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Camrose, Alberta, Canada.
The prairie wheat crop is springing up, spreading peacefully as far as the eye can see. The town, too, lies quiet and serene, a cluster of a few hundred houses around a belfried college in the lengthening summer sun.
      The aura of peace is appropriate. For here, miles from the population centers and the scenes of the action, lives a kindly man — puttering, painting, exchanging jokes with his wife, writing copious letters to his children and grandchildren — who just might help to end the war in Vietnam.
      His name is Chester Ronning. He is 72, a retired Canadian career diplomat who almost became his country’s first ambassador to Red China. He lived many years in Asia, speaks Chinese well enough to address Chou En-lai in his own dialect. In the past year he has twice left this bucolic atmosphere to travel to Hanoi and try to arrange terms which might bring the warring parties together. Before you read this, there is a possibility he might go again.
      Ronning talks Chinese to Ho Chi Minh, English to the American leadership — and turkey to both sides...

ex Ed Kiester, “Canada’s Chester Ronning : One Man’s Attempt to Bring Peace to Vietnam”
in the Parade supplement, (Long Beach, California) Independent Press-Telegram (Sunday, June 6, 1967) : 21-22
archive.org : link

—

Chester Ronning (1894-1984), born in China (“the son of Norwegian American Lutheran missionaries”), himself a missionary, politician, diplomat and later academic
wikipedia : link
 

17 May 2026