“Canada’s Peace Corps”? CUSO’s evolving relationship with its US cousin, 1961–1971

Date01 March 2015
AuthorRuth Compton Brouwer
DOI10.1177/0020702014562539
Published date01 March 2015
Subject MatterThe Lessons of History
untitled
The Lessons of History
International Journal
2015, Vol. 70(1) 137–146
! The Author(s) 2014
‘‘Canada’s Peace Corps’’?
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CUSO’s evolving
DOI: 10.1177/0020702014562539
ijx.sagepub.com
relationship with its US
cousin, 1961–1971
Ruth Compton Brouwer
King’s University College, Western University, Canada
Abstract
Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO), a non-governmental organization with a
mandate to send young Canadian volunteers to developing countries, was established in
1961, the same year that President John F. Kennedy launched the Peace Corps. Initially
self-identifying and described in the media as ‘‘Canada’s Peace Corps,’’ CUSO later
rejected the label. This article argues that a heady Canadian nationalism, together
with CUSO’s experiences in countries where its volunteers were serving, accounted
for the organization’s attempts to distance itself from its much larger US cousin, even as
it continued to benefit from that cousin’s friendship and resources.
Keywords
Peace Corps, Canadian University Service Overseas, CUSO, development assistance
When I was researching my book about CUSO (originally known as Canadian
University Service Overseas),1 my working title began with the phrase ‘‘Canada’s
Peace Corps.’’ I started to consider an alternative only when the manuscript was
near completion and only after several senior CUSO alumni who had otherwise
been wonderfully supportive urged me not to use it. Ultimately, I opted for what I
now realize is a better title, Canada’s Global Villagers: CUSO in Development,
1961–86. Still, my friendly exchanges with these CUSO alumni, one of whom
1.
Ruth Compton Brouwer, Canada’s Global Villagers: CUSO in Development, 1961–86 (Vancouver:
UBC Press, 2013).
Corresponding author:
Ruth Compton Brouwer, King’s University College, Western University, 266 Epworth Ave, London, ON
N6A 2M3, Canada.
Email: rbrouwer@uwo.ca

138
International Journal 70(1)
had married a former Peace Corps volunteer, left me with an ongoing interest in the
relationship between these two development organizations.
Of‌f‌icially established in June 1961 as Canadian University Service Overseas,
CUSO was the f‌irst distinctively Canadian non-governmental organization
(NGO) to undertake development work from a secular stance and in a context
of rapid decolonization. Although it was not—obviously—an agency of the state
like the US Peace Corps, which President Kennedy had established by executive
order in March 1961, the early CUSO often styled itself and was identif‌ied in the
media as ‘‘Canada’s Peace Corps.’’2 The early CUSO also benef‌ited substantially
from Peace Corps friendship and assistance, both organizationally and in terms of
its volunteers’ experiences in developing countries. Nevertheless, in 1967, at its
sixth annual meeting, CUSO passed a resolution calling for an end to the use of
the phrase ‘‘Canada’s Peace Corps’’ in all campus advertising.
The resolution was an obvious by-product of the new and more radical nation-
alism that was sweeping Canada in the last half of the 1960s. But it also ref‌lected
CUSO’s growing awareness of its own organizational distinctiveness and its experi-
ence in the Global South. The fact that it was a small NGO rather than an of‌f‌icial
agency of the West’s largest superpower made a signif‌icant dif‌ference in how
CUSO functioned organizationally within host countries. Likewise, the organiza-
tion’s smaller size and NGO status made a dif‌ference in how CUSO and its vol-
unteers were received and perceived overseas, usually allowing them to operate
below the radar at times when the Peace Corps was vulnerable to suspicion and
resentment because of Cold War tensions. That vulnerability was especially evident
as the Vietnam war escalated and ef‌fectively became an albatross around the necks
of Peace Corps volunteers. Certainly, there were occasions when CUSO and other
NGOs were lumped in with the Peace Corps as targets of host countries’ resent-
ments, and in those circumstances they, too, experienced negative fallout from
escalating anti-Americanism.
This article argues, then, that a heady Canadian nationalism, together with
CUSO’s experiences in countries where its volunteers were serving, accounted for
the organization’s attempts to dif‌ferentiate and distance itself from its much larger
US cousin, even as it continued to benef‌it from that cousin’s friendship and
resources. Finally, by way of introduction and as another relevant element in the
ambivalence of the relationship, it is important to bear in mind that Canada’s
‘‘nationalist moment’’ in the 1960s was not only a reaction to the US superpower
but also, to a signif‌icant degree, an echo of critiques of that superpower by
American liberals and leftists.3
2.
‘‘Peace Corps’’ was also used as a generic term for other national volunteer organizations; see, for
instance, ‘‘What other countries are doing,’’ CUSO Bulletin, May 1964, 5.
3.
Stephen Azzi, ‘‘The nationalist moment in English Canada,’’ in Lara Campbell, Dominique
Clement, and Gregory S. Kealey, eds., Debating Dissent: Canada and the Sixties (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2012), 213–228.

Brouwer
139
CUSO and Peace Corps volunteers: Commonalities and
differences
When CUSO and the Peace Corps left North America in August 1961 for volunteer
service in what was then called the Third World, they were part of a larger Western
movement. As the so-called Decade for Development began, there was a surge of
youthful idealism and an eagerness to help newly independent nations with their
development challenges in ways that would be decidedly dif‌ferent from the patron-
izing humanitarianism of the colonial and missionary eras—or so the young vol-
unteers liked to think. Although insider accounts of the Peace Corps generally pay
little or no attention to this larger international phenomenon, Elizabeth Cobbs
Hof‌fman’s f‌ine history of the corps in the 1960s devotes a useful chapter to
CUSO and other national youth volunteer organizations: ‘‘Peace Corps cousins.’’4
The Canadian and American volunteers had a great deal in...

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