Item 121: Bookplate, John Watkins, no date

Item — Box: 20, Folder: 121

Staff Only

Dates

Created: no date

Disclaimer for Name and Subject Authorities

Some of the name and subject authority tags have been assigned by educated guessing and estimation of persons and subjects by region, age, profession, and familial relationships. They have been thoroughly researched by using primary and secondary sources available digitally, and named in each description, or in some cases linked directly to the person tag.

Access:

All series and subseries within this collection are open for research, with the exception of a few files within the Academia series that are restricted. The Academia series contains financial and sensitive institutional records from Wilkes College, and financial report records from Princeton University that will remain restricted for 80 years upon creation.

Extent

1 items

Language of Materials

From the Collection: English

Additional Description

Type of Material:

Bookplate

Condition Note:

Good, no issues.

Measurements:

2 15/16 in. x 4 in.

Title:

John Watkins

Description:

A bookplate featuring a family crest. Above the crest, there is a hand holding a spear, and a heart on fire. On the crest, there are crosses and tea kettles. Bookplate collector, diplomat, ambassador, and professor, John Watkins was born on December 3, 1902 in Norval, Ontario, Canada. His parents were John Watkins and Jane Clark. He had two sisters, Elizabeth and Isabel. He was a Canadian diplomat and scholar who served as Canadian Ambassador to the Soviet Union for two years. Michael Dobbs from the Washington Post praised Watkins, saying that he was the ‘perfect ambassador to Moscow. He also described Watkins as ‘sophisticated, erudite, and fluent in Russian.’ He is known for getting Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev, and Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson to meet. In 1930, he exited Europe and Went to the United States, where he went to Columbia University and became part of the American-Scandinavian Foundation in New York City. After going to Columbia University, He went to Cornell University in 1942 and got his PhD two years later. During World War II, he went back to Canada to become a professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, and Guelph Agricultural College. Watkins later taught English at the University of Manitoba in 1944. In 1946, Watkins translated the complete works of Honore de Balzac to English. He was invited by Humphrey Hume Wong to take the Canadian Foreign Service Examination, to which he begrudgingly accepted. He accepted a job as a foreign service officer after exiting the University of Manitoba and became a part of the DEA. Watkins rapidly advanced from first secretary of the European Division to head of section to charge d’affaries in Moscow. On September 1, 1948, he became the new charge d'affaires ad interim after John Wendell Holmes. He knew a bit of Russian before he came to Moscow, and was unlike other diplomats there by learning the language. While he was there, he became friends with George Costakis, the longtime head of personnel at the Canadian embassy and collector of soviet art. While Stalin was in charge of the Soviet Union, Watkins and other diplomats got to know “Soviet society.” When he was getting close to the end of his tenure in Moscow, he started having health problems, including heart and circulatory problems that were undiagnosed when he came to the DEA. These problems would affect him for the rest of his life. He died on October 12, 1964 of a heart attack, however, it is speculated that he was killed by the KGB because he was gay. The details about how he died started to come to light with David Martin’s Wilderness of Mirrors revealing that “the KGB, using a honey trap, had targeted Watkins for blackmail because he was gay.” A book by Chapman Pincher, Their Trade is Treachery, stated that “he died while being questioned in a Montreal hotel room.”