In late May 2014, Senior Lecturer in Politics/IR, Dr Amelia Hadfield traveled to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, at the invitation of the Royal Commonwealth Society of Canada to give the keynote speech at its Annual General Meeting. Amelia was asked to attend as a result of her long-standing role on the International Advisory Board of the Commonwealth and international relations journal, The Round Table, as well as her abiding interest in UK-Canada-Commonwealth policy. Amelia spoke on May 30^th, at the Rodd Charlottetown Hotel, and covered a range of issues, including the soft-power potential of the Commonwealth, its contemporary relevance in international affairs, and the decision of the Canadian government to suspend its voluntary contribution to the Commonwealth Secretariat for the next two years. Amelia examined whether this was indeed a ‘strong and principled stand’, according to Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, or a poorly-calculated move whose outcome ultimately damages the Commonwealth structure, doing little to address the issues of human rights in Sri Lanka. The following day, Amelia acted as discussant in the morning panel, entitled Leadership and Development in Today’s Commonwealth, at Memorial Hall, Confederation Centre of the Arts, providing responses and perspectives to the presentation by Professor David Black of Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia), on sports governance and the specific impact of the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.