Lester Bowles Pearson, Canada’s 14th prime minister and a Nobel Prize laureate, is the subject of Andrew Cohen’s elegantly composed biography, Lester B. Pearson (Penguin Canada).

Part of the Extraordinary Canadians series, Cohen’s slim yet comprehensive volume takes a reader on a fascinating journey through time.

He starts in a hamlet north of Toronto, where Pearson was born in 1897, and concludes his survey on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, where Pearson rebuilt the Liberal party and presided over an amazingly productive agenda during which medicare, old-age pensions and a new Canadian flag were introduced.

In between, Cohen – a former Globe and Mail correspondent and now a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University – portrays Pearson as a University of Toronto history professor, a diplomat in prewar London who monitored the rise of Nazi Germany, and an imaginative foreign minister who played an indirect role in Israel’s creation and in bringing a United Nations peacekeeping force to the Sinai Peninsula after the 1956 Suez war.

By his account, Pearson, a self-effacing yet charming man, believed in  appeasement – the policy associated with Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister – until at least 1938.

Close to Vincent Massey, the Canadian high commissioner in London who frequented British high-society circles where anti-Semitism was a given, Pearson was virtually oblivious to Germany’s persecution of its Jewish citizens.

As Cohen puts it, “Pearson’s memoirs scarcely mention Hitler’s war upon the Jews… Pearson was wise and perceptive in many things, but not here. In his response to the Nazis – in private or public – he was slow, late and tepid.”

But after Germany’s annexation of Austria, Pearson opened his eyes and his  isolationism began to crack. Cohen quotes Pearson as writing, “No longer was it possible for me to believe that Nazism  was a temporary aberration in German politics, that the good sense of the German people would soon take care of the Fuhrer.”

By 1939, the outbreak of  the war, Pearson had gone well beyond appeasement and isolationism, suggesting that Nazism represented a descent into “savagery and barbarism.” Once war on the European continent erupted and Canada was militarily involved in it, Pearson was a hawk, urging the Canadian prime minister to commit all resources to it.

In 1947, as the United Nations debated the Palestine question, Canada was appointed to a special UN committee to decide its fate. Pearson, then undersecretary of state for external affairs, made himself useful by proposing the formation of a four-nation working group that eventually “drafted the terms that produced the state of Israel.” Cohen, presumably due to lack of space, does not elaborate.

According to Cohen, Pearson, a pragmatist, was not a committed Zionist. “Contrary to what some suggest, he wasn’t predisposed to a Jewish state.” Yet to his underlings at External Affairs, Cohen adds, Pearson was considered “king of the Jews.”

Pearson’s greatest triumph in statecraft occurred in the wake of Israel’s 1956 war with Egypt, when he had been foreign minister for eight years. “It was an opportunity made for Pearson, drawing on talents forged in a diplomatic career now reaching its zenith,” Cohen observes. “Nothing before or after was as momentous for him. In his long, eventful public life, Suez was his signature.”

Pearson, having been caught by surprise by Britain and France’s invasion of Egypt in concert with Israel, was angry when the British foreign minister, Anthony Eden, appealed for Canada’s “understanding” and “support.”

Having known him for years, he was surprised by Eden’s recklessness. To Pearson, the Anglo-French incursion was immoral, illegal, impractical and a burden on Britain’s alliance with the United States, which opposed the war.

Amid the confusion and acrimony, Pearson urged the United Nations General Assembly to authorize “a UN police force large enough to keep these borders at peace while a political settlement is being worked out.”

The United States supported the plan, as did Britain and France. Shortly afterward, a motion was passed, authorizing the secretary general to establish an emergency international force to supervise Israel’s ceasefire with Egypt.

Cohen discloses that the historic resolution, passed 57-0, with 19 abstentions, was actually drafted by the U.S. State Department, and then delivered by Pearson. The UN force, commanded by a Canadian general, E.L.M. Burns, took up positions in mid-November.

Cohen has high praise for Pearson. “At the centre of the whirlwind he was the master of events, the imperturbable Lester Pearson. It was he made or modified the proposals, presented the critical resolutions, enlisted support, persuaded skeptics.” It was, he says in Churchillian tones, “Pearson’s finest hour.”

Yet in Canada, Pearson’s achievement touched off a firestorm. The philo-British Conservative party was aghast that Canada had not supported Britain, and one of its leading lights claimed that Pearson had sullied himself by being “a chore boy for the United States.”

But in Sweden, Pearson was hailed as a hero and was awarded the Nobel Prize for peace. Burnishing his reputation, the award conferred “a kind of holy legitimacy” on Pearson. It also gave Canada a new vocation – peacekeeping.

In summation, Cohen writes that Suez was “a high-water mark” for Pearson as a diplomat par excellence. “Nothing he did as prime minister surpassed it.” Thanks to his stellar contributions, Pearson was elected president of the UN General Assembly and twice almost became the UN’s secretary general.

There was a consolation prize. On April 22, 1963, when he was 65, he took up his job as Canada’s prime minister. Cohen describes his tenure at length and has kind words for him.

“After the steely Pierre Trudeau, the hyperbolic Brian Mulroney, the cautious Jean Chrétien, the fumbling Paul Martin Jr., and the dour Stephen Harper, we appreciate the character of Lester Pearson [and] his stewardship. In the context of today’s minority government, and the general decline of civility in politics, the 1960s don’t look so shrill or chaotic or antagonistic.”

In short, Pearson was a remarkable man whose moderation and pragmatism served Canada and the world quite well. Cohen’s book tells the story quite well.