It is a great pleasure to welcome my friend Peter Donolo to Art’s History for another guest column. Peter is Vice Chair of Hill + Knowlton Strategies.  He worked with Jean Chretien (and Jean Pelletier) for eight years, first as Director of Communications in the OLO, from 1991 to 1993, and then as Director of Communications in the PMO, from 1993 to 1999 - a record in that job.Today, Peter helps us mark the anniversary of his friend Jean Pelletier’s appointment as Chief of Staff in the Leader of the Opposition’s Office under Jean Chrétien.Over to you Peter.by Peter Donolo"There is no indispensable man," Woodrow Wilson famously said.But then, he never met Jean Pelletier.History - Canadian history included - sometimes turns on fateful, unexpected moments.  One of those moments took place in the spring of 1991, as Jean Chretien was nearing his first anniversary as Leader of the Liberal Party.His first year in the job had been brutal.  It didn't help that he assumed the job on the very day the Meech Lake Accord died.  Or that his party was still battered and bruised from an unnecessarily bitter leadership race.  The media wouldn't give him a decent break.  He appeared tentative and unsure.   To many - including sometimes to himself - it seemed that the legendary political figure had lost his mojo.  He even began to wonder if he had reached his own "Peter Principle" (a term which, for obvious reasons, I loathe).Then he hunkered down and gamed out a plan to get the party back on the rails and win the next federal election.The first item on that to-do list was Jean Pelletier, who had recently retired after a record-setting twelve years as mayor of Quebec City.  Mr. Chretien had known him since they were bunkmates at boarding school in Sherbrooke in the 1950s.  They had stayed in touch through the years, but were not particularly close.  But Mr. Chretien once more showed his ability for clear-eyed and astute analysis - including self-analysis.  And he decided that Jean Pelletier was the person he needed at his side to turn things around.On the face of it, Jean Pelletier was not an obvious choice to be Chief of Staff.  He had no history in federal politics.  He was not particularly partisan.  In fact, up to that moment he had never even been a Liberal.  He knew few of the players in Ottawa, and had never wandered far from his hometown roots.But Mr. Chretien understood the skills that had made his old classmate one of the most consequential and successful mayors in Quebec City's long history.  He also appreciated the stature and seriousness of both the man and his experience.  And he saw that Jean's lack of history in the Liberal Party - and all its attendant infighting and petty squabbling - far from being a liability, was a decided asset.The rest, as they say, is history.  It took Jean Pelletier five weeks to noodle over the offer, which - given all the reasons noted above - made a lot of sense.  But once he took the job, he was in it with both feet - and all his heart.As fate would have it, I joined the team (as Director of Communications) just weeks after Jean Pelletier.  I worked closely with him first in opposition then, following the 1993 election victory - in which he played such an important role - in the Prime Minister's Office.And it was then that the true worth of Jean Pelletier became clear.  As Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Jean spoke with authority, acted with discretion and always, always put the interests of the country first.  He was legendary throughout the government as much for his firmness and fairness as for the silver hair and courtly manner that made a deep impression on everyone.He wasn't a career "staffer", he was an accomplished statesman, who also happened to be a contemporary of the Prime Minister's.  As all effective advisers must be, he was always honest and direct with the PM.  Not always telling the PM what he wanted to hear, but always telling him what he needed to know.  And giving him the best advice and support possible.  Finally, as someone who had already had a successful political career, he had no desire or interest in cultivating a public or media profile of his own.  He was there to serve... period.And that's the model - and the expectation - he set for all of us in the PMO.  Jean liked to refer to himself as the "Orchestra Conductor" - not micromanaging the office, but setting the tone and enabling each of us to do our jobs.  That's the way he was with those of us in the senior PMO staff.  For me, it was a lesson in management and statecraft.One last, small anecdote.  The day that the new government was sworn in 1993, Prime Minister Chretien met with the entire Deputy Minister contingent in a large boardroom on the top floor of the Langevin Block, as it was then know.  One item he touched on was the structure of ministers' offices.  Ever the traditionalist, the PM frowned on the title inflation that had enveloped Ottawa in the preceding decades, informing the group that the new government would be returning to the practice of the Pearson years, in which ministers would have smaller staffs, and their top aides would not be called "chiefs of staff", but rather "executive assistants" (this practice was reversed by subsequent governments).  He said, "there will only be one Chief of Staff in this government, and that is Jean Pelletier."Three decades later, that is still how I picture Jean Pelletier.[caption id="attachment_623823" align="alignleft" width="441"] Former PMO Chief of Staff Jean Pelletier[/caption]Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.