Building Sanctuary: The Movement to Support Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, 1965-1973 by Jessica Squires (review)

Jessica Squires’ Building Sanctuary: The Movement to Support Vietnam War Resisters in Canada contributes to the growing body of literature that interrogates the substance of national mythologies in Canada. The impulse behind her work is a critique of the notion of Canada as a “natural haven” or “sanctuary”, which Squires contends animates Canadian understandings of the Underground Railroad and the reception of an estimated forty to fifty thousand draft resisters and draft dodgers who came to Canada from the United States between 1965 to 1973. Squires’ animating concern arises from the fact that this latter myth ignores the significant social movement that was required to make sanctuary a reality.

Using a range of archival sources and first-person interviews, Squires explores the network of activists and advocates who came together to work on behalf of Americans who migrated to Canada as part of the anti-Vietnam War movement. In highlighting the varied composition and shifting agendas of groups such as the Montreal Council to Aid War Resisters (MCAWR), the Vancouver Committee to Aid American War Objectors (VCAAWO), the Ottawa Assistance with Immigration and the Draft (AID) and the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme (TADP), Squires deftly demonstrates that sanctuary was far from the norm in 1960s Canada, with Canadian public opinion rather divided on the desirability of accepting potential troublemakers from south of the 49^th parallel.

Building Sanctuary concentrates on the loose coalition of groups that assisted American migrants by providing information about Canadian immigration regulations, employment opportunities and settlement issues, and which also lobbied for immigration reforms (ultimately introduced in 1969) to ensure that eligible applicants would not be punished for their draft status or their anti-war politics. As such, Squires’ analysis focuses on the role of civil society as a source of change and influence on government policies. Squires uses a Gramscian framework to explore this relationship, referring frequently to the hegemonic workings of government and the interplay between activists and authorities in shaping the policies around accepting draft dodgers and resisters in Canada. The real strength of Squires analysis, however, lies in the source material or Building Sanctuary and the rich analysis she provides in teasing out the shifting priorities, and debates, amongst the various activist groups—whose membership included many Americans—who worked on behalf of the arriving migrants and encouraged the broader Canadian public to support sanctuary efforts.

In addition to a helpful theoretical introduction and conclusion, the book is divided into seven chapters, in which Squires traces the origins of the anti-draft movement in Canada, the relationship of various Canadian groups with their counterparts in the United States, the debates over assisting deserters rather than dodgers, the campaign to reform the immigration policies that governed admissions to Canada after 1967—culminating with the announcement by the Minister of Manpower and Immigration Alan MacEachen in 1969 that “if a serviceman from another country meets our immigration criteria, he will not be turned down because he is still in the active service of his country…” (pp. 36). The final chapters explore the overall impact of this concerted campaign and broader efforts to assist resisters and the trepidation with which activists greeted news of the 1973 Status Adjustment Program, which enabled people in the country illegally, including some draft dodgers and resisters, to apply to have their status normalized and avoid deportation.

Throughout her analysis of the critical eight years in which the anti-draft movement operated actively in Canada, Squires employs the notion of a “left nationalism” which she defines as a “perspective that ascribes several specific characteristics and values to Canada: the notion of a Canadian tradition of pacifism; an ingrained tolerance for cultural and linguistic minorities; a respect for individual and collective rights: and an adherence to a view of Canada being in a colonial or subservient relationship to the United States.” (pp. 145) This perspective, Squires argues, explains how people became involved in the resistance movement...