Plateaus of Freedom: Nationality, Culture, and State Security in Canada, 1940-1960 (review)

This book, a volume in the Canadian Social History Series, attempts to draw a connection between national culture and state security in Canada during the early part of the Cold War. Kristmanson aims to reveal 'how culture and security were caught up in a self-organizing intensification of "nationality" as a global system in the middle decades of the twentieth century' (xviii, italics in original). Drawing on a wide variety of archival sources, fictional accounts, interviews, and even art, he concludes that 'the censorship-intelligence-propaganda complex that proliferated in Canada after World War II played a counterpoint between national culture and state security, with the result that freedom, especially intellectual freedom, plateaued on the principle of nationality' (233).

Another aim of the book is to 'reauthorize memories and states of affairs that never "made it" historically' (xix). To that end it opens with a chapter on Tracy Philipps, an idiosyncratic Brit who came to Canada in 1940 and, according to Kristmanson, played a role in linking culture and security. What follows are chapters on the role of the RCMP, the National Film Board, and the career of Peter Dwyer, an MI6 operative who came to Canada and eventually headed the Canada Council. He closes with a chapter dealing with singer-songwriter and activist Paul Robeson, whose 1952 concert at the Peace Arch border crossing 'opens up a forgotten space within "nationality" wherein an emergent left-wing discourse was effectively blocked a half a century ago' (xx).

By far the most intriguing and provocative chapter is a reassessment of the Gouzenko affair. Although Kristmanson admits that he does not have irrefutable proof, he nonetheless claims to 'strip away the "papier mâché" history' to demonstrate that the British secret service 'engineered the defection behind the backs of the Canadian authorities' (xx). He does this by piecing together 'fragments,' bits and pieces of evidence to make the case. While Kristmanson must be given full marks for his imaginative approach, he occasionally lets his imagination run a bit too far. For example, one of the 'fragments' is in a letter Winston Churchill wrote to his wife, Clementine, on 5 September 1945 inquiring about some chickens Lord Beaverbrook had given the Churchills: 'Is there any particular flavour about the eggs that you do not like?' (151). Kristmanson claims this is a coded message about Gouzenko's documents. If one reads the original letter (which is about the Churchills' domestic affairs), there is nothing at all odd about the question. Perhaps Kristmanson is unaware that eggs can differ in taste. In another 'fragment,' he contends that Stewart Graham Menzies, head of the British secret service, was in Canada the night Gouzenko defected. His source for this is John Bryden's Best-Kept Secret. Bryden claims that Menzies came to Canada in September 1940 with the Tizard mission and joined the famed Seigniory Club on 22 September, signing as H Stuart Menzies in green ink, and then returned in early September 1945. It is unlikely that Menzies travelled to Canada on either date. He was not part of the Tizard mission, which had already left Canada by 22 September, because he was busy hunting down German spies in advance of the anticipated German invasion of England. As for the 1945 visit, Kristmanson (and Bryden) seem to have forgotten that on 4 September Konstantin Volkov, a KGB agent stationed in Ankara, approached the British Consulate in Istanbul. It was a development that caused some concern for Kim Philby, then head of Soviet Counterintelligence in MI6, because Volkov claimed to know the names of three Soviet agents operating in England. Philby convinced Menzies to allow him to go to Istanbul and to send Roger Hollis, Philby's counterpart in MI5, to Canada (which is one of the reasons why the MI5 mole hunter Peter Wright later suspected Hollis of being a Soviet mole). Even if the British had...