On any given day, she said, 10 to 15 Canadian citizens may come through the consular attach?'s door, many of them in a panic. The phone rings with added problems: An elderly woman is trapped at the airport; a tourist falls ill; a businessman has been robbed.
"What I like best is the human contact," said Houle, 52, whose job is to deal with frazzled foreigners facing problems ranging from adopting Russian children to misplaced travel documents.
"It doesn't take much to help people. They need to have someone who will listen and pay attention to them as a human being," she said.
George Yui, a Canadian businessman living in Moscow, was one of Houle's first customers after she arrived last autumn.
"The first time I met her was when my passport was stolen," said Yui, 52, head of the representative office of the Phoenix International Trade Corporation. "Nicole was very much in tune with the vulnerable position I was in. ... She was able to give me a passport in one day. My Russian counterparts were astonished."
After the passport incident, Yui received a letter of introduction to Russian officials from Houle when he needed to bring an automobile into the country from Helsinki.
"This letter had a very good effect on the militia," said Yui. "It seems Nicole puts her heart into it and makes a person feel very comfortable being with her."
Yui noted that Houle's soothing manner somehow takes the edge off the sense of panic that sometimes arises from encounters with Russian officialdom. That may be partly because of Houle's work philosophy: "This job is really much more like being a social worker," she said.
One of her superiors at the Canadian Embassy, deputy head of mission Ferry de Kerckhove, said, "Yes, she is different. She has the pizzazz of a seasoned officer as opposed to that of a junior clerk. ... Nobody leaves with a plain, ready-made answer. She has a lot of imagination and dedication."
Houle and her husband, who is also in the foreign service, came to Moscow from a previous post in Tanzania on Sept. 20, 1993 -- just two weeks before tanks fired on the White House.
"That was quite an experience," said Houle. "After 28 years on the road, that was my first coup."
Since then, her personnel file has grown fat with thank-you notes from grateful Canadians. Some show their gratitude in other ways, by calling her up and asking her out to dinner, she said, adding that more often than not she has declined. There is a point, after all, where one has to draw the line.
"After six to eight weeks of crisis, I need a break," said Houle.
But while some foreign residents may spell relief O-U-T, Houle said she and her husband relax by weekending at the dacha, going to the ballet and opera and playing duplicate bridge.
She also counts on long weekends in St. Petersburg, Suzdal and Yaroslavl. "I've done the entire Golden Ring," she said.
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