Canada and the Vietnam War

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The Vietnam War has many effects on Canada - and Canada and Canada affecting the war.

The Government of Canada (1968-1979 of the 20th Canadian Ministry under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau]]) did not formally participate in the war. However, it contributed to peacekeeping forces in 1973 to help uphold the Paris Peace Accords.

Personally, some Canadians contribute to the war effort. Canadian corporations sell war material to Americans. In addition, at least 30,000 Canadians volunteered to serve in the American armed forces during the war. At least 134 Canadians died or were reported missing in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of opponents of Vietnam's American War emigrated to Canada to avoid the draft. Most of the middle class and educated, they have a significant impact on Canadian life. After the war, tens of thousands of Vietnamese boatmen were also recognized and became a unique part of Canadian life.

Video Canada and the Vietnam War

Starter

During the First Indochina War between France and the Indo-Chinese nationalist and communist party, Canada remained militarily uninvolved but provided France with simple diplomatic and economic support. Canada is, however, part of the International Control Commission (along with Poland and India) overseeing the 1954 Geneva Agreement that divides Vietnam, provided for French withdrawals and will institutionalize elections for reunification in 1956. Behind the scenes, Canadian diplomats try to prevent France and the United States from increased conflict in parts of the world decided by Canadians is not strategically important.

Canada sets six prerequisites for joining a war effort or an Asian alliance such as SEATO:

1. It should involve cultural and trade ties in addition to military alliances.
2. It should prove to fulfill the will of the people in the countries involved.
3. Other free Asian countries should support it in person or in principle.
4. France should refer the conflict to the UN.
5. Any multilateral action must conform to the UN charter.
6. Every action must be separated from all elements of colonialism.

This criterion effectively ensures Canada will not participate in the Vietnam War.

Maps Canada and the Vietnam War

Canadian involvement in war

At the beginning of the Vietnam War, Canada was a member of the International Control Commission (ICC) overseeing the implementation of the Geneva Agreement, and thus sought to maintain air neutrality. However, Canadian negotiators are very much on the American side. A representative (Blair Seaborn, Robert Seaborn's younger brother) is even involved in the secret exchange of messages between the US and North Vietnam on behalf of America, with the approval of the Canadian government. Canada also sends foreign aid to South Vietnam, which, while humanitarian, is directed by the Americans. Canada is trying to mediate between the warring countries, which aims to draw conclusions that allow the US to leave conflicts respectfully, but also openly (if somewhat) criticize American war methods.

Meanwhile, the Canadian industry exports military supplies and raw materials that are useful in their manufacture, including ammunition, napalm and Agent Orange, to the United States, as trade between the two countries is done unhindered.

"500 companies sold $ 2.5 billion of war materials (ammunition, napalm, aircraft engines and explosives) to the Pentagon, another $ 10 billion in food, drinks, berets and boots for troops exported to the US, as well as nickel, copper, lead, oil, brass for bullet casings, cables, plate protectors and military transport.In Canada, the unemployment rate dropped to a low of 3.9% "

Although this export is a sale by a Canadian company, rather than a gift from the Canadian government, they benefit the American war effort. The first official response to the economic support given to the US military from the government was by Lester B. Pearson on March 10, 1967 that exports of goods to their southern allies were "necessary and logical" because of the extreme integration of both economies, and that the embargo would also be notice of withdrawal from North American defense arrangements.

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 strong support for US policy, called for a pause in the bombing of North Vietnam. In an apocryphal story, when a President Lyndon B. Johnson met Pearson the next day, he reached for a much smaller Canadian with his lapel collar and spoke angrily for an hour. After this incident, the two men found a way to resolve their differences during the war - in fact, they both had further contacts, including a two-time meeting in Canada.

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Help to America

The official diplomatic position of Canada in relation to the Vietnam War is that of an unarmer, which imposes a ban on the export of war-related goods to battle areas. Nonetheless, the Canadian industry is also a major supplier of equipment and supplies to American troops, not sending this directly to South Vietnam but to the United States. The items sold include relatively harmless items such as boots, but also airplanes, ammunition, napalm and commercial defoliants, a use strongly opposed by anti-war demonstrators at the time. In accordance with the Defense Production Sharing Agreement of 1956, Canadian industry sold $ 2.47 billion in material form to the United States between 1965 and 1973. Many companies are owned by US holding companies, but all export sales are over $ 100,000 US (and thus, the majority contract) is arranged through Canadian Commercial Corporation, a crown company acting as an intermediary between the US Department of Defense and Canadian industry. In some cases, Canadian defense contractors were even sent to war theaters to carry out corporate work such as when de Havilland Canada sent a car repair team from the Downsview (Toronto) plant to make depot level improvements on damaged de Havilland Caribou aircraft damaged owned and operated by Force US Army. Furthermore, the Canadian and American Defense departments are working together to test chemical defoliant for use in Vietnam. Canada also allows their NATO allies to use facilities and bases in Canada for training and weapons testing in accordance with existing agreements.

Between January 28, 1973 and July 31, 1973, Canada provided 240 peacekeeping forces for Gallant Operations, a peacekeeping operation associated with the Vietnam International Control and Control Commission (ICCS), together with Hungary, Indonesia and Poland. Their role is to monitor the truce in South Vietnam per the Paris Peace Accords. After Canada's departure from the Commission, it was replaced by Iran. Canadians in the US military

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Canada

In the reverse flow to the American dodgers and deserters movement to Canada, about 30,000 Canadians voluntarily fought in Southeast Asia. Among the volunteers there are fifty Mohawks from the Kahnawake Reserve near Montreal. One hundred and ten Canadians died in Vietnam, and seven remain missing in action. US Army Sergeant Peter C. Lemon, an American immigrant from Canada, was awarded the US Medal of Honor for his courage in the conflict. (This cross-border registration is unprecedented: Both the First World War and the Second saw thousands of Americans join the Canadian Armed Forces before the US officially declared war on Germany)

By 2015, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) produces stories of Canadians who fought and died in battle. According to the story, which took place eight years after the CBC news was referenced above, a Canadian veterans association estimated that 20,000 Canadians were registered in the US armed forces to fight alongside American troops, while some historians accounted for 40,000. Of these, about 12,000 saw combat in Vietnam, and at least 134 were killed or otherwise missing there.

The CBC 2015 story paid special attention to Rob McSorley, a teenage Army Ranger from Vancouver who was shot dead by North Vietnamese soldiers. Other Canadian people who give their lives and are recognized in this story include:

• Thomas Edwin Fraser of the Six Nations Reserve in Ohsweken Ont.
• Randolph Hatton from Toronto
• Robert Wilson Holditch from Port Robinson Ont.
• Bruce Thomas Kennedy from Espanola Ont.
• Jonathan Peter Kmetyk from St. Petersburg Catherines Ont.
• John J. Roden of Halifax N.S.
• Larry Semeniuk from Windsor Ont.
• Murray Dean Vidler from Kerrobert Sask.

In Windsor, Ontario, there is a privately funded monument to Canadians killed in the Vietnam War. In Melocheville, Quebec, there is a monument dating from October 1989 funded by the Association of Quà © à © bÃÆ' © coà © des VÃÆ' © tÃÆ'  © rans du Vietnam. However, many Canadian veterans return to a very anti-war society. Unlike the United States, there is no veteran organization or assistance to them from the government, and many of them move permanently to the United States. There has been ongoing pressure from Vietnamese veterans of Canada to gain the death of their officially recognized colleagues by the government, especially during times such as Anniversaries.

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Opponents of the American war in Canada

The American dodgers draft and military deserters who sought refuge in Canada during the Vietnam War will spark a controversy among those seeking to immigrate to Canada, some provoked by the Canadian government's initial refusal to recognize those who can not prove that they have escaped [ United States] military service. This changed in 1968. On May 22, 1969, Ottawa announced that immigration officials would not and could not question the immigration applicants' military status if they appeared on the border looking for permanent residence in Canada. According to Valerie Knowles, conscripts are usually highly educated middle-class children who can no longer delay induction into the Selective Service System. In contrast, deserters, especially children of low income and working class who have been inducted into armed forces directly from high school or who volunteer, expect to gain skills and expand their limited horizons.

Beginning in 1965, Canada became a haven for Americans who like dodgers and deserters. Since they are not officially classified as refugees but recognized as immigrants, there is no official estimate of how many conscripts and deserters were accepted in Canada during the Vietnam War. One estimate of information mentions their number between 30,000 and 40,000. Whether these estimates are accurate or not, the fact remains that emigration from the United States is high as long as America is militarily involved in wars and defends conscription; in 1971 and 1972 Canada received more immigrants from the United States than from other countries.

Turn on dodgers

Estimates vary greatly as to how many Americans reside in Canada for some reason avoid the draft or "avoid conscription," as opposed to desertion, or other reasons. Canadian immigration statistics show that 20,000 to 30,000 qualified American men came to Canada as immigrants during the Vietnam era. The BBC stated that "as many as 60,000 young American men avoid the draft." Estimates of the total number of Americans who moved to Canada because of their opposition to the war ranges from 50,000 to 125,000 The exodus is "the largest politically motivated migration of the United States since the Empire of Loyalists moved north to oppose the American Revolution." The main community of war opponents was formed in Montreal , Slocan Valley, British Columbia, and at Baldwin Street in Toronto, Ontario.

They were initially assisted by the Student Union for Peace Action, a Canadian-based campus anti-war group with connections to Students for Democratic Society. Canada's immigration policy at that time made it easier for immigrants from all countries to obtain legal status in Canada. By the end of 1967, the concept of dodgers was helped primarily by several local-based anti-draft groups (more than twenty of them), such as the Vancouver Committee to Help the American War Opponents and Toronto's Anti-Draft Program. As a counselor for the Program, Mark Satin wrote the Manual for Immigrant Draft Parties to Canada in 1968. It sold nearly 100,000 copies in its entirety. In 1970, Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot recorded his song "Sit Down Young Stranger" to express his views on Canadian acceptance of mandatory dodgers.

The entry of these young people, who (as mentioned earlier) are often well educated and politically left, affects Canada's academic and cultural institutions, and Canadian society in general. These newcomers tend to balance the "brain drain" experienced by Canada. While some conscripts returned to the United States after forgiveness was announced in 1977 during Jimmy Carter's reign, about half of them lived in Canada.

Prominent draft DODgers who live in Canada permanently, or for any amount of time are included below. (For a separate separate list of deserving descendants, see the next section.)

• Jim Green - city councilor and mayoral candidate of Vancouver
• Michael Wolfson - former assistant chief statistician at Statistics Canada
• Wayne Robinson - father of Svend Robinson, former Member of Parliament
• Eric Nagler - The child entertainer at The Elephant Show.
• Mike Fisher - Founding member of Heart - popular rock/pop band
• Jesse Winchester - Singer-songwriter
• Jeffry House - Lawyer
• Bill King - musician and organizer of Toronto's Beaches Jazz Festival
• Michael Klein - doctor, Doctor member for Social Responsibility, a couple from Bonnie Sherr Klein, father of Naomi Klein and Seth Klein
• Michael Hendricks
• Harry Yates - Human Resources Manager, British Columbia Attorney General's Department

Deserters

Unlike those who refused conscription, there were also defectors from American troops who also went to Canada. There is pressure from the United States and Canada to have them arrested, or at least stop at the border.

The deserters have not been forgiven and may still face pro forma arrests, like the case of Allen Abney in March 2006. Another similar case is the case of Richard Allen Shields: He has left the US Army in Alaska. in 1972 after serving a year in Vietnam. Twenty-eight years later, on March 22, 2000, when he tried to drive a wood truck across the US-Canada border (in Metaline Falls, Washington) he was arrested by US customs agents and imprisoned at Fort Sill. He left the Army with the return of Others From April 2000. Other deserters worth listening to from that era are as follows:

• Andy Barrie, formerly of Toronto's Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio's Metro Morning in Toronto (He later received General Discharge from the United States Army, became a Canadian citizen, and freely traveled to the US)
• Dick Cotterill
• Michael Shaffer: "After six months in the Army, my petition for CO status was rejected and I was told I was going to Vietnam I refused to draw my gun and ordered a military tribunal On Labor Day 1970 I was able to escape and crossed over to Canada.... During President's Ford Gracency Program in 1975, I went to Fort Dix looking for the "Undesirable Discharge" offered to deserters who surrendered.The Army decided that I did not qualify and the military-court proceeding proceeded. help from the ACLU, I was released and two years later the Federal Court ordered the Army to release me Respectfully as a Thorough Conquest.... I live in Vancouver "
• Jack Todd - award-winning sports columnist for Montreal Gazette
• Mike Tulley - Edmonton, Alberta field of voice engineer and social activist

Missing text controversy

In February 2009, texts on how the draft dodgers and opponents of the Vietnam War were finally allowed to live in Canada suddenly disappeared from the Canadian Department of Citizenship and Immigration website. "

Initially, the Government of Canada website contains the following statement:

... "Starting in 1965, Canada became the preferred haven for American denialists and deserters,... Although some Americans were transplanted back home after the Vietnam War, most of them put roots in Canada, making the largest, educated group best ever received by this country. "

The above statement (now missing from the website) is part of an extensive online chapter on the rejection and desert draft of the Vietnam war, found in larger online documents, "Forge Our Legacy: Canadian Citizenship and Immigration, 1900-1977" originally posted on the Canadian Government website in 2000, when the Canadian Liberal Party, led by Jean Chrà ©  © tien, was in charge and was responsible for the content of the website. But in 2009, the Ministry of Stephen Harper [took] a far more dim view than dozens of US troops who came north after refusing to serve in the invasion of Iraq. Some have been deported to face military prison sentences ranging from about six to 15 months. "

The move from the Citizenship and Immigration website took place the same month with its multi-party partners, the Standing Committee of Citizenship and Immigration is debating the matter: On 12 February 2009, the multi-party committee passed, for the second time, a non-binding movement that affirmed again the previous parliamentary vote (June 2008) recommending that the government let the opponents of the Iraq War live in Canada. One and a half months later, on March 30, 2009, the House of Commons of Canada again voted in a non-binding movement of 129 to 125 to support the committee's recommendations.

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After the war

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

Vietnam Boat

After the fall of South Vietnam in April 1975, hundreds of thousands of refugees, called boat people, fled from Vietnam and adjacent countries. According to Canadian immigration historian Valerie Knowles, from 1979 to 1980, Canada acknowledged about 60,000 of these refugees, "most of them have had several days in a leaky boat, prey on cruel pirate attacks, before ending in dirty camps ". Knowles says it is the highest number of human boats received by any country, including the United States, during that period. The boat people accounted for 25% of all new arrivals coming into Canada from 1978 to 1981. It created a large Vietnamese community in Canada, concentrated mainly in Montreal, Vancouver, and Toronto.

Cultural and political shift

The Vietnam War is an important cultural turning point in Canada. Coupled with a hundred years of Canada in 1967 and the success of Expo 67, Canada became much more independent and nationalist. The public, if not their deputies in parliament, becomes more courageous in opposition to the United States and moves in different directions socially and politically.

Agent Orange in New Brunswick

In 1981, a government report revealed that Agent Orange, a controversial defoliant, had been tested at CFB Gagetown, New Brunswick. In June 1966, the chemicals were sprayed in almost 600a, acreÃ, (2.4Ã, km ² ) forest in the base. There is a difference of opinion about site toxicity level; but, in 2006, the Canadian government said it planned to compensate some of those exposed. In 2011, several claims have been paid but the administration of the compensation program has been criticized.

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See also

• Baldwin Village neighborhood and commercial street in Toronto are the center of the American exile community.
• Canadian and Iraqi War Resistor
• Opposition to US involvement in the Vietnam War
• The war resister

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References

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Further reading

• The Asylum Building: Movement to Support the Vietnam War in Canada, 1965-1973 , by Jessica Squires. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013. ISBNÃ, 978-0-7748-2524-5.
• Forge Our Legacy: Canadian Citizenship and Immigration, 1900-1977 , by Valerie Knowles. Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services Canada, 2000. ISBNÃ, 978-0-662-28983-8.
• Volunteer: Canada Vietnam Vets Remember , by Tracey Arial. Winnipeg: Watson & amp; Dwyer Publishing, 1998. ISBNÃ, 978-1-896239-14-9.
• For Peace: Canada and Vietnam, 1954-1973 , by Douglas A. Ross. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. ISBNÃ, 978-0-8020-5632-0.
• Manual for Immigrants Drafts to Canada , by Mark Satin. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, "A List" reprint edition, 2017, orig. 1968. A new introduction by the Canadian historian James Laxer, said a new cover 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 interview transcripts with repellent. ISBN 978-0-87140-533-3.
• Northern Passage: American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada , by John Hagan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBNÃ, 978-0-674-00471-9.
• Quiet Simplicity: Canadian Involvement in the Vietnam War , by Victor Levant. Forward by Gwynne Dyer. Toronto: Between the Lines Books, 1987. ISBNÃ, 978-0-919946-72-9.
• Snow job: Canada, USA, and Vietnam (1954-1973) , by Charles Taylor. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1974. ISBNÃ, 978-0-88784-619-9.
• Foreigners at Our Gate: Immigration and Immigration Policies Canada, 1540-2015 , by Valerie Knowles. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 4th ed., 2016, page 214 (section "Draft-Age Americans in Canada"). Merge and update parts of the Knowles booklet cited in this article. ISBN 978-1-4597-3285-8.
• Unknown Soldiers: Canada in the Vietnam War , by Fred Gaffen. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1990. ISBNÃ, 978-1-55002-073-1.
• "Vietnam War", by Victor Levant. On the Canadian Encyclopedia website. Retrieved 14 December 2012.
• The War Is Here: The Vietnam War and Canadian Literature , by Robert McGill. Kingston, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017. ISBNÃ, 978-0-7735-5159-6.

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External links

• Association QuÃÆ'Â © bÃÆ' Â © coise des VÃÆ' Â © tÃÆ' Â © rans du Vietnam
• Vietnam Veterans Association of Canada
• Vietnam Veterans Veterans Association of Canada
• CBC archive. Canada's Secret War: Vietnam ( video timeline ).
• CBC archive. Searching for the Holy Place: Draft Dodgers ( video timeline ).
• CBC - As Happened - Canada and Vietnam War
• Manual for Immigrant Draft-Age to Canada. Narration and quotation.
• Mark Satin Papers, at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. Includes material from the Toronto Anti-Draft Program.
• North Wall, Vietnam Veterans Monument Canada
• Pocock (Jack) Memorial Collection, at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. Materials from Anti-Draft Programs and similar organizations.
• Toronto Anti-Draft Program. The self-description from 1968.
• Vietnamese veterans in Canada. Advocacy group.
• Vietnam Veterans With Mission. Information and pictures.
• Vietnam War Bibliography: Canada
• Vietnam War Resisters in Canada
• Vietnam War Resisters, Then and Now

Source of the article : Wikipedia