Mentor: A person, especially an experienced older person, who provides personal or professional guidance.

“A mentor who, because he is detached and disinterested, can hold up a mirror to us.”  P. W. Keve

My mentor – if indeed he were one – distinguished himself more by his relentless assault upon me than by his occasional support of me. His dispassionate nature always triumphed. I readily confess that any approbation from him would most likely have gone unnoticed or been laughably dismissed as not genuine. His rebuffs and sarcasms on the other hand – apart from being invariably risible – were overall more authentic and improving. There prevailed an air of light-heartedness whenever we met. Our correspondence was unquestionably ad hoc cobbled together usually by impromptu dinner or concert invitations at our respective homes, the National Arts Centre or his private club le Cercle Universitaire on Laurier Avenue W in Ottawa, Ontario.

It will be no revelation to observe that mentorship is generally plugged in with senior members of one’s tribe. I should note however that while I was amused to entangle socially with older people the predilection was limited and comparatively infrequent.  Both poles – senior and younger – had their commonality but also their peculiar conventions. I never travelled with a senior no matter how highly I may have regarded that person.  I found that the congeniality and rhetoric were best reserved for the drawing room or dining table, customarily lubricated with sufficient whiskey and Porto. There was nothing smarmy or wolfish about the congregation. It was always reciprocal as any common courtesy should be.

Yet in spite of the infrequency, the alcohol and the casual nature of the affairs, I always derived something memorable and often scintillating from the acquaintance. Including a capital store of drollness. Eventually after years of association the alliance descended to the level of friendship (contained as it may have been by age and other natural disparity).

Mentorship  – at least in my personal sphere – was not prompted by anything other than what I presume is the instinctive flow of knowledge between those we have it and those who do not.  Because of its native insinuation it resembles the seeds caste about in the wind; that is, only certain particles take hold. Seldom is there the added indignity of warning though I once heeded the advice of a superior court justice whom I knew strengthened his gratifying admonition to me based upon an immediate and similarly diminishing experience of his own. Such then is the often patriarchal nature of mentorship; viz., “Do as I say not as I do.”

Mentorship in my instance was further characterized by what I imagine is another common feature; namely, the intent of the person being taught by the other to commit enabling interest and curiosity in the unfolding relationship. This may in turn involve questions about or interest in the mentor’s past whence frequently issue the lessons and instruction for the present. Nonetheless paramountly the derivatives of the mentorship were casual and often unintended. This abstraction oddly preserved the intimacy of the coalition and prevented it from becoming too one-sided. Like any effective knowledge it was judged not by what was offered but by what was consumed. And as I have since discovered, the liveliness of the original nutrition can take years to manifest. Though the mentor eventually fades and ultimately dies his flame is not completely extinguished. Instead the torch is passed to another generation and normally the intelligence is carried forward.

Louis de la Chesnaye Audette, QC OC (April 7, 1907 – April 2, 1995^]) was a Canadian lawyer, naval officer and civil servant.

Born in Ottawa, Ontario, the son of Louis-Arthur Audette and Mary-Grace Stuart, the tenth child of Andrew Stuart, he was educated as a lawyer and practiced in Montreal during the 1930s. During World War II, he served with the Royal Canadian Navy and commanded several ships (HMCS Pictou, Amherst, Coaticook, and St. Catharines) in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean. He was mentioned in dispatches and left the Navy with the rank of Lieutenant commander. As a reserve officer, he was later promoted to commander.

After the war, from 1947 to 1959, he a member of the Canadian Maritime Commission and its chairman from 1954 to 1959. From 1959 to 1972, he was Chairman of the Tariff Board of Canada.

In 1974, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. His oral history of his wartime adventures was published in Salty Dips Vol. 2 (1985).