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The Shamrock Summit was the colloquial name given to the 1985 meeting between Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and US President Ronald Reagan in Quebec City.
So-named because of the Irish background of the two leaders, and due to the meeting being held on St. Patrick's Day, the event is considered a major political-cultural episode in Canada, mostly on the basis of the perceived symbolism of the summit. Mulroney enjoyed a close friendship with Reagan at the time; both men considered themselves conservatives politically, and shared a common agenda on many issues, notably Free Trade. The camaraderie between the two men was most prominently displayed in the most famous event of the summit, when Reagan and Mulroney joined others in singing "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling".
The Mulroney-Reagan bond was favourably contrasted in Canada with that between the Prime Minister's and President's predecessors. While Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister he had cool relationships with Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Reagan, due to disagreements over economic and foreign policies, and Trudeau received either negative attention or no notice at all in their presidential memoirs. The Shamrock Summit was a prelude to Mulroney's efforts to create far closer links between Canada and the United States, culminating in the 1988 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Mulroney was credited with raising Canada's standing with both Reagan and the United States. The legacy of this was when Mulroney eulogized at Reagan's state funeral in 2004, became the first foreign dignitary to eulogize at a funeral for an American president.
The Mulroney-Reagan relationship has bred some resentment among those who felt it was improper for Canadian-US relations to be too intimate. Canadian historian Jack Granatstein argued that this "public display of sucking up to Reagan may have been the single most demeaning moment in the entire political history of Canada's relations with the United States." Commentator Eric Kierans observed that "The general impression you get, is that our prime minister invited his boss home for dinner."
References
- Thompson, John Herd; Randall, Stephen J. (2010-05-31). Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies. University of Georgia Press. p. 265. Retrieved 2014-01-14.
- Ferguson, Will (1997). "11". Why I Hate Canadians. Vancouver, BC, Canada: Douglas & McIntyre. pp. 112–113. ISBN 1-55054-600-7.
{{cite book}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - Steele, Andrew. "Mr. Angry and Mr. Happy". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved April 13, 2010.