Wilson, Charles F. (Charles Frederick), 1907- : Charles Frederick Wilson, public servant, was born at London, Ontario, on 11 March 1907, and took his Bachelor of Arts in Economics at the University of Western Ontario in 1928. After three years as principal of a boys' school in British Guiana, he started his graduate work at Harvard University, and received his doctorate in Economics. He joined the Dominion Bureau of Statistics in 1936, and in 1941 was seconded to the Minister of Trade and Commerce to help with correspondence on wheat policy, and to serve as the first Secretary of the Cabinet Wheat Committee. In 1943 he transferred to that Department permanently, as the first Director of its new Wheat and Grains Divisions.
While working for the Department of Trade and Commerce, Wilson provided liason with the Canadian Wheat Board and supervised government grain expenditure under Canadian Mutual Aid to Allied governments during the Second World War. He was the junior Canadian delegate to the founding conference of the Preparatory Committee of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at Quebec in 1944, and served on the Cereals Committee of the Combined Food Board.
Wilson's direct involvement with international wheat trading began when he attended the Wheat Advisory Committee's 1939 meetings in London, and its 1941 and 1942 meetings in Washington. In 1947, when serious negotiation for a permanent International Wheat Agreement began, Wilson attended conferences first as Norman Robertson's alternate, and then in 1948 and 1949 led the Canadian delegation in the settlement of the 1949 International Wheat Agreement. In 1950 he went to Europe as head of Canada's first post-war Grain Mission, and in 1952 he transferred to the Department of External Affairs.
In his four foreign postings, Wilson worked chiefly as a wheat marketing expert. From Rome (1952-1956) and Copenhagen (1956-1960) he attended sessions of the International Wheat Council and the FAO Council, helped establish the FAO Group on Grains, and chaired the FAO Committee on Commodity Problems from 1958 to 1959. He developed considerable expertise in Communist bloc grain production, for Yugoslavia was within his purview from Rome, and at Copenhagen he was responsible for Poland. After four years' service as Counsul-General at Chicago (1960-1964), accredited to the ten mid-Western grain-producing states, he was appointed Commercial Minister at Vienna in 1965, accredited to all E astern Europe.
In 1967 Wilson returned to Canada, where he took charge of administering the creation of the Canadian Grains Council, and assumed membership in the Grains Group. In 1972 he completed the first part of the Review of Government Grain Policy, which grew to four parts and was finished in 1974 for government use; it was later edited, revised and published as A Century Of Canadian Grain: Government Policy to 1951. In 1977 he finished a textbook for the Canadian International Grains Institute, which they published in 1979 as Canadian Grain Marketing.
