The challenge of biography is to explain the contradictions, without explaining them away. Everyone of us is a paradox, or so I have begun to believe in attempting to understand the life of O. D. Skelton, a man who at first seemed to me (and others too) to be completely straightforward, without any complication at all. Skelton’s career as a scholar and public servant spanned the first four decades of the twentieth century: as a Queen’s University professor, he was a prominent public intellectual, before that term was invented, who staked out firm and provocative views on Canadian and international issues; later on, as its deputy minister, he built the Department of External Affairs into a preeminent institution of government.

The impressive achievements of a productive life reveal something at Skelton’s core. He was confident, quick of mind, and industrious to a fault. His work consumed him from early morning until late at night, seven days a week. He couldn’t be distracted, and everything else, his family included, took second place. A workaholic’s existence fit Skelton’s personality. He was shy and solitary, guardedly content to be in the shadows, in fact preferring the shadows. A grey man. And so, apparently, an uninteresting man. A worthy man, but worthy of a biography?

Skelton was quiet, but, it turns out, he did not lead a quiet life. He was a crusader for his country’s independence, at a time when Canada was nestled comfortably in the warm cocoon of the British Empire. He argued for a different destiny, promoting the development of a positive Canadian spirit, and a patriotism that engaged our own traditions and priorities. In a still-dependent, colonially-minded country, few Canadians shared his perspective and those who did were shy about admitting it. His critics called Skelton a dangerous man, a menace to Canada’s treasured British heritage.

Skelton’s inhibitions seemed to have no relevance. He was a hesitant, colourless speaker, yet he loved the university classroom and never missed an opportunity to promote his causes on the public platform. He wrote often and convincingly, and with a flair that amazed contemporaries who only knew his lackluster exterior. He was a risk taker. He was appointed to the public service in large measure because he was an outspoken Liberal and a supporter of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, but he took the job and bought a big Ottawa house just on the edge of an election that threatened to bring the hated Conservative Party to power. A cautious man ought to have been more cautious. Once ensconced in the Department of External Affairs, he chose his words more judiciously than he had as an academic, but he used his position to advance homegrown institutions and points of view -- passionately.

The explosiveness, sometimes bordering on excess, of a careful person is the most striking Skelton paradox. But it is far from the only one: how, for example, did an almost misanthropic interloper become the consummate government insider, the confidante of Conservative prime ministers and the undisputed master of the public service? In my forthcoming biography of Skelton (tentatively titled A Dangerous Man, to combat the notion of his timidity), I’ll attempt to expose and explore all the contradictions, without pretending that everything can be understood, and trying to avoid the temptation of manipulating complexity into a neat, homogenous package where inconsistency loses its meaning. Some mysteries will simply have to remain mysterious.