Abstract:
Canada’s role in the Vietnam War and the role of Canadian public opinion in shaping it is a largely unstudied subject. Canadians today view their role in the war as blameless at worst and virtuous at best: peaceful in comparison to the United States. The reality is much more complicated. Belief in “peace, order, and good government” did, in fact, contribute to an Indochina policy much more diplomatic than the United States’. Additionally, Canadian nationalism and anti-Americanism forced the Canadian government to take a more peaceable stance towards the war, negotiating ceasefires and accepting American draft dodgers. However, public opinion at this time was also anti-communist, leading Canada to collaborate with the United States in espionage and military aid, oftentimes in contradiction to the “rule of law”-style doctrine Canada espoused. A feeling of deference to the United States, coupled with unawareness and apathy toward the Vietnam War, allowed the Canadian government to get away with collaborating with the United States on a number of fronts during the war. This paper explores what I will call “complipendence” – complicity and independence – where Canadian public opinion, and consequently Canada’s Vietnam policy, was at once independent from and complicit towards the United States.
The Vietnam War is often thought of as America’s war.[1] The United States, haunted by the ghost of Vietnam, has spent the last several decades earnestly examining that painful chapter in their nation’s history. [2] Canada has had no such reckoning. It is often thought of as having been innocent in the Vietnam War, or even benevolent: peaceful and diplomatic, welcoming American draft dodgers and refusing to get dragged into the hawkish adventurism of its Southern neighbor.[3] While this myth does have some truth to it, it is a whitewashing of history. Canadians did believe in peacekeeping, order, and justice, and these principles did guide the country’s Indochina policy. In addition, Canadian nationalism and anti-Americanism did push Canada to stand up to the United States at times, as did important activist groups like college students and draft dodgers, who urged the country to pursue the path of peace. However, not all public sentiment was anti-war. Many Canadians were anti-communist, and supported solidarity with the United States in countering the “red menace”. Furthermore, as the issue largely did not concern them, many Canadians simply did not care much about Vietnam. For the duration of Canada’s involvement in the Vietnam War (1954-1973), this mixed bag of perspectives led to a public opinion, and subsequently a policy, of what I will call “complipendence” – complicity and independence, whereby Canadians sometimes urged the government to resist the United States in Vietnam, but other times were content, or at least willing, to see it fall in line.
Canada’s involvement in the Vietnam War was deeply complex and lasted for nearly 20 years. Thus, this paper employs a narrative structure to allow for sufficient context in which to couch the analysis. This also reflects the fact that public opinion and its effects over such a long period of time are dynamic, and various views and factions rose and fell over the course of the examined time period.
Historians have struggled to provide a holistic analysis of the effects of Canadian public opinion on Canada’s Indochina policy, as it is a complex issue that does not lend itself to dispassionate analysis. First, capturing the essence of “Canadian public opinion” on Vietnam is challenging because Canadians were strongly divided along ethnic, political, and generational lines. For instance, in an analysis of the public response to draft dodgers, Jessica Squires’ Building Sanctuary: The Movement to Support Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, 1965-73, which focuses on the role of activists and college students, gives the impression that draft dodgers enjoyed widespread support.[4] Contrarily, Luke Stewart’s “’Hell, They’re Your Problem, Not Ours’: Draft Dodgers, Military Deserters and Canada-United States Relations in the Vietnam War Era,” which focuses more on the perspective of law and immigration enforcement, suggests the issue was much more contentious.[5] It is also difficult to decipher public opinion’s impact on policy when Canada’s Indochina policy that was, in the words of one historian, “inconsistent and at times incoherent.”[6] With the Canadian government often simultaneously condemning and enabling American aggression, it is difficult to discern the impact of public opinion. Furthermore, because the Vietnam War was a traumatic and divisive experience for many, meaning that many books on the subject – especially those published shortly after the war’s end, like Charles Taylor’s Snow Job: Canada, the United States and Vietnam (1954 to 1973) – are highly polemical in nature.[7] Thus, there is a lack of scholarly consensus on the role of public opinion in shaping Canada’s Indochina policy from 1954 to 1973.
Canada’s views and actions in Vietnam were complicated from the start. Since 1945, the French had been waging war on its Indochinese colony of Vietnam with reluctant but increasing American support.[8] After the French were defeated by the communists in 1954, affected parties met at the Geneva Conference to discuss a settlement. Vietnam was divided in two – communist-controlled North Vietnam and non-communist-controlled South Vietnam, now the responsibility of the United States. A cease-fire was agreed upon and elections were scheduled to take place by 1956. An International Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC, often shortened to International Control Commission or ICC) was established to oversee the ceasefire, monitor the flow of refugees, and enforce the Geneva accord.[9] The Commission was composed of three countries: Poland representing the Communist bloc, India representing the neutral bloc, and Canada, because it was widely viewed as the most objective NATO country, selected to represent the West.[10] A nonplussed Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent reluctantly accepted the unsolicited offer and put then-External Affairs Minister Lester B. Pearson in charge of the delegation.[11]
A number of factors influenced the Canadian decision to accept a position on the ICC and guided its actions during its tenure. Canada’s position on the ICC reflected its rising presence on the international stage after the Second World War, and an interest in taking on international security responsibilities as a display of what its diplomats termed “middlepowermanship” -- that is, playing a relatively minor but significant role in international affairs through diplomacy and multilateralism.[12] The nature of Canada’s international commitments as a middle power in the early Cold War were articulated by St. Laurent in the Gray Lecture in 1947, stressing the importance of upholding and promoting the rule of law.[13] Thus, Canadians were well-suited to enforce the terms of the Geneva Conference and made an earnest effort to hold all parties to account, with Pearson instructing the delegation to conduct itself with “objectivity, impartiality and fairness,” and to avoid getting too friendly with the American and French delegations.[14] Canadians also valued peacekeeping, viewing it as a fitting international role and an opportunity to empower multilateral international institutions like the United Nations. In particular, Canada’s role in resolving the Suez Crisis in 1956 prompted an outpour of Canadian popular media about peacekeeping. Newspaper cartoons depicted Canada rising above partisan divides and resolving conflicts as part of a UN “police force”;[15] opinion polls found Canadians eager to embrace their new role on the world stage.[16] Thus, Canada was well equipped to practice quiet diplomacy in the ICC, advocating for de-escalation through dialogue and acting as an intermediary for American communications with the North Vietnamese.[17]
Canada, however, was also guided by anti-communism, creating a sometimes conflicting set of interests. Canadians shared American diplomat George Kennan’s view of communism as a dangerous force that needed to be contained.[18] Pearson warned the House of Commons about the “danger to international peace and security” posed by “the international communist conspiracy…securing control of South-East Asia.”[19] A 1954 Gallup poll showed that most Canadians concurred, and while they did not want to fight a war, they expected their government to support the United States in its fight against communist expansion.[20] Thus, the Canadian ICC delegation acted less as a neutral arbiter and more as a representative of Western interests.
Many officials saw no inherent contradiction between anti-communism and upholding peace and the rule of law, viewing communism as dangerous and subversive. For instance, St. Laurent argued that communism was illiberal and totalitarian; in essence, embodying the opposite of the values he had argued Canada should champion in the Gray Lecture.[21] However, anti-communist influence on the Canadian ICC delegation caused it to be complicit towards the United States, undermining its stated goals and facilitating American escalation. When the United States began sending arms to the South Vietnamese in 1954, and called off elections in 1956 due to fears that the communists would win, Canada did not protest, despite both actions being in direct violation of the Geneva accord they were supposed to uphold. In fact, the Canadian delegation legitimized American actions by parroting the American argument that the United States was only defending the South Vietnamese from communist aggression.[22] Members of the delegation who did not support the war were attacked by their colleagues as “callous” and “immoral.”[23] Canadian diplomats also engaged in espionage against the North Vietnamese, passing on the intelligence to the Central Intelligence Agency.[24] The Canadians were arguably less biased than the Poles, who unfailingly supported the North Vietnamese. They were also certainly less biased than many of their American counterparts wanted -- many memos by American diplomats reflect consternation at what they deemed to be insufficient Canadian loyalty.[25] However, they were complicit. This quiet complicity, borne out of a public anticommunist mood, contradicted stated foreign policy objectives and paved the path for war.
The late 1950s and early 1960s were a time of escalating Cold War tensions, leading Canada to pursue a foreign policy that matched its continentalist, hawkish mood. To steel itself against perceived communist threat, Canada and the United States pursued an integrationist defense policy. In 1956, the countries signed the Canada-United States Defense Production Sharing Agreement, improving Canadian access to American military contractors; subsequently, Canada began sending military equipment to the United States that the Americans used in Vietnam.[26] The hawkish attitude was offset somewhat by a rising anti-nuclear proliferation movement. The “ban the bomb” movement, consisting of college students, intellectuals, women’s groups, and church organizations, began in Britain before coming to the United States and later Canada.[27] Yet most Canadians thought of the Cold War in terms of Berlin and Cuba, not Vietnam; thus, the Canadians, even under the fiercely nationalist Diefenbaker, largely remained on its “complipendent” course, providing much, but not all, of the support the Americans wanted.[28] Furthermore, Diefenbaker learned the domestic political consequences of attempted independence when, after being perceived as insufficiently supportive of President John F. Kennedy and the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was voted out of office in 1963.[29] Thus, Pearson assumed the prime ministership knowing that he would have little room to challenge Kennedy and the Americans on Vietnam – even as both men increasingly felt they were sliding into a quagmire.[30]
On June 12, 1963, photos of a Buddhist monk self-immolating in protest of the South Vietnamese government catapulted Vietnam into the forefront of the American consciousness, forcing the United States to take action.[33] What followed was a dramatic escalation in American involvement, despite Canada’s best efforts at quiet diplomacy. South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated on November 1, 1963 in a CIA-backed coup. Kennedy was himself assassinated three weeks later and replaced with the more belligerent Lyndon B. Johnson, who began bombing Vietnam in 1964 and sending American ground troops in 1965. By 1968, there were over 500,000 Americans fighting in Vietnam.[34]
This period in the mid- to late 1960s coincided with the emergence of a number of movements that challenged Canadian complicity in Vietnam. Significant among them was a resurgence of Canadian nationalism. In 1965, Canadian philosopher George Grant wrote Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, claiming that the last twenty-five years of Canadian policy had detached the nation from its roots and robbed it of its sovereignty.[35] The book ignited nationalist sentiment among conservative Canadians, who sought to create a strong national identity to counter the “emasculating” influence of American hegemony.[36] That same year, Canadian patriotism was stirred by the adoption of the Maple Leaf flag. As Canadians reflected, two years shy of the centennial anniversary of Confederation, on the nature of their national identity, the new flag served as a common symbol that journalist George Bain called “bold and clean, and distinctively our own.”[37] Two years later, Canadians celebrated their centennial by hosting the World’s Fair in 1967, further stirring patriotic pride.[38]
These rising nationalist sentiments pressured Pearson to abandon a policy of quiet diplomacy for a more confrontational stance against the United States in Vietnam. In 1965, the Canadian Ambassador to the United States, Arnold Heeney, and American Ambassador to Canada Livingston T. Merchant, published Principles for Partnership: Canada and the United States, which called for greater Canadian-American cooperation and suggested that disagreements should be resolved privately.[39] The report was met with fury among Canadian nationalists, who saw it as encroaching on Canadian sovereignty.[40] That same year, Pearson took a step towards Canadian foreign policy independence when he delivered a speech at Temple University in the United States calling for a pause of American bombing in Vietnam, publicly challenging President Johnson’s policy while on American soil.[41] Pearson later attempted to regain the president’s favor after a furious Johnson screamed at him for “piss[ing] on my rug,” the speech nonetheless constituted a forceful Canadian pushback against American policy. Thus, a heightened sense of national identity led to a strengthened effort to assert an independent Indochina policy that reflected Canadian values and interests instead of kowtowing to American demands.
Domestic developments during this time also led to the emergence of new Canadian identities that caused it to turn inward. The early Cold War was the era of the national security state, with Canada following the United States in spending massive amounts on national defense in an effort to protect itself and its allies from communism.[42] In the 1960s, however, the Pearson government began implementing major social welfare programs including the Canada Pension Plan and Medicare, which gained a national mandate after the failed doctors’ strike of 1962.[43] This pivot from national security state to welfare state led to significant reductions in the defense budget to fund social programs.[44]It thus became less willing, and less eager, to engage in international affairs and aid its allies.
During the same time period, Canada also dealt with the rising issue of Québecois nationalism. The “Quiet Revolution” and Québec separatism posed a significant threat to Canadian security and unity. Pearson and his successor Pierre Trudeau grappled with terrorism from the separatist Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) and French president Charles de Gaulle’s imperious pronouncements of “Québec Libre,” they had less time and energy to expend on relatively peripheral foreign policy issues like Vietnam.[45] Thus, a more domestic-oriented conception of the role of government and internal threats to national security reduced Canada’s means, and interest, for foreign entanglements like Vietnam.
At the same time, a large and passionate anti-Vietnam War movement was building in Canada and around the world, led primarily by college students. Across the Western world after the Second World War, a newly prosperous middle class attended college in unprecedented numbers, where they formed an identity as social critics, questioning the assumptions of Cold War dogma. The college population grew further in the mid-1960s as the first “baby boomers” – a name given to the generation born between 1946 and 1964, which made up a large portion of both Canada and the United States – reached early adulthood.[46] In Canada, as in the United States, college students drew national media attention with large anti-war protests. In major cities like Toronto, thousands of students held parades against the war, which they saw as unjust and illegal.[47] Large protests did not necessarily indicate widespread support: for instance, one 1966 Gallup poll found that less than 12% of Canadians expressed a desire to participate in a protest.[48] These highly visible images of dissent nonetheless exerted public pressure on the Canadian government to distance itself from the increasingly unpopular American war effort.
College students also played a seminal role in supporting and aiding American draft dodgers, another major protest group. Draft dodgers, perhaps the most iconic and memorable aspect of Canada’s Indochina policy, began arriving in 1965. By 1973 some 30,000-50,000 young American men had fled to Canada to escape the draft, with tens of thousands more men and women emigrating in protest of the United States’ Vietnam policy.[49] While general public opinion towards these draft dodgers was rather cool, activist groups, including most prominently student groups, welcomed them with open arms.[50] Groups like the Student Union for Peace Action (SUPA) formed the basis for the Toronto Anti Draft Programme, which published the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, a best-seller that instructed dodgers on how to find aid, navigate immigration restrictions, and other essential information.[51] For left wingers, draft dodgers were a nationalist symbol and an affirmation of sovereignty, creating a Canadian identity as a haven for political refugees fleeing an unjust war.[52] Aware that the general public’s views were much more tepid and wary of admitting radicals, the Canadian government hotly debated the issue, particularly on the contentious matter of deserters.[53] Continuous direction action and media campaigns by anti-draft activists, however, eventually helped push the Canadian government to open the border to dodgers and deserters alike in 1969.[54]
While growing nationalism and anti-war movements pushed the Canadian government towards a more independent Indochina policy, a still significant anti-communist sentiment kept many of the complicities towards American involvement largely in place. Canada kept up its profitable flow of military aid, with sales to the United States doubling between 1964 and 1966.[55] A significant portion of Canadian military aid to the United States at this time – which by one estimate amounted to $2.47 billion between 1965 and 1973 – was used in Vietnam.[56] When confronted about this policy by a group of University of Toronto professors in 1967, Pearson touted the importance of “collective defense”, invoking the Hyde Park Agreement of 1941.[57] Pearson’s willingness to continue and escalate Canadian defense commitments reflects his belief that, in spite of rising opposition from left wing politicians, college students, draft dodgers, and some members of the press, enough Canadians still supported the war and the early Cold War view of North American solidarity in the face of communist aggression. To an extent, he was right. A November 1967 Gallup poll found nearly as many Canadians supported the war as disapproved of it.[58] And a poll from that October in Macleans magazine, perhaps highlighting the extent to which Canadians were ignorant and apathetic towards a faraway war that did not directly involve them, found that a significant percentage of respondents could not identify the continent where Vietnam was located or which Vietnam the United States was supporting.[59]
While Pearson continued to make halfhearted denouncements, speaking out against the war still carried heavy political consequences. This was clearly illustrated when, in 1967, Finance Minister Walter Gordon delivered a speech in which he declared that the United States was “enmeshed in a bloody civil war in Vietnam which cannot be justified on either moral or strategic grounds.”[60] Gordon found support in the expected anti-war circles, but was excoriated by the press and Conservative opposition members for anti-Americanism, with cartoons depicting him torpedoing Canada-U.S. relations.[61] Anti-war sentiment and consternation about Canadian complicity was an increasingly powerful force, but not enough to lead to any significant shift away from quiet American support under the Pearson government.
A particularly disturbing example of Canadian complicity is its involvement in the development of Agent Orange, the notorious cancer-causing defoliant sprayed over Vietnam by American pilots. Agent Orange caused health problems in more than three million Vietnamese, as well as lasting environmental degradation. Some argued that its use violated international law.[62] Yet the Canadian delegation to the ICC – despite its stated commitment to uphold laws and promote peace – remained silent on the issue.[63] Furthermore, Canada sold millions of dollars’ worth of Agent Orange and other chemical weapons to the United States, not only ignoring but aiding the dubious American practice.[64] Additionally, in 1966 and 1967, the Department of National Defense tested Agent Orange at CFB Gagetown, New Brunswick, in cooperation with the United States military. Canadian citizens were thus exposed to the dangerous substance, and hundreds of them subsequently developed health problems.[65] In an appalling violation of the national interest, the Canadian government compromised the health of its citizens to spend taxpayer money to fund an American initiative that arguably violated many of Canada’s stated foreign policy principles. This evoked some small, scattered protest among Canadians: some journalists lambasted Canada’s role as the “butcher’s helper”,[66] while youth activists, increasingly engaged in environmentalist causes, distributed literature condemning local Dow Chemical plants producing Agent Orange, such as one in Sarnia, Ontario.[67] However, there was never enough public interest generated in the subject for it to ever come up in the House of Commons. Canada’s complicity in the development and deployment of Agent Orange reflects the limits of the country’s nationalist and anti-war movements in persuading their government to defend their sovereignty against American incursion.
However, as the war dragged on in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States took a violent and chaotic turn, pushing Canadians further away from their neighbor. In 1968, there were riots in Black neighborhoods and at the Democratic National Convention, as well as the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.[68] The violence and lawnessness created an anti-American sentiment in Canada, generating pressure on the Canadian government to take a stronger stance on Vietnam. Furthermore, after the American government depleted its gold reserves borrowing to fund the Vietnam War, it was forced to end the gold standard in 1971 (the “Nixon shock”), effectively ending the American-centric Bretton Woods system, which had existed since the end of the Second World War.[71]In August 1968, a Harris poll showed that 81% of Americans believed “law and order had broken down in the United States” (https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/12/20/opinion/20081220opchart_ready.html?_r=0). The United States seemed, in the eyes of its citizens and the rest of the world, to be a flailing, morally bankrupt, contracting power.
This global anti-American trend emboldened Canadian nationalism. Whether or not Canadian sentiment at this time can be termed anti-American is largely a semantic argument, as the outcome was animosity towards, and distancing from, the United States. By the late 1960s, polls conducted by the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion (CIPO) indicated that many Canadians began to feel that the United States had too much influence over Canada – not just militarily, but also economically and culturally.[72] Anti-Americanism was prevalent in Canadian popular culture: in 1970, Canadian rock band The Guess Who had a major hit with their song “American Woman”, with lines like, “I don’t need your war machines/I don’t need your ghetto scenes.”[73] This anti-American Canadian nationalism was most concretely expressed in the so-called “Third Option” put forth by External Affairs Minister Mitchell Sharp in 1972 in response to the Nixon shock. Sharp, concerned about the asymmetrical relationship with the United States endangering Canadian sovereignty, suggested a “Third Option”, where Canada would pivot its economic focus to Western Europe and Japan.[74]The Third Option was never implemented. But some of its ideas, such as minimum requirements for Canadian content in television and radio broadcasting, further strengthened Canada’s sense of identity and, in turn, Canadian nationalism.[75] It was partially on this wave of anti-Americanism that Pierre Trudeau was elected in 1968, promising to implement a foreign policy less beholden to American influence.[76]
Once in office Trudeau upheld his promise to implement a defense policy that more clearly defined and defended Canadian interests. He unveiled a new defense policy, calling for more focus on national sovereignty and promotion of a “just society” at home and abroad.[77] Yet in spite of his staunch nationalism, and contrary to popular belief, Trudeau was not anti-American; he got along fairly well with U.S. President Richard Nixon, according to top Nixon aide Henry Kissinger.[78] However, general public opinon on both sides of the border had strongly turned against the war by the start of Nixon’s presidency, and Nixon’s announcement of a shift to “Vietnamization” – withdrawing American involvement and training the South Vietnamese to fight for themselves – was mostly welcomed by both Americans and Canadians.[79]As American involvement in the war wound down in the early 1970s, the Canadian government responded to public outrage over American atrocities, most notably in response to a series of heavy “Christmas bombings” carried out on the eve of peace negotiations in late 1972. After a near-unanimous reaction of horror and anger in the Canadian general public, the House of Commons passed a resolution condemning the bombings and expressing concern about continuing hostilities.[80]However, under Trudeau, Canada still continued to send military aid to the United States to assist its efforts in Vietnam until 1973.[81] For this Trudeau did not, and does not, suffer a drop in popularity among his fellow Liberals, despite their antiwar proclivities – perhaps indicative of a willingness to forgive a politician otherwise so well known as an advocate for peace and justice.[82]
Canadians’ desire to bring peace and order guided its last days in Vietnam. In January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed, effectively ending American combat operations in Vietnam. The accords established the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) to supervise the ceasefire, withdrawal of troops, and dismantlement of military bases; Canada was asked to join.[83] After nearly two decades of frustration in the ICC, Canadians were hesitant to get engaged. The House of Commons debated preconditions for getting involved.[84]Deciding that securing peace in the region coincided with national interests, Canada agreed to join the ICCS. But after just three months of hapless service, it became clear that the ICCS was as doomed an effort as the ICC had been. With widespread and overwhelming public support, Canada withdrew from the ICCS in July 1973, ending its exasperating and divisive involvement in the Vietnam War.[85]
Canadian public opinion and its influence on the Canadian government’s policy in the Vietnam War is much more complex than commonly thought. Canada contended with rising nationalist sentiment that pushed it towards a more independent foreign policy, as well as a burgeoning dissident movement in the form of college students and draft dodgers that made it increasingly detrimental to engage in or promote the United States’ deepening military and moral mire. However, strong anti-communist sentiment, especially in the early stages of the war, drew Canada in, to aid the Americans through political, legal, and military means. while a degree of ignorance and apathy among much of the general public gave cover for politicians who wanted to avoid taking a stand that might incur American wrath. Thus, Canadians were “complipendent” – sometimes independent, sometimes complicit – in the American war in Vietnam. This complicated, painful truth is not as satisfying as the national myth, but like the United States has done, Canada too must come to terms with the reality of its past.
Rachel Zack is a junior at the University of Toronto.
[1] “The Vietnam War: Canada’s Role, Part One,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, last modified April 23, 2015, https://www.cbc.ca/radio/rewind/the-vietnam-war-canada-s-role-part-one-1.3038110.
[2] Robert McNamara, United States Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1967 and major architect of American involvement in the Vietnam War, describes this process of national self-examination in his memoirs. See Robert McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, Vintage ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), xix-xxii.
[3] “The Vietnam War.”
[4] Jessica Squires, Building Sanctuary: The Movement to Support Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, 1965-73 (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2013), vii-viii.
[5] Luke Stewart, “’Hell, They’re Your Problem, Not Ours’: Draft Dodgers, Military Deserters and Canada-United States Relations in the Vietnam War Era,” Canadian Studies 85 (2018): 67, https://journals.openedition.org/eccs/1479.
[6] Shane B. Schreiber, “The Road to Hell: Canada in Vietnam, 1954-1973,” Master’s thesis, (Canadian Forces College, 2003), 44, https://www.cfc.forces.gc.ca/259/290/289/286/schreiber.pdf.
[7] T.A. Keenleyside, review of Snow Job: Canada, the United States and Vietnam (1954 to 1973), by Charles Taylor, Canadian Journal of Political Science 9, no. 1 (March 1976): 172, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423900043328.
[8] Max Mishler, “The Crisis of Authority,” HIS271: American History Since 1607 (class lecture, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, March 17, 2020).
[9] “Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Viet-Nam,” July 20, 1954, https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/genevacc.htm.
[10] According to Canadian diplomat John Holmes, Canada had “a reputation of being the most objective of the NATO countries.” See John W. Holmes, “Geneva: 1954,” International Journal 22, no. 3 (Summer 1967): 470, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/002070206702200309.
[11] Robert Bothwell, “The Further Shore: Canada and Vietnam,” International Journal 56, no. 1 (Winter 2000/2001): 91-92, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40203533.
[12] John W. Holmes, “Canada as a Middle Power,” The Centennial Review 10, no. 4 (Fall 1966): 432, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23737968.
[13] Louis St. Laurent, “Gray Lecture,” (speech, Convocation Hall, University of Toronto, 13 January 1947), accessed April 5, 2020, https://www.russilwvong.com/future/stlaurent.html.
[14] As quoted in Bothwell, “The Further Shore,” 104.
[15] Gordon Johnston, “Mike Takes the High Road,” Ottawa Citizen, November 13, 1956, https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/457063360/; Les Callan, “The Man for the Job,” Toronto Star, November 3, 1956, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1433360831/5D9984ED95DA49B8PQ/6?accountid=14771.
[16] James Eayrs, “Canadian Policy and Opinion during the Suez Crisis,” International Journal 12, no. 2 (Spring 1957): 108, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40198266.
[17] Andrew Preston, “Balancing War and Peace: Canadian Foreign Policy and the Vietnam War, 1961-1965,” Diplomatic History 27, no. 1 (January 2003): 89, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24914431.
[18] Escott Reid, “The United States and the Soviet Union: A Study of the Possibility of War and Some of the Implications for Canadian Policy,” in Norman Hillmer and Donald Page, eds., Documents on Canadian External Relations, Vol. 13, 1947 (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1993), 368-370; X [George Kennan], “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs 25, no. 4 (July 1947): 575, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20030065.
[19] Canada, House of Commons Debates, 28 May 1954 (Mr. Pearson, LPC), http://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC2201_05/696?r=0&s=1.
[20] On threat of communism, see “Canadian Gallup Poll, March 1954, #235,” Canadian Institute of Public Opinion, accessed April 5, 2020, https://dataverse.scholarsportal.info/ddi_explore/index.html?dfId=82266&dvLocale=en#?selected=@_id%3Dv278947%26type%3Drow&view=chart. On reluctance to send Canadian troops to Vietnam, see CIPO Opinion Poll, May 1954, as quoted in David James O’Kane, “Canadian Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam, 1954-1973,” Master’s thesis, (University of British Columbia, 1995), 10, https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/831/items/1.0086906.
[21] Louis St. Laurent, “Consequences of the Cold War for Canada,” (speech, Toronto, Ontario, March 27, 1950), Library and Archives Canada, accessed April 5, 2020, https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/primeministers/h4-4015-e.html.
[22] Howard C. Green, “The International Supervisory Commission for Vietnam June 2, 1962,” in Canadian Foreign Policy 1955-1965: Selected Speeches and Documents, ed. Arthur E. Blanchette (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977), 311.
[23] Escott Reid, Radical Mandarin: The Memoirs of Escott Reid (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 277.
[24] As admitted by former ICC member Brigadier Donald Ketcheson. See “Committee Decides Not to Call Ketcheson,” The Globe and Mail, January 28, 1970, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1241921211/216976F34CBC4727PQ/27?accountid=14771.
[25] Livingston Merchant to Dean Rusk, 28 May 1961, John F. Kennedy Papers, John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKPOF/113/JFKPOF-113-008#folder_info.
[26] “Defence Production Sharing Agreement between Canada and the United States of America,” 27 July 1956, https://www.ccc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/defence-production-sharing-agreement-en.pdf; Walter Stewart, “Proudly We Stand, the ‘Butcher’s Helper’ in Southeast Asia,” MacLean’s Magazine, March 1, 1970, https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1970/3/1/proudly-we-stand-the-butchers-helper-in-southeast-asia.
[27] Nicole Marion, “Canada’s Disarmers: The Complicated Struggle Against Nuclear Weapons, 1959-1963,” PhD thesis, (Carlton University, 2017), 2-3, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5707/e1b7276d9cd3fac4bc316931f50bbbca5f81.pdf. For an example of the activists’ efforts, see William MacEachern, “’Voice of Women’ Urges Dief Head Peace Bid,” Toronto Star, September 26, 1961, https://search.proquest.com/pagepdfpagination/1425997969/pageviewPDF/$N/1?accountid=14771&t:lb=t.
[28] John Boyko, Cold Fire: Kennedy’s Northern Front (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2016), 110-111.
[29] John G. Diefenbaker, One Canada: The Tumultuous Years, 1962-1967 (Toronto: MacMillan, 1977), 77-90.
[30] Kennedy’s beliefs as quoted in Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life, 1917-1963 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 2003), 450; Pearson’s beliefs as quoted in Lawrence Martin, The Presidents and the Prime Ministers: Washington and Ottawa Face to Face: The Myth of Bilateral Bliss 1867-1982 (Toronto: PaperJacks, 1983), 222.
[31] John F. Kennedy, “Commencement Address at American University,” (speech, Washington, D.C., June 10, 1963), John F. Kennedy Library, accessed April 5, 2020, https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-university-19630610.
[32] “Big Three Will Try to Negotiate Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in July,” Globe and Mail, June 11, 1963, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca/docview/1313892568/pageviewPDF/5DFA7CCAF6AA426DPQ/3?accountid=14369; Seymour Topping, “Kennedy Asks Break in Cold War; New Atom Parley Set in Moscow; U.S. to Forgo Atmospheric Tests,” New York Times, June 11, 1963, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/06/11/80446734.html?pageNumber=1; Boyko, Cold Fire, 271.
[33] Henry Cabot Lodge, “Telegram from the Embassy in Vietnam to the Department of State,” 27 August 1963, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume III, Vietnam, January-August 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v03/d298.
[34] “Chronology of the War in Vietnam and its Historical Antecedents from 1940,” New York Times, January 28, 1973, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1973/01/28/103216688.html?pageNumber=25.
[35] George Grant, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965), 4-5.
[36] Charles Taylor, Radical Tories: The Conservative Tradition in Canada (Toronto: Anansi, 1982), 148.
[37] As quoted in Scott Anderson and Stacy Gibson, “These 10 Things Are Very Canadian,” University of Toronto Magazine, June 25, 2019, https://magazine.utoronto.ca/people/alumni-donors/these-10-things-are-very-canadian/.
[38] Ronald Lebel, “7,000 Shiver in Cold to Watch Expo Fire Die,” The Globe and Mail, October 30, 1967, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1270310665/999B36BAB2F346ECPQ/1?accountid=14771; Lester B. Pearson, “Remarks at the Opening of Expo ’67,” (speech, Montreal, QC, April 27, 1967), Library and Archives Canada, accessed April 5, 2020, https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/primeministers/h4-4029-e.html.
[39] U.S. Department of State, Principles for Partnership: Canada and the United States, by Livingston T. Merchant and A.D.P. Heeney, 7940, Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of State, 1965, 13.
[40] Abraham Rotstein, “Canada: The New Nationalism,” Foreign Affairs 55, no. 1 (October 1976): 108, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20039629.
[41] Lester B. Pearson, “Address on Accepting the 2nd Temple University World Peace Award at the Founder's Dinner of the University's General Alumni Association,” (speech, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, April 2, 1965), in Canadian Foreign Policy 1966-1976: Selected Speeches and Documents, ed. Arthur E. Blanchette (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1980), 122-123.
[42] Cindy Ewing, “The National Security State,” TRN250: International Relations in the Age of Empire (class lecture, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, February 13, 2020.
[43] Ed Cosgrove, Ab Douglas, and Mike McCourt, “Medicare Becomes Canadian Law,” CBC Television News, Toronto, ON: CBLT, December 25, 1967, CBC Archives, accessed April 5, 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/medicare-becomes-canadian-law. For more background on the rise of the welfare state in Canada, see Robert Bothwell, The Penguin History of Canada (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2006), 409-412.
[44] In his 1970 budget speech, Finance Minister Edgar J. Benson noted the soaring healthcare and welfare expenditures and reduced defense spending. See Canada, House of Commons Debates, 12 March 1970 (Mr. Benson, LPC), http://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC2802_05/358?r=0&s=1.
[45] Norman Hillmer, Partners Nevertheless: Canadian-American Relations in the Twentieth Century (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1989), 129.
[46] Theodore T. Leber, Jr., “The Genesis of Antimilitarism on the College Campus: A Contemporary Case Study of Student Protest,” Naval War College Review 23, no. 3 (November 1970): 58, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44641164; L. Neville Brown, “Student Protest in England,” The American Journal of Comparative Law 17, no. 3 (Summer 1969): 395, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/839218. See also, Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 88-130
[47] An example of one of these mass protests drawing television attention is Bruce Rogers, “Anti-Vietnam War Movement Rises in Canada and U.S.,” CBC Television News, Toronto, ON: CBLT, October 23, 1967, CBC Archives, accessed April 5, 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/draft-dodgers-the-anti-vietnam-war-movement-rises-in-canada-and-the-us.
[48] “Canadian Gallup Poll #318,” Canadian Institute of Public Opinion, accessed April 5, 2020, https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ipoll/study/31072588.
[49] There are no official numbers for how many draft dodgers came to Canada during this time period, but it is estimated that at least 20,000 draft dodgers came, along with tens of thousands of other political refugees. Some estimates put the total count as high as 150,000. See Stewart, “They’re Your Problem,” 67.
[50] “Canadian Gallup Poll, October 1968, #332,” Canadian Institute of Public Opinion, accessed April 5, 2020, https://dataverse.scholarsportal.info/ddi_explore/index.html?dfId=82506&dvLocale=en#?selected=@_id%3Dv287076%26type%3Drow&view=chart; Edward Cowan, “Americans Move to Canada in Record Numbers,” January 1, 1970, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1970/01/01/archives/americans-move-to-canada-in-record-numbers-canada-draws-restless.html.
[51] Mark Satin, Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada (Toronto: House of Anansi, 1968), 3.
[52] Cowan, “Americans Move to Canada in Record Numbers.”
[53] “They’re Your Problem,” 70.
[54] Squires, Building Sanctuary, 112-129; Canada, House of Commons Debates, 22 May 1969, http://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC2801_08/911?r=0&s=1.
[55] Quoted in Victor Levant, Quiet Complicity: Canadian Involvement in the Vietnam War (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 1986), 55.
[56] Estimate of spending quoted in ibid.; report of percent of military aid used in Vietnam quoted in Ernie Regehr, Arms Canada: The Deadly Business of Military Exports (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1987), 61.
[57] Lester B. Pearson, “Address to Faculty Committee on Vietnam,” (speech, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, March 10, 1967), inCanadian Foreign Policy 1966-1976: Selected Speeches and Documents, ed. Arthur E. Blanchette (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1980), 130.
[58] Opinion poll, November 1967, as quoted in O’Kane, “Canadian Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam,” 32.
[59] Alexander Ross, “The Vietnam War: What Canadians Really Think,” Macleans, October 1, 1967, https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1967/10/1/the-vietnam-war-what-canadians-really-think.
[60] Walter Gordon, “The War in Vietnam,” (speech, Sixth Arts and Management Conference of Professional Women, May 13, 1967), appendix 8 in Walter Gordon: A Political Memoir (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977), 365.
[61] For media reaction, see cartoons as quoted in Adam J. Green, “Images of Americans: The United States in Canadian Newspapers during the 1960s,” PhD. thesis, (University of Ottawa, 2006), 226-227, https://ocul-uo.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01OCUL_UO/1lm0b9c/alma991014785809705161. For conservative opposition reaction, see Canada, House of Commons Debates, 23 May 1967 (Mr. Diefenbaker, CPC), http://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC2702_01/487?r=0&s=1.
[62] Hungary, “Statement before the First Committee of the UN General Assembly,” November 11, 1966, https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul_rule76.
[63] Boyko, Cold Front, 124-125
[64] Quoted in Levant, Quiet Complicity, 55.
[65] Canada, Parliament, House of Commons, Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs, minutes of proceedings, 1st session, 38th parliament, 2005, https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/38-1/NDDN/meeting-46/evidence.
[66] Stewart, “Butcher’s Helper.”
[67] Ian McKay, “Sarnia in the Sixties (Or the Peculiarities of the Canadians),” in New World Coming: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness, ed. Karen Dubinsky, Catherine Krull, Susan Lord, Sean Mills, and Scott Rutherford (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2009), 25.
[68] Bothwell, Penguin History, 418.
[69] Patrick Hagopian, “The ‘Frustrated Hawks,’ Tet 1968, and the Transformation of American Politics,” European Journal of American Studies (Online) 3, no. 2 (2008), https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/7193.
[70] Phil Ochs, “Another Age,” track 9 on Rehearsals for Retirement, A&M Records, 1969, vinyl.
[71] Max Frankel, “’Japan Inc.’ and ‘Nixon Shocks,’” New York Times, November 25, 1971, https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/25/archives/-japan-inc-and-nixon-shocks-china-currency-and-textiles-bring-a.html.
[72] John H. Sigler and Dennis Goresky, “Public Opinion on United States-Canadian Relations,” International Organization 28, no. 4 (Fall 1974): 646-647, 650-651, 658-659, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706228.
[73] The Guess Who, “American Woman,” track 1 on American Woman, RCA Victor, 1970, vinyl; “RPM’s Top 100 of 1970,” Library and Archives Canada, accessed April 5, 2020, https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/films-videos-sound-recordings/rpm/Pages/image.aspx?Image=nlc008388.3740&URLjpg=http%3a%2f%2fwww.collectionscanada.gc.ca%2fobj%2f028020%2ff4%2fnlc008388.3740.gif&Ecopy=nlc008388.3740.
[74] Mitchell Sharp, Which Reminds Me...:A Memoir (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 184-185.
[75] Ibid., 186.
[76] Peyton V. Lyon, “The Trudeau Doctrine,” International Journal 26, no. 1 (Winter 1970/1971): 22, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40201020.
[77] Donald S. MacDonald, “White Paper on Defence,” August 1971, in Canadian Foreign Policy 1966-1976: Selected Speeches and Documents, ed. Arthur E. Blanchette (Montreal: McGill-Queens Press, 1980), 49-52.
[78] Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1979), 383.
[79] On American public opinion, see William L. Lunch and Peter W. Sperlich, “American Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam,” The Western Political Quarterly 32, no. 1 (March 1979): 24, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/447561. On Canadian public opinion, see Gallup poll #340, March 1970, as quoted in O’Kane, “Canadian Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam,” 39.
[80] Sharp, Which Reminds Me…, 213
[81] Levant, Quiet Complicity, 55.
[82] Bruce Anderson and David Coletto, “Highest Positives for Trudeau son and Father, Highest Negatives for Stephen Harper,” Abacus Data, January 17, 2016, https://abacusdata.ca/popularity-prime-ministers/.
[83] Robert Bothwell, “Indochinese Shadows,” HIS311: Introduction to Canadian International Relations (class lecture, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, February 6, 2020).
[84] Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1 February 1973, http://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC2901_01/889?r=0&s=1.
[85] “Canadian Gallup Poll, July 1973, #360.” Canadian Institute of Political Opinion, accessed April 5, 2020, https://dataverse.scholarsportal.info/ddi_explore/index.html?dfId=82584&dvLocale=en#?selected=@_id%3Dv288324%26type%3Drow&view=chart.
