it you will find information about the scholarships we have supported with various universities around the country, most recently with Carleton University where we created the Deborah Chatsis Scholarship for an Indigenous graduate student in public policy or international relations. You will find lists of our events for our members with invited speakers, which we convene in person in Ottawa-Gatineau and virtually for members anywhere. We provide a bibliography of works relating diplomacy written by members of the Canadian foreign service. New titles are added by our members every year. We also provide links to all recent diplomatic appointments of Heads of Mission by the Government of Canada, as well links explaining diplomatic nomenclature.
AmbCanada welcomes enquiries from the media or the public seeking more information about Canadian diplomacy. Please see the “Contact Us” section on how to direct enquiries. We also welcome requests to join our association from recently retired Heads of Mission. The Members Only page explains how to do that as well.
We hope you enjoy visiting this site.
Michael Small
President
Canadian Ambassadors Alumni Association (AmbCanada)
