"They Didn't Even Realize Canada Was a Different Country:": Canadian Left Nationalism at the 1971 Vancouver Indochinese Women's Conference

From 1 to 6 April 1971, over 600 women gathered in Vancouver to attend the Vancouver Indochinese Women's Conference (viwc), an international women's antiwar conference organized by women's liberationists in that city. For the second day of the conference one of the organizers, Margo Dunn, had planned a "cultural exchange day" for six Indochinese women who were the guests of honour. These six guests – whom hundreds of people came to see that evening – were nowhere to be found and Dunn was anxious for their arrival.¹ Musical acts, plays, and poetry readings were scheduled throughout the evening to entertain delegates in the Student Union Building at the University of British Columbia and these performances went ahead as planned in hopes that the guests would soon arrive.

Several hours passed with no word on the whereabouts of the Indochinese women, all of whom had arrived the day before and were staying in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Shaughnessy. They had been picked up that morning but never arrived at the cultural exchange. Unbeknownst to organizers, the women were missing because members of the Black Panther Party visiting from Oakland had taken them to Chinatown for dinner – with no intention of bringing them back for the festivities.² Black Panther delegates felt that the antiwar conference focused too heavily on the needs of white women and that such an intervention was warranted.³

Attendees of the cultural exchange and viwc organizers were upset, and Dunn saw this incident as "100 percent a disaster."⁴ By acting as they did, the Black Panthers made it clear that they were not interested in meeting with Canadian women. They had their own agenda, which was to secure one-on-one time with the Indochinese women, even if it was at the expense of other conference attendees. Dunn felt that the executive decision made by Black Panthers to prohibit the Indochinese women from attending the cultural exchange – an event these Indochinese guests had specifically requested – demonstrated a typical American attitude toward Canadians at the viwc: that Canada as a country was insignificant, the needs of Canadian organizers were irrelevant, and the conference should support American ideas of sisterhood. This attitude was unexpected because American women were supposed to be allies, not enemies.

What Canadians described as "American imperialism" at the viwc divided, rather than united, women.⁵ I argue that the viwc reflects the limitations of international collaborations built on the shaky ideological grounds of "sisterhood": Canadian national identity became a more unifying force than the intensive desire for international sisterhood. My conclusion is based on archival sources, oral testimony, and She Named It Canada (snic), a radical history published by Canadian women specifically for American delegates at the viwc. There was also a key issue that represented the ultimate form of American imperialism for Canadian organizers – the demand for rifles and machine guns by American delegates. When Canadian women refused this request, a divide ensued that could not be healed, and hostility overruled sisterhood.

American women demanded that their political issues remain central to the ideological building blocks of this women's international antiwar, antiracist, and anti-imperial conference. While Americans were not an entirely homogenous ideological group, their political priorities did not include Canadian perspectives and issues, which Canadian women interpreted as chauvinistic. When Canadian women attempted to address this concern, American women were dismissive. They argued that the roles of Canadian women were to organize the conference and facilitate discussions between American and Indochinese women – nothing more. This attitude created new resentments and reinforced pre-existing ones between American and Canadian women, and tensions played out during the conference.

The term "imperialism" for these American behaviours and actions would not be used today. This terminology may seem inappropriate, and disproportional to the reality that the United States did not invade or dominate Canada by conquest or violence, as it did elsewhere in places such as Vietnam. Furthermore, by describing their experiences as a result of "American imperialism," Canadian women invoked...