Pearson’s Peacekeepers: Canada and the United Nations Emergency Force, 1956–67 by Michael K. Carroll (review)

With Pearson’s Peacekeepers, Michael Carroll has made a significant and considered contribution to our understanding of Canada’s peacekeeping history. Peacekeeping may still occupy a hallowed position in the Canadian national imaginary, but histories of Canadian contributions to specific missions remain oddly scarce. The flurry of publications related to Canadian peacekeeping in Somalia in the 1990s may well be the sole exception that proves a more general rule: scholars have long neglected peacekeeping, making it all the more difficult to separate fact from fiction, myth from reality. A few overviews have addressed multiple missions over decades, and our understanding of Canada’s role during the Suez Crisis and its aftermath has certainly benefited from historian John English’s excellent biography of Lester Pearson and diplomat Geoffrey Pearson’s study of his father’s noted diplomatic achievement. But, in Pearson’s Peacekeepers, we finally have in one volume a detailed account of the Canadian role in creating the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), the challenges for Canadian policy makers that arose from the ad hoc nature of UNEF’s financing, and the experiences of Canadian peacekeepers during their decade-long deployment between Egypt and Israel.

After an initial chapter provides helpful historical context for the Suez crisis, Carroll moves directly into two chapters addressing the diplomatic manoeuvring required to bring about the creation of UNEF. In Carroll’s account, Pearson is preeminent. UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld played an important role and the Americans are never far removed from the scene, but Lester Pearson dominates the narrative. For those interested in the broad strokes of Canadian foreign policy, much in Canada’s Suez diplomacy is familiar: Canada as linchpin between the United Kingdom and the United States; the inherent significance Canada attached to multilateral institutions, especially the UN; the particular suitability of middle powers to peacekeeping; and Canada’s developing interest in building relationships with newly independent states. Importantly, Pearson’s Peacekeepers reminds us that Canadian participation in UNEF was not uniformly welcomed at home. Those tempted to believe there is something inherently Canadian about this nation’s devotion to peacekeeping will do well to review Carroll’s depiction of negative media coverage, mixed public opinion, and the political hay the Progress Conservatives made of Canada’s great betrayal of Britain at Suez.

This book’s readability is a real strength. Carroll is an engaging author, and Pearson’s Peacekeepers will find a readership beyond the circle of scholars it will attract. He balances judicious use of humour with maintaining a scholarly tone. That said, the midsection of the book, addressing specific issues related to the financing of UNEF and UN peacekeeping generally, will be less interesting to the average reader. These two chapters are ponderous in their detailed review of the controversies surrounding financing and evolving Canadian policy. Though, in fairness to Carroll, financing is a dull issue that ultimately proved to be incredibly important. Or, more to the point, Carroll quite successfully demonstrates that not establishing a clear and consistent precedent on financing seriously jeopardized the independence of peacekeeping and ultimately threatened the financial stability of the entire United Nations.

The final chapters of the book provide a terrific glimpse into the daily routines of Canadian peacekeepers on the ground in the Middle East and also highlight the many challenges confronted when assembling a multinational force. In spite of the initial kerfuffle over the abortive attempt to dispatch the Queen’s Own Rifles as Canada’s contribution to UNEF (the echoes of this could still be heard even in the 1967 sudden withdrawal of Canadian peacekeepers at Egypt’s insistence), Canadians proved indispensable in their various roles providing administrative and logistical support. This was a much more useful and critical contribution than infantry would have been. And it set a precedent for Canadian contributions to future UN peacekeeping missions.

Pearson’s Peacekeepers makes a...