International: NEW U.N. ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT

Elected 1952 President at the U.N. General Assembly last week: Lester Bowles (“Mike”) Pearson of Canada, his country’s first top homegrown diplomat, and skillful advocate of Canada’s growing demand to be heard in its own right.

Early Life: Born at Toronto, April 23, 1897, son of the Rev. Edwin Arthur Pearson, grandson of the Rev. Marmaduke Louis Pearson, Methodists. Educated at University of Toronto (B.A. history) and St. John’s College, Oxford (M.A.), later honorary fellow. World War I service in Toronto University Hospital unit, where he got nickname “Mike”; lieutenant, Canadian army; flight lieutenant, R.A.F. Married in 1925 to “shy, appealing, collected” (his phrase) Maryon Elspeth Moody of Winnipeg, seminar student when he was assistant professor of history at Toronto; two children: Geoffrey Arthur, 24, Patricia Lilian, 22.

Career: First Secretary Canada’s Department of External Affairs at its formation in 1928, thereafter Counselor to the Canadian High Commissioner in London and Canadian Ambassador in Washington. Saw the birth of U.N. at Dumbarton Oaks (1944) and San Francisco (1945). In 1948, after winning a by-election in the rough & tumble riding of Algoma East (19,320 square miles) in north central Ontario, he took full cabinet rank as Secretary of State for External Affairs. Chairman NATO conference at Lisbon this year. Considered a good bet to be Canada’s Prime Minister some day.

Hobbies: Baseball, tennis; played ice hockey and lacrosse for Oxford; coached Toronto University in ice hockey and (Rugby) football.

Attitudes: Like most Canadians, he admires and likes both the U.S. and Britain, and is eager to cooperate with both, but insistent on being treated as an equal. “The special responsibility which the U.S. has accepted … in the struggle against Russian Communist imperialism,” he said last year of Korea, “does not mean an automatic response ‘ready, aye, ready’ to everything Washington proposes.” Two months ago use of Canadian soldiers to help quell rioting prisoners at Koje brought an indignant Pearson outburst.

Personality: Informal and friendly; candid in conversation; works hard, long hours, sleeps easily, except on trains or planes which make him airsick; prefers bow ties. Says an associate: “Mike is a very complicated character. The first thing you find out working with him is that he’s not the simple barefoot boy people think him.”

No one at the U.N. ever took “Mike” Pearson for a barefoot boy, least of all Russia’s Jacob A. Malik, who once said: “I always listen when he speaks.”