CHAPTER 5

The Defence Débâcle, 1957-1963

“I don’t think his post will be quite as soft as he may have thought,” American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said at a ceremony in Washington marking the swearing-in of Livingston Merchant as ambassador to Canada in 1956. “The post…used to be reserved for people who wanted a nice summer place and not much to do.” But no longer, he said.¹ Dulles was dead right, and over the course of the next half-dozen years relations between Canada and the United States reached a historic nadir.

The reasons were twofold. Merchant himself reported in July 1958 that Canadians had become extraordinarily sensitive because of their history and “their position of inferiority in power in relation to us. The last year has seen the development of a strident, almost truculent nationalism.”² Many saw Prime Minister John Diefenbaker as the creator of that new attitude, although Diefenbaker himself told American officials that while he knew he was considered anti-American in Washington, he was not. But as the opposition painted him as “dominated by United States policy,” the Prime Minister, the American government concluded, felt obliged to outdo the opposition in defence of Canadian interests.³

The second factor was the personal relationship between the Prime Minister and the presidents of the United States during his years in power. With Eisenhower the Canadian got on well, addressing him as Ike and being called John in return. There were occasional frictions between the two countries, but in general the pervasive friendliness allowed matters to be smoothed over and forgotten. That was not true with John F. Kennedy, however. The two leaders, so different in age and style, failed to hit it off, and as the personal relationship chilled, so too did the relations between the two nations.

The scene of the difficulty was in the area of defence. The demands of the Cold War, the escalating costs of military equipment, and the pressures exerted by the United States on an often reluctant Canada all contributed to create a tense situation. But the true cause lay in the character and make-up of the Prime Minister. John Diefenbaker was prickly and sensitive, a leader who reacted sharply to pushing from Washington or from the Department of National Defence in Ottawa alike. Even so, trouble might have been averted if Diefenbaker had been able to make decisions quickly – one way or the other – on the question of acquiring nuclear weapons for the Canadian armed forces. The delays enraged the U.S. government and led directly to the defeat of the Conservative government, left in a minority position after the election of 1962, in Parliament. It was a débâcle and a largely unnecessary one.

I

Ironically, the Conservative government’s troubles with defence began because the Prime Minister made one decision too quickly. When George Pearkes, the new Minister of National Defence, brought Diefenbaker a proposal to integrate the air defences of Canada and the United States into a single command – the North American Air Defence Command – the Chief quickly agreed with his friend and colleague that the step was necessary. On his copy, Pearkes inscribed, “Discussed with the Prime Minister and approved 24 July, 1957.” That was how Canada entered NORAD – without Cabinet or Cabinet Defence Committee discussion and with few ministers even aware that the decision had been taken.

There was a long history behind that day in July 1957.⁴ The idea of combining the air defence forces had a military logic to it, particularly because both air forces saw themselves as organized and equipped to counter any Soviet bomber attack on North America. The Royal Canadian Air Force in particular believed it could only benefit from closer ties with the large, powerful, and technically sophisticated U.S. Air Force. Indeed, in February 1953, with Korean fighting still under way, the Canadians had proposed that a joint Military Study Group be set up to examine air defence, and later Canadian and American studies recommended a separate commander for North American air defence,⁵ the need for “the integration of the two air defence systems and the ultimate establishment of a combined command.”⁶

Whatever the reasons, however, the Canadian Chiefs of Staff were a bit reluctant to press ahead, and the initiative came from the United States⁷ for an integrated command that left each air force separate and distinct but under joint operational control. By December 19, 1956, the Military Study Group had approved operational integration and the centralization of authority for operational control – the power to direct, control, and co-ordinate operational activities. Some care was taken to ensure that the overall commander would be responsible to both the American and the Canadian Chiefs of Staff, who were declared responsible for keeping their governments informed.⁸ To ensure that Canada would not be swamped in the vastly larger American air defence command, the report specified that the commander and his deputy “should not normally be from the same nation. His staff should be a joint staff composed of officers of both nations.”⁹

In effect, the military decision had been taken, and all that remained was to secure political consent. Between January and June 1957, the plan percolated its way through the committee process in Canada, being discussed in the Chiefs of Staff Committee, and being incorporated into a memo for the Cabinet Defence Committee.¹⁰ But in the pre-election atmosphere, the process slowed. The Americans nonetheless approved the integrated command on April 11, and General Charles Foulkes, the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, under pressure from his American counterparts, carried a forceful aide-memoire with him when he saw Defence minister Ralph Campney on June 12, two days after the election that saw the Conservatives secure the largest number of seats. The Americans, he said, had been promised a decision by June 15 and in Foulkes’s view, the St. Laurent government should decide the question. The general was the most experienced military-politician Canada had ever produced, but this was simply silly, and the chairman had to advise the Americans that the outgoing government “regretted to state that they did not consider they were any longer in a position to finalize international agreements….”¹¹

Foulkes was concerned at his failure to deliver, and as George Pearkes, the incoming Minister of National Defence, remembered, “from the moment I took over” Foulkes “pressed the urgency of getting a decision. He certainly gave me the impression that it was all tied up by the Liberal government, that promises had been made that it would be signed immediately after the election…. I do know that they [the Canadian military] were under almost daily pressure from the military in the United States.” Pearkes himself was a soldier, sympathetic to seeing military necessity take priority over political considerations. In the circumstances, he agreed that the plan sounded sensible.¹²

Ordinarily the proposal should have gone to the Cabinet Defence Committee, but no such committee had yet been set up by Diefenbaker, suspicious of the military (and civilian) advisers of the old regime. That being the case, Foulkes talked with the Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, Jules Léger, and the Secretary to the Cabinet, R.B. Bryce, about getting the integrated command approved “without setting up a Cabinet Defence Committee”; both apparently agreed. As a result, Pearkes saw the Prime Minister on July 24 and got his agreement to what was soon to be known as NORAD.¹³ Pearkes’s recollection was that Foulkes had also briefed several ministers. The issue, however, did not reach Cabinet until July 31 when the appointment of Air Marshal C. Roy Slemon as deputy commander of NORAD was approved.¹⁴

Did Foulkes stampede the new government? Foulkes himself apparently thought so, for he later said just that: “Unfortunately I am afraid – we stampeded the incoming government with the NORAD agreement….” Pearkes agreed. “I am inclined to think that the Chiefs of Staff did over-emphasize the importance of signing the Agreement at an early date. Whether or not it was done deliberately I am not prepared to say,” he told Diefenbaker in 1965. But Diefenbaker was not convinced, writing in his memoirs that “to suggest that we were stampeded in the early weeks of our government is to suggest that I, as Prime Minister, and more particularly, Major-General George Pearkes, V.C., the Minister of National Defence, had no appreciation of the requirements of North American defence.”¹⁵

The deed was done, obviously with the Prime Minister’s enthusiastic concurrence. But the Department of External Affairs was less pleased, the acting under-secretary complaining that he had first learned of the agreement from the United States ambassador, who had come to discuss a press release to be issued on August 1.¹⁶ The result was a nasty little squabble between External Affairs, scrambling to catch up, and General Foulkes, and an effort, ultimately successful, by the diplomats to enclose NORAD within a web of Canadian-American treaties and committees.¹⁷

In addition, the question of just how – or if – NORAD fitted within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization also arose. Initially, that query had been suggested by the State department to the ambassador in Washington. The Americans were seeking “a livelier sense of partnership,”¹⁸ but the idea was soon picked up by the Prime Minister who was already anxious that his government not appear to be too closely entwined in the American embrace. Thus Diefenbaker told the NATO Council in December 1957 that “this integrated force is an integral part of our NATO military structure in the Canada/United States region and will report…in a manner similar to that followed by other NATO military commands.”¹⁹ That was General Foulkes’s view; it was not that of Jules Léger. Officials in his department, he told his minister, did not believe that NORAD was a NATO command in the normally accepted sense of the term.²⁰ Inevitably this point, and others, was raised in the House and in the press, and Lester Pearson, the Liberal leader, said that the St. Laurent government had never had any intention of approving the agreement as it stood when the government left office.²¹

The confusion in the bureaucracy and in the government over the NORAD agreement was apparent. The political consequences of NORAD had not been thought out by the incoming government, and External Affairs, while it knew some of what was happening, had not subjected the agreement to detailed analysis. The confusion that accompanied the agreement, the irregular and unusual manner followed, were indicative of the new government’s total inexperience in foreign and defence policy.

—

NORAD’s origins went back well into the days of the St. Laurent government. So too did the CF-105 Avro Arrow, the aircraft that caused the Diefenbaker government no end of heartache and no end of political unpleasantness. The story had its roots in the Korean War years when Ottawa had been forced to consider the implications of the increasing threat to North America caused by the Soviet Union’s possession of nuclear weapons and development of long-range bombers. By 1953, the Chief of the Air Staff had proposed the development of a supersonic all-weather interceptor. The plan was for some six hundred aircraft, with the engines, armaments, and electronic control systems to be secured elsewhere. Only the airframe was to be developed in Canada, and two prototypes, at a cost of $27 million, were agreed to by Cabinet in December 1953.²²

But the pace of development had to be accelerated after the Russians demonstrated a long-range bomber at their annual May Day parade in Moscow in 1954. Canada responded by deciding to produce eleven prototypes and a pre-production order of twenty-nine Arrow aircraft at a cost of $190 million. Problems were already occurring, however. No suitable engine could be found, and, with misgivings, the government agreed to support the development and construction of the Iroquois engine at a cost of $70 million. The costs were beginning to skyrocket, and the government considered scrapping the project and substituting one of the U.S. supersonic interceptors, such as the F-101 B Voodoo aircraft or the F-102. The American planes, built in large runs, would be much cheaper and Canada would be spared the development costs. But the RCAF, concerned with the difficulties of flying in the North, was certain that the U.S. machines could not meet Canadian needs, and as a result the Chiefs of Staff recommended continuing with the Arrow.

The Liberal government’s decision in December 1955 was a compromise. The Arrow’s development would be limited until test flights proved out the design. Eleven machines would be produced, and total costs were to be limited to $170 million over three years. After the first flight, the entire programme was to be reviewed. At the earliest, Arrow squadrons could not be in service until 1961 or 1962.²³

The project suffered another blow in late 1956 when the United States Navy cancelled work on the Sparrow, the air-to-air missile intended for the Arrow. A new weapon now had to be found, but a harassed government simply deferred the question until after the Arrow’s first flight. It also decided, early in 1957, to reduce the prototypes from eleven to eight and to limit expenditures to $216 million (significantly higher than the previous limit). This was the situation when the Conservatives came to power in June 1957.²⁴

The Chiefs of Staff Committee in October 1957 considered the aircraft’s fate and decided to recommend the purchase of an additional twenty-nine Arrows as well as the continuation of work on the Sparrow. The Cabinet agreed and allotted $176 million for this purpose in 1958-59. In effect, the Conservatives had revived the programme, a decision based in large part on the first successful test of the Arrow’s airframe in August 1957.

But the missile age was coming to fruition and beginning to affect the argument. Why proceed with an expensive manned aircraft if a relatively cheap American-produced anti-aircraft missile was available? The Bomarc, just such a missile, was under development. Furthermore, the Soviets’ successful launching of a satellite in 1957 demonstrated that the world was close to entering the era of intercontinental ballistic missile warfare. With the equation altering quickly, the Arrow, a project begun early in the 1950s before the USSR even had long-range bombers and still under development after the Soviet Union had demonstrated a nascent ICBM capacity, was not scheduled to enter service for another four or five years.

The one certainty was that the costs continued to climb. A Department of Defence Production study in mid-1958, soon after the CF-105’s first flight on March 25, estimated that $300 million had been spent and that $871 million more was necessary to complete the project. The total unit cost per aircraft for an order of one hundred or so was therefore about $12 million, including development costs, an extraordinary price in the late 1950s and about fifteen times the cost of the CF-100, the last Canadian-built interceptor still in service, and six times the cost of contemporary U.S. aircraft. Where was the money to be found in a difficult financial period? And if the Arrow was built, could money be found to re-equip the RCAF Air Division in NATO, still flying obsolete F-86 aircraft, and to procure new weapons for the navy and army?

Thus by the summer of 1958, the time of decision had neared. The Chiefs of Staff had developed a number of alternative scenarios. One, costing at least $2 billion, called for completion and purchase of 169 CF-105 aircraft, for two Bomarc sites, and for installation of SAGE, the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment necessary to control the Bomarc. But cost made this impossible, General Foulkes told the Secretary to the Cabinet, “and even if we had a budget of two billion dollars we would have no room for re-arming the air division or for doing anything in regard to defence against the ballistic missile.” His preferred alternative called for sixty CF-105s in RCAF squadrons and sixty more to be purchased by the USAF for use in their squadrons on leased bases in Newfoundland and Labrador, two Bomarc sites, and SAGE. Worth noting, too, was that planning for the Arrow by this stage called for use of the American MB-1 air-to-air nuclear missile.²⁵

The Liberals had tried hard to sell the Arrow to the Americans, and now the Conservatives returned to the charge, George Pearkes travelling to Washington in the summer of 1958. But the simple truth was that the USAF did not like the Arrow – it was heavier, more expensive, and did not make use of SAGE as did their own new aircraft.²⁶ Unstated, but equally obvious, the Americans believed that their aircraft companies could use the business. The Canadians tried to argue on grounds of Allied solidarity and on the heavy imbalance in military trade between the two countries. Nothing worked. If Canada wanted to fly the Arrow, it would have to pay the shot.

In the circumstances, the decision was clear. The Chiefs of Staff Committee now came to the conclusion that it preferred to see all the services get something instead of only the RCAF getting the CF-105. In effect, as Foulkes noted, the military and economic considerations did not justify the continuation of the project. The Chiefs told the Cabinet Defence Committee, therefore, on August 8 that the Arrow should be scrapped, providing that consideration was given to securing a new interceptor for the RCAF, presumably from the United States.²⁷ The committee was next informed on August 21 that to cancel the Arrow probably would put the A.V. Roe Company and Orenda Engines Limited out of business, would affect the employment of 25,000 persons, and would cost some $170 million in cancellation charges. Those were political considerations of the first magnitude, and the Cabinet Defence Committee decided only that “consideration” be given to abandoning the programme.²⁸ At the same time, the committee recommended the construction of two Bomarc bases. This decision, as Douglas Harkness, then the Minister of Agriculture, reflected later, was taken almost cursorily: “I believe that the concern over cancellation of the Arrow occupied the minds of members of cabinet to such an extent that the significance of acquiring the Bomarc, equipped with nuclear warheads, did not make much impression and was accepted as a necessary step in order to meet our air defence responsibilities under the NORAD agreement.”²⁹ It was “unreasonable” to secure the Bomarc without the nuclear warhead, the Chiefs of Staff told the Cabinet Defence Committee on 14 August, in large part because of the feared adverse public reaction if Canada took the missile without the most effective warhead.³⁰

Thus the Arrow was almost dead, the decision awaiting only the coup de grâce of Cabinet approval. George Pearkes had agonized over the decision, but he was convinced, as he told Bryce, that the CF-105 was not a wise expenditure: “It cost too much money and was, in my opinion, getting out of date.”³¹ But the Cabinet, worried about adding to unemployment by cancelling the project, waffled. A “careful and comprehensive” review of the requirements for the Arrow aircraft was to be completed before March 31, 1959.³² This decision was presented to the public on September 23 when the Prime Minister announced that as the bomber threat was decreasing fewer aircraft would be necessary than previously believed. To provide defence against such bombers as did exist, the Bomarc would be installed, the CF-100s would continue in service, and the decision to begin production of the Arrow was postponed, although limited development could continue. The Sparrow was cancelled, and the Arrow was to be modified to accept an American missile and control system. In effect the political and financial considerations remained uppermost. But if the Arrow had a reprieve, it was only temporary. When the defence estimates for 1959-60 were being prepared in late November 1958, Pearkes told his colleagues that he “proposed to assume that the contract would be cancelled and to include only the cancellation costs” for the CF-105.³³

Early in the new year, the military began the autopsy. At a Chiefs of Staff Committee meeting on February 5, Foulkes summarized the situation, saying that the Chiefs “in the light of the changing threat” did not consider that the return to be gained justified the expenditure. That was a fair summary, but the Chief of the Air Staff persuaded his colleagues that the need for a new interceptor had to be made part and parcel of any recommendation to kill the Arrow.³⁴ When the Arrow decision was passed to Cabinet, however, the operative clauses said only that the Chiefs had “grave doubts as to whether a limited number of aircraft of such extremely high cost would provide defence returns commensurate with the expenditure.” Somehow the RCAF had been snookered, and it was 1961 before a decision was made to replace the obsolete CF-100s on NORAD duties with more up-to-date Voodoo aircraft.³⁵

The government finally agreed, on February 17, to scrap the Arrow and the Iroquois engine and to notify the contractors at the same time that the public announcement was made. The Cabinet also decided to make an agreement with the United States for implementation of arrangements “on the sharing of Bomarc and S.A.G.E. installations in Canada” and, most significantly for the future, the Cabinet agreed that an announcement of the Arrow decision “and the acquisition of atomic weapons be made in the House of Commons….”³⁶

The Prime Minister made the announcements on February 20, and a full-scale furore erupted. The government was denounced for selling Canada and Canadian technology short and for causing the ruination of the aircraft industry. It was assailed in Toronto for creating massive unemployment and for putting all of Canada’s defence eggs in the U.S. basket, not least for deciding to take the still untried Bomarc. A.V. Roe did its part by putting its 14,000 workers out on the street as soon as the government announced the cancellation.

But Diefenbaker did not back down. He had made the right decision, the only one possible in the circumstances. Despite arguments then and later about the CF-105’s technological sophistication, Canada simply could not pay the costs involved in creating a modern weapons system by itself, a lesson the British and others were also learning. The only error in the government’s decision was that it had not been made earlier.

II

The NORAD and the Arrow decisions had put the government into hot water. By themselves, they did not create difficulties with Washington although there was resentment at the failure of the Department of Defense to buy Arrow aircraft and at the military pressure from the American Joint Chiefs that allegedly had led the Canadian military to push the government precipitately into the air defence arrangement. But both issues fed the Canadian nationalism that was building quickly and that Diefenbaker very often seemed to be leading. There was resentment and envy in the Canadian mood, a feeling that the United States was a bully in Canada and around the world. There was also concern about American policy, a feeling that the United States was too strong militarily and too ready to use its power to achieve its ends. The mistrust was growing.

Difficulties between Canada and the United States particularly concerned Arnold Heeney, the ambassador in Washington. Heeney had served as Secretary to the Cabinet during the war, and he had joined External Affairs at the very top, succeeding L.B. Pearson as undersecretary. He had then served as ambassador to NATO and as ambassador in Washington from 1953 to 1957, and although his auspices and friends had always been Liberal, he had managed to make the transition to service under the new Progressive Conservative government with relative ease, in part at least because of the skill with which he had served as head of the Civil Service Commission from 1957 to 1959. In 1959, Diefenbaker sent him back to Washington, and Heeney began to worry almost as soon as he took up the reins again. The problem was in Ottawa, Heeney noted in his sporadic diary, and “This ‘anti-Americanism’ – as it is called, but it is something less than that, and more complicated – is to be found in the highest quarters in Canada….” The Canadian mood he characterized as “not ill will but combined asperity & cockiness,” and the Americans he described as “generous, charming and often frightening.”³⁷ The auguries were not good.

They soon turned bad. The occasion for the change was an air defence exercise called Sky Hawk, scheduled for October 1959. The exercise plan called for Strategic Air Command bombers, in the guise of a Soviet air attack, to attempt to penetrate NORAD defences, and in the process civilian air traffic was to be grounded to permit the employment of electronic countermeasures. Planning had been underway for at least six months when a NORAD briefing team came to Ottawa in mid-May 1959 to give details to officials of National Defence and Transport.³⁸

But the Department of External Affairs, it seems, did not hear of Sky Hawk until mid-August, and the first senior official in the department to express an opinion, John Holmes, the assistant under-secretary, was mildly dubious about its necessity at that moment. Premier Khrushchev of the USSR was to visit the United States in September, and Eisenhower was scheduled to return the visit. Was it a good idea to upset matters with a large air defence exercise when efforts to create détente were in train? Certainly Howard Green, the new Secretary of State for External Affairs who had been appointed to the post after the death of Sidney Smith, did not think so. As he wrote on Holmes’s memo, “Totally inappropriate and provocative now. Reserve right to consider proposal further.”³⁹ This the Cabinet did, and the government decision was that Canada should withhold approval “without, however, precluding reconsideration at a later date.” The reasons given were the Khrushchev visit and “the disruption which the exercise would cause in civil air traffic.”⁴⁰

Heeney was summoned to the State department twice on August 28 to hear the Americans’ outrage at first hand. The Canadian decision had been received with “shock,” and the U.S. officials expressed “the gravest concern” at the fundamentally opposed appreciations of the factors involved. What made the Americans furious was that the exercise had been in the works for months, had already cost large sums, and Canadian military and civil officials had been directly involved from the beginning. The Secretary to the Cabinet, R.B. Bryce, made that point to the Prime Minister, but the rejoinder was that “Sky Hawk [was] an illustration of a tendency on the part of military officers to assert authority in a field where the real authority and responsibility properly lay with the civilian government.”⁴¹ That was so, but what the affair really demonstrated, as Heeney noted, was that procedures in Ottawa had broken down.⁴² By the end of August, Diefenbaker had accepted that; nonetheless, he was determined “not to have Canada ‘put on the tail of the United States’ in a scheme of such questionable wisdom.”⁴³

The Prime Minister and Cabinet stuck to their position despite the importunings of the ambassador in Ottawa and a letter from Eisenhower. The best the Canadians would offer was that if the civil air disruptions were scrapped, they would reconsider;⁴⁴ but that did not seem possible, and Sky Hawk was cancelled on September 15.

For Arnold Heeney, this nasty little business had come closer to doing serious damage to the foundations of Canada–United States relations in joint defence than any other event in his experience.⁴⁵ What Sky Hawk had demonstrated was that there was an element of capriciousness in External Affairs and in the Cabinet. It was almost as if the department had been piqued to learn of the exercise so late, and as if Howard Green’s and John Diefenbaker’s nationalist hubris, once involved, forbade any alteration in a Canadian position. Equally important, this was Green’s first victory in Cabinet as Secretary of State for External Affairs, the first time he had managed to translate his concerns about war and the United States into policy. That he could carry the Prime Minister with him was significant.

The Americans were annoyed and puzzled, and their suspicions of Diefenbaker’s government began to burgeon. Even the President was concerned, and he called Secretary of State Christian Herter on April 8, 1960, to say that “from somewhere he had heard that our relationships with Canada were deteriorating. This he said he could not understand, and suggested inviting Prime Minister Diefenbaker down to Washington….”⁴⁶ Diefenbaker was invited, and the visit in June was a love feast. But it was never the personal relationship that needed repair – it was the building sentiment of anti-Americanism in Canada.

This apparently worried the Prime Minister who at the end of August 1960 spoke to Ambassador Heeney about “anti-Americanism,” which was, Heeney recorded, “now worse than at any time in his lifetime or mine…an ‘avalanche.’ ” The causes were the popular view that the Americans were “pushing other people around,” distrust of the U.S. military, the economic aggressiveness of American interests, and Canada’s adverse trade balance. Diefenbaker wanted the President to know his assessment of the gravity of the situation. Heeney did not agree with Diefenbaker’s appraisal, and he was suspicious about the source of most of Diefenbaker’s opinions – the Prime Minister’s mail. What did worry him was the Canadian leader’s dark mood and the simple fact that in January 1961 there would be a new administration in the U.S. capital. Whichever party won, Canada would be confronted by those “who knew not Joseph.” They would, “for this reason and by reason of the individuals concerned, be much more difficult for us to deal with.”⁴⁷

That turned out to be true, although the opening stages of Diefenbaker’s relations with President Kennedy were cordial enough. On February 20, 1961, Diefenbaker and Kennedy met at the White House. The Prime Minister described the meeting as “excellent…it could not have been better,” and Merchant from Ottawa reported how “greatly impressed” Diefenbaker was by “the President and his top lieutenants.”⁴⁸ That was true in February.

But the new administration, building on the fears of the old, was less impressed with the Canadians. Green was “naive and almost parochial,” while Diefenbaker “is not believed to have any basic prejudice against the United States. He has appeared, however, to seek on occasion to assert Canadian independence by seizing opportunities for Canada to adopt policies which deviate somewhat from those of the United States….”⁴⁹ Another paper, prepared prior to Kennedy’s visit to Ottawa in May 1961, was blunter. Diefenbaker showed “a disappointing indecisiveness on important issues, such as the defense program, as well as a lack of political courage and undue sensitivity to public opinion.”⁵⁰ With that kind of material in his briefing books, the new president, humiliated by the Bay of Pigs disaster in mid-April, was probably less sensitive to the feelings of the older man than he had been in February. The talks were blunt at times,*¹ and Diefenbaker was incensed by a memo that had been found in a fold of a sofa after the President’s departure. On it Walt Rostow, one of Kennedy’s key aides, had listed a series of points on which Kennedy should “push” Diefenbaker. “The P.M. said,” Heeney recorded ten months later, “he had not so far made use of this paper but ‘when the proper time came’ he would not hesitate to do so…. I have rarely if ever been so disturbed by a conversation with the head of the Can. govt.”⁵¹

Well he might have been. Diefenbaker’s favourable impressions of Kennedy were gone, replaced by a brooding suspicion of the President’s motives and a certain envy of his style and youth. The Prime Minister’s domestic difficulties also magnified the slights from Washington and the unanswered messages – “Not a bloody word,” Diefenbaker said, in reply to one congratulatory message he had sent.⁵² And Kennedy’s reaction to the Prime Minister was similar.⁵³ All it would take now was one new and major difficulty to bring the relations of the two countries to the breaking point.

—

The issue was to be Cuba. The Diefenbaker government had disagreed with the American attitude to the Cuban revolution almost since Fidel Castro seized power on New Year’s Day, 1958. After a brief burst of interest in the bearded, cigar-puffing Cuban leader, the Americans quickly decided that he was a Marxist bent on creating a one-party state and threatening to export revolution to the hemisphere. “We are facing a serious situation in the Caribbean,” Eisenhower had written to Diefenbaker in July 1960, “which is obviously inviting Soviet penetration of the Western hemisphere.”⁵⁴ A few days later, at a meeting of senior ministers of both countries at the Seigneury Club in Montebello, Quebec, the Americans went further. They were thinking of economic sanctions as a way of bringing home to the Cuban people the costs involved in supporting Castro and Communism, they said, and they wanted Canada to co-operate by blocking Cuban funds in Canadian banks. They hoped, Norman Robertson, the very sceptical Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, wrote after the meeting, “to avoid the use of armed forces.” All the Canadians present seemed to agree that American policy was wrong, destined inevitably to force Castro toward the Soviet Union.⁵⁵

The Canadian attitude did not please Washington, nor would Canadian suggestions that Canada might mediate between Washington and Havana.⁵⁶ Thus when the new administration took over in January 1961, Kennedy’s ministers and officials, generally tougher and more conscious of American power than those in the previous administration, were not well disposed toward Canadian policy to Cuba. Heeney discovered this when he sat beside Dean Rusk at a dinner and told him that Canada did not think cutting off trade would do anything except make Cuba completely Communist. Rusk “got quite hot in his response. The U.S. were simply not going to have a Communist base established in Cuba…and wd do whatever had to be done to prevent it including if necessary sending in troops. This was primarily a matter of the Monroe doctrine…. Further U.S. policy was not going to be altered because Canada didn’t like it.”⁵⁷ Such American attitudes had led to the Bay of Pigs.

No one expected a major crisis, however, least of all the Canadian ambassador in Moscow, who reported on October 19, 1962, that Khrushchev had told the American ambassador that “he had no intention of building [an] offensive military base” in Cuba.⁵⁸ That was three days after Kennedy had seen the first aerial surveillance photographs showing construction of a Soviet missile installation on the Caribbean island.

On October 21, two Canadian intelligence specialists who had been at a meeting in Washington returned to Ottawa with the first word of the impending crisis. The next day, Livingston Merchant, the former ambassador, flew to Ottawa to brief Diefenbaker.⁵⁹ As Kennedy wrote to the Prime Minister, “we are now in the possession of clear evidence…that the Soviets have secretly installed offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba and that some of them may already be operational.”⁶⁰ Merchant showed photographs of the installations, explained the actions to be taken by the United States, and read Kennedy’s speech that was to be delivered on television two hours later to announce the American naval blockade of Cuba. Defence minister Harkness asked about the stages of alert to which the U.S. forces were to be raised and also about the methods of blockade, and as Harkness wrote, “The Prime Minister stated that in the event of a missile attack on the United States from Cuba, Canada would live up to its responsibilities under the NATO and NORAD agreements.”⁶¹

No one doubted that. But how was Canada to respond to the immediate crisis? As soon as Kennedy’s broadcast ended, NORAD went to DEFCON 3, the middle of five alert statuses. According to Air Marshal Slemon, the deputy commander of NORAD, the expectation at Colorado Springs was that Canada would follow suit at once or within a few hours. Slemon was told by the chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Frank Miller, that the Canadian government would give the committee the authority to enable NORAD to increase the state of readiness of the NORAD forces in Canada to the same level and at the same time.⁶² But this did not occur.

In fact, on the evening of October 22 when Harkness asked the Prime Minister for authority to put the forces on alert, he found Diefenbaker “loath…and [he] said it should be a Cabinet decision.” As Harkness noted, he and Miller discussed what actions they could order without a formal alert. But all that could be done was to man the services’ intelligence and communications headquarters, to issue warning orders to field commands, and to order manning of field communications.⁶³

The next morning Harkness explained to his colleagues the reasons why an alert was necessary. “I believe all the cabinet would have agreed to this,” he said, perhaps underestimating the resentment of his colleagues at Kennedy’s late notice to Canada, “but the Prime Minister argued against it on the ground that an alert would unduly alarm the people, that we should wait and see what happened etc. He and I finally came to fairly hot words, but he refused to agree….” The Cabinet decided only that further consideration of the alert would come after the reactions of other countries, and particularly Britain, had been ascertained.⁶⁴ When he returned to his office, however, Harkness on his own ordered the Chiefs “to put into effect all the precautions we had discussed in the morning; but in as quiet and unobtrusive a way as possible.” Personnel on leave were not recalled, but everything was ordered to go ahead as though an alert had been authorized. That readied the forces, Harkness observed, but it did not “reassure the United States and our other allies…that we were prepared to fight.”⁶⁵ In other words, the Canadian forces were on alert despite the delaying tactics of their Prime Minister, an alert to which they were committed through their membership in NORAD, the alliance into which Diefenbaker had led Canadians. There were no nuclear weapons in the forces’ hands, but no one could charge that Canada had let down its friends – for more than a day.⁶⁶

What was the cause of Diefenbaker’s extraordinary actions? Part of it was undoubtedly his hesitation in making decisions. Another part was the suspicions he had developed of Kennedy as a brash young man and of American policy as unsound. But part also was his support, announced in the House on October 22, for a United Nations-sponsored mission to Cuba to find out the facts. That idea had emerged from the Department of External Affairs,⁶⁷ but it was an immediate non-starter, not least because it suggested that Canada did not believe the evidence in the American photographs. It did, however, serve to delay a formal Canadian decision on implementing the alert status and to worsen matters with Washington.

On October 24, the day the American blockade went into effect, the Cabinet again refused to sanction an alert,⁶⁸ despite Harkness’s shouting at the Prime Minister that “we were failing in our responsibilities to the nation and must act, which produced an outburst from the Prime Minister to the effect that he would not be forced into any such action.” When Harkness returned to his office, he learned that the Americans had moved to a greater degree of readiness, DEFCON 2. “I at once went to see the Prime Minister…showed him the message and said we just could not delay any longer and, in an agitated way, he then said, ‘all right, go ahead.’ ”⁶⁹

The indecision had ended and Harkness’s alert had been legalized. But the Americans did not forget the political delays, even though the crisis quickly dissolved when Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles. Nor did the Canadian people. Public opinion was strongly supportive of Kennedy’s actions – and very critical of the government’s hesitancy. Almost 80 per cent of opinion sampled in a Gallup poll supported Kennedy, a fact that led a Privy Council Office official to note that Canadians felt “a fundamental alliance with the United States that is often covered over but never seriously threatened…. The main lesson to be drawn from all this,” he wrote, “is that when the U.S. President chooses to psychologically mobilize the American people on the occasion of a serious threat to them, the Canadian people will be drawn up in the process also.”⁷⁰

That was exactly so, and in the circumstances Diefenbaker’s performance was found wanting. Newspaper commentators reached for their negative adjectives – inglorious, humiliating, embarrassing. Harkness wrote that the crisis shook confidence in Diefenbaker among Cabinet ministers “and the faith in him was, I believe, never restored to what it was.” Pierre Sévigny, the Associate Minister of National Defence, called the government position “vacillating” and added that it cost Diefenbaker the support of even “fanatical” Tories.⁷¹

Diefenbaker’s defence, delivered in Parliament after the fact, was that it was too much to expect any country to react instantly when it learned of a crisis an hour before it became public.⁷² That was fair, and Canada was entitled to greater consideration under the terms of the NORAD agreement. But this was a crisis of earth-shattering import, and Canada’s leader had flunked the test. That was not only the view of the Americans and the Canadian public but also of some members of the Cabinet. The impact of all this was to be enormous when the nuclear weapons dispute with the United States reached its denouement.

III

The question of whether Canada would accept nuclear weapons for its armed forces should have been resolved once and for all when Canada decided to take the Bomarc missile in September 1958. Then and in the Cabinet decision that determined the Arrow’s fall, the nuclear question was decided de facto if not de jure but almost in passing, so concerned were the ministers with the political fallout that was sure to come with the cancellation of the CF-105. Nonetheless, when the Prime Minister announced the decision on the Arrow on February 20, he spoke of nuclear weapons in a way that left no doubts. “The full potential of these defensive weapons,” he said, referring to the Bomarcs, “is achieved only when they are armed with nuclear warheads.” The government was already looking at the problems involved in securing warheads for the Bomarcs and for “short range nuclear weapons for NATO’s defence tasks,” and the Prime Minister did not foresee any difficulty in reaching agreement with the United States. “It will of course be some time before these weapons will be available for use by Canadian forces.”⁷³ That delay between decision and operational readiness was to allow time for second thoughts.

There had already been some delay. The Americans had been pressing Canada to take MB-1 nuclear-armed missiles for the RCAF’s interceptors at least since December 1957, and at the same time they had asked that similar weapons be stored at their leased air bases in Newfoundland and Labrador.⁷⁴ And early in January 1958, the Cabinet had agreed that “exploratory discussions” could be held between the military authorities of the two countries.⁷⁵

In addition, in December that year at the Canada–United States Ministerial Committee on Joint Defence meetings held in Paris on explicit authority of the Cabinet there were extensive discussions between ministers of the two countries over the draft of a statement, presented by Sidney Smith, the Secretary of State for External Affairs, that would be made to announce the Canadian decision to take nuclear weapons. In the discussion, George Pearkes confirmed that the decision was to cover MB-1 rockets and nuclear depth charges for the Navy. “It was agreed by the meeting that there seemed to be no difference of principle between Canadian and US views on the matter of control to be exercised over the use of nuclear weapons….”⁷⁶

And from early 1959, Canada was engaged in detailed negotiations with NATO authorities over the replacement of the equipment of the Air Division in Europe with a new aircraft to carry out a “strike/attack” role that was defined from the outset as “referring to attacks with nuclear or conventional armament against pre-determined surface targets.” General Lauris Norstad, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, made that point clear to the Cabinet on May 18, 1959, when he said that none of the NATO allies had been better in quality than Canada, and this quality adapted to the delivery of atomic weapons in the strike/attack role would be an important element in NATO strength. The general also indicated that he thought nuclear weapons could be made available to Canadian forces under the same type of arrangement as they were to the British. “Warheads would be made available on NATO authority in furtherance of NATO plans; they would be located on Canadian bases and guarded by Canadian servicemen; the ‘key to the cupboard’ would be held by a United States officer, and maintenance would be done by a small group of United States personnel. These weapons,” he went on, “could be used only if both Canada and the appropriate NATO authority, acting on behalf of the United States, agreed.”⁷⁷ In July 1959, Canada chose the F-104 aircraft for this role.⁷⁸

In other words, from 1958 onwards everything in Canadian defence was based on the clear assumption that nuclear weapons would be secured from the United States for the weapons systems Canada was acquiring. The military wanted the weapons; External Affairs apparently had no objections, subject only to the terms of the agreements being satisfactorily worked out; and the Prime Minister and the Cabinet were also apparently in favour. The formal and the final decision to take nuclear weapons had not yet been made, to be sure, but all the evidence leads inescapably to the conclusion that this would be simply the final seal of approval on a decision made long before.

Equally important, the Americans assumed that the decisions had already been made. For example, in June 1959, President Eisenhower met with some of the senior members of the administration to discuss the Bomarc system, under attack in the House of Representatives Military Appropriations Committee and the subject of interservice rivalry. Eisenhower was in an accommodating mood, asking his officials if the Canadians wanted the Bomarc bases in the northern United States sited farther north to give additional protection. But the real question was whether the Bomarc’s development should be continued. The Secretary of Defense commented that “if we were to go out of the BOMARC program, he did not think we could live with the Canadians, who had just recently, after long joint discussions, adopted it in preference to interceptors for their air defense.” It is at least arguable that had Canada not decided to take the weapons, the Americans might have decided to cancel production. And when in 1960 the Bomarc ran into testing difficulties and new problems in Congress, administration officials went strongly to bat for the weapon.⁷⁹

What turned this smooth and on-track situation into the quagmire it became? The first misadventure was the death of Sidney Smith in mid-1959 and his replacement as Secretary of State for External Affairs by Howard Green. A strongly partisan M.P. of long service, Green had been made Minister of Public Works in 1957 and, although he had not hitherto been known for firm views on current foreign policy, he was quick to form opinions. The prospect of nuclear war horrified Green, and he turned the search for disarmament into a personal crusade. To Green, logically enough, if Canada was to press for disarmament abroad, it could not acquire nuclear weapons for the Canadian forces. “We were advocating in the United Nations that there should be control of the spread of nuclear weapons,” Green said later, “…and then to turn around and take them ourselves just made us look foolish.”⁸⁰ In his position on nuclear weapons, Green was greatly assisted by his deputy minister. Norman Robertson was an experienced career officer who had served as Mackenzie King’s under-secretary through the war and as Clerk of the Privy Council, High Commissioner in England, and ambassador in Washington after the war’s end. A great, brooding man of intelligence and depth, Robertson by mid-1959 had become convinced that nuclear weapons were a direct route to “global suicide.” Our efforts, he told some of his officials, “should be turned…to the tremendous political effort that needed to be undertaken to avoid the awesome consequences of nuclear warfare.” But as a realist, the under-secretary recognized that dilatoriness on this issue would have serious repercussions on Canada–United States relationships, and would lessen Canada’s ability to influence U.S. policy on important issues.⁸¹ Robertson and Green made a formidable team inside the bureaucracy and at the Cabinet and committee tables.

Against them were the officials in the Department of National Defence. The generals wanted their men to have the best possible weapons and to them that meant nuclear weapons. The minister, General Pearkes, took the same view,⁸² and after Pearkes went to his reward as lieutenant-governor of British Columbia in October 1960, the new minister, Colonel Douglas Harkness, felt even more strongly about the need for Canada to take nuclear weapons. The pro-nuclear forces had one very important ally in Robert Bryce, the one civil servant completely trusted by the Prime Minister, a position he had earned by getting massive quantities of work done well and on time and by always putting his views squarely before Diefenbaker. On defence questions, an area that Bryce knew well from his long service on Treasury Board and in Finance, he was an unfailing advocate of a hard line – and that included nuclear weapons.

In essence, with National Defence and Bryce on one side and External Affairs on the other, the struggle was for the soul and mind of the Prime Minister. And the Prime Minister’s soul and mind were sorely troubled. He believed in the reality of the Communist threat, and he wanted Canada to take its fair share in the struggle against the Soviet Union. He admired and respected the United States and particularly President Eisenhower. But he resented bitterly any suggestions that Canada was being pushed around by the Americans, and he was concerned, as were other prime ministers before and after him, about the “real intentions” of the Pentagon.

By the summer of 1960, under continuing pressure from Howard Green, under the pressure of a growing Canadian public opinion that mistrusted the United States and was beginning to flirt with the idea of neutrality as a possible course, Diefenbaker was beginning to waver in his support for arming the forces with nuclear weapons.⁸³ On one day he could put off a Cabinet decision until such time as the Americans could present a justification for their requests of Canada; on another he could tell the ambassador in Washington that the early conclusion of a nuclear agreement with the United State was “desirable” if arrangements for joint control could be made.⁸⁴

But whatever his own growing personal doubts, Diefenbaker seemed slowly to be moving the government toward a firm decision to accept the nuclear warheads for the Bomarcs, for the RCAF interceptors in NORAD and the CF-104s in NATO, and for the Honest John surface-to-surface missiles used by the Canadian Brigade in Germany. On December 6, 1960, for example, the Cabinet decided to support an Irish disarmament resolution at the United Nations and agreed that henceforth only the Prime Minister would speak on nuclear weapons and Canadian policy. In addition, the ministers agreed that

discussions (or “negotiations”) with the U.S. Government concerning arrangements for the essential acquisition of nuclear weapons or warheads for use by the Canadian forces, in the manners already decided, may proceed as soon as they can usefully be undertaken but the acceptance of joint control is to be a basic principle;

an agreement with the United States concerning the storage of defensive nuclear weapons at Goose Bay and Harmon Field for the U.S. Air Defence forces should not be concluded until after discussions with the United States on other matters had been concluded;

in the discussions at the N.A.T.O. meeting this month, Canadian Ministers should recognize that the government has agreed, at the meeting in December 1957 and at other times, and is morally bound, to supply Canadian forces under N.A.T.O. command equipped and ready to use nuclear weapons if and when they are necessary;…

preparations should continue to enable the Canadian forces to have the vehicles, missiles, bases, training and other requirements to enable them to be ready to use nuclear weapons to be acquired from the United States under joint control arrangements if and when the adoption of these weapons is considered necessary.⁸⁵

The paragraph of the Cabinet decision on NATO was a clear admission that Canada had made commitments to the alliance; the other paragraphs amounted to a recognition of the fact that Canada had made commitments to the United States, subject only to reaching of agreements on joint control.

But on the other hand – and there was always another hand – the Prime Minister had told the Canadian Club of Ottawa on November 24, 1960, that Canada would not make a decision on nuclear weapons so long as progress toward disarmament continued. That speech encouraged External Affairs; the Cabinet decision emboldened National Defence.⁸⁶ Nonetheless, when Harkness tried to get the Cabinet to reaffirm the Prime Minister’s House of Commons statement of February 20, 1959, External Affairs was able to block the move by arguing that Diefenbaker’s recent speeches could be regarded as a modification of the Commons speech, and Robertson, setting out the arguments for his minister, added that the one firm element affecting the decision on nuclear weapons was the delivery date, which was still well in the future. “It would seem reasonable, therefore, to hold to the view that a decision to acquire weapons at this time is premature.”⁸⁷

That was the situation when Diefenbaker flew to Washington to meet President Kennedy for the first time on February 20, 1961. In their talks, Diefenbaker set out the Canadian position:

Mr. Diefenbaker [in his report to Cabinet on February 21] had stated that negotiations should continue regarding…storage at Harmon Field and Goose Bay, but that Canada would insist upon joint custody and control, and joint authority over use. The President had seemed to raise no objection. Regarding the submarine base at Argentia, Mr. Diefenbaker said he had stated that Canada would require joint custody, but that use should be determined by N.A.T.O. He had further stated that, so long as serious disarmament negotiations continued, Canada did not propose to determine whether or not to accept nuclear weapons for the Bomarc base or for the Canadian interceptors; but that, if such weapons were accepted by Canada, this country would require joint custody and joint control, and use would be determined in the same manner as on U.S. bases. Negotiations for the necessary arrangements should now continue on the basis of a “package” deal, no one agreement being signed before the others had been worked out. There would be no hold up if war should occur. The President had asked whether the same sort of “two key” arrangement as the United Kingdom had would be satisfactory and Mr. Diefenbaker had said it would.⁸⁸

Matters had advanced not at all between February and May when Kennedy paid his return visit to Ottawa. Harkness and Green could not reach an agreement between themselves and their departments on nuclear policy, and the negotiations with the Americans, in consequence, continued to be stalled.⁸⁹ Thus when Diefenbaker and Kennedy talked, the Prime Minister was, if anything, more negative on the subject of nuclear weapons than he had been in February. “Prime Minister said that in view of public opinion in Cda,” External Affairs telegraphed to Geneva, “it would be impossible politically at moment for Cda to accept nuclear weapons.” Nor could Canada take the F-101 Voodoo fighters from the United States as replacements for the CF-100, primarily because the arrangement offered by the United States was contingent on the aircraft being armed with nuclear rockets. “He asked President to reconsider deal on basis that while aircraft would be fitted to receive nuclear arms rockets would remain in storage in USA pending a decision in Canada on nuclear weapons.”⁹⁰ Whether other promises were made is unclear, although Willis Armstrong, the second-ranking officer in the American embassy, did tell a friend that Diefenbaker had pledged that he would prepare Canadian opinion for the acceptance of the nuclear weapons.⁹¹

But again, nothing happened until on August 3 Kennedy sent the Prime Minister a letter that went over the ground in detail and argued that the bilateral control agreements should be negotiated now to be in place when the Cabinet took the decision to accept the warheads. Diefenbaker replied on August 11, at a time of some tension between East and West over Berlin, to say that he would ensure “that final preparations were expedited for the negotiation of the agreements to which you referred.” But news of the exchange of letters was leaked (in Washington), and the Prime Minister was furious. As a result, the negotiations again stalled,*² and Livingston Merchant, again appointed ambassador to Canada, pressed the President to send yet another letter. He added, “I do not share apparent Canadian Government assessment that acquisition nuclear weapons constitutes issue on which it would encounter overwhelming opposition.” That might have been a rather presumptuous judgement for Merchant to make had the opinion polls – one on December 1, 1961, showed a 2-to-1 majority in favour of Canada acquiring nuclear weapons – and editorials not demonstrated that he was correct.⁹²

Merchant confirmed his surmise in an extensive tour of Central and Western Canada in the spring of 1962 and in secret briefings he himself conducted for the Ottawa press corps. He reported that while there was vociferous opposition, the overwhelming majority of businessmen and other community leaders considered the possession of such weapons necessary and hence inevitable. Canadians, in the ambassador’s view, “have no doubt that their destiny and even survival is indissolubly linked with ours.” Although Diefenbaker would not have agreed with Merchant that Canada’s destiny was linked to that of the United States, on March 8 he told the ambassador that he expected “to proceed forthwith on negotiations looking at least to initialing texts as finally agreed.” And, Merchant reported, Diefenbaker seemed confident of his ability “to carry through.”⁹³

But events intervened. The election of 1962 decimated the Prime Minister’s following in the House of Commons, and the economic crisis that preceded and followed the vote took its toll on the Prime Minister’s reserves of strength. For five weeks nothing happened, not even a Cabinet shuffle. Then on July 23, Diefenbaker broke a bone in his ankle and was virtually bedridden for another five weeks. The injury did nothing for the Chief’s humour, and the atmosphere of indecision around him grew almost palpable.

On August 9, however, the Cabinet was finally reorganized. Donald Fleming was replaced as Minister of Finance by George Nowlan, and the hard-working Fleming took the Justice portfolio. Davie Fulton became Minister of Public Works, and it was obvious that Diefenbaker had demoted him and Fleming. Ellen Fairclough left Immigration to become Postmaster General, and Ernest Halpenny became Secretary of State. R.A. Bell became Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and Paul Martineau Minister of Mines. The one major surprise was that Wallace McCutcheon, a key figure in Argus Corporation, a giant holding company in Toronto, became a senator and Minister without Portfolio. “Kennedy’s got McNamara,” Diefenbaker said, referring to the American Secretary of Defense who had headed the Ford Motor Company before going to Washington, “I’ve got McCutcheon.” The appointment was obviously designed to reassure the financial community about the economy.⁹⁴

Perhaps that might have worked if the economic woes, rapidly healing as international confidence in the dollar returned, had not been succeeded by the Cuban crisis of October 1962, which once again brought defence to the fore. Diefenbaker’s hesitancy in supporting Kennedy had a major impact in Ottawa, on the country, and on our political history.

In the first place, Diefenbaker’s own condition was in question. The prime ministerial ankle had mended but Diefenbaker’s spirit had not, and throughout the fall of 1962 he was repeatedly threatening, both in the Cabinet and to his friends, to resign. Those threats inevitably led aspirants for the leadership to talk with their supporters and others to begin discussion as to how, as Gordon Churchill put it, to avoid the quicksands that might engulf the government. Late in the year Diefenbaker told Churchill, probably his closest colleague and the one most worried about his state of mind, that he was definitely going to retire. But if Diefenbaker’s decision was final, it was no more final than many of his other decisions, and nothing happened.⁹⁵ The party, the Cabinet, and the country drifted rudderless.

But when the Cuban crisis was past, Defence minister Harkness was determined that the nuclear question had to be resolved. As he wrote later, “Immediately after the Cuban crisis I succeeded in getting a full discussion of the nuclear question in cabinet and it was unanimously agreed that we should at once reopen negotiations with the United States in order to secure an agreement.” The Cabinet decision on October 30, Harkness said, was to accept “nuclear ammunition for the weapons in Europe…on the same terms as the European members of NATO had agreed to with the United States.” For the Bomarcs and the Voodoos in Canada, “we were to try to get an agreement under which the nuclear warheads, or essential parts of them, would be held in the United States, but could be put on the weapons in Canada in a matter of minutes or hours.” Harkness considered this to be a dubious proposition militarily, but he was so pleased to have the NATO weapons question resolved that he went along.⁹⁶

The negotiations were to be conducted by Green, Harkness, and Churchill, and in November there was a three-day meeting with the Americans. There was, Harkness said, “no difficulty over the European nuclear warhead supply – a copy of the standard agreement on this was given to us and no objections were raised to it.” But the arguments over the methods of shipping warheads or a specific missing part by air to Canada were long. To Harkness the question was simply unrealistic: “To accomplish this a large number of aircraft and hundreds of men would be required which would make it an extremely expensive operation…. In addition, if weather conditions were bad, it might not work.” This was an “impractical” solution, and the only purpose it served was to permit Canada to maintain that no nuclear weapons were on its soil. That, however, was important to Green. By December, when Green and Harkness went to Paris for the NATO meetings, nothing had been resolved, and although the two men had discussions with Secretaries McNamara and Rusk, they made no headway. The Americans apparently went away convinced that there would be no further satisfactory progress toward Canadian acceptance of nuclear weapons.⁹⁷

Harkness also noted that between the October 30 Cabinet decision and the NATO meeting he had repeatedly attempted to have the Prime Minister sign the papers to authorize nuclear weapons for the NATO forces. There was an element of urgency involved for it was expected that at least six months’ time was necessary to bring the CF-104 squadrons to operational readiness. “He had no objection to this agreement as such,” Harkness remembered, “but argued that the whole thing should be announced at one time, and would not agree to immediate action for the European end….”⁹⁸

The Liberal party was having its own problems over nuclear weapons. Under Pearson, the Grits had opposed Canada’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, a position shared by the NDP. But under pressure within the party,⁹⁹ Pearson himself had been agonizing over the defence question. Early in 1962 he set out his views and those of some friends he had consulted, including Walter Gordon and Paul Hellyer. All agreed that in the changing conditions of the day, defence policy had to be flexible, although this was no excuse for refusing to take decisions, the “besetting sin of the present Canadian government.” But how to be decisive? That was not easy, but Pearson did manage to set down some firm positions. The Bomarcs, he wrote, were useless against missiles and of little use against bombers if only because, as fixed installations, they were vulnerable. “These Bomarcs should be scrapped,” Pearson wrote, “unless a much stronger case for their retention can be made than has been made” thus far. If circumstances changed in ways that made it necessary for Canada to provide sites for nuclear weapons, “a Liberal government will not shirk its responsibility to make a decision.” For the moment, however, Pearson concluded that nuclear weapons would not add “in any substantial way to our own or collective defence…. Therefore we should not manufacture, or acquire nuclear weapons for Canadian forces, either under Canadian or joint Canada-US control.” The one exception he made was to say that the weapons should “be made available to Canadian forces in NATO for defensive tactical purposes, if they are under NATO, and not national control.”¹⁰⁰ In effect, Pearson was rejecting the strike/attack role of the CF-104s, and as the warheads for the Honest John would be under ultimate U.S. control, he was consigning those weapons to the scrapyard as well. Under the conditions of 1962, then, Pearson was opposed to Canada going nuclear.

But this position was under assault,¹⁰¹ and Pearson began to modify his stand. His policy statements, he wrote one supporter, had always been phrased so “as not to ‘require’ us to use nuclear warheads, which is, of course, less definite than to say that we will never use nuclear warheads in any circumstances.”¹⁰² What turned Pearson around completely, however, was the word that Paul Hellyer and Judy LaMarsh, two of his M.P.s, brought back from a visit to NATO and a talk with General Norstad in November 1962. Canada was not meeting its commitments, they said, and as a result it was endangering the alliance and the country’s place in it. The two felt very strongly about this and apparently indicated they would leave the party if the policy remained unaltered.¹⁰³ Hellyer in fact delivered a speech at Walkerton, Ontario, on December 8 in which he said that as Canada had committed itself to taking the weapons, it had to follow through. “I don’t object to that,” Pearson said, “but I would add: ‘or change the commitment.’ ”¹⁰⁴Jack Pickersgill weighed in as well, pointing out that the public saw the Liberal party as being just as bad as the government in its vacillation. “You have already decided what our position must be on existing commitments and there was no dissent in caucus,” Pickersgill wrote on January 3, 1963. “But let it be said simply and decisively and without any qualifications about trying to get out of it.”¹⁰⁵

But before Pearson could announce his party’s new defence policy, General Norstad came to Ottawa. The retiring NATO commander held a press conference on January 3, 1963, and left no one in doubt that Canada was committed: “We are depending on Canada to produce some of the tactical atomic strike force…. I know that they have committed the Starfighters [CF-104s]….”¹⁰⁶

It was not Norstad’s statements that persuaded Pearson to change the Liberal position: that decision had been made at least a week before. But the general’s remarks gave added potency to Pearson’s new line, delivered in a speech in Toronto on January 12. “As a Canadian,” Pearson told a party meeting, “I am ashamed if we accept commitments and then refuse to discharge them.” What was to be done? Canada “should end at once its evasion of responsibility by discharging the commitments it has already accepted…. It can only do this by accepting nuclear warheads, for those defensive tactical weapons which cannot effectively be used without them but which we have agreed to use.” In addition, there should be an immediate examination of the bases of Canadian defence policy. Canada should also discuss with the Americans and NATO a role “in continental and collective defence which would be more realistic and effective for Canada than the present one.” But until the present role was changed, “a new Liberal government would put Canada’s armed forces in the position to discharge fully commitments undertaken for Canada by its predecessor.”¹⁰⁷

Pearson had taken the plunge. The Tories were clearly divided on the issue and a Gallup Poll in November 1962 showed that a substantial majority still wanted Canada to have nuclear weapons. “These factors,” Pearson said, “certainly did not inhibit me.”¹⁰⁸ Significantly, and despite the popular perception to the contrary, Pearson did not say that his government would renegotiate the nuclear commitment and return Canada to atomic virginity. As Paul Hellyer later wrote to him, “…you never did say that we would – either immediately or otherwise – negotiate out of a nuclear role. You may have given that impression but you did not say it.”¹⁰⁹

For Harkness, the Pearson switch was a promising development. “I believed that this would enable the matter to be settled, and would remove it as a major question in the forthcoming election….” But that was not the Prime Minister’s position: “…to my complete surprise,” Harkness wrote, “he took the position that we must now oppose the position taken by Pearson and delay any decisions on acquiring the warheads.” That further strained relations between Harkness and Diefenbaker.

So too did the events surrounding the resolution on the nuclear question at the mid-January 1963 annual meeting of the Progressive Conservative Association. Eddie Goodman, a Toronto lawyer, was chairman of the resolutions committee and a strong believer in Canada taking nuclear weapons. Goodman had made up a draft resolution from the many submitted by constituency associations across the country stating that if no system of nuclear disarmament were adopted by the great powers before December 1963, Canada would accept nuclear weapons provided that those for use in NORAD were under joint control. The Prime Minister tinkered with Goodman’s phrasing but ultimately rejected the resolution, saying that if the association accepted it, the party would need a new leader. Goodman, a tough man and a veteran of the fierce fighting in Normandy in the summer of 1944, refused to retreat. In the end, the resolution was emasculated when the meeting referred it back to the government for “consideration and decision.” Harkness was not unhappy with that, but he was furious at the way Diefenbaker had tried to squash the resolution before the meeting: “…it became more apparent than ever that he was planning to back away from a nuclear position and the whole defence policy we had followed for the previous four to five years.” And Harkness told his friends in the Cabinet that he would resign if the government did not take a position on the nuclear question that he could accept and defend.¹¹⁰

At the first opportunity after the association meeting, Harkness told the Cabinet that the question had to be resolved. The House was to resume on January 21, and while Diefenbaker argued that “we must continue on the line of delay and no definite policy until the election was over,” Harkness said he would quit if that course was followed. The result was that the ministers decided to settle matters once and for all on Tuesday, January 22. Prior to that Cabinet meeting, Diefenbaker told Parliament that there would be a debate on defence and foreign policy on Friday of that week.¹¹¹

Characteristically, the Cabinet on the twenty-second did not resolve matters. Instead the Prime Minister proposed to create a committee of four – Harkness, Green, Churchill, and Donald Fleming as chairman – to find an acceptable solution. Harkness agreed, but made clear that he could not accept anything short of the Cabinet decision taken October 30, 1962. Fleming’s committee pored over the records of Cabinet decisions and other documents on January 22 and 23. According to Harkness, Green initially argued that the government had never made a decision to accept nuclear weapons, but the record showed “that we had definite obligations, assumed at different times and in different ways…there was no question that acquisition…had been approved of at several times.” Green then backed down, and the committee members pressed Harkness to retreat from his adamant stand so that a report could be presented that might be acceptable. In the end, reluctantly, Harkness did. The result was a one-page report acknowledging that Canada had accepted a nuclear role in NATO but suggesting that recent statements by President Kennedy and Prime Minister Macmillan after their meeting in Nassau had put that role “in some doubt.” It was therefore necessary for Canada “to seek on the part of NATO a clarification of her role in NATO defence plans and dispositions.” That could take place at the NATO Ministerial Meeting scheduled for Ottawa in May 1963. “Should NATO reaffirm for Canada a role involving nuclear weapons, Canada will equip her NATO forces to discharge her obligation.” As for the Bomarcs and Voodoos, the ministers agreed to continue negotiations “with a view to reaching agreement to secure the highest degree of availability to Canada.” By this date, the Americans had made clear that it was impossible to fly a missing part into Canada. They were willing to store the parts in Canada if they could be installed without delay.¹¹²

The committee’s report was unanimous, but Diefenbaker refused to accept it. He ranted and raved, Harkness wrote. “He said he would not be forced into any position on the matter and he complained that I had not compromised in any way to reach a settlement. I replied…that he appeared to regard compromise as giving in completely to his point of view, and also that I would put in my resignation at once.” But again matters were smoothed over, the committee and the Prime Minister agreeing that the report could go to Cabinet on Thursday. At that meeting, after the Prime Minister had left the council chamber, the great majority accepted the Fleming report. Fleming then left to give this result to Diefenbaker, but again the Prime Minister refused to agree. Once more Harkness said he would resign, but at another Cabinet meeting at 5 P.M. Harkness was prevailed upon to hold his resignation, his colleagues urging him to await the Prime Minister’s speech in the House the next day.

Diefenbaker’s address on January 25 was confusing to all who heard it. On the one hand, he seemed to reject nuclear weapons: “…more and more the nuclear deterrent is becoming of such a nature that more nuclear arms will add nothing materially to our defences. Greater and greater emphasis must be placed on conventional arms and conventional forces.” But on the other hand, the Prime Minister revealed the secret negotiations with the United States, and he did state the terms of the Fleming committee report as policy.¹¹³ That inclusion satisfied Harkness who, as Minister of National Health and Welfare Waldo Monteith noted, said, “ ‘Thank you very much’ and shook hands” with Diefenbaker, “said he was more than happy and could live very well with it.”¹¹⁴

If Harkness was satisfied, no one else was. The press was confused by the flow of words, and on Sunday, January 27, Harkness issued a press release clarifying what Diefenbaker had said – “the definite policy of the Government.” This he did emphasizing the Fleming committee recommendations.¹¹⁵ Diefenbaker was appalled: “This is terrible–you’ve ruined everything – why did you do it?” But for the next few days nothing happened, the Prime Minister telling questioners that he stood by his speech. At Cabinet on January 30 there were further threats of resignation from Harkness, but once more the ministers persuaded him to delay. By this point, Harkness wrote, several ministers were saying rather openly that no solution could be found if Diefenbaker remained prime minister.¹¹⁶

The tenor of the debate now changed dramatically. At 6:15 P.M. on January 30 President Kennedy’s Department of State issued a statement that turned the domestic struggle into a major crisis. The American document briefly detailed the weaponry that had been put into Canada, noted the inconclusive discussions that had been held, briefly corrected some of Diefenbaker’s comments in the House on January 25, and then devastatingly noted that “the Canadian Government has not as yet proposed any arrangement sufficiently practical to contribute effectively to North American defense.” The press release also noted that the Nassau talks had raised no question of the appropriateness of nuclear weapons for Canadian forces in fulfilling their NATO or NORAD obligations.¹¹⁷

The Americans had called Diefenbaker a liar, and in a briefing the next day, Dean Rusk took out none of the sting: “…we regret it if our statement was phrased in any way to give offense. The need for this statement, however, arose not of our making but because of statements which were made in the defense debate in Ottawa….” The Americans were blunter still in private, telling one officer of the embassy in Washington that they “had felt obliged to set out in factual terms the status of the problem as seen by the United States in the light of [Diefenbaker’s] statement of January 25.”¹¹⁸

Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy’s close aide, said later that the President “did not like and did not respect Diefenbaker, and had no desire to see him continue in office,”¹¹⁹ a comment that suggests, perhaps too strongly, that Kennedy used the press release with conscious and deliberate effect. McGeorge Bundy, another key aide, told Canadian ambassador Charles Ritchie that the President knew nothing in advance about the State department release.¹²⁰ The new ambassador to Canada, Walton Butterworth, reported that in his view the press release required no apology – not surprisingly, for the draft had originated in his mission. It was “very useful” and “will be highly beneficial in advancing U.S. interests by introducing realism into a government which had made anti-Americanism and indecision practically its entire stock in trade.”¹²¹

The Diefenbaker government was visibly collapsing. Although all parties in the House deplored the U.S. intervention, there was little willingness to doubt the essential accuracy of the American charges. In the Cabinet, the Prime Minister seemed even more unwilling than before to carry out the October 30, 1962, Cabinet decision or the Fleming committee recommendations, and he was, Harkness noted, determined to dissolve Parliament on the issue of the Americans’ intervention. Indeed, on January 31 the Prime Minister arranged to see the Governor General the next day. No argument could sway the Chief on that – “he was convinced he could win an election on an anti-U.S. appeal and this,” Harkness claimed, “to him, was all that mattered.” But by the next day the Prime Minister had thought better of this idea. Vanier privately indicated how glad he was that Diefenbaker had not sought dissolution: “…it would be giving too much importance, too quickly, to what the State Department had said.” He was also relieved; his notes indicated how reluctant he would have been to grant Diefenbaker the dissolution and a constitutional crisis – like that of 1926 – might have resulted.¹²²

By this time, February 1, Harkness had persuaded himself that it was time for either himself or Diefenbaker to resign, and a number of other ministers had reached similar conclusions. But when the Cabinet met on February 2, the Prime Minister kept the members busy for three hours making appointments and then proceeded to seek a snap decision on a dissolution on the anti-American issue “without any discussion, by simply asking each member in turn to say whether he favoured dissolution or not – a straight yes or no without remark.” That was unacceptable to many, and the meeting broke up without decision. The next meeting was scheduled for Sunday morning, February 3. Harkness had now definitely decided to leave if Diefenbaker did not, and he said so to the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Leon Balcer, the Minister of Transport, Pierre Sévigny, and George Hees all agreed that Diefenbaker had to go, and McCutcheon also said that he would support a move to force him out.¹²³

The meeting of ministers on Sunday morning at the Prime Minister’s residence was unquestionably the strangest in our political history. Harkness took the bull by the horns and told Diefenbaker he had lost the confidence of the country and must resign. “People of nation, Party, Cabinet and he had lost confidence in P.M.,” Monteith recorded. “All hell broke loose – P.M. asked standing Vote of Confidence – some (saying misunderstood issue) did not stand.” The Prime Minister then left the room, saying he was going to see the Governor General to submit his resignation. Green, Churchill, Hamilton, Dinsdale, and Monteith said that if Diefenbaker resigned, they would as well. In the confusion that followed, the ministers met with Howard Green presiding and Harkness repeated that he had lost all confidence in the leader. As Monteith recorded, “It was felt that Doug should leave – he did in sorrowful way [it seemed] to rest of us….”¹²⁴ To Harkness, who had expected his friends to resign with him, this scene was “a failure in human courage. If the majority who felt this was necessary had been prepared to face the situation, I think there is no doubt [Diefenbaker] would have resigned.” Harkness’s assessment is almost certainly correct.

Meanwhile, the meeting reconvened with Diefenbaker again at the table. “P.M. and Green thought we should dissolve,” Monteith scribbled. “Majority thought we should force vote and be beaten.”¹²⁵ The meeting broke up, but Fulton and Hees returned to urge Diefenbaker to resign, a request that was indignantly refused.

The next day, February 4, Harkness made public his letter of resignation. In Parliament, the Liberals moved want of confidence in the government, deliberately framing the resolution so as to attract Social Credit and NDP votes. The decision would come on February 5.

In the interim, George Hees and Wallace McCutcheon separately saw the Prime Minister, urged him to step down, initially in George Nowlan’s favour, and apparently promised him the office of Chief Justice if he did so.¹²⁶ There was also a “secret meeting” in Hees’s office to which a number of ministers were invited,¹²⁷ and the NDP were offered assurances that if they supported the government in the February 5 vote, Diefenbaker would be gone in forty-eight hours.¹²⁸ It was the Social Credit M.P.s who held the balance of power, however, and they were badly divided. Robert Thompson, the leader, and his Western supporters did not want to defeat the government, but the Quebec members elected in 1962, with Real Caouette absent – “as usual,” Créditiste M.P. Guy Marcoux remembered – wanted to topple the Tories, probably because Diefenbaker made no move to offer them anything in exchange for their support. “We’ve got to have an election. Our electors are fed up with compromises,” they said. When Caouette learned of the decision, he tried vainly to reverse it, but it was too late.¹²⁹ And the NDP, also fed up with the government, decided to vote with the Liberals. “It wasn’t a government worth supporting any more,” York South M.P. David Lewis said. “The issue didn’t count. It was a carcass; it wasn’t a government.”¹³⁰ The result of the vote was 142 to 111 against the government. John Diefenbaker’s government had been defeated, and an election, the second in less than a year, was inevitable.

But the bizarre events had not yet ended. At a Conservative caucus on February 6, deliberately rescheduled to precede, and not follow, a Cabinet meeting where Diefenbaker was to be ousted by rebellious ministers, the party tore itself apart and then made itself whole again. Monteith’s diary tells the story:

Caucus at 9 A.M. – Hees in chair – started in to justify innocence of private meetings his office Tuesday (how to get Soc. Cred. to support in vote). Apparent innocents at meeting Martineau, Fulton, Bell – question mark McCutcheon, Halpenny, Sévigny, Balcer – all at Hees’ invitation. P.M. forced Hees to tell of his visit to 24 Sussex at 8.30 Tuesday A.M. Hees offered chief justice to P.M.

P.M. gave fighting speech and offered to resign – Back benchers rose in arms to say NO. [Senator] Alf Brooks, [Senator] Grattan O’Leary, and Angus MacLean gave wonderful effort on behalf of unity. Tears in all eyes. Finally, P.M. agreed to go on if all agreed. Eventually all stood up [except Harkness and possibly Sévigny] – and Hees…with tears in his eyes agreed….

Seemed like another united caucus and Hees went overboard to say so to press later. 100% behind P.M., etc., etc.¹³¹

That afternoon, Parliament was dissolved and the election set for April 8.

The spurious unity could not last. On February 8, Hees and Sévigny resigned, the former having been pressured by his friends in Toronto. On the next day, the ministers still in town were called to 24 Sussex and, as Monteith wrote, “Extensive phoning – [to find out] who still O.K. and who not.” Halpenny was willing to carry on if his health permitted. Martineau was willing, as were McCutcheon, Starr, and Fairclough. Balcer wavered, but Nowlan and McCutcheon persuaded him to continue. O’Hurley (Minister of Defence Production) was willing, but Fleming, for family reasons, had decided to leave. Fulton was “ready to stay if leader,” Monteith noted, “– only P.M., Churchill, Green and M[onteith] really knew….”¹³²

On February 12, Diefenbaker brought Marcel Lambert into the Cabinet as Minister of Veterans Affairs, McCutcheon was given Trade and Commerce, and Churchill took Defence. (Later, on March 18, Frank McGee, Martial Asselin, and Théogène Ricard were appointed to the ministry.) The crisis was not yet over, however, for on February 13, after a routine meeting, “Balcer very emotionally told P.M. in his considered opinion only one thing for P.M. to do and that was resign. Complete shock,” Monteith wrote, “– P.M. felt he should [resign] – others including O’Hurley and Martineau felt he should stick.” But that crisis too blew over, and Balcer even remained in the government.

The battered Tory government, its ranks depleted and its morale shattered, headed into the election. It was clear, Jack Pickersgill wrote to a friend, that nothing like that had happened to a Cabinet since Mackenzie Bowell had to deal with the nest of traitors in 1896. That was true enough, but Diefenbaker, particularly with his back to the wall, was a far more formidable politician than the unlamented Bowell.¹³⁴ In fact, as R.A. Bell noted, the Chief was a changed man now, in good spirits and steady – “every inch a Prime Minister.”¹³⁵

IV

The Liberals should have been in good shape for the election. The party had been organizing feverishly ever since the 1962 vote, and there was no shortage of money. But there were disquieting signs. In Quebec, sympathetic political figures were reporting that Caouette, bolstered by the Liberals’ switch on nuclear weapons, might win as many as forty to fifty seats.¹³⁶ On the other hand, opinion surveys conducted for the party before Diefenbaker’s defeat in the Commons had demonstrated that unemployment remained the key issue and that the new, seemingly definite Liberal defence policy should be hammered for all it was worth, with special care taken not to qualify or amplify a phrase.¹³⁷ Those polls, however, seemed less reassuring a month later when Pearson’s aide, Tom Kent, reported that there was now a good deal of sympathy for Diefenbaker in the country. In his view, this demanded a quiet campaign to keep the emotional voltage low.¹³⁸

Probably that was good advice, and unfortunately for the Liberals, they failed to follow it. Instead Pearson’s party went in for gimmicks with disastrous results. One effort was to purchase and distribute 50,000 copies of The Election Colouring Book, a viciously funny production that made observers blanch once they saw its effect on the public. One full-page line drawing showed Diefenbaker riding backwards on a rocking horse:

This is the leader.

He is trying to go two ways at once.

Sometimes he tries to go three.

Most of the time he doesn’t move at all.

Colour him in reverse.

Some voters laughed; more seem to have been angry that the Liberals were making fun of the Prime Minister. Even less successful was the Truth Squad, an idea first suggested for the 1962 election. The tough and combative Judy LaMarsh was given the task of shadowing Diefenbaker and issuing corrective press releases to set out the “facts.” There was a purpose behind the idea, for the Conservative leader did play fast and loose with statistics and events. But at Moncton, local Conservatives set up a special and well-marked table for LaMarsh and, as National Campaign Chairman Dalton Camp remembered, “Dief was up anyway, but that really got him up. We had a marvellous time with them…. Dief just played them like an organ and the crowds loved it….” Later in Halifax the Tory crowd turned ugly, pushing and shoving at the embattled Judy, and the Liberals cut their losses after three days, leaving LaMarsh “incensed” and humiliated.¹³⁹

The Tories also capitalized on a Newsweek cover story that featured a portrait of a glowering, almost satanic Diefenbaker. The text was patently unfair, and Conservative headquarters sent thousands of copies across the country. “It is difficult to recall any American publication making a more abusive and inflammatory attack on the head of any state, friendly or otherwise,” the party’s covering letter said.¹⁴⁰ The Liberals were not to blame for the news magazine, but the cover story reinforced the growing public perception that the Liberal gimmicks were Kennedyesque in style, and in an election where American interference was a major issue, that did Pearson and the Liberals no good. As Camp recalled, Newsweek, the colouring book, and the Truth Squad turned the election from a rout into a real contest.¹⁴¹

The key was Diefenbaker. The Prime Minister ought to have been a broken man. Instead the Chief rebounded magnificently from the carnage, his energy restored by contact with the crowds that came to see and stayed to cheer him, particularly in the Maritimes, in the West, and in countless small towns. As he told one audience, “Everybody’s against me but the people. No, I haven’t got the big Toronto papers with me, but a crowd like this makes it pretty plain that the people are reading other papers.”¹⁴²

Diefenbaker’s buoyancy made it hard for his followers to paint him as a martyr, but some tried. Waldo Monteith, for example, running in his riding of Perth, told one meeting that he had been shocked at some of the things that were being said about the Prime Minister. There were rumours abroad that Diefenbaker had Parkinson’s disease, that he was insane, that he was a pathological liar and rabidly anti-American, to give only a few examples. “I now ask you to accept my word,” Monteith said, “against the malicious slander which has been spread across this country by those who would like to destroy John Diefenbaker…. I know this man. I respect and honour him. I trust him.” Privately, Monteith wrote to Diefenbaker to say that his constituents’ biggest worry was that the Chief might resign. There was not much concern about “indecision.” That drew the reply from the Prime Minister that “the question of indecision is now the new Liberal campaign. Everyone should point out that it was the Opposition that blocked us and made it impossible to get anything through,” a rejoinder that neglected the nuclear question completely.¹⁴³

That question should not have been a strong point for the Tories. The polls still confirmed Canadian’s support for acquisition of nuclear weapons (although Quebec had reversed itself and was said to be against nuclear weapons in a March 1963 poll).¹⁴⁴ And the Tory position was extraordinarily fuzzy. As one of R.A. Bell’s aides advised, “It is a simple matter to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to any complex problem – to render such a decision without a full appraisal of the situation – to swing with the Gallup Polls…. It is more difficult to say that you are not prepared to make a final ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision – that you believe the situation to be so complex and fluid…that a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is neither appropriate nor satisfactory….”¹⁴⁵ That would have been a reasonable non-position – if only the Conservative government had not purchased the weapons that required nuclear warheads and had not accepted a nuclear role in NATO and NORAD.

Nor could the Tories sort out their position during the campaign. The new Defence minister, Gordon Churchill, tried to get the Prime Minister to agree to review the NORAD situation, but Diefenbaker refused: “That would mean that the Americans would immediately arm their Voodoos with nuclear weapons at their bases in Newfoundland and Labrador,” Churchill remembered him saying. Even the loyal minister asked himself if the real reason for disagreement was that the Prime Minister feared he might be seen to be yielding to Kennedy.¹⁴⁶ Indeed, anti-Americanism was a major campaign theme of the Prime Minister’s. At a rally in Manitoba he told the crowd that the United States couldn’t accuse Canada of not doing its part – not after the Second World War, where the Americans had stayed neutral until December 7, 1941. “We don’t need any lessons as to what Canada should do after that record of service in two world wars.”¹⁴⁷ The Americans, watching Diefenbaker closely, confined themselves to memos that noted that “many of his speeches carry snide comments, innuendoes or other anti-U.S. overtones.”¹⁴⁸

This worried many Conservatives too. Bell, for example, had an argument with Diefenbaker after dissolution and told his leader that he would not be a party to an anti-American campaign, a statement that drew the rejoinder, “I will do whatever I bloody-well like and I don’t care whether I have your resignation or not.”¹⁴⁹ And Donald Fleming, sitting out the election, wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury in Washington that “the mutuality of [Canadian-American] interests is one of the most important facts in the world today,” a statement that was passed to the President as an example of disgust over Diefenbaker’s tactics.¹⁵⁰

But Diefenbaker had the devil’s own luck. Late in March, a letter purporting to be from American ambassador Butterworth to Pearson and dated January 14, 1963, fell into Conservative hands. The letter congratulated the Liberal leader on his nuclear policy, said that the timing had been perfect, and added that Diefenbaker was “unfit to continue governing the country. At the first opportune moment, I would like to discuss with you how we could be useful to you in the future. You can always count on our support.” The letter was branded a forgery by Pearson and by the embassy, but some believed it to be genuine.¹⁵¹

The letter came too late in the campaign to be decisive (no more so, at any rate, than Diefenbaker’s veiled references to the memorandum Kennedy had mislaid in May 1961),¹⁵² but the Prime Minister got substantially more mileage from the release of Defense secretary McNamara’s secret Congressional testimony on the Bomarc. In essence, McNamara had referred to Bomarc targets in Canada as useful only because they would attract Soviet firepower toward Canada.¹⁵³ That was not quite what McNamara said, but that was Diefenbaker’s interpretation as his attacks on the worthlessness of the weapons he had purchased reached a crescendo, and the Liberals, committed to arming the Bomarcs, were put on the defensive.¹⁵⁴

The travails of the Grits were in part caused by their appearance of being power hungry and unscrupulous, a party that would do anything – even reverse its position on nuclear weapons-for political advantage. The party argument for a majority government tended to reinforce that perception. Keith Davey, the Liberals’ national organizer, told Pearson that there were unprecedented numbers of the undecided, a phenomenon he explained by noting that those appalled by Diefenbaker were nonetheless searching desperately for reasons not to vote Liberal. How that could be countered, particularly after the Truth Squad fiasco, was difficult to determine. Walter Gordon, the architect of the Liberal revival, was more optimistic, certain that the party would win if it got the support of the government of Jean Lesage in Quebec (which it did on March 21) and if Pearson stressed a firm agenda for action in his first ninety days in office. But “Ninety Days of Decision” did not have the proper ring to it, and soon Pearson had promised “Sixty Days of Decision,” which was to be a fateful pledge.¹⁵⁵

Quebec support was indeed critical to a Liberal majority. As late as March 8, reports from the province continued to predict a big Créditiste showing, possibly much bigger than in 1962. Liberal surveys showed Caouette’s troops sharply denouncing nuclear arms, with a strong appeal to men and the young, while Liberals generally were supported by women and older people.¹⁵⁶ But in fact the national Liberal situation was not bad, in large part because of the massive media support the party was drawing. The big city newspapers hammered at Diefenbaker daily while businessmen, afraid of the consequences of an anti-American policy, threw their money and support to the Grits. Some openly called for a majority government and sent letters to their employees urging this, implicitly a plea to vote Liberal.¹⁵⁷ The results showed in the Gallup polls that had the Conservatives stuck at 32 or 33 per cent for the entire campaign, the NDP at 12 to 14 per cent, and the Social Credit fluctuating between 11 and 16 per cent. The Liberals, however, dropped from 44 per cent early in February to 41 per cent two months later. The Chief’s achievement was to have prevented a total Conservative collapse; Pearson’s failure was to have allowed an early Liberal lead, one sufficient for a solid majority, to dwindle.

The result was a Liberal minority victory. Pearson’s team won 129 seats, a gain of 29; the Conservatives held 95, a loss of 21, including 7 ministers. The NDP took 17, not benefiting much from its clear position of opposition to nuclear weapons, and Social Credit lost 6, again confounding the experts, to end at 24 seats. The Liberals won 41.7 per cent of the popular vote, gaining in all provinces, to the Tories’ 32.8 per cent. Pearson picked up seats in Quebec (from 35 to 47), in Ontario (from 44 to 52), and in the Maritimes (from 14 to 20), but in the West won only a single seat on the Prairies and 3 in British Columbia. The Conservative vote again was concentrated among the elderly and the rural, the poor and the Protestant. The Liberals were the party of the cities, the professionals, the educated, and the Catholic. They were also the party of the Armed Forces, drawing 70 per cent of the service vote.¹⁵⁸

Pearson’s victory produced great sighs of relief in corporate boardrooms and city editorial offices. The public service in Ottawa was delighted at the return to sanity, as so many saw it.¹⁵⁹ And the Americans too were pleased. Ambassador Butterworth wrote to Walter Lippmann, the great columnist, that the election had been about fundamentals. “That is why facing up to them was so very serious and why the Pearson victory…was so significant.” There was no doubt that Canada’s place in the world and with the United States was the key issue, he said, and that place had now been settled. “At any rate, the outcome holds salutary lessons which will not be overlooked by future aspirants to political office in Canada.”¹⁶⁰

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*¹ Diefenbaker told a different story to his brother, Elmer: he and the President “get along very well together. The opinion I formed of him when I first met him – a brilliant intellect and a wide knowledge of world events – was not only borne out but intensified as a result of our discussions….” (PAC, Diefenbaker Papers, Family Series, Diefenbaker to Elmer Diefenbaker, 18 May 1961, f.2135.)

*² Even so, Diefenbaker told his brother in September 1961 that “the world situation is terrible and people not knowing the situation are loud in their opposition to Canada having any nuclear defence. It is an ostrich-like philosophy which, while adhered to by many sensible people, is most beneficial to the Communists….” (PAC, Diefenbaker Papers, Family Series, Diefenbaker to Elmer Diefenbaker, 14 Sept. 1961, f.2213.)