Northern Passage: American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada

More than 50,000 draft-age American men and women migrated to Canada during the Vietnam War, the largest political exodus from the United States since the American Revolution. How are we to understand this migration three decades later? Was their action simply a marginal, highly individualized spin-off of the American antiwar movement, or did it have its own lasting collective meaning?

John Hagan, himself a member of the exodus, searched declassified government files, consulted previously unopened resistance organization archives and contemporary oral histories, and interviewed American war resisters settled in Toronto to learn how they made the momentous decision. Canadian immigration officials at first blocked the entry of some resisters; then, under pressure from Canadian church and civil liberties groups, they fully opened the border, providing these Americans with the legal opportunity to oppose the Vietnam draft and military mobilization while beginning new lives in Canada. It was a turning point for Canada as well, an assertion of sovereignty in its post-World War II relationship with the United States. Hagan describes the resisters' absorption through Toronto's emerging American ghetto in the late 1960s. For these Americans, the move was an intense and transformative experience. While some struggled for a comprehensive amnesty in the United States, others dedicated their lives to engagement with social and political issues in Canada. More than half of the draft and military resisters who fled to Canada thirty years ago remain there today. Most lead successful lives, have lost their sense of Americanness, and overwhelmingly identify themselves as Canadians.

The author, Professor John Hagen, is a sociologist interested in examining the pilgrim's progress of individual draft-dodgers/emigrants who poured over the border for close to a decade, often with a surprising set of expectations and unresolved internal conflicts associated with the personal experiences that had led them so far from home. His ability to recount the many levels on which the war continued to determine the options and the world view of the individuals so affected is fascinating stuff, and the author does a yeoman's job of breathing life and substance into a work that might otherwise be dry and difficult reading indeed. While his account is earnest and quite well documented, it is also quite revealing and entertaining to read. Hagan often poses questions for the respondents that result in illuminating glimpses into the lingering ways in which the fateful decision to move north continue to affect them in most fateful ways, both for better and for worse. What is most amazing is the degree to which the majority of the individuals rose above the difficulties associated with this move and made successes of their lives.

In this sense, the work is a penetrating effort to unmask and explore the consequences of the war in Vietnam for all of us. In this sense it is a resounding affirmation of how each of us was transformed and changed by our participation in the culture of the sixties, whether for better or for worse. The best in sociology is its ability to locate the individual meaningfully in his times and embedded within the context of his or her cultural meanings. Such a book is this, an effort to locate and recognize the ways in which our times help to determine how we live and under what specific set of existential circumstances we strive to realize our most important goals and most personal dreams. This is a great book, and one I wish many more people would read. Enjoy!


More case studies should have been added.   August 2, 2001
 11 out of 16 found this review helpful

This is a sociological study of the Americans who emigrated to Canada during the late 1960s and early 1970s. I believe that there is an attempt to draw an analogy with the Americans who chose Peace Corps service during this period of time with those who went to Canada. This is an invalid comparison. American Peace Corps volunteers served in places like Atar, Mauritania; Qandahar, Afghanistan; Bilma, Niger; Kikwit, Zaire; Sarh, Tchad; and Zabol, Iran. Most of the Americans that went to Canada chose to live in southern Onatrio, viz. Toronto. How many went to Lac St. Jean, Quebec or Churchill, Manitoba? Few. These sites would have been partially commensurate with the difficulty of the Peace Corps sites.