Review: Canada: Diefenbaker's World
| Published date | 01 March 1991 |
| Date | 01 March 1991 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070209104600118 |
| Author | Peter C. Dobell |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVI
EWS/CANADA
199
in
the
dominant
camp
as
Senator Cairene
Wilson
or
Professor
H.F.
Angus.
Even
a
Liberal
government
that
relied
on
ethnic
votes
knew
little
of
its
constituents.
For
advice
on
the
Ukrainian community,
fourth
largest ethnic
culture
in
the country,
Ottawa
listened
for
a
time
to
the
likes
of
Tracy
Phillips,
an
Englishman
bred
in
the
heritage
of
interpreting
the
folkways
of
the
empire's
lesser
breeds.
Isolation
of
minority
cultures
fed
the
xenophobia
and
occasional
hysteria
of
wartime
Canada.
An
RCM
i
equipped
to
patrol
the
Arctic
and
keep
an
untutored
eye
on
communists
obviously
had
no
idea
of
who,
if anyone,
in
the
German,
Italian,
orJapanese
communities
posed
a
danger
to
national
security.
If
it
prevented
sabotage,
it
was
because
none
was
intended. Under
Frederick
Blair,
the
Immigration
Branch
found
the
threat
of
Nazi
or
communist infiltration
an
added
argument
for
a
settled
policy
of
keeping
out
as
many
refugees
as
possible.
It
should
disturb
historians
that
almost
half
a
century
had
to
pass
before
smaller
ethnic
solitudes
began
to
make
a
place
in
our
general
understanding
of
Canada's
wartime
experience.
To
their
credit, Nor-
man Hillmer,
Bohdan
Kordan,
and
Lubomyr
Luciuk
and
their
col-
leagues
have
made
a
start.
This
collection
of
papers
from
a
conference
at
Queen's
University
in
1986
provides
a
foundation
of
knowledge
and
opinion, particularly about
internment,
refugees,
and
the wartime
roots
of
federal
multicultural
policy.
The
Canadian
Committee
on
the
History
of
the Second World
War
has
once
again
blazed
some
unbeaten
trails
for
others
to
follow.
Desmond
Morton/Erindale
College,
University
of
Toronto
DIEFENBAKER'S
WORLD
A
populist
in
foreign
affairs
H.
Basil
Robinson
Toronto:
University
of
Toronto
Press,
1989,
xviii,
351PP,
$29.95
Basil
Robinson's book
on
Diefenbaker's
foreign
policy
gave
me special
pleasure.
As
a
young
foreign
service
officer,
I
happened
to
be
serving
in
Ottawa
when
John
Diefenbaker
formed
his
first
government.
In
those
days
there
was
a
small
cafeteria
in
the
East
Block
basement where
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