Canada did not officially participate in the Vietnam War. However, it contributed to peacekeeping forces in 1973 to help enforce the Paris Peace Accords.
Privately, some Canadians contributed to the war effort. Canadian corporations sold materiel to the U.S. government. In addition, at least 30,000 Canadians volunteered to serve in the U.S. armed forces during the war. At least 134 Canadians died or were reported missing in Vietnam.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of U.S. Vietnam War resisters immigrated to Canada to avoid the draft. Largely middle class and educated, they had a significant impact on Canadian life.Agarwal, Annushka (9 July 2025). " Resisterville: 50,000 Evaders Fled the U.S. Across the Northern Border and Changed Canada". National Post (Canada). Retrieved 18 August 2025. After the war, tens of thousands of Vietnamese boat people were also admitted and became a unique part of Canadian life.
Beginnings
During the First Indochina War between France and the Indo-Chinese nationalist and communist parties, Canada remained militarily neutral but provided modest diplomatic and economic support to the French. Canada was, however, part of the International Control Commission (along with Poland and India) that oversaw the 1954 Geneva Agreements that divided Vietnam, provided for French withdrawal, and would have instituted elections for reunification by 1956. Behind the scenes, Canadian diplomats tried to discourage both France and the United States from escalating the conflict in a part of the world Canada had decided was not strategically vital.
Canada laid out six prerequisites to joining a war effort or Asian alliance like SEATO: It had to involve cultural and trade connections in addition to a military alliance. It had to demonstrably meet the will of the people in the countries involved. Other free Asian states had to support it directly or in principle. France had to refer the conflict to the United Nations organization. Any multilateral action must conform to the UN charter. Any action had to be divorced from all elements of colonialism.
These criteria effectively guaranteed Canada would not participate in the Vietnam War.
Canadian involvement in the war
At the start of the Vietnam War, Canada was a member of the International Control Commission (ICC) overseeing the implementation of the Geneva Agreements, and thus attempted to maintain an air of neutrality. However, the Canadian negotiators were strongly on the side of the U.S. One representative (J. Blair Seaborn, younger brother of Robert Seaborn) was even involved in secretly exchanging messages between the U.S. and North Vietnam on behalf of the U.S., with the approval of the Canadian government. Canada also sent foreign aid to South Vietnam, which, while humanitarian, was directed by the U.S.""Vietnam War". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Canada tried to mediate between the warring countries, aiming for a conclusion that could allow the U.S. to leave the conflict honourably. It has also been commonly believed, as reported at the time, that the Canadian government of Prime Minister Lester Pearson publicly criticized U.S. war methods. Yet, the text of a speech which Pearson delivered at Temple University in Philadelphia on April 2, 1965, has debunked this widespread rumor, with Pearson even stating "The government and great majority of people of my country have supported wholeheartedly the US peacekeeping and peacemaking policies in Vietnam."
Meanwhile, Canadian industry exported military supplies and raw materials useful in their manufacture, including ammunition, napalm and Agent Orange,Supplying the war machine – CBC Archives to the United States, as trade between the two countries continued without interruption or hindrance. In total, Canadians firms sold over $12.5 billion of war materials to the US during the war, including machinery, munitions, clothing, food, and raw materials. Testing of Agent Orange also took place in Canada.
"500 firms sold $2.5 billion of war materials (ammunition, napalm, aircraft engines and explosives) to the Pentagon. Another $10 billion in food, beverages, berets and boots for the troops was exported to the U.S., as well as nickel, copper, lead, oil, brass for shell casings, wiring, plate armour and military transport. In Canada unemployment fell to record low levels of 3.9%".
Although these exports were sales by Canadian firms, not gifts from the Canadian government, they nonetheless benefited the U.S. war effort. The first official statement about the Canadian economic support given to the United States armed forces was by Lester Pearson on March 10, 1967, when he stated that the export of goods to Canada's southern ally was "necessary and logical" due to the extreme integration of both economies, and that an embargo would be a notice of withdrawal from North American defense arrangements."Thakur, Ramesh C.(1984). Peacekeeping in Vietnam: Canada, India, Poland, and the International Commission. The University of Alberta Press. p.205. .
As the war escalated, however, relations between Canada and the United States gradually deteriorated. In his Temple University speech, while stating firm support for U.S. policy, Pearson also called for a pause in the bombing of North Vietnam. In a perhaps apocryphal story, when a furious President Lyndon B. Johnson met with Pearson the next day, he grabbed the much smaller Canadian by his lapels and talked angrily with him for an hour. After this incident, the two men somehow found ways to resolve their differences over the war and had further contacts, including later twice meeting in Canada. With the federal elections of 1968, which brought Pierre Trudeau to the prime ministry, Canadian policy changed radically to one of unrelenting criticism of U.S. policy in Vietnam. Trudeau called for immediate negotiations between the U.S. and North Vietnam and offered on at least one occasion to serve as mediator in the negotiations, annoying President Richard Nixon, who succeeded Lyndon Johnson after his own election to the U.S. presidency in 1968.
Assistance to the U.S. war effort
Canada's official diplomatic position in relation to the Vietnam War was that of a non-belligerent, which imposed a ban on the export of war-related items to the combat areas. Nonetheless, Canadian industry was also a major supplier of equipment and supplies to the U.S. forces, not sending these directly to South Vietnam but to the United States. The goods included relatively benign items like boots, but also aircraft, munitions, napalm, and commercial defoliants, the use of which was fiercely opposed by anti-war protesters at the time. In accordance with the 1956Full text (pdf) Defence Production Sharing Agreement, Canadian industry sold $2.47 billion in materiel to the United States between 1965 and 1973. Many of the companies were owned by US parent firms, but all export sales over $100,000 US (and thus, the majority of contracts) were arranged through the Canadian Commercial Corporation, a crown corporation which functioned as an intermediary between the United States Department of Defense and Canadian industry. In some cases Canadian defence contractors were even sent to the theatre of war to undertake company work, such as when de Havilland Canada sent mobile repair teams from the Downsview, Toronto plant to complete depot-level repair of battle-damaged de Havilland Caribou aircraft that were owned and operated by the U.S. Army. Furthermore, the Canadian and the American Defence departments worked together to test chemical defoliants for use in Vietnam, a collaboration only revealed to the public in 1981."History of the Canadian Peoples, 1867–Present," Alvin Finkel & Margaret Conrad, 1998 Canada also allowed their NATO ally to use Canadian facilities and bases for training exercises and weapons testing as per existing treaties.
Canadian diplomats covertly supported US counterinsurgency and espionage efforts in Vietnam, justifying these actions as a counterbalance to similar activities conducted by its Eastern bloc peers on the International Control Commission and the International Commission of Control and Supervision.
Between January 28, 1973, and July 31, 1973, Canada provided 240 peacekeeping troops to Operation Gallant, the peacekeeping operation associated with the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) Vietnam, along with Hungary, Indonesia, and Poland.Vietnam War Bibliography: The International Commissions: ICC (ICSC) and ICCS Edwin Moise. Their role was to monitor the cease-fire in South Vietnam per the Paris Peace Accords.Control and Supervision Vietnam 1973 – ICCS , Veterans Affairs Canada, March 26, 2001 After Canada's departure from the commission, it was replaced by Iran.
Canadians in the U.S. armed forces
In a counter-current to the movement of U.S. draft evaders and deserters to Canada, about 30,000 Canadians volunteered to fight for the U.S. in Southeast Asia. Among the volunteers were 50 Mohawks from the Kahnawake reserve near Montreal. U.S. Army Sergeant Peter C. Lemon, an immigrant from Canada, was awarded the U.S. Medal of Honor for his valour in the conflict. This cross-border enlistment was not unprecedented: Both the First and the Second World War saw thousands of Americans join the Canadian military before the U.S. officially declared war on Germany.
In 2015, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) produced a story remembering the Canadians who fought and died in the war.Corday, Chris (10 November 2015). " Lost to History: The Canadians Who Fought in Vietnam". CBC News British Columbia. Retrieved 5 December 2017. According to that story, a Canadian veterans association estimates that 20,000 Canadians enlisted in the U.S. armed forces to fight alongside the Americans, while some historians put the number as high as 40,000. Of these, an estimated 12,000 saw combat in Vietnam, and at least 134 were killed or declared missing in action.
The 2015 CBC story paid special attention to Rob McSorley, a teen-age Army Ranger from Vancouver who was shot dead by North Vietnamese soldiers. Other Canadians who gave their lives and were recognized in the story include: Thomas Edwin Fraser of the Six Nations Reserve in Ohsweken, Ontario Randolph Hatton from Toronto Robert Wilson Holditch from Port Robinson, Ontario Bruce Thomas Kennedy from Espanola, Ontario Jonathan Peter Kmetyk from St. Catharines, Ontario John J. Roden from Halifax, Nova Scotia Larry Semeniuk from Windsor, Ontario Murray Dean Vidler from Kerrobert, Saskatchewan.
In Windsor, Ontario, there is a privately funded monument to the Canadians killed in the Vietnam War. In Melocheville, Quebec, there is a monument dating from October 1989 funded by the Association Québécoise des Vétérans du Vietnam.
in the 2009 episode of the show house "the tyrant" house treats a canadian veterans phantom pain who while in vietnam as a peacekeeper lost his arm.
U.S. war resisters in Canada