After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation and United States made an effort to attempt to establish better diplomacy as to step away from the tension of the Cold war to try and build a new era of cooperation. Part of this process was to establish a meeting between newly elected Presidents of both Russia and the United States. So on April 3rd and 4th 1993, Vancouver and UBC hosted then Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin and United States President Bill Clinton. The event drew much local fanfare, and both Presidents had very important agendas to address both foreign and domestic policy issues as they set the stage for a new era of global politics.

The Presidents were both gifted UBC apparel; Clinton as shown above was given a UBC sweatshirt which he was seen in during a routine jog. Yeltsin, as pictured below, was gifted a UBC Engineers jacket, which he posed for photos wearing, although it was reported that he did not keep the jacket.

Interestingly, both Presidents made a stop by the Museum of Anthropology, which was nice and tidy due to the location being prepared to be in the film “Intersection.”

If you would like to watch the Clinton-Yeltsin Vancouver Summit press conference, it has been made publicly available by the Clinton Presidential Library:

The United States National Security Archives at George Washington University has made available the memos of President Clinton’s National Security Advisor Anthony Lake to Clinton after they were declassified. This seven page document details what the Presidents likely discussed during the Vancouver summit. It is available for reading here.

The next year, the Homecoming committee hoped that the Presidents liked the campus enough to want to return for Homecoming and sent a formal invitation to the White House and Kremlin.

The short version of the 1993 Vancouver Presidential summit, as written by the Ubyssey:

Thank you for reading!