Gracing the capital with his presence
Ottawa played a part in Mandela’s life — before, during
and after his tenure as the first black president
of South Africa,
Nelson Mandela came to Ottawa three times: before, during and after his tenure as the first post-apartheid president of South Africa. Each visit was a major event.
The first, in June of 1990, was a mere four months after he was released from his 27 years of imprisonment. In appreciation of Canada’s support for his cause, which culminated in sanctions to pressure the South African government, Mandela came to say thank you.
Then-prime minister Brian Mulroney praised him in Parliament, where Mandela, then 71, spoke of the moment, then on the horizon, when South Africans would all be able to vote. He was accompanied on that trip by his second wife, Winnie Mandela.
It was in that year that the idea first surfaced to rename Ottawa’s Pretoria Bridge after Mandela. The city of Pretoria is the seat of executive power in South Africa, and so was associated with apartheid, so renaming it to honour Mandela was seen as apt.
The name of the bridge is connected, in an unofficial way, to the fact there were Canadians who fought and were killed in the Boer War. The naming still hasn’t happened — although Ottawa Centre MP Paul Dewar has made more recent efforts — but similarly, a plan to rename the South African city has also been hung up for the last eight years.
When Mandela visited Ottawa next it was in 1998, as an 80-year-old head of state, albeit one who was late in his term and soon to retire.
In that two-day visit, he said he felt “a great deal of pleasure to come and thank the people of Canada directly for the enormous assistance they have given us.”
The pomp of that visit included a 21-gun salute, a trip up the driveway of Rideau Hall in a horse-drawn landau and investiture into the Order of Canada, at the level of Companion (the highest of three levels).
The many photographers who took his picture, the Citizen’s coverage noted at the time, were prohibited from using flash because of eye damage he suffered in prison when doing forced labour breaking rocks.
During that visit, he made another downtown visit that inspired Ottawans, as described by then Citizen columnist Charles Gordon:
“At the Human Rights monument on Elgin Street people were crying, in a quiet way, when Nelson Mandela came into view. If you looked around at the hundreds who were there, you would have seen it — the people not making a big deal out of it, but the tears at the corners of the eyes. And you would have tried to remember where you had seen it before, when the last time was you saw that kind of emotion in a Canadian crowd.”
Former Citizen columnist David Warren wrote: “There is no doubt that Mr. Mandela emerged, after 27 years in prison, wise and astute to an astonishing degree. To listen to him talk is to listen to a statesman, not a mere politician.”
Mandela’s final visit came in 2001, after his retirement. As with the second visit, he was accompanied by his third wife, Graca Machel.
On this trip, he was given honorary Canadian citizenship.
“We have difficulty finding the words,” Mandela said on the occasion, “to describe the depths of our appreciation to be made an honorary citizen of this great country.”