Eldon Pattyson Black

Eldon Pattyson (Pat) Black (15 October 1925 – 3 November 1999) was a Canadian diplomat.[1][2]

Black was educated at Selwyn House School and studied law at McGill University.[3][4]

In 1967, Black was appointed minister (second-in-command) to the Embassy of Canada in France.[5] Canada–France relations were tense following Charles de Gaulle's Vive le Québec libre speech and, in 1969, Black was accused of interfering in French national elections.[6] Years later, in 1996, Black would publish a book titled Direct Intervention: Canada-France Relations, 1967-1974 (ISBN 0886292891).[7] Graham Fraser, in a review published in the International Journal, praised it as "a valuable account, clear and detailed in its description of the challenge Canadian diplomats faced in dealing, day-to-day, with an ally whose government had taken a decisively hostile position on the central question of Canada's future."[8]

Black returned to Canada where he took a position as a Department of External Affairs Foreign Service Officer working in foreign intelligence.[9] In 1978 Don Jamieson, Minister of External Affairs, asked Black to fill a new deputy under-secretary position in his department to deal with the increasing threat of terrorism.[9][10]

In 1985 he was appointed as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Holy See.[11] Prior to that appointment he had been chargé d'affaires in Cairo.[12]