During the Cold War, Canada was one of the western powers playing a central role in the major alliances. It was an ally of the United States, but there were several foreign policy differences between the two countries over the course of the Cold War. Canada's peacekeeping role during the Cold War has played a major role in its positive global image. The country served in every UN peacekeeping effort from its inception in 1948 until 1989. This resulted in Canada providing the greatest amount of UN peacekeepers during the Cold War.
Canada was a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) in 1958, and played a leading role in United Nations peacekeeping operations—from the Korean War to the creation of a permanent UN peacekeeping force during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Subsequent peacekeeping interventions occurred in the Congo (1960), Cyprus (1964), the Sinai (1973), Vietnam (with the International Control Commission), Golan Heights, Lebanon (1978), and Namibia (1989–1990).
Canada did not follow the American lead in all Cold War actions, sometimes resulting in tensions between the two countries. For instance, Canada refused to join the Vietnam War; in 1984, the last nuclear weapons based in Canada were removed; diplomatic relations were maintained with Cuba; and the Canadian government recognized the People's Republic of China before the United States.
The Canadian military maintained a standing presence in Western Europe as part of its NATO deployment at several bases in Germany—including long tenures at CFB Baden-Soellingen and CFB Lahr, in the Black Forest region of West Germany. Also, Canadian military facilities were maintained in Bermuda, France, and the United Kingdom. From the early 1960s until the 1980s, Canada maintained weapon platforms armed with nuclear weapons—including nuclear-tipped air-to-air rockets, surface-to-air missiles, and high-yield gravity bombs principally deployed in the Western European theatre of operations as well as in Canada.
Background Canada emerged from the Second World War as a world power, radically transforming a principally agricultural and rural dominion of a dying empire into a truly sovereign nation, with a market economy focused on a combination of resource extraction and refinement, heavy manufacturing, and high-technology research and development. As a consequence of supplying so much of the war effort for six long years, Canada's military grew to an exceptional size: over a million service personnel, the world's fifth largest surface fleet and fourth largest air force. Despite a draw-down at the end of the war, the Canadian military nonetheless executed Operation Muskox, a massive deployment across the Canadian Arctic designed in part to train for a ground and air war in the region. Canadians also assisted in humanitarian efforts, and sent observers for the United Nations to India and Palestine in 1947 and 1948.
There was never any doubt early on as to which side Canada was on in the Cold War due to its location and historical alliances. On the domestic front, the Canadian state at all levels fought vehemently against what it characterized as communist subversion. Canadian and business leaders opposed the advance of the labour movement on the grounds that it was a Bolshevik conspiracy during the interwar period. The peak moments of this effort were the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 and the anticommunist campaigns of the depression, including the stopping of the On-to-Ottawa Trek. Canada, along with other major, Allied Powers convened at the Yalta Conference in 1945 to discuss the reorganization of Europe, laying the groundwork for a new Europe.
Early Cold War (1946–1960) In February 1946, the Canadian government disclosed to the public the defection of a Soviet cipher clerk, Igor Gouzenko, in Ottawa; who also disclosed the existence of a Soviet spy ring in the country. The event has been used by historians to mark the beginning of the Cold War era in Canada, with the Gouzenko Affair triggering another red scare in Canada.
Canada was a founding member of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), of which Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent was a chief architect. Canada was one of its most ardent supporters and pushed (largely unsuccessfully) to have it become an economic and cultural organization in addition to a military alliance.
To defend North America against a possible enemy attack, Canada and the United States began to work very closely together in the 1950s. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) created a joint air-defence system. In northern Canada, the Distant Early Warning Line (or Dew Line) was established to give warning of Soviet bombers heading over the north pole. Similar early warning radar systems were also developed in the middle of Canada, known as the Mid-Canada Line; and across the 50th parallel north, known as the Pinetree Line.
Domestic anti-Communism
Canada addressed the threat posed by Communist sympathizers in a manner more moderate than in the United States. The United States wished the Canadian government would go further, asking for a purge of trade unions, but the Canadian government left the purge of trade unions to the AFL–CIO. The American officials were especially concerned about the sailors on Great Lakes freight vessels, and, in 1951, Canada added them to those already screened by its secret anti-communist screening program. The Communist Party of Canada had not been outlawed since Section 98, which was repealed by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1935.
Despite its comparatively moderate stance towards Communism, the Canadian state continued intensive surveillance of Communists and sharing of intelligence with the United States. PROFUNC was a Government of Canada top secret plan to identify and detain Communist sympathizers during the height of the Cold War.CBC: Secret Cold War plan included mass detentions
Tensions between Canada and the United States heightened during this time as on April 4, 1957, Canadian Ambassador to Egypt, E. Herbert Norman, leaped to his death from a Cairo building after the United States Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security released a textual record of a previous hearing to the media. Despite having been cleared several years earlier—first by the RCMP in 1950, then again by the Canadian Minister of External Affairs, Lester B. Pearson (later Prime Minister)—the American media portrayed Norman as a spy and traitor. The only evidence the United States had was that as a student at Cambridge and Harvard he was a part of a Marxist communist study group. This made Pearson, who was still External Affairs Minister, backed by outrage across the country, send a note to the U.S. Government, threatening to offer no more security information on Canadian citizens until it was guaranteed that this information would not slip beyond the executive branch of the government.
Peacekeeping
It was during the Cold War period that Canada began to assert the international clout that went along with the reputation it had built on the international stage in World War I and World War II.
In the Korean War, the moderately sized contingent of volunteer soldiers from Canada made noteworthy contributions to the United Nations forces and served with distinction. Of particular note is the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry's contribution to the Battle of Kapyong.
Canada's major Cold War contribution to international politics was made in the innovation and implementation of 'Peacekeeping'. Although a United Nations military force had been proposed and advocated for the preservation of peace vis a vis the U.N.'s mandate by Canada's representatives Prime Minister Mackenzie King and his Secretary of State for External Affairs Louis St. Laurent at the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco in June 1945, it was not adopted at that time. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, the idea promoted by Canada in 1945 of a United Nations military force returned to the fore. The conflict involving Britain, France, Israel and Egypt quickly developed into a potential flashpoint between the emerging 'superpowers' of the United States and the Soviet Union as the Soviets made intimations that they would militarily support Egypt's cause. The Soviets went as far as to say they would be willing to use "all types of modern weapons of destruction" on London and Paris—an overt threat of nuclear attack. Canadian diplomat Lester B. Pearson re-introduced then-Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent's UN military force concept in the form of an 'Emergency Force' that would intercede and divide the combatants, and form a buffer zone or 'human shield' between the opposing forces. Pearson's United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), the first peacekeeping force, was deployed to separate the combatants, and enforce a ceasefire and resolution that was drawn up to end the hostilities.
Canada–U.S. tensions (1961–1980)
Diefenbaker and the Missile Crisis (1961–1963) Great debate broke out while John Diefenbaker was Prime Minister as to whether Canada should accept U.S. nuclear weapons on its territory. Diefenbaker had already agreed to buy the BOMARC missile system from the Americans, which would be not as effective without nuclear warheads, but balked at permitting the weapons into Canada.
Canada also maintained diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba following the Cuban Revolution. Prior to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the insistence on a much more placated policy towards the Cuban government had been a source of contention between the United States and Canada. Diefenbaker firmly stood by his policy decision, insisting that this was the result of the rights of states to establish their own forms of government, rejection of current US interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine as well as Canada's right to establish its own foreign policy. Concern in the Canadian government was focused primarily on nuclear weapons, many politicians in the opposition and in power believed that as long as the US president retained absolute control of the nuclear weapons, Canadian forces could be ordered to undertake nuclear missions for the US without Canadian consent.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Canada was expected to fall in line with American foreign policy, in that Canada's military forces were expected to go on immediate war alert status. Diefenbaker however, refused to do so emphasizing the need for United Nations intervention. It would only be after a tense phone call between President John F. Kennedy and Diefenbaker that Canada's armed forces would begin preparations for "immediate enemy attack."
Although the crisis would eventually be solved by diplomatic talks between Nikita Khrushchev and Kennedy, nothing would loom larger over the Canadian state in the months following the crisis than the governing party's disarray on the question of nuclear arms.
Pearson and Trudeau (1963–1984)
In the 1963 Canadian election, Diefenbaker was replaced by the famed diplomat Lester B. Pearson, who accepted the warheads. Further tensions developed when Pearson criticized the American role in the Vietnam War in a speech he gave at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Also of note: In 1968, Canada's three separate armed services were unified into the Canadian Armed Forces.)