Canada and the Cold War

"The Cold War refers to the period between the end of the Second World War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, during which the world was largely divided into two ideological camps — the United States-led capitalist “West” and the Soviet-dominated communist East"...(read more in the Canadian Encyclopedia)
Source Citation:  Herd, Alex.  "Cold War." Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Historica Canada,  2006

Websites

The CBC provides a timeline of key events with links to a biography to external sites through its web project Canada: A People's History.  This is a good place to start.

The Canadian Military Journal from the Department of National Defence provides a concise history of key events through a Canadian Lens in its web article titles "Gouzenko to Gorbachev: Canada’s Cold War."

Conduct a site specific search to find all that the Canadian Government has to offer on the topic of Canada's involvement in the Cold War.  Just follow your search query with site:.gc.ca

Primary Sources

Google News Archive
The archive provides newspaper coverage of events as they unfolded.  See the headlines and read the articles.  For specific newspapers, consider browsing issue of the Ottawa Citizen or the  Montreal Gazette.   You can search the archive or simply scroll through the papers by date.

CBC Digital Archives: War and Conflict
Brows through the sub-categories to find coverage of key events in the Cold War as these events occurred.

Books in our Library

In Print  (if the books below are not available from our library, try accessing them from our Google Bookshelf. Links to the Right.)

Bothwell, Robert.  Alliance and Illusion: Canada and the World, 1945-1984. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007.

Gruending, Dennis ed. Great Canadian Speeches. Markham: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2007.

Melady, John. Pearson's Prize: Canada and the Suez Crises. Toronto: Dundurn, 2006

Morton, Desmond. A Short History of Canada. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2006

Slade, Arthur, G. John Diefenbaker: an Appointment With Destiny. Montreal: XYZ, 2001.

Whitaker, Reginald and Steve Hewitt. Canada and the Cold War. Toronto: Lorimer, 2003.  The library holds three copies of this book. 

Featured Articles from Our Databases*

Check Canadian Points of View, a database from Ebsco specializing in articles with a Canadian perspective.  (You will need a login and password if accessing from home.)

GRANATSTEIN, J. L., and NORMAN HILLMER. "Household Feuds: Sharing a continent with Americans is an exercise in tension management." Maclean's 31 Dec. 2001: 45.

Granatstein, J.L. "A friendly agreement in advance: Canada-US defense relations past, present, and future. (The Border Papers)." C.D. Howe Institute Commentary 15 June 2002: COV+. 

*Login required.  Drop by the library for more information.

 Books on Our Google Shelf

Cavell, Richard ed. Love, Hate and Fear in Canada's Cold War:  You can read a portion of this book online.  Chapter one by Reg Whitaker is particularly useful: "'We Know They're There': Canada and Its Others With or Without the Cold War."

Thompson, John Herd, Randall, Stephen, J. Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies.  Scroll to page 171: "Canada in the New American Empire."

Teigrob, Robert.  Warming Up to the Cold War: Canada and the United States' Coalition of the Willing from Hiroshima to Korea. University of Toronto Press. Toronto: 2009.