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The first toast would have been to “zdorovye” (health). Then came a toast for “the dead.” Then several toasts for the women. A toast to President Eisenhower. A toast to Prime Minister St. Laurent. A toast to the Canadian wheat surplus.

Ounce after ounce of pepper vodka. The Canadian delegation could barely put down their glasses before their host, Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev, ordered that it be refilled.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or The night Lester Pearson (and Michael Ignatieff’s dad) outdrank the Soviets Back to video

It had all started so innocently; some food and conversation after a day of tense negotiations. But as a liquored haze overtook them, and the eyes of their Russian hosts narrowed, the four Canadians realized the gravity of their situation.

They were 8,000 kilometres from home, sharing a remote Crimean palace with their bitterest Cold War enemy. It was 1955 and a nation was counting on them to show what Canadian livers were made of.

“Khruschev … hoped and felt that there would never be conflict between Canada and the Soviet Union,” Lester Pearson, then Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, reported at the midpoint of their boozy odyssey.