Fredericton native Joe Cashion is the man who introduced Bill Clinton to Frank McKenna

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By Brent Mazerolle
Times & Transcript Staff

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When Bill Clinton and Frank McKenna both took time out to praise Joe Cashion at the Moncton Coliseum yesterday, there was only one question on the minds of the thousands of Maritimers in attendance:

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Former U.S. president Bill Clinton chats yesterday with Frank McKenna's son James (centre) and Fredericton native Bill Cashion, who works for the Clinton Foundation.

"Who the heck is Joe Cashion?"

Clinton and McKenna explained it to an extent. Cashion, now 31, is a Fredericton native who works for the Clinton Foundation on its international development projects.

But thanks to one person in the audience who does know Joe Cashion rather well, Joe's mother Marie, we now have a bit more of the story.

Joe Cashion was born and raised in Fredericton, where his mother Marie Cashion and father Peter Cashion were professors at the University of New Brunswick. Both recently retired, the Cashions joined several family and friends in making the trip to Moncton to hear Clinton speak yesterday. They also got to see their son, who until just last week was working in hurricane-devastated Haiti on behalf of the Clinton Foundation.

Though Joe's parents are Americans from the Boston area, Marie said it was through no connections of theirs that their son should find himself in a high-profile job with the former American president. Instead, armed with a degree in English literature from McGill University, he essentially dropped in to the foundation's New York headquarters off the street to look for work.

According to Marie, Joe got the idea from a small item he happened to see in the New Yorker not long after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The author of the piece suggested working for the Clinton Foundation was beneath her, but Joe was intrigued.

Living in New York at the time and recently laid off because the small publishing house he worked for folded after 9/11, Joe decided starting at the bottom of an organization that was then in its infancy, but showed lots of promise was actually just the sort of difference he wanted to make in the world.

From there, he assumed ever greater responsibilities and has been a leading member of the organization in its struggles to make HIV/AIDS and the threat of climate change history.

Even though you can find a photograph of Bill Clinton introducing Joe to Nelson Mandela out there in cyberspace if you look hard enough, the New Brunswicker hasn't forgotten his Fredericton roots, including his high school friendship with Frank McKenna's son James.

In fact, Marie said yesterday it was the friendship between Joe and James McKenna that led to the friendship between Bill Clinton and Frank McKenna, as it was Joe who introduced the former ambassador to Washington to the former president.

And the rest is, as they say, history.