Canada and the Vietnam War

During the First Indochina War between France and the Indo-Chinese nationalist and communist parties, Canada remained militarily uninvolved 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 Canadians had decided was not strategically vital.

Canada laid out six prerequisites to joining a war effort or Asian alliance like SEATO:

1. It had to involve cultural and trade ties in addition to a military alliance.
2. It had to demonstrably meet the will of the people in the countries involved.
3. Other free Asian states had to support it directly or in principle.
4. France had to refer the conflict to United Nations.
5. Any multilateral action must conform to the UN charter.
6. Any action had to be divorced from all elements of colonialism.

These criteria effectively guaranteed Canada would not participate in the Vietnam War.

Colonel Lorne RodenBush was Canada's representative to the International Control Commission in Vietnam from 1967– 68.[5]

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 Americans. 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 Americans, with the approval of the Canadian government. Canada also sent foreign aid to South Vietnam, which, while humanitarian, was directed by the Americans.[6] Canada tried to mediate between the warring countries, aiming for a conclusion that could allow the U.S. to leave the conflict honorably, but also reportedly publicly (if mildly) criticized American war methods. Text of a speech which Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson gave at Temple University in Philadelphia in 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."[7][8][9]

Meanwhile, Canadian industry exported military supplies and raw materials useful in their manufacture, including ammunition, napalm and Agent Orange,[10] to the United States, as trade between the two countries carried on unhindered.

"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%".[6]

Although these exports were sales by Canadian companies, not gifts from the Canadian government, they benefited the American war effort nonetheless. The first official response to the economic support being given to the United States military from the government was by Lester B. Pearson on March 10, 1967 that the export of goods to their southern ally was "necessary and logical" due to the extreme integration of both economies, and that an embargo would also be a notice of withdrawal from North American defense arrangements.[11]

As the war escalated, relations between Canada and the United States deteriorated. On April 2, 1965, Pearson gave a speech at Temple University in the United States which, in the context of firm support for U.S. policy, 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—in fact, they both had further contacts, including later twice meeting in Canada.[12]

A de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou transport plane on landing approach, Vietnam War, 1971.

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 American forces, not sending these directly to South Vietnam but to the United States. Sold 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 1956[13] Defence Production Sharing Agreement, Canadian industry sold $2.47 billion in material to the United States between 1965 and 1973.[10] 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 acted as an intermediary between the United States Department of Defense and Canadian industry.[10] In some cases Canadian defence contractors were even sent to the theatre of war to carry out company work such as when de Havilland Canada sent mobile repair teams from the Downsview (Toronto) plant to carry out depot level repair on 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.[14] Canada also allowed their NATO ally to use Canadian facilities and bases for training exercises and weapons testing as per existing treaties.

Between January 28, 1973 and July 31, 1973, Canada provided 240 peacekeeping troops to Operation Gallant, the peace keeping operation associated with the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) Vietnam, along with Hungary, Indonesia, and Poland.[15] Their role was to monitor the cease-fire in South Vietnam per the Paris Peace Accords.[16] After Canada's departure from the Commission, it was replaced by Iran.

The Canadian Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Windsor, Ontario, commemorates Canadians who died fighting alongside American forces in Vietnam.

Toronto-born Peter C. Lemon served with distinction in the U.S. Army in Vietnam.

In a counter-current to the movement of American draft evaders and deserters to Canada, about 30,000 Canadians volunteered to fight in southeast Asia.[17] Among the volunteers were fifty Mohawks from the Kahnawake reserve near Montreal.[18] One hundred ten Canadians died in Vietnam, and seven remain listed as missing in action. U.S. Army Sergeant Peter C. Lemon, an American 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 Armed Forces before the U.S officially declared war on Germany)[19]

In Windsor, Ontario, there is a privately funded monument to the Canadians killed in the Vietnam War.[20] In Melocheville, Quebec, there is a monument dating from October 1989 funded by the Association Québécoise des Vétérans du Vietnam.[21]

American draft evaders (often referred to by the disparaging term "draft dodgers") and military deserters who sought refuge in Canada during the Vietnam War would ignite controversy among those seeking to immigrate to Canada, some of it provoked by the Canadian government's initial refusal to admit those who could not prove that they had been discharged from [American] military service. This changed in 1968.[22] On May 22, 1969, Ottawa announced that immigration officials would not and could not ask about immigration applicants' military status if they showed up at the border seeking permanent residence in Canada.[23] According to Valerie Knowles, draft evaders were usually college-educated sons of the middle class who could no longer defer induction into the Selective Service System. Deserters, on the other hand, were predominantly sons of the lower-income and working classes who had been inducted into the armed services directly from high school or who had volunteered, hoping to obtain a skill and broaden their limited horizons.[22]

Starting in 1965, Canada became a choice haven for American draft evaders and deserters. Because they were not formally classified as refugees but were admitted as immigrants, there is no official estimate of how many draft evaders and deserters were admitted to Canada during the Vietnam War. One informed estimate puts their number between 30,000 and 40,000.[22] Whether or not this estimate is accurate, the fact remains that emigration from the United States was high as long as America was involved militarily in the war and maintained compulsory military service; in 1971 and 1972 Canada received more immigrants from the United States than from any other country.[22]

Draft evaders

Main article: Draft evasion

Mark Satin (left) counseling American Vietnam War evaders at the Anti-Draft Programme office in Toronto, 1967.

Estimates vary greatly as to how many Americans settled in Canada for the specific reason of dodging the draft or "evading conscription," as opposed to desertion, or other reasons. Canadian immigration statistics show that 20,000 to 30,000 draft-eligible American men came to Canada as immigrants during the Vietnam era. The BBC stated that "as many as 60,000 young American men dodged the draft."[24] Estimates of the total number of American citizens who moved to Canada due to their opposition to the war range from 50,000 to 125,000[25] This exodus was "the largest politically motivated migration from the United States since the United Empire Loyalists moved north to oppose the American Revolution."[26] Major communities of war resisters formed in Montreal, the Slocan Valley, British Columbia, and on Baldwin Street in Toronto, Ontario.

They were at first assisted by the Student Union for Peace Action, a campus-based Canadian anti-war group with connections to Students for a Democratic Society.[27][28] Canadian immigration policy at the time made it easy for immigrants from all countries to obtain legal status in Canada.[29] By late 1967, draft evaders were being assisted primarily by several locally based anti-draft groups (over twenty of them), such as the Vancouver Committee to Aid American War Objectors[30][31] and the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme.[32][33] As a counselor for the Programme, Mark Satin wrote the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada in 1968.[34][35] It sold nearly 100,000 copies overall.[36][3] In 1970, Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot recorded his song "Sit Down Young Stranger" to express his views on Canada's acceptance of American draft evaders.

Quebec gay rights advocate Michael Hendricks (right) is one American war resister who affected Canadian life.

The influx of these young men, who (as mentioned earlier) were often well educated[22][37][38] and politically leftist, affected Canada's academic and cultural institutions, and Canadian society at large. These new arrivals tended to balance the "brain drain" that Canada had experienced. While some draft evaders returned to the United States after a pardon was declared in 1977 during the administration of Jimmy Carter, roughly half of them stayed in Canada.[39]

Prominent draft evaders who stayed in Canada permanently, or for a significant amount of time, have included:

• Mike Fisher – founding member of Heart, notable rock/pop band[40]
• William Gibson – science fiction writer, winner of a Nebula Award
• Jim Green – Vancouver city councillor and mayoral candidate
• Michael Hendricks – gay rights advocate[38]
• Jeffry House – lawyer, clients include many activists
• Bill King – musician and organizer of Toronto's Beaches Jazz Festival[41]
• Michael Klein – activist physician, spouse of Bonnie Sherr Klein, father of Naomi Klein[23][38]
• Keith Maillard – professor or creative writing, University of British Columbia
• Eric Nagler – children's entertainer on The Elephant Show
• Wayne Robinson – father of Svend Robinson, former Member of Parliament
• Jay Scott – film critic, The Globe and Mail
• Jesse Winchester – singer-songwriter
• Michael Wolfson – assistant chief statistician at Statistics Canada[23]
• Harry Yates – human resources manager at the Ministry of the Attorney General of British Columbia

After the war, Canada admitted many Vietnamese boat people as immigrants.

The Vietnam War continued to resonate in Canada long after the war was over.

• Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War
• Baldwin Village – a neighbourhood and commercial street in Toronto that became the centre of the American exile community
• Canada and Iraq War resisters
• Canada–Vietnam relations
• Military history of Australia during the Vietnam War
• New Zealand in the Vietnam War

• Building Sanctuary: The Movement to Support Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, 1965–1973, by Jessica Squires. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-7748-2524-5.
• Forging Our Legacy: Canadian Citizenship and Immigration, 1900–1977, by Valerie Knowles. Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services Canada, 2000. ISBN 978-0-662-28983-8.
• I Volunteered: Canadian Vietnam Vets Remember, by Tracey Arial. Winnipeg: Watson & Dwyer Publishing, 1998. ISBN 978-1-896239-14-9.
• In the Interests of Peace: Canada and Vietnam, 1954–1973, by Douglas A. Ross. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-8020-5632-0.
• Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, by Mark Satin. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, "A List" reprint edition, 2017, orig. 1968. New introduction by Canadian historian James Laxer, new afterword by Satin ("Bringing Draft Dodgers to Canada in the 1960s"). ISBN 978-1-4870-0289-3.
• The New Exiles: American War Resisters in Canada, by Roger Neville Williams. New York: Liveright Publishers, 1970. Includes transcripts of interviews with resisters. ISBN 978-0-87140-533-3.
• Northern Passage: American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, by John Hagan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-674-00471-9.
• Quiet Complicity: Canadian Involvement in the Vietnam War, by Victor Levant. Foreword by Gwynne Dyer. Toronto: Between the Lines Books, 1987. ISBN 978-0-919946-72-9.
• Snow Job: Canada, the United States, and Vietnam (1954–1973), by Charles Taylor. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1974. ISBN 978-0-88784-619-9.
• Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540-2015, by Valerie Knowles. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 4th ed., 2016, p. 214 ("Draft-Age Americans in Canada" section). Incorporates and updates parts of the Knowles booklet cited in this article. ISBN 978-1-4597-3285-8.
• Unknown Warriors: Canadians in the Vietnam War, by Fred Gaffen. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1990. ISBN 978-1-55002-073-1.
• "Vietnam War", by Victor Levant. On the Canadian Encyclopedia website. Accessed 14 December 2012.
• War Is Here: The Vietnam War and Canadian Literature, by Robert McGill. Kingston, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017. ISBN 978-0-7735-5159-6.