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Diplomatic missions

New U.S. consul general for B.C. and Yukon, Lynne Platt, has been networking with Vancouver’s business community to understand how to stimulate bilateral trade
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New U.S. consul general Lynne Platt top priority is to find ways to boost bilateral trade and economic opportunities | Photo: Dominic Schaefer

Lynne Platt's first couple of months as the U.S. government’s top official in B.C. and the Yukon have been a whirlwind of networking and getting acquainted.

When she was not on trips to Prince Rupert or Whitehorse, she was in her new home city, attending Vancouver Board of Trade (VBOT)luncheons and touring Port Metro Vancouver with CEO Robin Silvester.

“I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t know [Business Council of British Columbia CEO] Greg D’Avignon, [British Columbia Chamber of Commerce CEO] John Winter or if I hadn’t met with Iain Black and the folks at the VBOT,” Platt said.

She is sitting on a sofa in her corner office on the top floor of the mirrored Manulife Place tower on West Pender Street. Framed artwork is propped against the walls, waiting to be put up – mementos from past diplomatic posts.

One frame holds an enlarged poster of the front page of a magazine that Platt launched when living in Paris and working as a press attaché. Another is a gift she received when she was the deputy director for provincial reconstruction in Iraq and based in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

While many think of the U.S. Consulate as the place where Americans go when passports are lost or where foreigners go when they need a U.S. visa, Platt’s role is multi-faceted and includes overseeing 75 consulate staff and 115 customs and border patrol officers.

She facilitates cultural exchanges, forges partnerships to promote democracy around the world and works to relieve Nexus-pass processing backlogs – which is ironic given that she has yet to receive her own Nexus card.

“As far as our customs and border patrol is concerned, I’m just another American citizen,” Platt said.

“This is something that can be a shock to people, but I’m only a diplomat when I’m overseas. I’m treated as any other American citizen when I cross back to the U.S.”

Her priority is to increase trade – hence the meetings with local business leaders to help her understand what’s happening in B.C. so she can spot opportunities for mutual economic benefit.

She then relays her insights to either Ottawa-based U.S. Ambassador Bruce Heyman or officials in Washington to inform American policy changes.

Platt is new to being a consul general. Her past posts have been in communications or management.

Platt’s plan is to serve her three-year term in Vancouver and then be reassigned elsewhere. Though she is nearing retirement age, she has no plans for that yet.

Platt married Charles “Jud” Hamblett in 2011, when the two U.S. diplomats were based in Haiti. They had met years earlier during a mutual posting in Paris. Soon after their wedding, the two were relocated to London.

Parting might have seemed inevitable, however, given how frequently diplomats get reposted.

In August, Hamblett was sent to Brussels for an administrative post. So, he and Platt are separated for the first time in years.

“We have strict nepotism restrictions so he can’t report to his wife,” Platt said of her husband. “If he were to get a job in Vancouver, there’s pretty much only one other position he could get and he would be reporting to his wife.”

They chat on FaceTime every night.

“Modern relationships are more complicated than old-fashioned relationships,” Platt said. “I would like him to retire and come here and join me. Vancouver is perfect for all the sports he loves. He’s a huge sailor and a fantastic skier. So he would have a lot of fun here.”

Born in California, Platt moved around a lot as a child because her father was in the military.

By the time she attended high school in Seattle, she had already lived in Oklahoma, Kansas, Hawaii and Guam.

She did both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science and then went to Washington, D.C., to work in a variety of jobs, including helping craft U.S. drug policies.

She married a diplomat, who was sent to the Dominican Republic as deputy ambassador, and was easing in to a life as the wife of a foreign service officer when the unthinkable happened.

Her husband contracted a rare blood disease and died 13 months into their marriage. His parting gift to her, however, was the inspiration to live a life in the foreign service. 

She returned to Washington and jumped through necessary hoops to be accepted by the State Department. Then came posts in Cairo and Casablanca in Africa, Paris, London and Brussels in Europe, Baghdad in the Middle East and Haiti in the Caribbean.

Before she left London to build a home in Vancouver, she visited Canada’s high commissioner to the U.K., former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell.

The two hit it off, and Campbell impressed her with his enthusiasm for living in B.C.

“Lynne’s natural curiosity and vast experience in international diplomacy clearly make her a wonderful choice to represent Canada’s closest neighbour, biggest trading partner and strongest ally,” Campbell told Business in Vancouver in an email.

That curiosity often finds Platt researching and reflecting on the history of U.S. diplomacy in places where she lives.

After discussing how different diplomatic life must have been for Benjamin Franklin, who was the first U.S. minister to France in the 1780s, she pulls up a PDF file of a letter that then-U.S. president Abraham Lincoln wrote to the U.S. secretary of state in 1861.

Lincoln asked him to create the post of consul general to B.C. and to appoint his friend, Allen Francis.

With travel being so much easier today than it was back when it took weeks for then-U.S. president George Washington to send a cable to Franklin, Platt is looking forward to hosting her family at her Shaughnessy home for American Thanksgiving later this month.

Hamblett will fly in from Belgium and be joined by his three adult children, who all live in the U.S.

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@GlenKorstrom