Canada and the Cold War

Canada and the Cold War

Author: Reginald Whitaker

Publisher: Lorimer

Published: 2003-10-19

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13:

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Canada and the Cold War is a fascinating historical overview of a key period in Canadian history. The focus is on how Canada and Canadians responded to the Soviet Union -- and to America's demands on its northern neighbour.


Cold War Canada

Cold War Canada

Author: Reginald Whitaker

Publisher:

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13:

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The Cold War was initiated in Canada in 1945 by the dramatic defection of Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet cipher clerk. This event marked the start of over four decades of muted conflict between the Soviet Union and the West and became a major element of public life in Canada. This book examines the response of the Canadian government to these events and the systematic repression of communists and the Left, directed at civil servants, scientists, trade unionists, and political activists. These campaigns were undertaken in a secrecy imposed by the government, and supported by the RCMP security services. It also discusses the development of Canada's Cold War policy, the emergence of the new security state, and the deepening political alignment of Canada with the United States.


Czech Refugees in Cold War Canada

Czech Refugees in Cold War Canada

Author: Jan Raska

Publisher: Univ. of Manitoba Press

Published: 2018-08-24

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 0887555705

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During the Cold War, more than 36,000 individuals entering Canada claimed Czechoslovakia as their country of citizenship. A defining characteristic of this migration of predominantly political refugees was the prevalence of anti-communist and democratic values. Diplomats, industrialists, politicians, professionals, workers, and students fled to the West in search of freedom, security, and economic opportunity. Jan Raska’s Czech Refugees in Cold War Canada explores how these newcomers joined or formed ethnocultural organizations to help in their attempts to affect developments in Czechoslovakia and Canadian foreign policy towards their homeland. Canadian authorities further legitimized the Czech refugees’ anti-communist agenda and increased their influence in Czechoslovak institutions. In turn, these organizations supported Canada’s Cold War agenda of securing the state from communist infiltration. Ultimately, an adherence to anti-communism, the promotion of Canadian citizenship, and the cultivation of a Czechoslovak ethnocultural heritage accelerated Czech refugees’ socioeconomic and political integration in Cold War Canada. By analyzing oral histories, government files, ethnic newspapers, and community archival records, Raska reveals how Czech refugees secured admission as desirable immigrants and navigated existing social, cultural, and political norms in Cold War Canada.


Give Me Shelter

Give Me Shelter

Author: Andrew Paul Burtch

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0774822406

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What do you do when a nuclear weapon detonates nearby? During the early Cold War years of 1945-63, Civil Defence Canada and the Emergency Measures Organization planned for just such a disaster and encouraged citizens to prepare their families and their cities for nuclear war. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil defence program was widely mocked, and the public was vastly unprepared for nuclear war. Canada’s civil defence program was born in the early Cold War, when fears of conflict between the superpowers ran high. Give Me Shelter features previously unreleased documents detailing Canada’s nuclear survival plans. Andrew Burtch reveals how the organization publicly appealed to citizens to prepare for disaster themselves -- from volunteering as air-raid wardens to building fallout shelters. This tactic ultimately failed, however, due to a skeptical populace, chronic underfunding, and repeated bureaucratic fumbling. Give Me Shelter exposes the challenges of educating the public in the face of the looming threat of nuclear annihilation. Give Me Shelter explains how governments and the public prepared for the unexpected. It is essential reading for historians, policymakers, and anybody interested in Canada’s Cold War home front.


Shattered Illusions

Shattered Illusions

Author: Donald G. Mahar

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-12-31

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1442269154

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Yevgeni Vladimirovich Brik and James Douglas Finley Morrison were central figures in what was considered one of the most important Cold War operations in the West at the time. Their story, which involves espionage, intelligence tradecraft, intelligence service penetrations, double agent scenarios, and betrayal, is a piece of Cold War intelligence history that has never been fully told. Yevgeni Brik was a KGB deep cover illegal who had been dispatched to Canada in 1951. He settled in Verdun, Quebec. He eventually became the KGB Illegal Resident where he had responsibility for running a number of agents, one of whom was working on the CF-105, Avro Arrow. In 1953, he fell in love with a married Canadian woman to whom he revealed his true identity. She persuaded him to turn himself in, which resulted in his becoming a double agent, working for Canada. He was later betrayed by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer, James Morrison, who sought money from the KGB to pay his debts. Brik was consequently lured back to Moscow in 1955, where he was arrested, and interrogated. Convicted of treason, a traitor’s fate awaited him, predictable, grim and final. Incredibly, he reappeared at a British Embassy as an old man in 1992, seeking Canada’s help. He was exfiltrated by a joint Canadian / British intelligence team which was headed by Donald Mahar. He was debriefed by Mahar for several months when they returned to Canada.


Just Watch Us

Just Watch Us

Author: Christabelle Sethna

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2018-03-21

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0773553665

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From the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, in the midst of the Cold War and second-wave feminism, the RCMP security service – prompted by fears of left-wing and communist subversion – monitored and infiltrated the women’s liberation movement in Canada and Quebec. Just Watch Us investigates why and how this movement was targeted, weighing carefully the presumed threat its left-wing ties presented to the Canadian government against the defiant challenge its campaign for gender equality posed to Canadian society. Based on a close reading of thousands of pages of RCMP documents declassified under Canada’s Access to Information Act and the corresponding Privacy Act, Just Watch Us demonstrates that the security service’s longstanding anti-Communist focus distorted its threat assessment of feminist organizing. Combining gender analysis and critical approaches to state surveillance, Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt consider the machinations of the RCMP, including its bureaucratic evolution, intelligence-gathering operations, and impact, as well as the evolution of the women’s liberation movement from its broad transnational influences to its elusive quest for unity among women across lines of ideology and identity. Significantly, the authors also grapple with the historiographical, methodological, and ethical difficulties of working with declassified security documents and sensitive information. A sharp-eyed inquiry into spy policies and tactics in Cold War Canada, Just Watch Us speaks to the serious political implications of state surveillance for social justice activism in liberal democracies.


Invisible and Inaudible in Washington

Invisible and Inaudible in Washington

Author: Edelgard Mahant

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0774842245

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Edelgard Mahant and Graeme Mount examine details of White House policy from 1945 to the 1980s to assess the extent to which the United States could be said to have had a Canada policy. They challenge the popular nationalist view that Canada has been treated as peripheral and dependent, but also counter the opposing view that Washington has respected Canadian advice and benefitted from it. Instead, they argue that for the most part Canada has mattered little in Washington and that America's Canada policy is largely an ad hoc affair.


Cold War

Cold War

Author: Jerry Langton

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2015-02-03

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1443432571

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Organized crime in Canada has long been dominated by the Hells Angels and their friends in the Rizzuto crime family. Over the years, they have brought many street gangs into their alliance, most notably the Indian Posse, many sets of the Crips, the Independent Soldiers and the Red Scorpions. The key to their allegiance is that the Hells Angels and the Rizzutos could always get the commodities—marijuana, cocaine, meth, Ecstasy, cash, steroids—that fed organized crime. But their strong-arm tactics have created an opposition including the Cotroni family, the Musitanos, the Outlaws, the Bandidos, the Rock Machine—all less familiar names to Canadians. And the opposition is now standing up to the stalwart Canadian kingpins. Canada’s crime families, bikers and youth gangs are waging a war for supremacy across the country, and innocent people often get in the way. In Cold War, bestselling author Jerry Langton explains the history of the rivalries, the current tensions and the build-up of anti–Hells Angels/Rizzuto family forces in Canada. In unprecedented detail, Langton outlines the risk and the fallout of Canada’s true-crime cold war.


In Peace Prepared

In Peace Prepared

Author: Andrew B. Godefroy

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2014-10-15

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 077482705X

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The Allies claimed victory at the end of the Second World War, but the United States’ invention of the atomic bomb and its replication by the Soviet Union posed new dangers for all nations. In Peace Prepared examines what Canada’s Cold War Army did to prepare for war – and why and how it did it. Although a Third World War never happened, army officers supported by a large civilian defence workforce of scientists, engineers, and designers responded aggressively to the challenges presented by the possibility of nuclear attack. Through innovation and adaptation, they developed a collaborative and systematic approach to problem solving that not only played a significant role in the evolution of Canada’s national force but also shaped how armies in the Western Alliance related to one another during the Cold War and beyond.


Warming Up to the Cold War

Warming Up to the Cold War

Author: Robert Teigrob

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2009-05-30

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1442693258

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When U.S. President Harry Truman asked his allies for military support in the Korean War, Canada's government, led by Prime Minister Louis St-Laurent, was reluctant. St-Laurent's government was forced to change its position however, when the Canadian populace, conditioned to significant degrees by the powerful influence of American media and culture, demanded a more vigorous response. Warming up to the Cold War shows how American cultural influence helped to undermine waning Canadian nationalism. Comparing Canadian and American responses to events such as the atomic bomb, the Gouzenko Affair, the creation of NATO, and the Korean War, Robert Teigrob traces the role that culture and public opinion played in shaping responses to international affairs. With penetrating political and cultural insight, he examines the Cold War consensus between the two countries to reveal the ways that Canada cited "home-grown" rationales to justify its increasing subservience to American strategy and posturing. Full of fascinating insights, Warming up the Cold War is essential reading for anyone interested in the Cold War, the role of culture in politics, and the history of U.S.-Canada relations.