Building Sanctuary: The Movement to Support Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, 1965–73 by Jessica Squires (review)

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Lyndon Johnson’s blank cheque to wage war in Southeast Asia. To commemorate America’s long involvement in Vietnam, the Obama administration has allocated $65 million to the Department of Defense to oversee commemorative initiatives that will honour, in the words of the President, those who “(fought) heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans.” It promises to be, some assert, “a panoply of Orwellian forgetfulness and faux-patriotism.” (Peace History News, Fall 2013: 9–10). It is in this context that we must welcome Jessica Squires’ timely and illuminating Building Sanctuary.

Squires’ work represents an important contribution to what is still a small body of scholarly literature on the anti-draft movement in Canada. David Sterling Surrey’s 1982 Choice of Conscience (New York: Praeger, 1982) represented a start. In 2001 the subject witnessed something of an explosion with the publication of Frank Kusch’s All American Boys (Westport: Praeger, 2001), John Hagan’s Northern Passage (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), and the completion of David Churchill’s PhD thesis “When Home Became Away.” Squires contributes to this work in two significant ways. First, while Hagan and Churchill have focused on the Americans entering Canada, Building Sanctuary addresses the subject of the Canadians who supported them. Secondly, Squires presents the story in a national context. Again, while the work of Hagan and Churchill is for the most part focused on Toronto, Squires’ work includes individuals and organizations from across Canada.

Squires wisely distinguishes anti-draft activism from the antiwar movement. This is not a book about Canadian opposition to America’s war in Vietnam, but rather the Canadians who supported those Americans who came to Canada rather than remain complicit in an immoral war. She challenges what she calls the myth that Canada acted as “a refuge from militarism.” In reality the Canadian state worked hard to keep many of these prospective immigrants out of the country. Squires argues that in spite of government resistance, many of these Americans became landed immigrants as a direct result of political action undertaken by Canadians.

Anti-draft organizations emerged nearly simultaneously in early 1966 in Montreal, Vancouver, and Toronto. Initially these groups endeavoured to meet the immediate needs of Americans – shelter, employment, and acquiring landed immigrant status. Increasingly this involved political advocacy. At its peak the anti-draft movement included groups in every province. (22) Significantly, and an aspect of the book that warrants more discussion, is the absence of francophones. (27) Appreciably, Squires demonstrates the vital role of women in the movement, such as Joan Wilcox in Ottawa. Meg Brown, Melody Killian, and Betty Tillotson in Vancouver, and Nancy Pocock in Toronto.

Despite its national character, the movement exhibited transnational qualities. This is evidenced by regular contact between Canadian and American groups, and the wide distribution of Canadian-produced anti-draft literature in the United States, most notably the Manual for Draft-Age Americans. Also, considerable funding for these groups came from the United States.

Initially Canadian immigration policy did not formally take Americans’ military status into account. In 1967, however, Canada adopted the points system. Under this regime prospective immigrants were awarded points based on education, language proficiency, possession of a job offer, and other criteria. Applicants needed to score fifty points or better to be awarded landed immigrant status. The following year the Department of Immigration directed its agents could withhold discretionary points based on military status. (113–114) While dodgers tended to be well educated and middle class, deserters overwhelmingly came from the ranks of the working class, had little education, and were far more stigmatized in the public eye. These differences, combined with political action by anti-draft groups, soon led to a change in policy in which, officially at least, only deserters warranted the extra attention. Anti-draft organizations launched a concerted campaign...