SubscribeCanada tried to play a mediator role to help reach a conclusion that could allow the U.S. to honorably leave the conflict that prime minister of Canada Lester Bowles Pearson thought was a horrible mistake.
As the war escalated, relations between the two nations deteriorated. The lowest point was in April 2, 1965 when Pearson gave a speech at Temple University in the United States which called for a reduction in the bombing of North Vietnam. A furious Lyndon B. Johnson met with Pearson and apparently grabbed the much smaller Canadian by the collar and held him against the wall, and yelled, "you don't come here and piss on my rug."
Maybe the Germans have word for that?
Canadian delegates engaged in espionage for the US Central Intelligence Agency and aided the covert introduction of American arms and personnel into South Vietnam while they spotted for US bombers over North Vietnam. Canadian commissioners shielded the US chemical defoliant program from public inquiry, parlayed American threats of expanded war to Hanoi, and penned the reports legitimating both the rupture of the Geneva Agreements and the US air war over North Vietnam. Ottawa would later assert that these actions were necessary to counter-balance the activities of the Eastern bloc countries with whom they shared membership on the truce commissions.(Quoted here.) So while no troops were sent, your implication that Canada was horrified by the whole thing and avoided getting its hands dirty is incorrect.
Canadian aid during the war went only to S Vietnam, $29 million 1950-75, routed through the Colombo Plan and the Canadian Red Cross. Although humanitarian in appearance, Canadian assistance was an integral part of the Free World Assistance Program, co-ordinated by the US Department of State with the International Security Office of the Pentagon as the point of contact. In the field, Canadian capital assistance was regulated by the US-RVN Health Defense Agreement and administered by the International Military Assistance Force Office in Saigon. On a number of occasions, Ottawa stopped the shipment of ecumenical medical relief to civilian victims of the war in North Vietnam.
At home. 500 firms sold $2.5 billion of war materiel (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 US, as well as nickel, copper, lead, brass and oil for shell casings, wiring, plate armor and military transport. In Canada unemployment fell to record low levels of 3.9%, the gross domestic product rose by 6% yearly, and capital expenditure expanded exponentially in manufacturing and mining as US firms invested more than $3 billion in Canada to offset shrinking domestic capacity as a result of the war. The herbicide "Agent Orange" was tested for use in Vietnam at CFB Gagetown, NB. US bomber pilots practiced carpet-bombing runs over Suffield, Alberta and North Battleford, Sask, before their tours of duty in SE Asia. And the results of the only successful peace initiative to Hanoi—that of Canadian diplomat Chester Ronning—would be kept from public knowledge in order not to harm official US-Canadian relations. Ten thousand young Canadian men fought in the US armed forces in the war. At the same time 20,000 American draft-dodgers and 12,000 army deserters found refuge in Canada.
« Older The Goleta Air & Space Museum/ Goleta Natural Hist... | Harry Frankfurt's "On Bullshit... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
You can see in her appearances and her writing that she actually thinks things can become true by saying them over and over. So it's very interesting in moments like this when someone catches her right at the get go and she's reduced to going "I know you are but what am I?" until she changes the subject. You can clearly see that she had another 200 words to follow "sent troops to Canada" and she suddenly realized she has to abandon the whole segment of rhetoric because the guy isn't allowing her to go with it.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 4:29 AM on February 1, 2005