Like Any Good Wife
| Date | 01 June 2008 |
| Author | Janice Cavell |
| Published date | 01 June 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200806300211 |
| Subject Matter | Over the Transom |
Like any good wife
Gender and perceptions of Canadian foreign policy, 1945-75
The relationships between Canada and other nations, and especially those
with Britain and the United States, have repeatedly been described through
gendered imagery by academics, journalists, popular writers, and cartoonists,
and sometimes by politicians themselves. It would indeed be surprising if
Canada proved to be the exception to the rule that countries are imagined
and personified by their citizens as figures with strong masculine or femi-
nine attributes. As scholars working in a number of fields have emphasized,
political elites seek to construct images of themselves and their nation as
strong, masculine, and adult.1 Canadian nationalist writers, however, have
Janice Cavell works in the historical section at Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Canada, where she edits the series Documents on Canadian External Relations. She would
like to thank Norman Hillmer, Greg Donaghy, and the journal’s anonymous reviewers for
their extremely helpful comments.
1 For example, see J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 1992); V. Spike Peterson, Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions
of International Relations Theory (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1992); Miriam Cook and
Angela Wollacott, eds., Gendering War Talk (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1993); Charlotte Hooper, Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations, and
Gender Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Stefan Dudink, Karen
Hagemann, and John Tosh, eds., Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern
History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); and Kristin Hoganson,
“What’s gender got to do with It? Gender history as foreign relations history,” in
Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Patterson, eds., Explaining the History of American
Foreign Relations, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 304-
22. The footnotes to Hoganson’s article list the major recent American publications on
| International Journal | Spring 2008 | 385 |
| Janice Cavell |
often been disappointed by what they see as a failure on the part of their leaders
to achieve a sufficiently high standing in the world. A common response is to
sardonically depict Canada in a feminine or juvenile male role.
Nor is this gendered discourse merely a convenient shorthand, embody-
ing abstract situations in concrete terms that will readily be understood by
the masses.2 Instead, assumptions about gender have always profoundly
shaped nationalist aspirations. Their power was perhaps at its height during
the early and middle years of the Cold War. This article examines the inter-
play between the realities of Canadian foreign policy and gendered represen-
tations, focusing on the period from 1945 to 1975, and especially on the two
decades when Lester Pearson and John Diefenbaker dominated the political
scene. The 1950s were the period of Canada’s greatest success in interna-
tional affairs, and by the end of the decade the call for an ever stronger, more
independent, and manly stance on the world stage had become a character-
istic feature of Canadian nationalist writing. Both Pearson and Diefenbaker
did their best to meet such demands, at least on the level of rhetoric. How-
ever, they could not evade the fact that American power placed Canada in a
subordinate position. By the late 1960s the country’s diplomats, once figures
viewed with an admiration bordering on reverence, were increasingly seen
gender and foreign policy. Although many aspects of Canadian political discourse have
been studied from a gender perspective, this approach has not yet been extended to
the history of Canadian foreign policy. There are, however, abundant indications that
the issue lurks just below the level of conscious thought. Book and article titles include,
to take a few of the most obvious examples, J. L. Granatstein’s How Britain’s Weakness
Forced Canada into the Arms of the United States; Granatstein and Norman Hillmer’s
For Better or For Worse: Canada and the United States into the Twenty-First Century; and
John English’s “‘A fine romance’: Canada and the United Nations, 1943-1957.” On gender
and current Canadian foreign policy, see Edna Keeble and Heather A. Smith, Re‘Defining’
Traditions: Gender and Canadian Foreign Policy (Halifax: Fernwood, 1999), especially
chapter three for the strong historical component, and Claire Turenne Sjolander, Heather
A. Smith and Deborah Stienstra, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Canadian Foreign Policy
(Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2003). Keeble and Smith provide an excellent analy-
sis of the post-1970s left wing nationalist ideal of a “kinder, gentler” Canada.
2 See Frank Costigliola, “Language and power in the western alliance,” in Kathleen Burk
and Melvyn Stokes, eds., The United States and the European Alliance since 1945 (Ox-
ford and New York: Berg, 1999), 101-02.
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| Like any good wife |
as obsolete and irrelevant in “the era of the sit-in.”3 Pearson’s diplomatic skill
during the 1956 Suez crisis and Diefenbaker’s landslide 1958 election victory
had marked the two men as the outstanding Canadian public figures of their
time. But in the 1960s Diefenbaker was labeled as an indecisive fumbler,
while Pearson seemed like a mere shadow of his earlier confident self. Both
had apparently failed the test of national leadership. Rather than being a uni-
fying source of pride and strength for the nation, foreign policy gave rise to
angry, divisive debates. During the early 1970s, Canadian diplomacy was the
target of sharp and exceptionally bitter criticism from the younger generation
of nationalist writers.
A persistent and obviously very deeply felt subtext running through the
journalism and popular writing of this period was the need to forge an indis-
putably masculine national identity. It had not always been so: from Confed-
eration to the time of the Second World War, images of a feminine Canada
were successfully combined with other representations of the country as a
vigorous young man. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Canadians drew
on the rich political iconography of the British empire, which included both
strong male symbols like John Bull and the British lion and the powerful, but
nurturing, figures of Britannia and the “great white mother,” Queen Victoria.
At this time, Canada was often envisioned as the daughter of mother Britain.
In political cartoons, she was a demure young lady who politely but firmly re-
jected the attentions of her cousin Jonathan. This feminine persona was not
incompatible with an independent stance: Canada could deny her powerful
American suitor, and Rudyard Kipling had her declare to Britain, “Daughter
am I in my mother’s house/But mistress in my own.”4
However, when Canadian autonomy was under discussion, the nation
was usually represented as Britain’s son, now grown to the verge of man-
hood. Urging in 1909 that Canadians should make a greater contribution to
their own defence, George Foster countered the argument that Canada would
always be protected by Britain or the US by declaring that it would be “[b]ad
enough for us to hang on to the apron strings of a loving, opulent mother,
3 James Eayrs, “Principles for receivership,” Diplomacy and Its Discontents (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1971), 57.
4 Rudyard Kipling, “Our lady of the snows,” in The Definitive Edition of Rudyard
Kipling’s Verse (Garden City: Doubleday, 1940), 181. For cartoon representations of a
feminine Canada, see the examples reproduced in J. L. Granatstein, How Britain’s
Weakness Forced Canada into the Arms of the United States (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1989).
| International Journal | Spring 2008 | 387 |
| Janice Cavell |
but when we have grown to manhood it is the negation of every principle of
manhood and independence that we should live in our national home by the
grace of the stranger.”5 After the First World War, it was often claimed that
Canada had at last come of age on the field of battle. The belief that autonomy
had been won through the courage of Canada’s soldiers provided welcome
reassurance that true national manhood had indeed been achieved. The per-
formance of Canadians in the Second World War gave equal cause for pride.
In The Unknown Country, a popular work first published in 1942 and
reprinted several times during the late 40s and the 50s, journalist Bruce
Hutchison declared, “[N]o longer are we children...our time is come and we
are ready.”6
The realities of the postwar world dictated that Canadians must come to
terms as best they could with the greatly enhanced power of the US as well
as the decline of Britain. Despite the inevitable resentments produced by
colonial status, the authority of the “loving, opulent” mother country had
generally been accepted as benevolent and affectionate, with Canada’s growth
towards autonomy as its ultimate goal. Diplomat Arnold Smith recalled that
when visiting the Foreign Office in London, he was always “delighted” by
the “gorgeous” murals depicting “Britannia nutrix” and “Britannia colono-
rum mater.” The new dominance of the American colossus was another mat-
ter. In the suggestive words of historian Donald Creighton (an intensely
anti-American nationalist), “Since 1940, Canada has stood alone, its inde-
pendence exposed to the penetrative power of American...imperialism.”7
Lacking the softer maternal dimension provided by the figure of Britannia,
American power was...
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