Canada in The Cold War - Early Cold War

Early Cold War

There was never any doubt early on as to which side Canada was on in the Cold War. Canada was in the middle of the United States and the Soviet Union from the latter's inception in 1917, supplying troops to fight a counter-revolution. On the domestic front, the Canadian state at all levels fought vehemently against what it characterized as the "red menace." Specifically, Canadian and business leaders opposed the advance of the labour movement on the grounds that it was a Bolshevik conspiracy during the interwar period. The peak moments of this effort were the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 and the anticommunist campaigns of the depression, including the stopping of the On-to-Ottawa Trek. The formal onset of the Cold War, usually pegged with the 1945 defection of a Soviet cipher clerk working in Ottawa, Igor Gouzenko, was therefore a continuation and extension of, rather than a departure from, Canadian anticommunist policies.

Canada was a founding member of the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Canada was one of its most ardent supporters and pushed (largely unsuccessfully) to have it become an economic and cultural organization in addition to a military alliance.