Canada in The Cold War - End of The Cold War

End of The Cold War

Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan had a close relationship, but the 1980s also saw widespread protests against American testing of cruise missiles in Canada's north.

When the Cold War ended, Canada, like the rest of the west, was delighted. The Canadian Forces were withdrawn from their NATO commitments in Germany, military spending was cut, and the air raid sirens were removed in Ottawa. The Diefenbunkers, Canada's military-operated fallout shelters designed to ensure continuity of government, were decommissioned. Canada continues to participate in Cold War institutions such as NORAD and NATO, but they have been given new missions and priorities.

In addition, Canada may have played a small role in helping to bring about glasnost and perestroika. In the mid-1970s, Alexander Yakovlev was appointed as ambassador to Canada remaining at that post for a decade. During this time, he and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau became close friends. Trudeau's second son, Alexandre Trudeau, was given the Russian nickname "Sacha" after Yakovlev's.

In the early 1980s, Yakovlev accompanied Mikhail Gorbachev, who at the time was the Soviet official in charge of agriculture on his tour of Canada. The purpose of the visit was to tour Canadian farms and agricultural institutions in the hopes of taking lessons that could be applied in the Soviet Union, however, the two began, tentatively at first, to discuss the need for liberalisation in the Soviet Union. Yakovlev then returned to Moscow, and would eventually be called the "godfather of glasnost", the intellectual force behind Gorbachev's reform program.