Maurice Strong
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The Honourable Maurice F. Strong, (his first name is pronounced "Morris"), PC, CC, OM (born April 29, 1929, in Oak Lake, Manitoba) is an industrialist and public servant who was the Secretary-General of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), better known as the Earth Summit. He is currently a senior advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, although he has suspended his involvement while he is being investigated for financial ties to Tongsun Park, a lobbyist involved with the Iraq oil for food scandal and now under arrest in Houston, TX.
Working in the background as an advisor to powerful world figures, Strong looms large in the paranoid fantasies of conspiracy theorists [1]. CBC reporter Ann-Marie McDonald described him as "a cross between Rasputin and Machiavelli". In person, he is mild-mannered, courteous and diplomatic, although prone to flights of idealism.
He was the 1989 recipient of the Pearson Medal of Peace.
Strong became wealthy during his career in the oil and utlilities industry. He was President of Power Corporation until 1966. As such he was a mentor to Paul Martin giving him his first job and putting him in a position to become a powerful corporate executive.
Strong left Power Coporation to become head of what became the Canadian International Development Agency. In the early 1970s he was Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. He then became the first Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme.
He returned to Canada to become Chief Executive Officer of Petro-Canada from 1976 to 1978. In the early 1990s he was Chief Executive Officer of Ontario Hydro.
John Ralston Saul dedicated his polemic The Unconscious Civilization to Strong.
In 1976 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 1999.
In 2005 He was Awarded the Order of Manitoba the Highest Award in the Province of Manitoba.
Strong was the UN's envoy to North Korea until July 2005. According to Associated Press his contract was not renewed "amid questions about his connection to a suspect in the UN oil-for-food scandal", Tongsun Park, as well as due to criticism that he gave his step-daughter a job at the UN contrary to UN staff regulations against hiring immediate family[2].
Maurice Strong is associated with the town of Crestone, Colorado, having briefly held a controlling interest in AZL, a land owning company which laid out the Baca Grande, a large land development south of the town. Together with his wife Hanne Strong, who remains a local resident, the couple made a number of grants of land to the small spiritual communities which give the Crestone-Baca community its distinctive flavor. He was also one of the principles in the abortive American Water Develpment, Inc. (AWDI) scheme to pump and export underground water from the San Luis Valley.
External links
- Maurice Strong Disinfopedia entry