Towards a Francophone Community: Canada's Relations with France and French Africa, 1945-1968 9780773560031

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to wa r d s a f r a n c o p h o n e c o m m u n i t y

foreign policy, security and strategic studies editors: alex macleod and charles-philippe david The Foreign Policy, Security and Strategic Studies Series seeks to promote analysis of the transformation and adaptation of foreign and security policies in the post Cold War era. The series welcomes manuscripts offering innovative interpretations or new theoretical approaches to these questions, whether dealing with specific strategic or policy issues or with the evolving concept of security itself. Canada, Latin America, and the New Internationalism A Foreign Policy Analysis, 1968–1990 Brian J.R. Stevenson Power vs. Prudence Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons T.V. Paul From Peacekeeping to Peacemaking Canada’s Response to the Yugoslav Crisis Nicholas Gammer Canadian Policy toward Krushchev’s Soviet Union Jamie Glazov The Revolution in Military Affairs Implications for Canada and nato Elinor Sloan Inauspicious Beginings Principal Powers and International Security Institutions after the Cold War, 1989–1999 Edited by Onnig Beylerian and Jacques Lévesque Security and Defence in the Terrorist Era Canada and North America Elinor Sloan Towards a Francophone Community Canada’s Relations with France and French Africa, 1945–1968 Robin S. Gendron proceedings The Future of nato Enlargement, Russia, and European Security Edited by Charles-Philippe David and Jacques Lévesque

Towards a Francophone Community Canada’s Relations with France and French Africa, 1945–1968 ro b i n s . g e n d r o n

The Centre for Security and Foreign Policy Studies and The Raoul-Dandurand Chair of Strategic and Diplomatic Studies McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2006 isbn-13: 978-0-7735-3033-1 isbn-10: 0-7735-3033-9 Legal deposit second quarter 2006 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Gendron, Robin Stewart, 1972– Towards a francophone community: Canada’s relations with France and French Africa, 1945–1968 / Robin S. Gendron. (Foreign policy, security and strategic studies) “The Centre for Security and Foreign Policy Studies and the Raoul-Dandurand Chair of Strategic and Diplomatic Studies” Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-7735-3033-1

isbn-10: 0-7735-3033-9

1. Canada – Foreign relations – Africa, French-speaking. 2. Africa, Frenchspeaking – Foreign relations – Canada. 3. Canada – Foreign relations – France. 4. France – Foreign relations – Canada. 5. Canada – Foreign relations – 1945– 6. France – Foreign relations – 1945-1958. 7. France – Foreign relations – 1958–1969. I. Université du Québec à Montréal. Centre d’études des politiques étrangères et de sécurité. II. Raoul-Dandurand Chair of Strategic and Diplomatic Studies. III. Title. IV. Series. fc244.f72g45 2006

327.7106′0917′54109045

This book was typeset by Interscript in 10/13 Sabon.

c2005-906814-0

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction

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1 A Brave New World: Canada and French Africa to 1954

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2 Tempered Sympathy: Canada and French North Africa, 1954–58 26 3 Lingering Colonialism: Canada and French North Africa, 1958–62 45 4 Holding the Line: Canada and French Africa to 1963

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5 A Compelling Need: Canada and French Africa, 1963–66 6 Jostling over French Africa 7 The Road to Libreville Conclusion

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Appendix A

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Appendix B

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Notes

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Bibliography Index

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Acknowledgments

Over the years, many people have contributed generously of their time and their expertise to help bring this book to publication. The guidance and diligence of the archivists and staff at the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France, the National Archives of Quebec, and what is now the Library and Archives Canada greatly facilitated the research involved. Father Jacques Monet’s permission to use Jules Léger’s papers is gratefully acknowledged. I have benefited from the input and criticism of numerous colleagues, most notably David Bercuson, who supervised the dissertation from which this book sprang and whose support since has been remarkable. In addition, Don Smith, Doug Francis, Don Barry, Steven Lee, Steve Randall, Duane Thomson, Sahadeo Basdeo, Kim Munholland, Ged Martin, Galen Perras, Serge Bernier, Norman Hillmer, Paul Marsden, Raymond Blake, Melanie Methot, David Campbell, Chris Bell, and many others have commented on parts of the book, critiqued the portions of it that were presented at conferences, or simply shared their wisdom, their knowledge, and their friendship with me. The members and former members of the Historical Section at Foreign Affairs Canada – John Hilliker, Greg Donaghy, Hector Mackenzie, and Mary Halloran – have been especially helpful over the years. During a nomadic life over the past several years, I have also appreciated the support and the encouragement of Jim Hull and Lynda Wilson at Okanagan University College; Robert Schneider, Paul Stone, and Bert

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Kreitlow at the University of Minnesota; and John Shoup, Eric Ross, and Carlos Jaques at Al Akhawayn University. The contributions of all of these individuals, as well as those of the editorial staff and the anonymous readers at McGill-Queen’s University Press, have made this book better. The flaws that remain are my responsibility alone. Portions of chapters 2 and 3 were previously published in the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association in 1998, and portions of chapters 5 and 6 were published in the International Journal in 2001. I thank these journals for permission to republish these materials. Similarly, this book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Finally, I have to acknowledge the tremendous emotional and other forms of support given to me by my family. My parents, Barb and Frank Clumpus and Stewart and Jo-Anne Gendron, my sisters Jodi Hayami and Jani Edwards, their families, and the Morris family have been there through it all, easing the process and understanding the preoccupations that come with this type of project. Most of all, my wife, Kelly Morris, has been a constant source of encouragement and assistance without which none of this would have been possible. This book is dedicated, with love, to her.

to wa r d s a f r a n c o p h o n e c o m m u n i t y

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Introduction

In January 1968, Quebec’s Minister of Education accepted an invitation to attend a meeting in Libreville, Gabon, between the ministers of education of France and of the French African states. What was remarkable about Jean-Guy Cardinal’s participation in this meeting was the fact that the invitation had been addressed to the government of Quebec rather than to, or through, the federal government of Canada. Canada’s government had not been invited. This represented a dramatic escalation in a dispute, which had been building since the early 1960s, between Canada and Quebec over their respective responsibilities for foreign affairs. It also led to the first public incident between them over Quebec’s desire to represent itself within the emerging community of French-speaking states known as la francophonie. This organization, dedicated to French language and culture, was gradually created between 1968 and 1971 at a series of international meetings in Libreville, Kinshasa, Paris, and Niamey. The governments of Canada and Quebec competed fiercely to ensure that they each obtained the right to represent French Canadians within it. This was not just a domestic dispute between them, however. To a large extent, both Canada and Quebec relied upon the governments of other French-speaking states to adjudicate and further their respective claims to membership in la francophonie. Support from France provided a significant boost to Quebec’s ambitions; it also forced the Canadian government to depend on the French-speaking countries of

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Africa to endorse Canada’s membership in the international francophone community and, thereby, uphold federal responsibility for foreign affairs in Canada and the federal government’s ability to represent all Canadians internationally. For a period during the late 1960s and early 1970s, therefore, the countries of French Africa occupied a central place in Canada’s foreign relations; with their help the Canadian government succeeded in preventing Quebec from fully realizing its international ambitions. At the same time, however, the precariousness of Canada’s relations with these countries had almost enabled Quebec to displace the Canadian government as the representative of French Canadians within the international community of French-speaking states. The Canadian government’s ability to prevent Quebec from securing its own membership in the francophone community to the detriment of federal interests and potentially even of Canada’s national unity depended at least in part on the strength of Canada’s relations with the French-speaking countries of Africa. In 1968, however, these relations were still in their infancy. Most of the French-speaking countries of Africa had only acquired their independence at the beginning of the 1960s, and Canada had only established diplomatic relations with them a few years later. When the crisis over la francophonie erupted, therefore, the Canadian government had had only a short period of time in which to develop these relations. Given that France continued to enjoy intimate relations with its former colonies and dependencies in Africa after their independence and used them to press for Quebec’s inclusion in the community of French-speaking states, this was a significant disadvantage for Canada.1 It hampered Canada’s ability to forge the strong ties it would need with French Africa to defeat Quebec’s interest in la francophonie. Unfortunately for the Canadian government in the late 1960s these relations had also been adversely affected by the evolution of Canada’s overall interests in French Africa from the end of the Second World War to the years following its decolonization. It was commonplace in Quebec in the 1960s to complain that the federal government’s neglect of French Canadian interests had led it to ignore the French-speaking countries of Africa in its foreign relations. For many within Quebec nationalist circles, this failure justified the government of Quebec’s efforts to develop its own international relations, especially through la francophonie.2 Despite the accusation that Canada lacked any interest in French Africa, an accusation that has been tacitly accepted by scholars of Canadian foreign relations ever

Introduction

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since, Canadian governments had been actively involved in international issues related to French Africa since the end of the Second World War. These issues, generally related to the decolonization of France’s empire in Africa, affected Canadian interests in nato and the United Nations, Canada’s bilateral relations with France and other important allies, its growing relations with the Third World, and Canada’s interests in the course of the Cold War. Canada did not simply discover French Africa as a result of pressure from Quebec in the early to mid 1960s, nor did it pursue relations with the countries of French Africa in this period merely because of the threat that Quebec’s international ambitions posed to federal interests and powers. However, the Canadian government’s policies towards French Africa prior to the mid1960s did have a significant effect on subsequent developments in Canada’s relations with the French-speaking countries of Africa. From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, the Canadian government’s interests in French Africa focused predominantly on the effects that its decolonization had upon Canada, France, nato, the United Nations, and the international community as a whole in the midst of the Cold War. Focusing on the international dimensions and implications of decolonization in French Africa led the Canadian government to condition its policies according to Cold War concerns such as the desire to contain the spread of communism in Africa and the need to preserve its relations with France, one of its most important nato allies. As a result, the Canadian government’s interests in French Africa were often subordinated to other foreign policy concerns. Although in the early 1960s the Canadian government began to devote more attention to the domestic importance of its relations with the newly independent French-speaking countries of Africa, its pursuit of these relations continued to be affected by these other foreign policy concerns. The Canadian government ultimately overcame its inhibitions by the mid-1960s and started to pursue relations with the French African countries vigorously as a result of both international and domestic pressures. By then, however, its task had been made more difficult by the legacy of Canadian policies from the previous two decades. A full understanding of Canada’s successes and failures visà-vis the creation of la francophonie, and of the clashes between Canada and Quebec over responsibility for foreign affairs in the 1960s, must therefore take into account the entirety of Canada’s involvement with French-speaking Africa, right from the Canadian government’s first consideration of the implications of its decolonization in the late 1940s.

1 A Brave New World: Canada and French Africa to 1954

Having been cut off from France by the Conquest and the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years War in 1763, the inhabitants of what would become Canada had little further to do with the French Empire. Thereafter, with the notable exception of missionaries, few Canadians had any direct knowledge of France’s colonies. In the twentieth century, when Canadian governments gradually exerted control over external affairs, the trend was to disengage Canada from the British Empire rather than to rebuild links with a country from which it had been severed for over a century and a half.1 The importance of the French colonies to Canada changed with the outbreak of the Second World War, but only after France’s surrender in June 1940 enhanced their political, strategic, and symbolic value by raising the prospect that they could be rallied to the Allied cause. The Allies also feared that the Vichy authorities in France might allow their colonies to bolster the German war effort. In either case, it remained the responsibility of the British and the Americans to respond to the altered circumstances of the French colonies after the fall of France. It was the British who attacked the French fleet at Oran in Algeria in July 1940 and who attempted to rally French West Africa in 1940 and Madagascar in 1942. Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942, was undertaken by us and British forces.2 Though Canadians had little to do with any of these early operations the Canadian government played an active role in Allied discussions

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about the problem posed by the islands of St Pierre and Miquelon in the months before Admiral Muselier and the Free French captured them in December 1941. These islands lay just off the coast of Newfoundland, and Canada had direct interests at stake in who controlled them and their radio station. Even so, the Canadian government had been forced to tread carefully between competing British and us wishes over St Pierre and Miquelon.3 The British and us governments disagreed just as strongly over whether or not to help Charles de Gaulle’s Free French movement take control of Vichy France’s other overseas territories. Because of the vast distances that separated Canada from these other French territories, however, the Canadian government had few interests in their wartime problems, particularly if its involvement therein risked antagonizing either Britain or the us. With little to gain and much to lose from taking sides in this uk/us dispute, William Lyon Mackenzie King characteristically confined Canada’s involvement in the political affairs of the French Empire to issuing warnings about Allied actions that might result in Vichy France joining the war on the side of the Axis. Mackenzie King’s principal concern, as he told Winston Churchill prior to the British assault on Dakar in French West Africa in 1940, was the effect on domestic harmony within Canada if Vichy France ever declared war on Britain.4 At the request of the British government, Mackenzie King did allow Canadian diplomat Pierre Dupuy to visit France three times between November 1940 and August 1941 in order to explore the possibility of Vichy France rejoining the war against the Axis powers. Dupuy spent ten days in the Vichy capital in autumn 1940, meeting with Marshall Pétain, Admiral Darlan, and other senior officials who suggested to him vaguely that Vichy might seek some form of British assistance at some point in the future to help organize the defence of French North Africa. He was also told, in no uncertain terms, that such cooperation to keep Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria out of German hands depended on the degree to which Britain was able to restrain the Free French from attacking the Vichy-controlled colonies in Africa. During this trip, Dupuy concluded that any further attempts against the French territories in Africa by de Gaulle’s forces would be a mistake and would only give the Germans a pretext to occupy the Vichy colonies.5 In January 1941, Dupuy returned to Vichy at Churchill’s instigation to pursue the idea of Vichy-British cooperation in the French colonies. He discussed with Pétain and Darlan the possibility of relaxing the British naval blockade to allow more foodstuffs to reach France from its colonies, but it is not

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clear whether Dupuy discussed the British proposal for joint action in North Africa with the Vichy authorities. He was assured, however, that the Vichy government would not allow German military or naval units to pass to North Africa through French territory.6 As Vichy France increasingly fell under the sway of Germany, Dupuy’s usefulness as an intermediary for the British diminished. He made his third and final trip to wartime France in July and August 1941. By autumn 1942 the Allied invasion of French North Africa had shifted the focal point of French political affairs to Algiers, the capital of Algeria and the city where de Gaulle convened the Consultative Assembly of the Provisional Government of France. It was thus to Algiers that the Canadian government posted Major General Georges Vanier as Minister to the French Provisional Government. Vanier spent eight months in Algiers reporting on all developments as seen from French North Africa following his appointment on 1 October 1943. His most significant activity during this period was to lobby the Allied leadership repeatedly to include at least one French Division in the force that was scheduled to invade Northwest Europe in spring and summer 1944.7 He and Dupuy were two of the few Canadians with firsthand experience of affairs in the French colonies in Africa during the Second World War, and their attitude towards them is reflective of broader Canadian policies. Both Dupuy and Vanier considered France’s colonies and overseas territories incidental to a greater cause, a means through which to pursue victory against the Axis powers. They offered the potential for first Vichy and then the Free French to renew the war against Germany and Italy.8 For the Canadian government, as for the Allies in general, the colonies had no separate existence outside of France. In practical terms, the colonies were France. In the abstract, however, there remained during the Second World War much to be decided about the fate of France’s colonies and those of the European powers more generally. After all, the Allies led by the United States and Britain had proclaimed that the war was a struggle to liberate subjugated peoples from conquest and foreign domination. The Atlantic Charter, issued by the Allies on 1 January 1942, promised to respect, preserve, and protect the right of subjugated peoples to selfdetermination. Yet to what extent were colonial territories entitled to the same consideration under the Atlantic Charter as occupied countries such as France, Belgium, or Holland? British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, for one, recognized that the Charter’s proclamations could equally be applied to the plight of colonial peoples. Halifax also

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acknowledged as early as March 1943 that it was the duty of colonial powers such as Britain and France to help their dependent peoples move progressively towards self-government.9 Even when other imperial statesmen shared this attitude, however, there was far from universal agreement about when and how this colonial self-government should be obtained. The Second World War severely weakened the hold of the European powers on their colonies. Japanese propaganda in the Far East and the Pacific undermined European rule and encouraged indigenous nationalism in large parts of Asia while rapid defeat by German or Japanese armies impaired the prestige of countries such as France, Belgium, and the Netherlands throughout their colonies. Wartime circumstances also forced the colonial powers to make concessions to some of their territories including the promise of dominion status for India in 1942 and independence for the French mandates in Syria and Lebanon. Nevertheless, few imperial statesmen were prepared for their countries to relinquish their empires completely during or immediately following the Second World War. Winston Churchill clarified his attitude towards colonial emancipation in November 1940: “I have not become the King’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”10 To such individuals as Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, colonies remained vital to their countries’ overall wealth, prosperity, power, and prestige, and severing the imperial connection remained unthinkable. Though resigned to the eventuality of self-government in India, Britain fully expected to maintain its dominance in its less developed African colonies. The French authorities were even more determined to retain their empire given France’s humiliating defeat in 1940 and the traditional role that extensive colonies had played in bolstering and even confirming France’s great power status since the end of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Most French citizens also expected the colonies to contribute to rebuilding France politically and economically after the war and even to its moral regeneration through the continuation of the French mission civilisatrice.11 At the Brazzaville Conference in early 1944, French leaders promised reforms to the structure of the French Empire, including a new federation of the colonies and Metropolitan France called the French Union, but de Gaulle and others rejected the idea of outright independence for the French colonies.12 The French colonial impulse may have been liberal, but it did not yet include emancipation. This attitude contrasted sharply with the anti-colonialism of the United States during the Second World War. The American people and

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their government were deeply suspicious of colonialism and did not hesitate to inform their allies of this. On 12 October 1942, for example, Life magazine addressed an “Open Letter” to the “People of England” stating that, though not all Americans could agree upon why they were involved in the war, “One thing we are sure we are not fighting for is to hold the British Empire together.”13 us policy never officially endorsed dismantling Europe’s empires after the Second World War, but us anti-colonialism remained a significant obstacle to continued European colonial rule in Africa and Asia and most famously almost cost France its colonies in Indochina before President Roosevelt reluctantly allowed French authorities to return to the region following Japan’s surrender in 1945. Though Canada was not a colonial power, many Canadians took an active interest in colonial questions during the war. Some Canadians shared their neighbours’ dislike of colonialism and believed that the liberation of the European countries from German rule should be followed by the liberation of their colonies from European rule. The Fellowship for a Christian Social Order in Toronto, for example, urged Mackenzie King to apply the provisions of the Atlantic Charter to colonial territories, arguing that true peace would follow the Second World War only if all colonies were granted self-government.14 Similar attitudes even permeated the Canadian government during the war, with officials Louis Rasminsky and J.R. Barton among those who believed that Britain needed to be pressured into doing more to fulfill its obligations under the Atlantic Charter to hasten the achievement of colonial self-rule.15 Mackenzie King, however, had learned early in the war not to impose either himself or Canada into discussions of colonial policy. Mackenzie King’s perception of Canada’s interest in colonial issues owed much to his unsuccessful attempt to influence British policy towards India during the early stages of the war. He had long believed that India would gradually secure self-government from Britain, but with the rapid advance of Japanese forces throughout Asia and the Pacific in early 1942 he became convinced that the time had come to expedite this process to ensure India’s continued contribution to Britain’s war effort. King was not alone in this belief, but he saw in the decision of the British government to send Sir Stafford Cripps to negotiate with the Indian National Congress and other Indian nationalists an opportunity for himself and for Canada to make a major contribution to the achievement of self-government in India.16 In a telegram he sent to Winston Churchill on 15 March 1942, King suggested that Canada and

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the other dominions could reinforce Cripps’s mission by offering to guarantee self-government for India following Japan’s defeat. As a demonstrable indication of their “readiness to accord recognition of Dominion status to India,” King also suggested that the existing dominions should exchange high commissioners with India.17 As explained by H.S. Ferns, the assumption behind this proposal was that “the pledges of the British government on self-government were insufficiently trusted by the Indian politicians” and that Cripps’s mission was likely to fail unless a collective guarantee by the dominions, and possibly the United States and China, allayed their suspicions about the Cripps mission.18 Because Canada, and King himself, had led the decades-long struggle to entrench the principle of the equality of all of the self-governing dominions within the Commonwealth, King believed that Canada’s good offices would help reassure Indian leaders of the sincerity of the offer of self-government. He never got the opportunity to test this belief, however. Churchill’s terse reply reiterated the complexity of the political situation in India and warned King against interfering in the Cripps mission.19 With this message, Churchill deflated King’s trial balloon and the Canadian prime minister abandoned his “Indian initiative.” King’s dream of a role for himself and Canada as a “world apostle” of self-government similarly vanished.20 Thereafter, though the Canadian government continued to take an interest in the political evolution of India, it did so from a distance, and self-government for India was a problem left to the British and the Indians to solve. This experience had a profound effect upon Mackenzie King and the Canadian government’s approach to the issue of decolonization during the rest of the war and even thereafter. Despite misgivings within his government about the nature of colonial rule, Mackenzie King generally refrained from offering any further advice or assistance to other governments on colonial matters. In December 1942, King informed the British Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs that colonial policy must remain the responsibility of the colonial powers, and he reiterated this position in late 1944 when the British government asked for Canada’s input on the latest proposals for the postwar settlement of colonial issues.21 King’s reluctance to have Canada become involved in these discussions is easily understood. On one level, since Canada possessed no colonial territories, the functional principle dictated that Canada should have minimal influence over colonial policy.22 Yet even more importantly, the Canadian government was deterred by the divisiveness and

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the potential explosiveness of colonial questions that threatened to impair relations between the United States and the colonial powers, including Britain. With few direct interests at stake in these matters beyond ensuring that they did not unduly disrupt inter-allied relations and uk/us friendship in particular, Canada had little to gain from involvement in colonial questions, especially since any Canadian position would likely antagonize one or the other, or both, of its principal international partners.23 For King and the Canadian government, it was more important to safeguard the uk/us relationship than to contribute to the making of colonial policy. The Canadian government’s desire to preserve uk/us friendship as the bedrock of Canada’s postwar security compelled it to try to minimize disagreements between Britain and the United States. At the San Francisco Conference in spring 1945, the United States wanted to ensure that colonies and mandated territories would come under the strict supervision of the United Nations, but Britain and the other colonial powers bitterly opposed this plan. As the gulf between the United States and Britain on this issue threatened to become a chasm, the Canadian government tried to act as a lynchpin between the two. Anxious to ensure that, in the words of Canadian diplomat John Holmes, “the colonial problem is not a source of friction between the United States and the United Kingdom,” Canadian officials sought to reconcile the British and us positions. In practice, this meant explaining the us attitude on colonialism to Britain and the other Commonwealth members, much as an earlier Canadian government had explained us resentment of the uk-Japanese naval alliance at the Imperial Conference of 1921. Following the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in March and again in April 1945, for instance, Canadian officials urged their reluctant counterparts from the British Foreign Office and the other members of the Commonwealth to cooperate with the United States in creating a system for the United Nations to oversee the progress that mandated territories were making towards self-government and to punish those colonial powers that were slow to fulfill their colonial responsibilities. Many Canadian officials similarly believed that anti-colonialism was leading the United States to press too precipitously for colonial selfgovernment but this opinion was not shared with the us government.24 It is extremely doubtful that Canada’s advice to compromise on international supervision of colonial territories affected Britain’s position at all during the discussions leading to the creation of the United Nations in 1945. The Canadian government’s interest in colonial issues

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was too limited and sporadic, and Britain was much more likely to seek the input of Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa, since these Commonwealth countries administered mandated territories of their own. Nonetheless, the original Charter of the United Nations required the colonial powers to report to the international organization once a year on the progress their dependent territories made towards self-government. This requirement suited Canada’s interests perfectly. It prevented a rift from growing between the United States and important Western European countries, bolstered the prestige and the role of the United Nations in international affairs, and ensured that the colonial powers themselves retained the primary responsibility for colonial affairs. It also allowed the Canadian government to retreat to the fringes of involvement in colonial affairs. For the next several years, the Canadian government tracked colonial developments intently, aided in this by regular reports from the British Colonial Office, but rarely stirred itself to a more active role. The imminent independence of India, Pakistan, and Ceylon in 1947 raised questions about the composition of the Commonwealth that troubled some within the Canadian government, but even then Secretary of State for External Affairs Louis St Laurent had to convince Mackenzie King that the matter was not solely of interest to Britain and the Indian people. King, in contrast, believed that whatever the effect on the Commonwealth, Canada’s role in India’s independence was to do nothing to impede or delay the carrying out of any agreement on India’s political status arrived at by the British government and the people of India.25 Its unwillingness to become involved in colonial issues did not prevent the Canadian government from asking its embassy in Paris to report regularly on reforms to the structure of the French Empire after 1945. These reports contained little useful information, though Ambassador Vanier observed that the French Empire was evolving in a very different way than the British Commonwealth. In 1947, the newly established French Union gave the French colonies representation in France’s National Assembly and other imperial bodies, but Vanier concluded that the French continued to exhibit centralizing impulses that, given France’s dominance of the Union, would prevent the colonies from achieving the same type of autonomy that the dominions enjoyed within the Commonwealth.26 Still, Canada was not greatly affected by developments in France’s empire in the first years after the Second World War, and the discussions of them by Canadian officials in Paris and Ottawa in this period retained the characteristics of an academic

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exercise. They did not yet fully realize the potential difficulties that France’s determination to control the political evolution of its colonies could pose for Canada and the West in general in the quickly shrinking geopolitical atmosphere of the late 1940s. By 1948, the wartime cooperation between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had definitively broken down, undermined by mutual suspicions and distrust, and competing political, ideological, and economic systems. From the Western perspective, the Soviet Union loomed large and threatening. The Communist coup in Czechoslovakia, the Communist rebellion in Greece, Soviet intimidation of Finland, Norway, and Turkey, and the electoral prospects of communist parties in France and Italy clearly demonstrated to most Western governments that the Soviet Union would stop at nothing to extend its rule throughout Europe. Despite some initial hopes that its wartime alliance with the ussr would be maintained in the postwar years, the Canadian government shared with other Western governments the growing conviction that communism and the Soviet Union posed an imminent threat to them, their citizens, and their liberal democratic societies.27 Instead of ensuring peaceful relations between countries, the United Nations had become a forum where East and West regularly confronted each other in diplomatic battles, and the vastness of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans no longer seemed to offer Canada the same degree of protection from involvement in the world’s troubles as they once had done. Faced with these circumstances, the Canadian government was one of the first advocates for and founding members of the North Atlantic Treaty alliance that, when it was completed in April 1949, united Canada, the United States, Britain, France, and eight other Western European nations in a military alliance intended to provide for their collective security against the Soviet menace. The negotiations leading to the North Atlantic Treaty were far from easy, however. Particularly difficult for Canada was France’s insistence on including its dependencies in North Africa in the territory protected by the treaty, an insistence that forced the newly installed Prime Minister Louis St Laurent and his government to confront the colonial issue that his predecessor had assiduously avoided during and after the war. This issue was not supposed to have been raised at all. Britain, France, and the Benelux countries had purposefully excluded colonial territories from the Brussels Treaty in March 1948, and the us, British, and Canadian governments assumed that they would be similarly excluded

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from the Atlantic pact.28 As late as summer 1948, the six countries involved in the Washington Talks agreed that since the Brussels Treaty excluded North Africa then so too would the North Atlantic treaty. Yet by November 1948, the French government had changed its mind and requested protection for all of Africa north of thirty degrees north, including parts of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands had not wanted France to make this request, and Britain gave it only lukewarm support, but the French persisted. French rule dated to 1912 in Morocco, 1881 in Tunisia, and 1830 in Algeria. Parts of Algeria had even been incorporated into Metropolitan France in 1871. During summer 1948 the French government concluded that the intimate political, military, economic, and legal ties between France and its North African dependencies merited their inclusion in the proposed Atlantic treaty.29 The French request generated little enthusiasm in Washington in December 1948. Hume Wrong, Canada’s ambassador in Washington and lead negotiator during the Washington Talks, received instructions to oppose it. His government worried that including any colonial territories in the treaty would encourage all the participating colonial powers to seek similar considerations for their colonies, a concern that gained credence on 17 December when M. Taymans of Belgium declared that the Belgian Congo would have to be covered by the pact as well if North Africa were included.30 The French having failed to convince the representatives of the other countries to accede to their request at two lower level meetings, French Ambassador Bonnett urged his counterparts to include the French territories of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco in the treaty at the ambassadors’ meeting on 22 December. The British ambassador supported the French position, but Sir Oliver Franks declared that, out of deference to the obvious reluctance of the other parties, his government would not insist on including its own interests in Egypt and the Suez Canal in the treaty. This was the only measure of support the French garnered. All of the other representatives rejected the proposal. The us, Belgian, and Dutch governments all worried about expanding the territorial scope of the treaty beyond the Atlantic region, while the Americans added that including colonial territory in the Atlantic pact would jeopardize its ratification by the us Senate, a notoriously anti-colonial body. Hume Wrong similarly expressed Canada’s belief that, as in the Brussels Treaty, the area covered by the Atlantic pact would be limited to the European members’ metropolitan territories alone.31

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In early January, the treaty’s territorial coverage remained the one point of critical importance that had yet to be resolved during the Washington negotiations. Opposition, however, had only hardened the French resolve. Facing deadlock between France on the one side and Canada, the us, Belgium, and the Netherlands on the other, Hume Wrong asked Ottawa for instructions. He suggested that Canada might compromise on the inclusion of French North Africa, but, contrary to his expectations, he was told that Canada’s position had hardened as well. On 4 January 1949, Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester Pearson had discussed the negotiations with Louis St Laurent, and together they decided that Wrong must take an even stronger stand against the inclusion of any part of North Africa in the area covered by the Atlantic treaty. Though their fears were probably overblown, both St Laurent and Pearson believed that many Canadians, like their neighbours to the south, considered colonialism profoundly distasteful and anachronistic, and they worried that adding a colonial dimension to the treaty would make it harder for the Canadian public to accept it.32 There has been no in-depth analysis of Canadians’ attitudes towards colonialism in the post-Second World War period, but in its coverage of the conclusion of the Washington Talks the Canadian press did not reveal any concerns about the impact of colonialism or colonial issues on the operation of the North Atlantic Treaty. Even Le Devoir, the newspaper that expressed the most reservations about the alliance, did not include anti-colonialism among its reasons for opposing it.33 Nevertheless, the fear of the Canadian public’s response provided the pretext for Canada’s position vis-à-vis the French bid to have its North African territories protected under the Atlantic pact. Equally important in this instance, however, were the background and the personal opinions of the prime minister and the secretary of state themselves. St Laurent had been reared in Quebec’s anti-imperialist culture, while Pearson had been indelibly shaped by the liberal Methodist impulses of his father. They both genuinely sympathized with colonial peoples that were being denied self-government by their European rulers. On a more practical level, they also worried that Canada’s international image would become tainted by association if the Atlantic alliance was perceived to contribute to the perpetuation of colonial regimes. Finally, they also feared the difficulties to which Canada would be subjected if France were ever able to invoke the alliance’s pledge of mutual assistance to call for Canadian help in suppressing a nationalist revolt in any of its colonies included in the treaty.34

Canada and French Africa to 1954

17

On 4 January, when informed by Hume Wrong of Canada’s rigid position excluding all colonial territories from the pact, Armand Bérard of the French Embassy in Washington indicated that his government was prepared to compromise on Tunisia, Morocco, and the rest of North Africa but that it was adamant about including Algeria in the treaty. Bérard reiterated his government’s position that since Algeria was legally a part of Metropolitan France, it deserved the same protection as Florida or Alaska. Bérard surprised Wrong by the strength of his intransigence. After speaking with French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman in Paris on 12 January, Georges Vanier confirmed that the French government insisted on Algeria at least being included in the area covered by the treaty. British and us sources similarly confirmed that the French would not modify this demand.35 The French government even threatened to refuse to join the alliance if the Algerian departments were excluded. Faced with the prospect of proceeding without France, the opposition of the other delegations crumbled. On 14 January, the Belgian and Dutch ambassadors agreed to accept the inclusion of Algeria, while the British indicated that they would do so as well provided that the United States government also agreed. Only Canada and the United States remained firmly opposed to the inclusion of any colonial territories in the pact. Wrong personally believed that “the inclusion of Algeria would make no real difference in the operation of the Treaty, although it might add an undesirable ground for public criticism of its provisions.”36 Nevertheless, he cabled Ottawa for instructions on how to handle the negotiations in Washington. Faced with the alternatives of acquiescing to the reduced French demand or continuing its opposition to the point where France might refuse to join the alliance, St Laurent and Pearson decided to accept the inclusion of France’s Algerian departments in the Atlantic alliance. “Algeria,” said Louis St Laurent, “was not a matter of great importance in relation to the main purposes of the Treaty, but France was essential.”37 France was expected to be the North Atlantic alliance’s lynchpin in Western Europe and ultimately this consideration outweighed all others for the Canadian government. On 18 January, Pearson informed Wrong that Canada was prepared to include Algeria in the alliance and the us government indicated that it had reached a similar conclusion on 24 January. When the final treaty was signed in April 1949, Article 5 pledged the members of the alliance to mutual self-defence in the event of an attack upon any of the allies and Article 6 extended that pledge to cover the three Algerian departments of France, though the guarantee of assistance

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would only be triggered by an external invasion of Algeria rather than a nationalist uprising in the territory. Nevertheless, France had gained an important diplomatic victory that was even greater than the French themselves realized. Closely tied to France politically and militarily after April 1949, the other allies thereafter had a strong interest in maintaining France’s strength, stability, and loyalty to the North Atlantic alliance. This factor later won for France allied support for its colonial policies in Asia and Africa that might not otherwise have been forthcoming. Though the North Atlantic alliance was established by the West to contain communist expansion in Europe, the threat had already begun to migrate to other regions in the world in the late 1940s. This development raised problems for the United States and Canada since many of the areas where communist influence was growing most rapidly, particularly in the Far East and Southeast Asia, were areas like Indonesia and Indochina, which were under the control of the Netherlands, France, or other colonial powers. Protecting these regions from communist encroachment required trying to maintain and even bolster the authority of the European powers in their spheres of influence. The Truman government in the United States felt the need to provide the war-weakened European countries with political and material assistance to sustain their influence in their colonies. Yet the idea of us support for colonial regimes troubled many anti-colonial us policymakers. They worried that, by maintaining the power of the colonial authorities, they would impede the ambitions of colonial nationalists and force them to turn to communism to secure nationalist aims, thereby ultimately undermining the balance of power between the West and the Soviet Union. The problem for the us government was to balance these contradictory impulses, ensuring that the European countries received the support they needed to combat communism while encouraging them to cede selfgovernment to their colonies in order to maintain the Western orientation of the colonial nationalists. The Canadian government experienced similarly conflicting impulses as Communist victory in China in 1949 and Communist aggression in Korea and Indochina focused Canadian attention on the communist threat in Asia. It endorsed the need to contain communism in the Far East and Southeast Asia, which mandated Canadian support for the colonial regimes in the region, yet it also believed that the West’s interests would not be truly secure until the colonial powers were encouraged to create “indigenous centres of pro-Western influence” by surrendering their own authority.38

Canada and French Africa to 1954

19

Though the threat of communist expansion was obviously greatest in the Far East in the early 1950s, it was not negligible elsewhere in the developing world. For many Western officials, colonial territories offered the Soviet Union particularly enticing opportunities to extend its influence. In June 1951, the North Atlantic Council of Deputies predicted that the Soviet Union would seek to strengthen itself and weaken the West by championing colonial peoples in the United Nations, supporting Communist-led nationalist movements, or generally exploiting colonial nationalism wherever nationalists felt frustrated by the slow pace of colonial reform.39 According to the Canadian, British, and us governments, France’s reluctance to adopt meaningful colonial reforms made its colonies especially vulnerable to communist and Soviet influence. While the British anticipated that their colonies would eventually become self-governing members of the British Commonwealth after the Second World War, the French always envisaged a much more formal relationship with their dependent territories even after the adoption of colonial reforms. In 1946, in response to nationalist agitation in Indochina, France created the French Union, uniting France and its colonies and overseas territories in a federation in which each enjoyed representation in the organs of the imperial government. France, however, maintained exclusive control of the Union’s foreign, defence, and economic policies.40 This was part of the French vision of Greater France, which was considered one and indivisible, and it did not admit the possibility of significant degrees of colonial self-government. Like Indochina, French North Africa was another part of the French Empire that chafed under restrictive French colonial policies after the Second World War. Technically, Tunisia and Morocco were French protectorates rather than colonies. Treaties concluded in 1881 and 1912 respectively allowed the French to control foreign and some internal affairs for Tunisia and Morocco but neither the Bey of Tunis nor the Sultan of Morocco had surrendered their sovereignty. Nevertheless, France exercised virtually untrammelled rule in these protectorates through its resident-generals in Tunis and Rabat, its control of the political process, and through the influential communities of French settlers in North Africa.41 Disenchanted with French rule and inspired by the creation of several Arab states including Pakistan in 1947 and the imminent independence of Libya in 1952, Tunisian and Moroccan nationalists increasingly asserted their demands for full autonomy for their countries in the early 1950s.

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Unlike Indochina, however, there was not likely to be an armed uprising in the North African protectorates despite the rising cycle of violence between the French and Tunisian and Moroccan nationalists. The region’s proximity to France itself and the severity of the anti-nationalist measures taken by the French authorities precluded this possibility according to many foreign observers, including Canada’s Georges Vanier. Nonetheless, the ambassador worried that nationalist agitation in French North Africa could still pose a threat to Western interests even if it never reached the point of armed conflict. He believed that the suppression of nationalism in the two protectorates antagonized their Arab populations, promoted hostility towards France and the West, and offered the Soviet Union “tempting opportunities for trouble-making” in a strategically important region on nato’s southern flank.42 While he praised the political, economic, and social progress that Tunisia and Morocco had made under French direction, Vanier argued that the potentially explosive situation could only be diffused by France promising to reform its administration of the two protectorates including, ultimately, the promise of their full and complete independence.43 Without this type of reform, the nationalist agitation would only escalate and cause further problems for France and its Western partners. The seriousness of the situation in French North Africa was demonstrated in January 1952 when nationalist riots and the deaths of several French settlers induced France to strengthen its grip on Tunisia. The French reinforced their military in the protectorate with units of the French Foreign Legion, censored the press, banned the Neo-Destour nationalist party, and arrested Tunisian nationalist leaders including Habib Bourguiba and Tunisian Prime Minister Mohammed Chenik. Chenik responded by attempting to internationalize the conflict; on 14 January the president of the un Security Council received a letter from the imprisoned nationalist appealing for the Council to intervene on Tunisia’s behalf. The Council itself ignored the appeal, but Chenik’s strategy paid dividends in April when eleven African and Asian countries, including Egypt, Lebanon, and India, submitted a formal request to have the Security Council address the deteriorating situation in Tunisia. This was not the first attempt to have the situation in Tunisia considered by the Security Council. Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen had tried to do so the previous autumn, unsuccessfully.44 The second attempt to compel the Security Council to discuss the repression of nationalism in French North Africa in April 1952 similarly failed. France and Britain both voted against it while, secure

Canada and French Africa to 1954

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in the knowledge that the request would be defeated without the required majority support, the other members of nato on the Council – the United States, Greece, Holland, and Turkey – all abstained.45 France’s respite was only temporary, however. Disappointed with the Security Council’s decision, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru sent an aide mémoire to all of the Western countries, including Canada, condemning the Council’s narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness, and asking for the West’s support for a special session of the Security Council to discuss the situation in Tunisia in summer 1952.46 The support of Third World states for the nationalist movements in French North Africa pointed to a broader dilemma for the West. Third World nationalism was on the rise in the postwar years, and several former colonies, like Indonesia or Pakistan, had already achieved their independence. Subsequently, these newly independent countries and other like-minded states used their influence and especially their seats at the United Nations to agitate for the decolonization of other dependent territories. Western countries faced the prospect that, increasingly, the United Nations would be used as a forum from which to attack the colonial powers at the same time that successful decolonization reduced Western influence in the international organization by increasing the number of its anti-colonial members. Anti-colonialism in the United Nations therefore posed as significant a threat to the colonial powers and their allies, as any armed uprising in one of their colonies and threatened to drive a wedge between the West and the Third World to the benefit of the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc. More specifically for Canada, Louis St Laurent had tremendous respect for Jawaharlal Nehru and firmly believed that India could play a vital role as a bridge between the West and other Third World countries. He and others in the Canadian government worried that Canadian support for the colonial powers could impair Canada’s relations with India.47 The need to preserve Canada’s and the West’s relations with the Third World, and the observation that nato members occupied a majority on the un Security Council but only twelve out of sixty seats in the General Assembly, convinced Morley Scott of the United Nations Division in Canada’s Department of External Affairs that Canada could not afford to alienate the majority of world opinion by aligning itself against the anti-colonial states. He therefore advocated supporting India’s proposal for a special session of the Security Council on Tunisia.48 Charles Ritchie of the European Division, in contrast, opposed holding this special session. While Ritchie believed that colonialism

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was outdated and that the Tunisians’ desire for independence could not be resisted indefinitely, he argued that Canada’s policy on Tunisia should be guided by the effect a special session on Tunisia would likely have “on the capacity of France to play its part in the defence of Europe and of South-East Asia.”49 According to Ritchie, the object of Canadian policy should be to avoid weakening France by giving the communists and Arab and Asian nationalists a forum to attack French policy in North Africa. Ritchie also argued that the French would clearly regard Canadian support for a special session on Tunisia as an unfriendly act at a time when they already resented the seeming lack of support from their allies for their war against communism in Indochina. Instead of airing France’s problems in the United Nations, Ritchie advocated using the private confines of nato’s North Atlantic Council to press France to compromise with the nationalists in North Africa as a way of preserving the West’s relations with the anti-colonial states. St Laurent, Pearson, and others within the Canadian government clearly favoured Ritchie’s analysis of India’s request for support for Tunisia. In the un General Assembly in summer 1952, Canada was one of twenty-seven countries that voted against holding a special session of the Security Council on Tunisia versus only twenty-three in favour. As Canada’s high commissioner in New Delhi explained to the Indian government, Canada had to balance “the longer term and fundamental issue of progress toward self-government and freedom [for dependent peoples] against the short-term problem of preserving a strong and united Western European and North American peace coalition against the aggressive and subversive designs of international communism acting as the spearhead of Russian imperialism.”50 The desire to prevent an embarrassing discussion of France’s problems in the United Nations, however, did not translate into blanket support for France’s policies in North Africa. In summer 1952, Canadian officials led by Escott Reid widely discussed the desirability, as Charles Ritchie had suggested, of using an upcoming meeting of the North Atlantic Council to urge the French to grant nationalists in Tunisia and Morocco autonomy from French rule. The us government even urged Canada to cooperate with the United States to urge colonial reforms on the French. Yet the likelihood of airing Canadian and us concerns in nato collapsed after French officials indicated that their government was not prepared to sacrifice any of its rights or authority in French North Africa and that it would consider any indications of support for the Tunisian and Moroccan nationalist movements by its nato allies in the gravest possible light.51 Faced with the undesirable prospect that their criticism would alienate a key ally, or

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perhaps even provoke France’s withdrawal from Indochina or the collapse of the current French government and its replacement by one more inimical to nato, the Canadian and us governments decided against raising the Tunisian issue in nato. Lester Pearson himself firmly believed that the French government would deeply resent any criticism of France’s North African policies in nato or the United Nations.52 Despite its success in imposing its will on its allies, France was fighting a rearguard action to prevent the intervention of the United Nations into something the French considered their own domestic matter. Anticolonial countries like India had failed to secure special consideration of the nationalist situation in French North Africa in the un Security Council in spring 1952, but it was clear that the Afro-Asian Bloc would generate enough support for a discussion of France’s policies in Tunisia and Morocco at the un’s regular session that began that autumn. Though the Canadian government’s tactics shifted slightly when these issues were again raised in the un in October, its fundamental goal remained the same. Unlike the previous spring, the Canadian delegation did not oppose the inscription of Tunisian and Moroccan items on the un’s agenda. Though the Department of External Affairs’ legal advisers justified this decision by concluding that Article 10 of the un Charter gave the organization ample scope to discuss any issue that threatened the general welfare and peaceful relations among nations, despite the French objections, it was really motivated by the hope that a simple discussion of the Tunisian and Moroccan situations would satisfy the Arab and Asian states. After attempting to appease the Afro-Asian Bloc in this fashion, the Canadian Cabinet nonetheless instructed its delegates to the United Nations “to prevent any severe or malicious criticism of France” over Tunisia and Morocco.53 The objective of Canadian policy at the United Nations in autumn 1952 thus remained consistent and the Canadian delegation voted against all of the resolutions introduced by African and Asian states that urged France to recognize the independence of Tunisia and Morocco and sought to create a committee of good offices to assist in negotiations between France and the North African nationalists. Instead, the delegates expressed Canada’s faith in France’s intentions towards Tunisia and Morocco and stressed that it should be allowed to fulfill them without interference from the United Nations.54 Although Canada did not offer France as sweeping support as some other countries – the British, Australians, Belgians, and South Africans all argued that the un had no authority to intervene in France’s domestic affairs for instance – yet it sufficed. Together, the nato powers, other Western countries, and the Latin American states defeated the

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resolutions critical of France, and once again France escaped the censure of the international community for its treatment of nationalists in French North Africa. During the debate on Tunisia in the un’s First Committee, Paul Martin, then Minister of National Health and Welfare, stated that Canadians “know the irresistible strength – because we have felt it ourselves – of the urge for freedom which develops in all national groups still subject to external control.” The Canadian government also knew that “our interests will probably not be served best by blind support of the French ‘presence’ in Tunisia” and that France needed to reach an accommodation with the nationalists in North Africa in the long term.55 Yet as long as France remained intent on maintaining its position in North Africa, the Canadian government concluded that it had to protect France from its attackers. Britain, the United States, and the rest of nato reached a similar conclusion. The alternative risked alienating a key Western ally and weakening the North Atlantic alliance. The determination of the anti-colonial states to press for decolonization and the persistence of such states as India in trying to use the United Nations to advance the cause of Tunisian and Moroccan independence, however, indicated that victory at the un in late 1952 had only earned France and its allies a temporary respite. Despite the intensity of France’s objections to un intervention in its affairs in the two North African protectorates, the nationalist movements in Tunisia and Morocco were of secondary importance compared to France’s concerns about the war for independence being waged by the communist Viet Minh against French rule in Indochina in the early 1950s. Canadian policy towards this war mirrored its policy towards French rule in North Africa. Like the United States, the Canadian government maintained doubts about the desirability of continued French rule in the region but firmly believed in the importance of “establishing a pro-Western state on China’s southern periphery,”56 which thus compelled them both to support France’s armed struggle against the Viet Minh. The United States provided over one billion dollars worth of aid to the French effort in Indochina between 1951 and 1953, and France expected similar assistance from Canada. The provision of military equipment for France’s war in Indochina, however, was complicated by the Defence Appropriation Act of 1950 that limited the use of Canadian military supplies to the defence of Western Europe. In June 1952, the French government asked Canada’s permission to divert Canadian anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft guns, ammunition, and

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other types of arms that France had received as Mutual Aid to Indochina. Lester Pearson believed that France’s war against communism in Indochina deserved Canada’s support, but Louis St Laurent and Minister of Defence Brooke Claxton worried about how the Canadian public would react to Canada sending military supplies to help France retain its colonial position in Southeast Asia.57 Hoping to avoid Canada’s becoming explicitly implicated in the use of force against France’s rebel colonies, St Laurent himself proposed to his Cabinet in July and August 1952 that the French either purchase the equipment outright or that France replace the Canadian equipment sent to Indochina so that French forces in Europe were not deprived of adequate supplies.58 Ultimately, however, the Canadian Cabinet approved the transfer of the Canadian equipment without any such restrictions by agreeing to send the Mutual Aid equipment to France itself. Thereafter, the French were told that what they did with the supplies after their arrival in France was of no concern to the Canadian government.59 This willful blindness allowed the transfer of Canadian military equipment to Indochina to proceed but permitted St Laurent and his government to deny direct knowledge of or responsibility for the use of its military equipment against national liberation movements in France’s colonies in Southeast Asia. The desire of dependent peoples around the world for self-government profoundly shook the global community in the aftermath of the Second World War, challenging the established global order and demanding an end to European rule in large parts of Africa and Asia. The process of establishing independent states from the wreckage of the French, British, and other colonial empires, however, was neither rapid nor painless and often provoked bitter struggles between colonial nationalists and their European rulers. Like the rest of the world, Canada and its government were forced to adapt to the changes brought on by nationalist pressures in the developing world. Yet the postwar period also witnessed the intensification of the Cold War between the West and the East. Consequently, the Canadian government had to balance its desire to embrace the principle of self-determination for dependent peoples against its perceived need for security from communist aggression. The Canadian government often spoke about the desirability of accommodating the aspirations of colonial nationalists, but the constraints imposed upon it by its commitment to containing communism and its close alliance to the colonial powers meant that its support for the processes of decolonization rarely transcended the purely rhetorical.

2 Tempered Sympathy: Canada and French North Africa, 1954–58

Encouraged by the support their cause had garnered from African and Asian states, nationalists in Tunisia and Morocco continued to press for independence from France throughout the early 1950s. In summer 1953, the increasing cycle of violence and repression led to the deaths of several nationalists and French settlers in Tunisia and to the overthrow by the French of the Sultan of Morocco.1 In autumn 1953, concerned by these developments, several Arab and Asian states again raised the situation in the French protectorates for discussion in the United Nations. France, with the support of the United States, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Australia, resisted fiercely, arguing that the un lacked the authority to intervene in France’s domestic affairs. In contrast, the Canadian delegation continued to uphold the right of the General Assembly to discuss any issue it saw fit while nonetheless endeavouring to protect France from embarrassing or harmful AfroAsian resolutions. In practice, this meant that the Canadian delegation voted in favour of discussing the Tunisian and Moroccan items but against the resolutions condemning the French for failing to negotiate independence with the North African nationalists.2 While the United Nations debated these issues, however, the French government had come to the conclusion that repression only provoked further violence and that its attempts at reform had not mollified either the nationalists or the French settlers. Seemingly at an impasse, French Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France visited Tunisia at the end of July 1954 and

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27

announced that his government would grant Tunisia complete internal sovereignty while retaining control only of its foreign and defence policies.3 This announcement came only ten days after the signing of the Geneva Accords partitioning Indochina. Similar concessions to Morocco followed within a year. Within a few short months, the French government had seemingly committed itself to withdrawing from most of its dependencies in Indochina and North Africa. Far from ending France’s colonial problems, however, these agreements merely paved the way for another nationalist uprising in the third, and most important, of the French territories in North Africa. Sandwiched between Morocco and Tunisia, Algeria could not remain unaffected by the currents engulfing its neighbours. The great majority of its people shared the Arabic language, the Islamic religion, and many aspects of a common cultural heritage with the Moroccans to the west and the Tunisians to the east. They too felt the upsurge in Arab nationalism that took place in the Middle East and North Africa following the Second World War, and they too could look to the newly formed Arab League and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt for inspiration and support. It was thus inevitable that Algerian nationalists would crave the same self-government that Mendès-France had conceded to their neighbours, and on 1 November 1954 they began their campaign to wrest Algeria’s independence from France. For the French, however, the situation in Algeria differed markedly from those in either Morocco or Tunisia. While the French government had reluctantly embraced the idea of self-government for the latter, several factors led the French government to take a vastly different attitude towards the uprising in Algeria. From the French perspective, unlike Tunisia and Morocco, which had nominally remained sovereign states after the agreements they had signed with France in 1881 and 1912 respectively, Algeria had never been an independent country. French rule in Algeria stemmed from the conquest of Algiers in 1830. Furthermore, Algeria enjoyed a different status within France than either Tunisia or Morocco, its coastal area having been incorporated into Metropolitan France itself in 1871. For the French, an independent Algeria was no more possible than an independent Normandy, Brittany, or Corsica, particularly since there were one million French settlers in Algeria in 1954 out of a total population of ten million. Most of their families having lived in Algeria for several generations, these pieds-noir considered it their home and their determination to remain exercised tremendous influence over the Algerian policies of successive French

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governments – influence that the smaller French settler communities in Morocco and Tunisia had never matched. Moreover, being home to the bulk of French investments overseas, Algeria was by far France’s richest colony.4 Still, these factors alone cannot explain the intensity of French opposition to the uprising in Algeria after 1954. For over a century prior to the Second World War, colonial possessions had bolstered Europe’s dominance in the world and many of the French people believed that France would be unable to rebuild its power and prestige without Algeria, its oldest and richest colony.5 This belief was especially prominent in the French Army, still seething from its humiliation at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. When the powerful French settlers in Algeria demanded the suppression of the Algerian revolt after November 1954, the French government, the French Army, and a majority of the French people rallied to their cause. What ensued was a bitter war that killed tens of thousands of people, cost hundreds of millions of dollars, seriously undermined France’s political stability, and occupied a prominent place in international affairs throughout the eight years that it lasted, from 1954 to 1962. France’s determination to remain in Algeria created a dilemma for the St Laurent government. In 1952 and 1953, it had endorsed the idea that France needed to negotiate with Tunisian and Moroccan nationalists regarding the gradual independence of the two protectorates. How could it now deny that the principle of self-determination also applied to the people of Algeria? Yet France vehemently and violently opposed the nationalist uprising in Algeria, raising the prospect that the St Laurent government could be forced to balance its support for the principle of self-determination for dependent peoples against the need to placate and support its French ally during its period of crisis. The decision was less difficult than it seemed. Strategically, French-controlled Algeria contributed to nato’s interests in the Mediterranean area by securing Western lines of communication through the Mediterranean Sea, by contributing to the operation area of the Strategic Air Command, and by augmenting France’s capacity to meet its military obligations to nato. Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs Jules Léger worried that a serious disturbance of French authority in Algeria could have an adverse affect on nato’s position in the Mediterranean and even Western Europe. Other officials, such as M.N. Bow of the European Division of the Department of External Affairs, believed that the maintenance of French rule was the only way to prevent anarchy in Algeria and to ensure that it remained Western-oriented rather than

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29

succumbing to communist or Arab League influences.6 The St Laurent government determined, therefore, that the West’s interests were intimately connected to the maintenance of French rule in Algeria, at least in the short term. As a result, the Canadian government’s initial sympathy for the aspirations of the Algerian people was tempered by “the basic fact that the outcome of events in French North Africa directly affects European and North Atlantic security.”7 The Eisenhower administration in the United States shared this initial analysis of the situation in Algeria and was prepared to accept France’s colonial aims in North Africa as long as the nationalist troubles there were disposed of quickly and quietly. As a colonial power itself, Britain was even more solidly behind the French efforts to suppress the nationalist movement in Algeria since it recognized that its own colonial interests in Africa and elsewhere were similarly vulnerable to attack from indigenous nationalists and an increasingly anticolonialist international community. Consequently, the British pledged their complete political and moral support for France’s policies in Algeria and in North Africa more generally.8 Both the us and British attitudes would change in subsequent years but, during the opening stages of the Algeria revolt, France’s principal allies were prepared to give the French government free rein to suppress the nationalist movement. This support for France, however, was always somewhat ambivalent, a fact of which the French themselves were keenly aware given the depths of antipathy that French policies in Algeria inspired in parts of Canada, Britain, and the United States.9 Despite the support from its allies, the French government remained doubtful of their reliability and was sensitive to any indications that us, British, or Canadian attitudes towards Algeria were changing. France’s inability to suppress the revolt in Algeria ultimately began to affect the way Canadian and other Western officials perceived the conflict. Among the first to re-evaluate the situation was Jules Léger, who in September 1955 warned that France’s unrealistic policies in Algeria “could have disastrous effects” on Canadian and Western interests, including prolonged bloodshed, chaos, and the creation of weak states in North Africa that were destined to be controlled by the Arab League.10 By this time, Léger believed that Algeria, like the rest of Africa, would ultimately achieve self-government within a generation even if France maintained some control over its foreign and defence policies. The large number of autonomous or even independent African states that emerged from the ruins of Europe’s empires would then be in a position

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to affect Western interests adversely unless the nato countries maintained their friendship, or at least benign neutrality. As a first step towards this goal, Léger suggested that encouraging France to deal liberally with the demands of the Algerian nationalists was a better way to serve nato’s long-term interests than by unquestioningly supporting France through a drawn out and bloody nationalist conflict. Two events from earlier in 1955 had contributed to Léger’s prescient re-evaluation of the situation in Algeria. The first was the inauguration of the non-aligned movement in world affairs at the Bandung Conference in April 1955. At this conference, Third World states, including India, Pakistan, and Egypt, condemned colonialism and announced their intention to agitate for the independence of Europe’s remaining colonies in Africa and Asia. Their commitment to anti-colonialism threatened to drive a wedge between the Third World states and the Western colonial powers and their allies. For the Canadian government, it was an article of faith that Canada was well positioned to win the friendship of newly independent Third World states but its guilt-byassociation with its allies’ colonial policies risked jeopardizing this desirable development.11 The second event occurred in May 1955, when France withdrew one of its Army divisions from its nato duties in Germany in order to reinforce the troops it had already committed to Algeria. The transfer of these troops, among France’s best trained, to North Africa weakened nato in Western Europe and exposed Canadian troops stationed in Germany to greater risks. It also helped convince Lester B. Pearson, Jules Léger, and others in Ottawa that France’s position in Algeria could only be maintained at the expense of its commitments to the defence of Western Europe.12 The anti-colonialism of the Bandung Conference and the removal of French troops from nato persuaded the St Laurent government that France’s military response to nationalism in Algeria undermined Western interests, particularly since crushing the revolt – if it could be accomplished – would not permanently eradicate the nationalist problem in the territory. Independence for Algeria, on the other hand, offered the prospect of preserving the West’s standing in North Africa and the Afro-Asian world while returning French troops to their duties in Europe. In March 1956, Lester Pearson himself wondered “if we hold colonial territories against the wishes of their inhabitants are we going to be stronger or weaker in the long run?”13 Sentiment in the Department of External Affairs was thus moving towards a long-term analysis of Canadian and Western interests based on the inevitability, if not yet

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necessarily the desirability, of Algeria’s independence. Not all officials within the Department embraced this analysis – M.N. Bow, for example, continued to argue that Canada should follow the British example and support French aims and policies in North Africa unequivocally.14 Nonetheless, Pearson and most of his senior officials were increasingly inclined to encourage France to acquiesce to nationalist demands in Algeria by autumn 1955. The Canadian government was joined in this new attitude by the Eisenhower administration, which had been similarly affected by the anti-colonialist sentiment of the Third World in the aftermath of the Bandung Conference.15 Both North American governments also believed that the North Atlantic Council offered them the perfect vehicle through which to apply pressure on France to resolve the conflict in Algeria quietly and with the minimum of offence to the French. Neither government, however, was quite prepared for the strength of France’s opposition to interference in its domestic affairs, even from its friends and allies. The French government had good reasons for being sensitive about the way its allies treated the Algerian problem in 1955, since French opinion itself was increasingly divided over the issue. The French Communist Party and increasingly the left as a whole in France embraced the cause of independence for Algeria, but the parties of the right were committed to maintaining l’Algérie française. Between them, they scuttled all attempts to reform the administration in Algeria, with the left objecting to reforms that fell short of full independence while the right rejected any weakening of French authority in the territory. Meanwhile, French citizens became more and more polarized between those demanding France’s withdrawal from Algeria and those demanding allout efforts to keep Algeria French.16 The impasse between these two extremes paralysed the French government and undermined France’s political stability to such an extent that some observers anticipated the collapse of the French political system.17 The French government feared that public disagreements with its nato allies over Algeria would only exacerbate France’s internal turmoil. The knowledge that France was intensely vulnerable to international criticism over Algeria conditioned the French government’s response to events at the United Nations in autumn 1955. When thirteen African and Asian states tried to place a discussion of the conflict in Algeria on the un’s agenda, France, with British and us support, argued that such a discussion would violate Article 2(7) of the Charter of the United Nations, the clause prohibiting United Nations’ intervention into a

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member-states’ domestic affairs. On this occasion, the St Laurent government instructed its representatives in New York to vote against holding a discussion of Algeria in the United Nations as well, in contrast to its approach towards the Moroccan and Tunisian questions before the un from 1951 to 1953 when it had argued that the General Assembly could discuss any situation that it considered likely to impair the general welfare or friendly relations between states. Canada’s vote, however, was motivated more by its fear of France’s reaction to an affirmative vote than by its acceptance of the French argument that the un had no jurisdiction over France’s domestic affairs. Subsequent events in New York justified this fear. After the General Assembly voted to include a discussion of Algeria on its agenda, the French delegation withdrew from the Assembly in protest. It subsequently refused to return until its members agreed, as a result of a compromise partly orchestrated by the Canadian delegation, that Algeria would remain inscribed on the Assembly’s agenda but that the actual discussion would not take place.18 For the St Laurent government, this episode revealed the depths of French feelings about Algeria as well as the potential cost of failing to support France’s Algerian policies within the international community. In so doing, it helped determine the basic parameters of Canadian policy towards the Algerian war for the next several years in the sense that, above all, the need to avoid antagonizing France would be an overarching concern for the Canadian government. It still hoped that France could be encouraged to adopt more liberal policies in Algeria even as it realized that France’s sensitivity to interference in its affairs made this unlikely. Nonetheless, as the conflict in Algeria dragged on into 1956, it became increasingly difficult for France to convince its allies that they should let France solve the problem on its own. The Communist Bloc had seized upon support for the Algerian nationalists for its propaganda value and as a way to drive a wedge between the West and the Third World. In a similar way, Egypt had begun providing the Algerian nationalists with financial and material support to bolster its own version of pan-Arabism.19 Together, communist and Egyptian influences raised the spectre of the loss of Algeria to anti-Western forces, one way or another. Even more damaging for Canada were accusations by the governments of Egypt and India that nato provided military support for France’s campaign against Algerian nationalism.20 The longer the war in Algeria lasted, the more nato’s prestige in Africa and Asia suffered by its association with France. The implications of this situation

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33

were clear for all to see when, for example, the French military forced a plane carrying five leaders of the Algerian Front de libération nationale on their way to Tunisia from Morocco to land in Algiers on 22 October 1956. Their subsequent arrest provoked anti-France protests that quickly blossomed into anti-Western riots throughout the Arab world. The lesson was clear. France’s unilateral actions in Algeria had the potential to undermine broader Western interests, and this realization prompted the Canadian government to consider ways to end the war before Algeria was lost to the West. Various ideas began circulating within the Department of External Affairs throughout 1956; some were even presented to Cabinet for its consideration. One proposal advocated uniting Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia into a single Maghreb state. Another envisioned a multilateral effort from the nato countries to relieve France of the burden of economic development in North Africa as a way of forestalling the Soviet Bloc from making inroads in the region.21 In any event, none of these ideas ever advanced beyond the stage of intellectual exercise. Through a clever stratagem in spring 1956, the French government had already managed to divert the attention of its allies away from voicing thoughts of multilateral solutions to the Algerian war. In March 1956 the French government withdrew another of its divisions from nato duty in Europe to cope with the deteriorating military situation in Algeria. At the same time, the North Atlantic Council, nato’s political organ, was asked to declare its unqualified support for France’s aims and policies in Algeria and North Africa. The St Laurent government had intended to use the Council’s meeting in March to encourage the French to accept the principle of self-government for the Algerian people. Instead, it had been presented with a request that, if granted, would reinforce the damaging impression that already existed in countries such as Egypt and India that nato supported the use of military force to suppress nationalism in Algeria. The stratagem succeeded. Instead of being subjected to pressure from its allies to acquiesce to the demands of Algerian nationalists, the French had forced the Canadian and other delegations to dissipate their time and energy in the Council fighting against the declaration of support for France.22 In the end, the North Atlantic Council never endorsed the transfer of a total of two French Army divisions and three air battalions from nato command to service in Algeria. Still, the French had pre-empted the Canadian government from trying to use the Council to put pressure on France to liberalize its policies in Algeria.

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The contradictions in the policies that France pursued towards Algeria on the one hand, and Morocco and Tunisia on the other, proved particularly frustrating to the Canadian government in 1956. While France was increasing the number of troops that it committed to an increasingly bloody conflict, it was simultaneously completing negotiations with Morocco and Tunisia to end the dependent status of these two countries. Complete internal autonomy for Tunisia, conceded by the Mendès-France government in July 1954, had been put into effect in June 1955. By November 1955 the nationalist Mohammed ben Youssef had also been restored as Sultan of Morocco, and the French government had publicly proclaimed its intention to concede independence to Morocco. In March 1956, the same month that the French Army was being given reinforcements to crush the Algerian nationalist rebellion, the French signed the protocols that would transfer full independence to Morocco and Tunisia later that year. The contrast between France’s military crackdown in Algeria and the political concessions it offered Algeria’s two North African neighbours was strikingly apparent throughout 1956. Despite the escalating conflict in Algeria, by 1955 it was increasingly clear to the St Laurent government that Algeria’s neighbours Tunisia and Morocco would soon be completely independent of France. Moreover, officials within the Department of External Affairs realized that they knew very little about these countries, their governments, or their leaders. Given their strategic importance and the growing competition between the West and the Soviet Bloc for the hearts and minds of Arab nationalism, this was not a situation that could be allowed to persist if the Western orientation of Tunisia and Morocco was to be maintained following their independence. Beginning in February 1955 with the visit of Second Officer Claude Châtillon to Tunisia, a series of officials from the Canadian Embassy in Paris travelled to North Africa to establish contacts with and gather information about the Tunisian and Moroccan governments. Ambassador Jean Désy himself visited Morocco in May 1955.23 Despite the apparent urgency of developing contacts with the two North African governments, however, these initial visits of Canadian diplomats to Morocco and Tunisia were limited in frequency and remained largely exploratory in nature. Because of the complicated negotiations taking place between France and its two protectorates in this period, the French government discouraged its allies from taking any steps towards establishing relations with Tunisia and Morocco before the final agreements on the transfer of sovereignty were ratified by the

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French National Assembly. Canada and the other nato members largely complied with this request, though the Eisenhower administration for one believed that the negotiations were taking too long and that France needed to relinquish its hold over the North African territories more expeditiously. The St Laurent government did not recognize Tunisia and Morocco diplomatically until 19 June 1956, but, according to Lester Pearson, it was only the desire to avoid antagonizing the French that had prevented Canada from granting de jure recognition and opening relations with the two countries earlier.24 In general, Canada’s policy towards the independence of Tunisia and Morocco, much like that of the United States and Britain, was broadly shaped by the need to preserve French influence in North Africa in order to protect broader Western interests. This task was complicated by Prime Minister Habib Bourguiba and the Tunisian government’s insistence on the removal of all of France’s remaining military forces from Tunisia after its independence. If this took place, warned General Charles Foulkes, the Chairman of Canada’s Chiefs of Staff Committee, it would have a ripple effect leading eventually to the loss of French, us, and British military bases in Algeria, Morocco, Libya, and elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East. In turn, this would enable Egypt and even the Soviet Union to extend their influence across North Africa, creating “an unfriendly or even hostile South Mediterranean coast line which together with an unfriendly Egypt might put the nato alliance in danger in the whole Mediterranean area.”25 Foulkes also reached a similar conclusion about the effects of France’s military withdrawal from Morocco. The fact that the protocols France had signed with Tunisia in March 1956 contained no definite provisions allowing French forces to remain in Tunisia meant, according to Jules Léger, that the Canadian government could not support the French in their efforts to maintain a military presence in post-independence Tunisia.26 Even so, it would not actively seek to undermine France’s claim or its remaining influence in North Africa. This principle had far-reaching effects on Canada’s relations with Tunisia and Morocco. By July 1956, for example, six thousand French citizens in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco had submitted applications to immigrate to Canada, and Deputy Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Laval Fortier wanted to send a team to North Africa to evaluate the suitability of the applicants. An earlier attempt to send such a mission had failed to obtain French permission to travel to North Africa, but Fortier was optimistic that the trip could proceed once Morocco and

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Tunisia had negotiated their independence from France. For Fortier and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, the desirability of the potential immigrants – mostly farmers, professionals, and industrialists – more than justified any effort expended to meet with them.27 Lester Pearson and his senior officials, however, disagreed. While they recognized that Canada had potential immigration interests in North Africa, Pearson and Léger nonetheless believed that Canada’s overriding interest in the area was to maintain its friendship for the West and its close ties with France. They feared that encouraging the exodus of thousands of French citizens from North Africa would undermine this goal. It would certainly antagonize the French, since the French ambassador in Ottawa had already told Léger that France would consider the overt recruitment of immigrants by Canada in North Africa an unfriendly act given its desire to preserve substantial French communities and economic interests in the former protectorates.28 After Pearson vetoed Fortier’s proposed mission, Jules Léger proposed sending a three-man team composed of representatives from the Department of External Affairs, Citizenship and Immigration and the Department of Trade and Commerce to explore with Tunisian and Moroccan officials the whole range of Canada’s relations with the two new countries. Citizenship and Immigration’s representative on the trip, R. Brunet, would not be able to make any commitments on behalf of the Canadian government, but he could gather the information about the potential immigrants that his department wanted without antagonizing the French government.29 The French remained leery about this new configuration of the Canadian mission to North Africa but were mollified by Pearson’s assurances to the French ambassador that Canada neither wanted to attract attention to the mission’s immigration component nor to encourage a mass exodus of French citizens from North Africa. Jean Désy stressed these points to the team’s members when they stopped in Paris on the way to their destination in order to “keep the immigration aspects of the visit from becoming embarrassingly conspicuous.”30 Nonetheless, despite the efforts of the Department of External Affairs to minimize this aspect of the trip, news that Canada was interested in recruiting immigrants in North Africa quickly emerged. On 18 October 1956, the day that the mission arrived in Morocco, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast that “A three man Mission is on its way to North Africa to make arrangements to obtain French speaking immigrants for Canada … A number of French-speaking residents of [Tunisia and Morocco] have made application for permission to emigrate

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[sic] to Canada, and it is hoped that the Mission will be able to make arrangements to deal speedily with these requests.”31 The story had been leaked to the cbc by officials in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, causing Lester Pearson a great deal of embarrassment. Fortunately, the leak did not affect the mission in North Africa. During their three weeks in North Africa, Paul Beaulieu from External Affairs, R. Campbell Smith from Trade and Commerce, and Citizenship and Immigration’s Brunet met with representatives of the Tunisian and Moroccan governments, with French, British, and us diplomats, and with leading figures of the French communities in each country. According to their instructions, the Canadians were unable to conclude any agreements or make any firm commitments, but they nonetheless returned to Ottawa convinced that Canada could develop beneficial relations with the two countries in a number of areas. Though neither Tunisia nor Morocco could be expected to welcome the mass emigration of their most skilled citizens, Brunet discovered a large pool of potential immigrants in their European and Jewish communities. In turn, Smith observed that posting a trade commissioner to Rabat could double Canada’s annual export of agricultural implements or automobile parts to Morocco to more than $3.5 million, though he did admit that, because of its much smaller and less developed market, the potential for trade with Tunisia remained negligible. Even Beaulieu returned to Canada optimistic about the future of Canada’s relations with Tunisia and Morocco. He had been repeatedly assured that, despite the tension caused by France’s refusal to withdraw from such military bases as Bizerte in Tunisia, both countries desired close and friendly relations with France and the West in general. Moreover, Beaulieu assured his superiors in the Department of External Affairs that their governments were eager to establish diplomatic relations with Canada and to have Canadian embassies opened in Rabat and Tunis. He had been convinced that Moroccans and Tunisians looked favourably upon Canada because of its history as a former colony, its willingness to work with Third World countries in the Commonwealth and the United Nations, and its lack of colonialist ambitions. Properly cultivated, he argued, this attitude could be parlayed into considerable political influence in North Africa at a time when Egypt and the Communist Bloc could be expected to exert considerable pressure on the Western orientation of Tunisia and Morocco.32 As an initial Canadian foray into North Africa, this mission was considered a resounding success, with both Morocco and Tunisia offering

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the potential for fruitful relations with Canada. One problem, however, impeded the fulfillment of this potential. The ongoing conflict in Algeria poisoned Tunisia and Morocco’s relations with France and threatened to do the same to their relations with other Western countries, including Canada, insofar as they supported France’s military campaign against the Algerian nationalist movement. By autumn 1956, France had 400,000 soldiers in Algeria, leaving only two understrength French divisions in Germany and no regular troops in France. Nonetheless, the St Laurent government continued to provide the French military with extensive gifts of armaments and equipment through nato’s Mutual Aid program, despite the fact that Mutual Aid was intended to strengthen nato’s ability to deter a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. This type of activity did little to discourage the idea that Canada was complicit in France’s war in Algeria.33 From 1955 to 1958, Canada gave France Mutual Aid that included 300,000 rounds of 20 mm ammunition, one million rounds of .303 ammunition, trucks, dynamite, sub-machine guns, 90 mm shells, pistols, and Harvard training aircraft. From January 1957 to March 1958 alone Canada donated $14.6 million in Mutual Aid to France. Given that a majority of the French Army was stationed in Algeria during these years, the St Laurent government could not ignore the embarrassing probability that most of this equipment was being used against the nationalist movement in Algeria. To protect itself from allegations of complicity in the suppression of nationalism in Algeria, St Laurent’s Cabinet passed Order-In-Council 1956–507 in March 1956. This Order-In-Council codified the modus operandi that the St Laurent government had previously used when it had acquiesced in the transfer of Canadian Mutual Aid from France to Indochina in late summer 1952. It stated that once a recipient nation accepted Mutual Aid from Canada it also accepted the responsibility to use it to strengthen nato’s capacity to deter aggression. Having done so, the recipient nation could then use the equipment wherever and for whatever purpose it chose without having to ask Canada’s permission to defy the limitations of the Defence Appropriation Act that required that Canadian Mutual Aid supplies be used to defend Western Europe alone. In effect, the St Laurent government had delegated to its allies the responsibility for ensuring that the military equipment Canada gave them was used appropriately, to strengthen nato in Western Europe. The government had chosen to look the other way rather than risk alienating the French by cutting off a supply of much needed equipment in the midst of France’s escalating war in Algeria.34

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39

The Canadian government was not alone in the support it gave to the French war effort in Algeria. The United States, for example, provided up to one quarter of France’s defence budget in the mid-1950s.35 Yet for both governments, such support contradicted their public positions opposing the use of military force by the colonial powers to suppress nationalism in their colonies. While the Canadian public may not have realized the exact extent to which its government indirectly supported France’s Algerian campaign, some Canadians at least were aware that their government was more complicit than it liked to acknowledge. Writing on behalf of the Religious Society of Friends in September 1955, Deborah Haight protested to Lester Pearson that by contributing men, money, and arms to nato, Canada was actually helping to protect France, which was then free to use its own military to combat the nationalist movement in Algeria. Jules Léger conceded that there was “an element of truth” in Haight’s argument, though this was not an opinion that was shared with her or the Quakers.36 It is very difficult to determine how many Canadians shared the Quakers’ opinion about the Algerian war for independence. A study of the media coverage of the war in Quebec and throughout Canada has determined that from 1954 until 1958, Canadian newspapers and magazines largely sympathized with the French position in Algeria and worried about the effect of the war on France, its prestige, and its role in nato.37 This study supports the general observation that, to the extent that Canadians were actively interested in the war during its early stages, they tended to support France. Opposition to France’s policies in Algeria, where it existed, seemed to be sporadic and relatively muted. Nonetheless, French diplomats at the embassy in Ottawa and consulates in Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, or Vancouver, were convinced that the coverage of the Algerian war in the Canadian press was biased against France and that the Canadian public at large was extremely hostile towards French actions in North Africa. Revelations that French soldiers were committing atrocities during the Battle of Algiers did have a negative impact on Canadian public opinion by the beginning of 1957, a development that worried French diplomats in Canada enormously.38 They need not have worried so much, however. In the end, Canada’s relationship with France was simply too important for the St Laurent government to risk rupturing it by defying the French government’s expectations of political and even military support for France’s policies in North Africa, regardless of how the Canadian people felt about them.

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Still, the pressure on France to resolve the conflict in Algeria was growing and, insofar as it considered Gamal Abdel Nasser to be at the heart of its problems in Algeria, contributed to the French government’s willingness to conspire with Britain and Israel against Egypt in autumn 1956. The eruption of the Suez Crisis at the end of October momentarily diverted the world’s attention away from France’s problems in Algeria but the two issues were inextricably linked, especially for the Canadian government. Prime Minister Louis St Laurent joined others, including President Eisenhower, in condemning the fading “Supermen of Europe” for trying to reassert their colonial authority in the Middle East.39 But the failure of Canada, the United States, and the other nato allies to support the British and the French in their attempt to regain control over the Suez Canal seriously affected inter-allied relations within nato. The bitterness lasted for months, and the French never completely lost their sense that the United States and Canada had betrayed them or that Britain had deserted them at the first sign of disapproval in Washington. Thereafter, French officials became increasingly convinced that France could no longer rely on nato for its security requirements, thus helping to nurture a growing sense of alienation from the alliance that would blossom over the next decade.40 Because France remained a key participant in nato, the Canadian government’s overarching concern in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis, for both symbolic and practical reasons, was to repair the relations between the biggest nato allies. nato’s unity and its strength, and by extension Canada’s national security, depended on it. The French sense of betrayal after Suez magnified their sensitivity over Algeria to the point where, in November 1956, nato’s Supreme Commander in Europe, General Alfred Gruenther, told the Canadian Cabinet that “if the United Nations were to condemn France over her policies in Algeria, he thought it quite possible that she would withdraw from nato. It was illogical for the French to feel this way, but they did and the fact had to be recognized.”41 This possibility worried Canadian officials, even more than it worried about the negative effects of France’s policies in North Africa. The French government itself was increasingly paralysed by events in Algeria. The French Army enjoyed considerable military success against the Algerian rebels, driving them out of the major cities of Algiers, Oran, and Constantine in 1957, for example, yet the government could not match these military successes in Algeria with political accomplishments. The European settlers and the influence they wielded in France

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prevented the government from implementing reforms that appealed to moderate Algerian nationalists as a way of ending the war even as the left in France hardened its demand for the complete independence of Algeria. Increasingly concerned for France’s political stability, in January 1957 Jules Léger again tried to persuade Lester Pearson that the time had come to get the French government to accept the eventual independence of Algeria as the basis for a negotiated end to the war. Pearson was not convinced, arguing that no country could exert enough pressure to change France’s Algerian policy and that any attempt to do so would run afoul of the strength of French national feeling and the bitterness that remained from the Suez Crisis.42 Pearson did not want to jeopardize France’s enthusiasm for nato by an ill-advised attempt at peace brokering in Algeria. A few short months after Pearson rejected Léger’s idea about the Canadian government exerting pressure on France to negotiate a settlement in Algeria, the Conservative Party won the Canadian general election of June 1957 and became Canada’s governing party under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. The changes that took place in the Cabinet and in the leadership of the Department of External Affairs did not affect the basic nature of Canadian policy towards Algeria, however. Diefenbaker’s stated commitment to Canada’s traditional alliances, friendships, and associations, coupled with the Conservative leaders’ inexperience in international affairs, guaranteed that Canada would continue to tread cautiously around France’s delicate relationship with both Algeria and nato.43 Nevertheless, this new government joined its predecessor in recognizing that the situation in North Africa was rapidly approaching a crisis. France’s refusal to grant selfdetermination to the Algerian people defied the trend towards decolonization that had already emancipated such countries as Tunisia and Morocco and others throughout Asia and Africa. How much longer could France deny the aspirations of the Algerian nationalists? How much longer would France’s allies continue their support while their reputations suffered from their association with France’s military repression in North Africa? In autumn 1957, French Prime Minister Maurice BourgèsMaunoury enacted a loi-cadre that promised Algerians greater internal autonomy, but the French National Assembly rejected it by a vote of 279 to 253 in September of that year, precipitating another political crisis in France following the resignation of the Bourgès-Maunoury ministry. The National Assembly subsequently passed another loi-cadre

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for Algeria in November 1957, but only after it had been rendered so innocuous that it contained little substance for the Algerian nationalists. Furthermore, because it could not be implemented until three months after the end of hostilities, this measure failed to appease France’s international critics.44 To countries such as India, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, the loi-cadre was not a sincere attempt by France to address the nationalist demands in Algeria. Even Canadian officials began to lose patience with France’s inability to resolve the Algerian problem. It was, according to Jules Léger, “becoming very difficult for us to continue to support the French on the Algerian issue.”45 Yet the French government remained as sensitive to interference in its affairs as ever. In late summer 1957, the recently established Republic of Tunisia approached Britain and the United States for help in equipping its military. Ordinarily this was the type of assistance that France would have provided for its former protectorate, but the ongoing Algeria war was poisoning relations between France and Tunisia. President Habib Bourguiba and his government supported the Algerian nationalists and were unwilling to seek military aid from France as long as the latter continued to suppress the nationalist movement. For their part, even if they had been asked for aid, the French would not have provided it for fear that its military equipment would make its way across the border and into the hands of the rebels in Algeria. Nonetheless, the French government continued to insist on being the principal point of contact between the West and Tunisia and Morocco, especially concerning the provision of military equipment and assistance. In November 1957, after two months of discussions, the United States and Britain sent Tunisia a token shipment of semi-automatic rifles, machine guns, and small calibre ammunition as a gesture of goodwill to prevent it from turning to less desirable donors. The French reaction was swift and, from the Canadian perspective, “unexpectedly strong.” French officials accused their allies of “conspiring to deprive France of her special position in North Africa generally and in Algeria in particular.”46 Tunisian and Moroccan leaders had pledged their sympathy and support for the Algerian Front de libération nationale from the beginning of the rebellion against French rule in late 1954. The Algerian rebels used Tunisian and Moroccan territory as sanctuaries, crossing the border to hide from French forces after their deadly hit and run missions in Algeria. They also received shipments of arms and ammunition from Egypt across Tunisian territory. French resentment against Tunisia’s support for the Algerian nationalists boiled over in February 1958, when

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the French Air Force bombed the Tunisian village of Sakiet Sidi Youssef just across the border from Algeria, killing sixty-nine people, including twenty-one children. This incident reinforced for the Tunisian and Moroccan governments that it was impossible for them to have bilateral military associations with France and intensified their demands that French troops withdraw completely from their territory. France’s problems in Algeria were spilling over into the rest of North Africa and jeopardizing not only France’s interests in the region but the broader strategic and political interests of other Western countries as well.47 As a result, the strain of the war began to manifest itself in the relations between France and its allies. In July 1956, Senator John F. Kennedy asked President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Dulles to use their influence “to achieve a solution which will recognize the independent personality of Algeria.”48 Publicly, neither Eisenhower nor Dulles were willing to abandon their support for France, but privately the us administration’s anger grew throughout 1957, finally erupting at the December nato meeting when Dulles vehemently denounced French efforts to elicit support from the United States for French aims in Algeria. France’s allies had demonstrated a great deal of patience with France thus far over Algeria, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that their patience was wearing thin. By late 1957, Canada’s Department of External Affairs had again begun to consider ways to resolve the conflict in Algeria multilaterally, whether through the creation of a nato foreign aid program for North Africa or by promoting a confederation that united Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, France, and Spain. As had been the case in previous years, many of these ideas were fanciful and wildly impractical, but for the first time some French leaders seemed ready to welcome multilateral intervention in Algeria. At a luncheon on 6 March 1958, for example, former French Prime Minister Guy Mollet invited France’s allies to take the initiative in proposing solutions to the Algerian problem.49 The French government did not share Mollet’s view of the situation in Algeria but the Diefenbaker government joined other nato governments in being sufficiently exasperated by France’s handling of the conflict that they were increasingly prepared to confront the French with the demand that they concede Algeria’s independence. Before they could do so, however, the political crisis in France deepened with the collapse of government after government and the inability of any political party to form a stable new coalition throughout the first half of 1958. On May 8, the latest prime minister, Pierre Pflimlin,

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took office after announcing publicly his intention to negotiate an end to the war in Algeria. The French Army reacted immediately to this announcement by forming a Committee of Public Safety under General Salan, the Army’s commander in Algeria. Its goal was simple: to prevent the government from ending French rule in Algeria. Towards this end, the generals in Algeria began massing troops in Corsica in preparation for a coup against the government. With the Fourth Republic seemingly on the verge of collapse, the British and Canadian governments contemplated ways to help Pflimlin remain in power by providing his government with economic assistance, among other things, but in the end they could only watch as events unfolded in France. When the dust settled in June 1958, Charles de Gaulle, war hero and former prime minister of France, had emerged from retirement to rescue his nation in its time of need. His return to power forced the Canadian government to re-evaluate its position on a range of issues, not the least of which was the continuing war for the independence of Algeria.

3 Lingering Colonialism: Canada and French North Africa, 1958–62

Charles de Gaulle’s return to power in France in June 1958 created mixed feelings in many Western capitals. De Gaulle had clashed frequently with us and British officials during the Second World War, and his years in semi-retirement at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises after January 1946 had dimmed neither his commitment to restoring France’s greatness nor his resentment of its subordination within a us-dominated Western alliance.1 When he became prime minister of France for a second time in June 1958, Western diplomats worried about his anti-us, anti-German, anti-British, anti-European, and anti-nato tendencies, and about his desire for a rapprochement with the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, Canada’s chargé d’affaires in Paris, G.G. Crean, was not alone in concluding that de Gaulle had “a better chance of finding solutions to some of France’s problems than any other man presently on the political horizon.”2 A more prickly relationship with France’s government was a price that France’s allies were prepared to accept for an end to France’s political instability and to its ongoing trouble in Algeria. De Gaulle moved quickly to address France’s problems. To cure the chronic political problems that had plagued the Fourth Republic with its weak executive branch and dominant National Assembly, he immediately began crafting a new constitution for France. De Gaulle sought in particular to create a strong presidency capable of subordinating the National Assembly to his wishes in order to end the recurrent political

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crises that paralysed and weakened France’s government.3 In a September 1958 referendum, the electorate in France and its overseas territories overwhelmingly endorsed de Gaulle’s new constitution, with only the voters of Guinea rejecting it.4 On 21 December 1959 Charles de Gaulle was elected president of France’s Fifth Republic, inaugurating a new and relatively more stable era in France’s political history. Yet de Gaulle had less initial success with France’s other great problem, the war with Algeria’s Front de libération nationale. Part of this problem was of de Gaulle’s own making. He had a reputation for liberal colonial views but had deliberately refrained from voicing his opinion on Algeria during his years of political exile. As a result, some observers believed that he was prepared to deal liberally with the nationalist movement in Algeria, while the ease with which the generals accepted him as prime minister in 1958 indicated their belief that de Gaulle remained committed to keeping Algeria French.5 His first visit to Algeria as prime minister in June 1958 did little to clarify the ambiguity that surrounded his position. De Gaulle benefited from this uncertainly in at least one significant respect. Commenting on de Gaulle’s trip to Algeria in June, Canada’s chargé d’affaires in Paris observed that, even though no one knew what he was thinking, “it is at least encouraging that [de Gaulle] seems to have approached the problem in a forward looking and generous spirit.”6 Under the circumstances, Western diplomats were prepared to give de Gaulle both the benefit of the doubt and the time he needed to develop his own policy towards Algeria. Canadian officials had been considering ways to resolve the Algerian conflict multilaterally by early 1958, yet after May of that year the Diefenbaker government decided that de Gaulle “must be given his chance” to deal with the Algerian situation himself before others volunteered their own suggestions. Even the Indian government indicated that it planned to give de Gaulle a chance to come to terms with the Algerian nationalists though, according to Charles Ritchie, the French were likely to take this offer with a “pinch of salt.”7 Canadian officials recognized the importance attached to de Gaulle’s ability to resolve the Algerian conflict. If he failed, they predicted that international support for the Algerian nationalists would grow, Tunisia and Morocco would be alienated from the West, and France itself could be the victim of increased radicalism either through a right-wing military coup or a Communist-led Popular Front government. Moreover, in late 1958 Canadian officials believed that time was running

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out, that “the stage has been reached where the French cannot expect another chance if de Gaulle fails to find a solution.”8 Given this situation, the Diefenbaker government decided it could not afford to do anything that might undermine de Gaulle or his ability to bring about an end to the conflict in Algeria. As a result, it continued its policy of supporting France in public in the United Nations while it refrained from pressuring de Gaulle in private through the councils of the North Atlantic alliance or other means. An incident in late summer 1958 demonstrated that the Canadian government’s dilemma with regard to Algeria had not changed following de Gaulle’s return. In August, the Conference of Independent African States announced that it would be sending representatives to Ottawa to lobby Canada to support the Algerian nationalists in their quest for independence. Pierre Dupuy warned his colleagues in the Department of External Affairs that receiving this delegation would irritate the French but Under-Secretary Jules Léger did not want to antagonize the African states or undermine Canada’s reputation for objectivity at the United Nations. Léger even felt that he could take advantage of the meeting to press upon the African representatives that de Gaulle needed time to deal with Algeria in his own way.9 The news that Léger was prepared to meet with the delegates from Africa caused an immediate uproar in the French Embassy in Ottawa, which Dupuy attributed to the sensitivities of de Gaulle and his followers. In the end the Africans cancelled their trip to Ottawa, and their meeting with Léger never took place. Some Canadian officials, however, were angered by the overblown reaction of the French. Henry Davis in particular denounced the “lingering colonialism in French relations with us” that led the French to believe that ties of friendship and sympathy required unswerving Canadian support for France’s interests in Algeria.10 There was a new government in France but it was as determined as any of its predecessors to prevent its allies from taking independent actions regarding Algeria. To protect French interests in Algeria, even more important since oil from the Saharan oil fields began flowing to France in January 1958, de Gaulle’s new administration still needed its allies’ help to counter pressure for Algeria’s immediate independence from the Afro-Asian Bloc and the Communist Bloc. Privately, Western governments were tiring of the extreme sensitivity France displayed over the Algerian issue and the diplomatic blackmail it used to compel its allies’ support. Relations between France and the United States had deteriorated to the

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point that influential Americans like Senator John F. Kennedy were convinced that only Algeria’s independence could restore friendly relations between the two countries. Even the British had begun to waver in their support for France by 1958 despite their own colonial problems.11 It was only their reluctance to antagonize the French and to disrupt the unity of nato further that prompted the United States, Britain, and Canada to continue to support France publicly on the subject of Algeria. In September 1958, the Front de libération nationale established an Algerian government-in-exile in Cairo. nato’s members joined France and rejected the claim of the Gouvernement provisoire de la Republique algérienne (gpra) that it represented the Algerian people and denied the rebel government diplomatic recognition. A legal opinion prepared for the Canadian government denied that the gpra met the criteria for diplomatic recognition, arguing among other things that it did not have the support of the Algerian people, did not control Algeria’s territory, and could not ensure law and order.12 More importantly, however, the government’s policy in this instance was driven by the knowledge that recognizing the Algerian government-in-exile would have complicated French plans for Algeria and angered de Gaulle. After being informed that the us ambassador in Egypt had informally met with a representative of the gpra, Canada’s ambassador in Cairo was instructed to avoid any contacts, even informal ones, with the representatives of the fln. Fearing the French reaction, the Canadian government did not want to be seen conferring any degree of legitimacy upon the self-proclaimed Algerian government.13 There were limits to Canada’s willingness to support France on Algeria, however. Following the establishment of the gpra the French government wanted Canada to use its influence with the African and Asian members of the Commonwealth to prevent them from granting the fln body diplomatic recognition, but the Diefenbaker government refused. The French hoped that Canadian influence could help diffuse the growing effectiveness of Afro-Asian support for Algerian independence, particularly in the United Nations where the growing number of Third World states admitted in the 1950s had undermined the West’s domination of the organization and its agenda. Yet Canadian officials worried that Algerian nationalism had become so symbolic of the Third World’s struggle against colonialism that efforts by Canada to mitigate support for Algeria within the Commonwealth would only fail with potentially adverse effects on Canada’s relations with countries

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like India and Ghana. The Diefenbaker government agreed to disseminate its reasons for refusing to recognize the gpra within the Commonwealth but declined to articulate the French position more forcefully for fear of undermining its own influence in the Commonwealth or the Third World.14 The French had worried that widespread recognition of the fln’s government-in-exile by Third World states would complicate their position in Algeria, but in the end only Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and a few other Arab and Muslim states recognized the gpra as Algeria’s government. Most members of the Afro-Asian Bloc focused their attention on promoting Algeria’s interests in the United Nations instead. In autumn 1958, in what had become an annual event, African and Asian states again raised the question of Algeria’s status in the un. Once again, France boycotted the discussion of what it considered its domestic problems and, reluctant to defend France’s Algerian policy in the absence of the French, the other Western delegations chose not to participate in the debate over the resolution on Algeria. Consequently, the Afro-Asian Bloc succeeded in crafting a resolution that recognized Algeria’s right to independence and urged France to negotiate with the gpra and other representatives of the Algerian people to bring it about. For the Diefenbaker government, this resolution presupposed that the Algerian people wanted independence from France, thus prejudging the outcome of any negotiations on Algeria’s future, and it joined other nato members in voting against it. The resolution failed to win the two-thirds of votes it needed to be adopted by the un General Assembly but, instead of being grateful for its allies’ help, the vote left the French angry and embittered. Of all the nato members, the United States alone abstained on the Algerian question, the first public indication that the Eisenhower administration was losing patience with France’s inability to come to terms with Algerian nationalism. According to Robert Schumann, the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in France’s National Assembly, the French felt betrayed by the us abstention, a factor that contributed to the increasingly troubled relationship between France and the United States and other Western countries.15 Historically suspicious of what he called the Anglo-Saxon powers, Charles de Gaulle resented us and, to a lesser extent, British dominance in nato. In September 1958, de Gaulle outlined for President Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan his proposal for a leadership triumvirate composed of the United States, Britain, and France to oversee nato’s political and strategic direction. This Steering

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Committee would have increased France’s stature in nato and made the alliance more responsive to France’s global interests and responsibilities, but, not surprisingly, the other nato members were not enthusiastic about de Gaulle’s proposal. Neither Eisenhower nor Macmillan were anxious to weaken their influence in the alliance, while Canada and the smaller allies feared that adding another layer of decisionmaking responsibility at the top of the alliance’s structure would adversely affect their already limited influence in nato.16 The rejection of this proposal, combined with the us refusal to provide France with a nuclear reactor for one of its submarines and its abstention on Algeria at the un, heightened the antagonism between France and the United States and increased the reluctance of the French government to cooperate with nato. Consequently, de Gaulle announced that France’s Mediterranean Fleet would no longer serve under nato command in the event of hostilities with the Soviet Union and resisted integrating French air forces into the nato command structure. He also vigorously pursued France’s nuclear program aimed at giving his country an independent nuclear force de frappe despite us objections and the United States’ own strategic policy.17 Fundamentally, a gap was growing between the worldviews of France and its nato allies led by the United States and Britain, with de Gaulle and the French aspiring to a rapprochement with the Soviet Union and to Europe’s independence from the superpowers. By late 1959, it was clear that France was becoming increasingly estranged from nato, a process that would be completed with its withdrawal from nato’s military command in 1966. Canada’s own relations with France fared no better than those of the United States and Britain. In autumn 1959, Howard Green, the newly appointed Secretary of State for External Affairs and a committed opponent of nuclear proliferation, angered the French when he directed the Canadian delegation at the United Nations to criticize French nuclear testing in the Sahara Desert.18 Similarly, the French authorities strongly resented any indication that Canada’s support for France on Algeria was slipping. Canadian police and immigration agents had been on alert since mid-1958 in case the fln, as was rumoured, tried to establish an office in Montreal, yet French officials remained concerned that the Canadian public was susceptible to sympathetic accounts of the Algerian nationalist movement.19 They were especially disturbed when, in May 1959, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired two separate interviews with the fln’s unofficial representative

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in New York, M. Chanderli, and two Algerian students in Montreal.The French ambassador in Canada, Francis Lacoste, complained that Canada’s public broadcaster had disseminated the subversive views of rebels against the lawful authority of the French government, and he wanted assurances that the Canadian government would prevent the cbc from broadcasting this type of anti-France propaganda in the future.20 Though sympathetic to the ambassador’s concerns, and well aware of the negative effect that lack of support from its allies on Algeria had on the French government, the Diefenbaker government was unwilling to interfere directly with the independence of the cbc. Howard Green discussed the issue with George Nowlan, the minister responsible for the cbc, and H. Basil Robinson, the liaison between the Department of External Affairs and the Prime Minister’s Office, tried to get the prime minister to write Nowlan as well. Nowlan listened to Green’s concerns, but the cbc dismissed the French ambassador’s accusation of bias in its coverage of the Algerian conflict and refused the Department of External Affairs’ offer to consult with the cbc about its coverage of events in France and Algeria.21 Howard Green and the Department of External Affairs had made the gesture of approaching the cbc to appease the anger of the French ambassador but the news agency’s independence from direct government control had tied the government’s hands. The Canadian government might have been more concerned about French sensitivities if, in turn, the French government had tried to win Canada’s support on Algeria rather than merely demanding it. In the aftermath of the uproar over the cbc interviews, Henri Langlais of the French Foreign Ministry asked G.G. Crean of the Canadian Embassy in Paris what France could do to improve the Canadian public’s perception of events in Algeria. Crean replied that, rather than subjecting the Canadian people to propaganda, the French “would be doing well if they convinced the Canadian government and senior officials” that France deserved Canada’s support.22 Crean was expressing the exasperation that he and his colleagues in the Department of External Affairs were feeling over France’s failure to resolve the Algerian conflict. Prior to Crean’s meeting with Langlais, Henry Davis informed the embassy in Paris that the Canadian government was “not happy with the situation as it exists since we face embarrassment every time the [Algerian] question arises in the United Nations in trying to justify our support of France.” According to these officials, the point had been reached that, unless the French demonstrated their good faith by

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participating in the upcoming debate on Algeria at the United Nations, Canada might not be able to continue its public defence of France.23 Clearly, the period of grace that de Gaulle had been allowed on Algeria was drawing to a close. The upcoming session of the United Nations in autumn 1959 promised to be very difficult for France. The Afro-Asian Bloc was expected to renew its pressure for Algeria’s independence, and France’s allies were wavering in their support for France. The United States had already demonstrated that it would not blindly support France at the previous un session, and now both Canada and Britain indicated that they had reservations about supporting France as well.24 France needed to make a dramatic gesture towards the nationalist element in Algeria, or it risked being censured by the United Nations. On 16 September, de Gaulle surprised many in the international community when he announced his plan for bringing an end to the Algerian conflict. The plan he outlined called for the Algerian people to choose their own future within four years, providing that the fighting had stopped. He offered three choices: independence, the integration of Algeria into France, or, de Gaulle’s own preference, an internally autonomous Algeria associated with France in matters of economic development, defence, and foreign policy. De Gaulle had decided that France could no longer afford the enormous economic, military, and political cost of the war in Algeria; he was convinced that, even if the Algerian people chose independence, France would be better off than if it continued to occupy a hostile territory militarily.25 Implicitly, de Gaulle had recognized that an extensive colonial empire no longer bolstered France’s power or its prestige. On the contrary, de Gaulle acknowledged that the suppression of nationalism in Algeria had severely undermined France’s international standing. De Gaulle made his announcement after an item on Algeria had already been inscribed on the un’s autumn agenda, and it had a profound effect upon the course of debate in the international body. The announcement “dispel[led] most if not all of the doubts of France’s friends” and “made it possible for the allies of France to support her, at least to the extent of opposing a motion of censure in the General Assembly.” The British government, which like other nato members had been increasingly critical of France’s inability to resolve the Algerian crisis, now believed that the French had to be protected from criticism by the United Nations, or de Gaulle’s efforts to find peace in North Africa would be undermined. Both the United States and the United

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Kingdom voted for resolutions favourable to France while Greece and Turkey abandoned their public criticism of France.26 For its part, even before the announcement, the Canadian delegation had been instructed to vote with France on Algeria to mitigate the anger it had caused earlier when it had voted against French nuclear testing in the Sahara. After 16 September, however, for the first time in four years, the Canadian government could publicly and sincerely say that it agreed with the overall direction of French policy towards Algeria.27 Even the AfroAsian Bloc noted that the right of self-determination for Algeria had been accepted and urged France to negotiate with the Algerian nationalists as quickly as possible. While the international community rejoiced at the newfound prospect for peace in Algeria, the reaction of the French settlers in Algeria to de Gaulle’s new policy was much less enthusiastic. The colons considered the offer of self-determination for Algeria a betrayal of Algérie française, and their hostility culminated in a settler revolt against the government in Algiers in January 1960. More troubling still, the leaders of the French Army in Algeria declined to defend the government against the settlers, the very people whose interests they had been fighting to protect since 1954. Political protests by the settlers had successfully influenced previous French governments but on this occasion Charles de Gaulle refused to submit. In this, he was supported by a French populace exhausted by war and no longer prepared to sacrifice for the French minority in Algeria. Deprived of the support in France that the colons had previously enjoyed, the settlers’ insurrection collapsed. Their political protest having failed, some of the most militant colons founded the Organisation de l’armée secrète (oas) and turned to terrorism to disrupt the peace process set in motion by de Gaulle. Because they doubted the sincerity of de Gaulle’s offer and to strengthen their position in the event that negotiations did take place, the Algerian nationalists and the fln also continued their campaign against the French military.28 Negotiations between the French government and the Algerian nationalists began in March 1960, but the cycle of bloodshed continued and even intensified. Thus, the situation in Algeria remained unstable despite the offer of self-determination to Algeria and the start of the peace process. The antipathy of the colons to the prospect of independence for Algeria, the uncertainty surrounding the response of the French military to de Gaulle’s policy, and the continued violence between settlers and nationalists

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ensured that Algeria remained a source of international concern into the early 1960s. As a result, the Algerian problem continued to overshadow all other developments in North Africa, including the development of Morocco’s and Tunisia’s relations with France and its nato allies. The governments of the North African states ardently supported the fln, and the prolonged conflict in Algeria continued to affect their relations with France adversely.29 Yet the French insisted on maintaining Tunisia and Morocco within France’s sphere of influence. They welcomed the establishment of diplomatic relations between them and France’s allies but continued to react angrily to what they saw as attempts to undermine France’s special position in the North African states. The Canadian government neither wanted to nor could usurp France’s position in the foreign and economic relations of Tunisia and Morocco following their independence. It recognized their importance as Western bastions in North Africa and the Middle East, but Canada’s direct interests in Tunisia and Morocco were minimal in this period.30 With its abundant natural resources, Morocco offered slightly better prospects for trade with Canada, but only in the long term. Tunisia, a primarily agricultural country, offered even fewer opportunities for Canadian exporters and businesses. Consequently, officials within the Department of Trade and Commerce saw little value in opening trade offices in either of these countries. The bleak assessment of Canada’s opportunities in North Africa was echoed by the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, where interest in immigrants from Tunisia and Morocco had declined since its initial overtures towards North Africa had been rebuffed in 1956. Immigration officials did enquire about the potential for recruiting French settlers and Jews from Tunisia and Morocco during the crises in North Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s but without a great deal of enthusiasm.31 Neither department believed that the current state of affairs warranted a large investment of Canada’s diplomatic capital in either of these countries. The Canadian government undertook some humanitarian activities in Tunisia and Morocco in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including assistance for Algerian refugees and disaster relief after two earthquakes and a flood devastated Agadir in 1960, but its interest in the two countries remained overwhelmingly political during this period.32 Though friendly to the West, both Morocco and Tunisia faced pressure from antiWestern elements including the Arab League and the Communist Bloc, with Western officials believing that Tunisia was particularly vulnerable to their influence. The Department of External Affairs believed that the

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West needed to act quickly lest these countries turn to the Communist Bloc for political and economic support.33 Furthermore, Canadian officials believed that Canada could play an important role in maintaining Western influence in Tunisia and Morocco. Algeria had undermined the relations between France and its ex-protectorates, and many Tunisians and Moroccans suspected that Britain and the United States harboured neo-imperialist designs against their countries’ newly won independence. As a middle power without a history of colonialism towards developing countries, Canada did not arouse such suspicions. By 1959, both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China had built large diplomatic missions in Rabat and Tunis. Yet, instead of seizing the opportunity to build upon its advantages in North Africa, the Canadian government preferred to rely on its larger Western allies to match the diplomatic manoeuvres of the communist countries. Shortly after their independence in 1956, the Canadian government considered opening resident missions in Tunisia and Morocco but could not find the financial and material resources to enable the Department of External Affairs to do so. International events, including the independence of dozens of new countries, were already placing great strains on the diplomatic resources of the department. Moreover, thanks in large part to its English-dominated culture, the department lacked sufficient Frenchspeaking officers to staff new missions in countries like Tunisia or Morocco.34 Until this situation changed, the Canadian government could not open missions in Tunisia and Morocco and relied on France, Britain, and the United States to represent Western interests in North Africa. Nonetheless, the Department of External Affairs continued to prepare for the day when it would open a diplomatic mission to help boost the Western presence in French-speaking North Africa. Anticipating that Canada would be unable to afford more than one embassy in the region, officials began debating the merits of both Tunisia and Morocco as the site for a Canadian mission. On the surface, their political and strategic importance seemed roughly equivalent. They were both strategically important gateways to the Middle East and Africa, they were both heavily involved in the Arab world and in the continuing problems in Algeria, they were both friendly towards the West, and they were both targets of communist encroachment.35 For most Canadian officials, therefore, there was little to choose from between Morocco and Tunisia though many of them acknowledged that Morocco offered Canada better long-term prospects for trade. Gradually, however, Tunisia emerged as the focus of the department’s attention.

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According to Henry Davis, the head of the department’s European Division, Tunisia offered Canada a unique opportunity to exert influence in North Africa. He observed that Tunisia was a moderate country that wished to preserve its Western orientation but that it faced constant internal and external pressure to align itself more closely with the Arab League and Egypt. Without exaggerating the ability of a middle power like Canada to counter the influence of Soviet diplomatic initiatives or the appeal of Arab nationalism, Davis still believed “that few countries would have at this time a better opportunity of gaining a sympathetic hearing in Tunis.”36 Though the same arguments could be applied to Morocco, Davis felt that Tunisia was more eager to develop diplomatic relations with Canada. At the time, Tunisia had only eight missions abroad, but it had still appointed an ambassador to Canada, even though he was based in Washington. The Tunisian ambassador routinely consulted Canadian officials on topics ranging from the disposition of the French base at Bizerte and nuclear testing in the Sahara Desert to the Law of the Sea Conference and the 1967 World Fair that Canada wanted for Montreal.37 In contrast, Morocco seemed much less interested in cultivating ties with Canada, having failed to respond to the Canadian government’s informal overtures. Despite the emerging preference for Tunisia over Morocco, the Canadian government had no plans to open a mission in North Africa in 1960–61. As Howard Green explained to Tunisian Ambassador Habib Bourguiba Jr during their meeting in spring 1961, his department could not find the resources for even one resident mission in French Africa.38 As a compromise, the Canadian government decided to accredit nonresident ambassadors to both Tunisia and Morocco in 1961, with Canada’s ambassador to Switzerland also accredited to Tunisia while the ambassador in Spain was also appointed to Morocco. Even the beginnings of a small Canadian aid program for French-speaking countries in Africa, however, could hardly alter the fact that Canada had few direct political or economic interests in the North African countries. The Canadian government’s interest in Morocco and Tunisia remained general at best and continued to be shaped by the continued uncertainty surrounding Algeria, even after de Gaulle had accepted the principle of self-determination for the Algerian people in September 1959.39 Although the Canadian government now agreed with the basic nature of French policy towards Algeria, it was still leery of criticism over its support for France on this issue. As yet, there were no widespread indications that Canadians blamed their government for supporting France’s

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Algerian policies, though Quebec’s intellectuals and newspapers had begun, as a result of their own growing outpouring of nationalism, to embrace the cause of Algerian nationalism.40 Canadian officials also knew that Canadian public opinion could easily turn against the government if Canadians ever learned of the extent to which it had contributed to France’s military activities in North Africa. From 1950 to March 1960, the Canadian government sent France $127,679,000 in military equipment under the Mutual Aid program. The passage of Order-In-Council P.C. 1956–507 allowed France to use this equipment in its rebellious colonies without notifying the Canadian government.41 Because of this, neither the Department of External Affairs nor the Department of National Defence had any idea how much of Canada’s Mutual Aid had been used in Algeria. When Carleton University Professor Douglas Anglin asked the Department of External Affairs whether Canadian equipment had been used against Algerian nationalist forces, the department’s embarrassed officials could not answer him. On the one hand, nothing prevented the French from using Canada’s Mutual Aid in the Algerian coastal departments that had been included in the territory covered by nato. On the other hand, they acknowledged that as long as the majority of the French military was stationed in Algeria to fight its nationalist uprising, the government could not convincingly claim that none of Canada’s military equipment was being used there.42 This situation made Canadian officials worry that both international and domestic opinion could accuse Canada of complicity in France’s war against nationalist forces in Algeria. Despite its concerns, the Diefenbaker government continued to balance its need to support France politically and even militarily with regard to Algeria against the desire not to antagonize either the Canadian public or other countries such as Tunisia or Morocco in the process. Worried that they might be inclining towards the Communist Bloc, the Diefenbaker government was anxious to make friendly gestures towards the North African countries; in late 1960 it transferred its commercial agent for Tunisia to Bern from Paris and waived visa requirements for Tunisian and Moroccan travellers to Canada.43 Howard Green even considered having Canada abstain during December’s upcoming un debate on Algeria to appease Tunisia, Morocco, and the other states of the Afro-Asian Bloc. He was only persuaded against this course of action when Ross Campbell and G.S. Murray, two of his officials, reminded him of the importance that France attached to its allies’ support in the un.44 In the end, Canada voted in

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favour of an innocuous un resolution that endorsed the principle of self-determination for the Algerian people but only after the AfroAsian Bloc had dropped a provision calling upon the un to supervise a referendum in the territory.45 In this way, Green and the Diefenbaker government demonstrated their willingness to work with African and Asian states without adversely affecting the French government’s interests as it began to negotiate an end to the war in Algeria. The first of the negotiations between French and Algerian representatives took place in mid-1960 at Melun in France, but little progress was made regarding the timing of a referendum in Algeria and the situation remained so delicate that Canadian officials worried that any interference in this process, even by the United Nations, risked doing more harm than good. They also worried that the French military in Algeria would turn against de Gaulle and the government of France, which it did in April 1961 after a referendum in January demonstrated that 75 percent of French voters endorsed the granting of self-determination to the Algerian people. De Gaulle and the government held firm, however, and the military revolt in Algeria collapsed within days.46 The oas continued its campaign of terror against the prospect of Algeria’s independence, but in March 1962 the French government and the gpra announced the cessation of hostilities. This ceasefire was quickly followed in June by a referendum in which the Algerian people overwhelmingly voted for complete secession from France. At last the Algerian and the French people had tired of one the bloodiest anti-colonial wars, and Algeria achieved its independence on 3 July. Throughout this period, Canada’s policy was motivated by the desire to prevent anything from undermining the peace process in Algeria. The growing likelihood of Algeria’s independence did not solve all of France’s problems in North Africa, however. France’s relations with Tunisia in particular continued to deteriorate, exacerbated by France’s ongoing occupation of military bases in Tunisia, including the important naval base at Bizerte. Tunisian nationalists considered these bases an affront to their country’s sovereignty and a reminder of French colonialism; they pressured President Habib Bourguiba to eject the remaining French forces from the country. In July 1961, Bourguiba organized a public march on Bizerte during the course of which a shot was fired. French paratroopers rushed from the base and a four-day battle ensued that resulted in 1,300 Tunisian casualties.47 With the support of other African and Asian states, the Tunisian government demanded an immediate session of the United Nations to address France’s violence against

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the Tunisian people, and once again the Canadian government was faced with the prospect that its alliance with France would undermine its interests in establishing friendly relations with Tunisia and other Third World countries. When he visited Ottawa on 8 August 1961, Habib Bourguiba Jr, Tunisia’s ambassador to the United States and Canada and the son of Tunisia’s president, warned Canadian officials that, because of the Bizerte crisis, Tunisia was losing its faith in the West. He also felt that, despite clear French wrongdoing in Bizerte, “because [France] was a member of the Atlantic club all the other members sided with her and feared taking a firm stand in public in favour of Tunisia.”48 Under the circumstances, Bourguiba Jr felt that Tunisia might be forced to reappraise its Western orientation. Canadian support for France during the crisis, therefore, risked alienating the Tunisian government and its African and Asian supporters. It also risked angering important constituencies within Canada itself. Organizations as diverse as the Canadian Labour Congress and the Globe and Mail, for example, criticized the United States, Britain, and other Western countries for failing to condemn France’s attacks upon Bizerte, which only proved, according to the Globe and Mail, that Western support for France transcended even the basic principles of national sovereignty.49 Canadian officials themselves were divided over Canada’s response to the crisis. Those stationed at the embassy in Paris wanted to punish President Bourguiba and Tunisia for provoking the crisis, mainly by withdrawing Canada’s support for the candidacy of Mongo Slim, the Tunisian Foreign Minister, for the presidency of the un General Assembly at its upcoming session. Officials in Ottawa, however, believed that criticizing Bourguiba would forfeit any influence Canada had on Tunisian policy.50 Having concluded that nothing useful would come from a bitter debate in the United Nations, especially since Canada and the other nato powers would be compelled to defend France despite the political risks to themselves, the Diefenbaker government opposed the convening of a special session to discuss the crisis in Bizerte. Instead, Canada’s un delegation urged France and Tunisia to resolve their dispute through bilateral negotiations, a proposal that fell on deaf ears in both countries.51 Ultimately, the crisis occasioned by the attempt to expel French forces from the naval base at Bizerte passed, though not before sixtysix countries voted to condemn the French attacks on Bizerte at a special session of the un in August, with Canada and most of the other

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nato states abstaining.52 Canada’s abstention had been motivated by the desire to limit the damage to France while preserving as far as possible its friendly relations with Tunisia and the other African and Asian states, and in this it was reasonably successful. The French government indicated that it appreciated Canada’s position, realizing that, under the circumstances, an abstention was all that it could expect from its allies.53 Similarly, Canada’s relations with Tunisia did not suffer unduly as a result of the crisis since the Tunisian government increasingly looked to Canada as a source of aid after late 1961. France still continued to supply the largest amounts of technical, economic, and military assistance to Tunisia, but, because of the Bizerte crisis, Tunisia began actively seeking other donors. In addition to general economic assistance, the Tunisian government turned to Canada to supply specific types of aid that had previously been provided by the French. On the eve of the discussion of Bizerte in the un, for example, Tunisian officials asked for Canada’s help to fill 1,481 teaching positions in Tunisian schools while in February 1962 they sought Canada’s help in training officer cadets for the Tunisian Army. As an economically developed, French-speaking state, Canada seemed to be in an advantageous position to gain influence in Tunisia by providing it with technical assistance once the Bizerte crisis had rendered aid from France politically undesirable. Two factors prevented Canada from meeting these two requests, the first of which was a lack of suitable resources. Canada’s ambassador to Tunisia, H. Feaver, doubted that Canada, Switzerland, and Belgium combined could find enough French-speaking teachers for the vacancies in Tunisia. Nor could Canada train Tunisia’s officer cadets since the only suitable institution for this type of training in Canada was Collège militaire St Jean, a bilingual institution that would require the Tunisian students to speak English as a condition of enrollment. More importantly, the Canadian response to these requests reflected the belief that Canada “should [not] contribute to the severance of links between France and Tunisia.”54 French influence in North Africa continued to serve Canada’s interests, and the Canadian government was reluctant to undermine it by replacing France as a source of aid to Tunisia even in a limited fashion. On 1 July 1962 the people of Algeria voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence from France. Two days later Charles de Gaulle proclaimed the independence of the Republic of Algeria and that same day Prime Minister John Diefenbaker officially recognized the new country, welcoming it to the community of nations.55 This brought to a close a

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problem that had plagued the international community, devastated Algeria, exhausted France, rallied the Afro-Asian Bloc, exacerbated the growing rift within nato, and conditioned Canada’s relations with France and French Africa from 1954 to 1962. In 1961, a Radio Tunis reporter asked Howard Green if Canada had a double standard on anticolonialism because it had opposed the repression of the Hungarian people by the Soviet Union but it had consistently refused to support the Algerian people in their struggle for independence. Green denied that Canada had such a double standard.56 He did not explain, however, that Canadian policy had been determined more by Cold War concerns than by adherence to the principle of self-determination for all dependent peoples. The Soviet use of force to suppress Hungarian nationalism had helped rally international opinion against the Soviet Union in 1956. In Algeria, however, the anti-colonial conflict threatened nato unity, a consideration that had compelled Canada to support France’s efforts to preserve its influence throughout all of French North Africa.

4 Holding the Line: Canada and French Africa to 1963

While events in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia dominated the Canadian government’s attention throughout the 1950s, France’s colonies and dependencies elsewhere in Africa were going about their political, economic, and social development more quietly. There had been a violent uprising against French rule in Madagascar from 1947 to 1948, but the colonies of Dahomey, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Upper Volta in West Africa, the colonies of Chad, Gabon, Middle Congo, and Oubangui-Chari in Equatorial Africa, the Malagasy colonies, and the mandated territories of Cameroon and Togo were generally not as politically advanced as French North Africa, and French authorities retained control of their political development.1 Because of their more gradual and peaceful political evolution, the international community paid little attention to the French territories in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar throughout the 1950s. The Canadian government itself had limited interests in most of France’s African colonies after 1945. Trade with them was negligible and offered few prospects for growth. The one bright spot after the Second World War was Madagascar, to which Canada exported $263,430 in wheat, gin, footwear, automobile parts, and batteries in 1946, a substantial increase from the $9,099 in goods that Canada had exported to the island in 1938. Yet officials in the Department of Trade and Commerce recognized that this increase was not as hopeful as it appeared since Canada’s own postwar credits to France had financed

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these purchases. By themselves France’s colonies could not pay for Canadian goods, and as soon as Canada’s credits ran out so too would Madagascar’s Canadian purchases. When France exhausted these credits in 1947, limited reserves of foreign currency forced the French government to restrict its colonies’ purchases from dollar countries like Canada and the United States. Already by 1946 Madagascar’s purchases of Canadian wheat and rolled oats had fallen to a value of 189,000 francs from a high of 4,159,000 francs in 1945.2 The spike in Canada’s postwar trade with French colonies in Africa, therefore, did not accurately reflect the long-term potential for trade with Canada. Given France’s desire to restrict its colonies’ trade, even international agreements like Bretton Woods and the Marshall Plan had little effect upon France’s colonial purchases; Canadian officials worried that Canada’s already small market share in French Africa would be eliminated entirely.3 The Canadian government did establish a trade office in Leopoldville in the resource-rich Belgian Congo in 1946, but here too Canadian exports faced import restrictions and strict competition from other countries. In 1947, Canada exported $920,791 in canned fish, automobile parts, and other goods to the Belgian Congo but lagged a distant eighteenth among the colony’s suppliers.4 Several of the Frenchspeaking colonies of Africa offered potential for future trade with Canada, but their overall importance to the Canadian economy barely registered in the 1940s and 1950s. Canadian mining companies did find a niche helping French and Belgian concerns exploit the colonies’ mineral resources after 1945, but even here obstacles limited the potential for Canadian businesses. The French and Belgian people criticized the participation of foreign companies in colonial developmental projects, and their governments wanted their own companies and nationals to retain control of economic activities in their colonies. Consequently, even those Canadian companies eager to work in the colonies had to be content with minority stakes in projects.5 Moreover, because the Canadian government restricted the export of capital from Canada, itself a voracious importer of capital through foreign investments, Canadian companies had to overcome another barrier to invest abroad. Companies like Frobisher Limited, which had discovered a large deposit of iron ore near Fort Gouraud in the colony of Mauritania in West Africa, needed the Canadian government’s approval to invest in its development in the early 1950s. Frobisher owned 40 percent of the mine but had to petition Canada’s Foreign Exchange Control Board for permission to pay its

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40 percent share of the costs to develop the mine and begin its operations.6 Combined, therefore, the colonial authorities and the Canadian government restricted the degree to which Canadian companies were able to invest in the French colonies in Africa. If Canada had few economic interests in the colonies of French West and French Equatorial Africa during the late 1940s and 1950s, it had even fewer immigration or consular interests. The Canadian government had not yet eliminated the colour bar from its immigration policies, and non-Caucasian people from Africa were not considered desirable immigrants in Canada.7 There were thus few potential immigrants for Canada in French West and Equatorial Africa since these colonies were home to few settlers of European descent, and French authorities were just as reluctant to encourage their emigration as they had been to accept large scale emigration from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. At the same time, there were very few Canadians, mostly missionaries, in the French colonies in Africa with the result that British offices and officers were easily able to handle Canada’s few consular requirements in the colonies. In his 1962 book Le Canada français missionnaire, Lionel Groulx revealed that between 1953 and 1959 the number of French Canadian missionaries in Africa increased from 925 to 1,500. Since Groulx examined only French Canadian missionaries, his work understates the total number of Canadian missionaries serving in Africa in the 1950s. Nonetheless, it does reveal an interesting trend. Groulx found that French Canadian missionaries represented forty-eight religious societies and pursued their spiritual work in twenty-two different parts of Africa, while many also worked as teachers, nurses, and administrators. Nine French Canadians even occupied African dioceses.8 Yet according to Groulx the vast majority of French Canadian missionaries in Africa served in British and ex-British territories, protectorates, and colonies. Only a small minority of these French-speaking Canadians pursued their vocations in French-speaking parts of Africa. The largest community of French Canadian missionaries in Africa belonged to the Pères Blancs. Of the 330 French Canadian Pères Blancs in Africa in 1959, only 109 served in French colonies, including ninetyfour in French Equatorial Africa, six in French West Africa, and nine in French North Africa. Two-thirds of the Pères Blancs lived and worked in English-speaking Africa. Their experience was repeated elsewhere. The Oblats de Marie-Immaculée, for example, had 151 missionaries in English-speaking Basutoland in 1959 but only six in French Cameroon.

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Overall, of the forty-eight missionary orders that sent French Canadians to Africa in the 1950s, only two directed their efforts primarily towards French Africa. The Frères des écoles chrétiennes worked mostly in the French territories of Cameroon, Togo, and Dahomey while the Frères du Sacré-Coeur were active in Cameroon, Guinea, Senegal, the Ivory Coast, and Madagascar.9 Even these orders, however, had missions in English-speaking Africa as well. While French Canadian missionaries served in virtually all the French and Belgian colonies in Africa during the 1950s, most of them lived, worked, and proselytized in British Africa. Groulx himself pointed to the facility of French Canadian missionaries with the English language and to their one-time status as British subjects to explain this interesting phenomenon.10 Apparently, even those missionary orders based in France believed that their French Canadian members would be most useful in the British territories. It is also possible, however, that national jealousies in France and Belgium limited the extent to which French Canadians engaged in missionary work in the French-speaking colonies in Africa. In 1946, for example, the newspaper La Libre Belgique criticized the Belgian government for allowing non-Belgian missionaries to teach children in the Belgian Congo because the foreigners would not instil the Congolese with Belgian nationalism.11 In any event, the small number of Canadians living in French-speaking parts of Africa also limited the Canadian government’s interests in this part of the world. In the absence of other substantial factors, what interest the Canadian government took in the French African colonies during the 1950s was largely determined by two separate yet intertwined political trends: looming decolonization and the growing competition between East and West for the allegiance of the new countries. With colonies such as Ghana and Nigeria having won promises of independence from Britain – achieved by Ghana in 1956 and by Nigeria in 1958 – the Department of External Affairs was induced to consider more closely Canada’s policy towards “Black Africa” in 1955. Diplomats like Jules Léger and Robert Ford generally acknowledged the desirability of African independence, or at least accepted its inevitability, but worried nonetheless that decolonization offered the Soviet Union an opportunity to exploit the withdrawal of the European powers and to meddle in African affairs. With the Soviet Union posing as the champion of African emancipation, these officials doubted that the West could easily maintain its influence in Africa in the face of an expected post-independence reaction against the colonial powers and their close political and military

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allies like Canada and the United States. To prevent this loss of Western influence from occurring, Léger argued that Canada and other Western countries needed to demonstrate, aggressively and proactively, that they valued the friendship of the people and governments of Africa. Accordingly, Léger advised Lester Pearson that Canada needed to open a diplomatic mission in Ghana as quickly as possible following its independence even though other global trouble spots such as South East Asia faced more imminent communist threats and thus might seem to be in more need of Canadian representation. A mission in Ghana, he felt, would demonstrate Canada’s full acceptance of African countries as members of the Commonwealth and the international community; it could be used to counter the propaganda of the Soviet Union and the anti-colonial powers. Even more than diplomatic recognition, however, Léger argued that the West needed to devote substantial economic aid to all of the African countries as a way of “holding the line against Communism in Africa and removing from the West the taint of colonialism.”12 Canada could channel this aid through the United Nations and its agencies, thus insulating itself from accusations of harbouring neocolonialist ambitions, but it would allow the Canadian government to expand its aid programs beyond the Commonwealth.13 The fear of communist gains in Africa conditioned the Canadian government’s perception of events throughout Africa in the mid-1950s. It also led its officials to recognize that the West could ill afford complacency if it hoped to preserve its influence in the continent, for “to do too little is to ensure that the Russians will have the last word.”14 Some officials did worry that the pace of events in Africa was developing too quickly, beyond the control of Western countries. Robert Ford, the head of the European Division in the Department of External Affairs, was particularly vocal in criticizing Britain for “rushing ahead too fast in the plans to give independence to a number of colonies which have very little in the way of either civilization or training at self-government behind them.”15 According to Ford, such rashness merely invited largescale intervention in the new countries by the Soviet Union or even by other countries like India at the expense of Western interests. Still, it was obvious in the mid-1950s that independence for the African colonies was coming. Yet despite the perception of Africa’s vulnerability to communist infiltration, the continent as a whole remained a very low priority for the Canadian government at this time. One of the factors that impeded the Canadian government’s ability to prepare for the eventuality of dealing with independent African

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countries was its woefully inadequate knowledge of African affairs. Worse, what information it did receive about Africa was largely provided by the colonial powers themselves, a situation that was particularly evident with regard to the French African colonies. To correct it, in early 1956 Jules Léger directed the embassy in Paris to start gathering information on French Africa as part of a broader effort to build up the Canadian government’s understanding of developments throughout the principal African territories. Léger wanted information on French Africa’s political parties, its leaders’ views about their future relationship with France, economic developments, and even such details as the extent of the colonies’ transportation networks.16 Still, Léger cautioned the embassy to take care when gathering this information to avoid provoking French concerns about interference in their affairs. He need not have worried so much. In contrast to their sensitivity over French North Africa, the French themselves seemed open to the idea of their friends and allies taking a greater interest in French West and Equatorial Africa. Early in 1956, Gaston Defferre, the French Minister of the Overseas Territories invited Canada’s ambassador to France to visit French West Africa, an invitation that was eagerly accepted in light of the instructions that the embassy had recently received from Ottawa. At the end of March, Jean Désy, accompanied by his wife, embarked on a ten-day tour of Senegal, Mali, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Upper Volta, and Mauritania. Throughout their trip, the Désys were impressively entertained and met many deputies, functionaries, elected officials, magistrates, and administrators, both French and African. The ambassador even took the time while in Guinea to inspect the construction and operation of an aluminium smelter in the Boké region in which the Aluminium Company of Canada (Alcan) had an interest. In keeping with his stated goal of gathering information on the situation in French West Africa, however, Désy also visited small straw hut villages and ultra-modern cities; humid and arid areas; barren and fertile lands; high mountains and river valleys. He noted the contrast between, on the one hand, African artisans and farmers and, on the other, the European-dominated industrial concerns and large agricultural producers, as well as between the nomads of the Sahel in Mauritania and Mali, the agriculturists of the savannah, and the collectors of cocoa and bananas in the forests of the coasts. The trip did not lead to any substantive changes in Canadian policy towards French West Africa, but Désy did return to Paris greatly impressed with its ethnic, linguistic, religious, and economic diversity.17

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Désy had not been invited to West Africa on a whim. Prompted by their difficulties in North Africa, Defferre and the French government had recently begun considering reforms to their colonial administration elsewhere in Africa. The invitation to Désy was part of a campaign by the French government to gain the goodwill of their friends and allies by demonstrating the progress that the French African colonies were making while the National Assembly considered Defferre’s proposed reforms. Ultimately, the government’s loi-cadre was passed in June 1956, establishing universal suffrage for all French citizens in the colonies while abolishing the system of double electoral colleges through which the settler minorities had maintained their dominance in the colonies. The law also increased the powers of local elected assemblies and the powers of government councils elected by the territorial assemblies. Electoral equality between European and native peoples, along with responsible government, gave France’s colonies more autonomy than any other African colonies at this time.18 To Désy and other Canadian observers, these reforms signalled the end of centralized rule from Paris, meaning that the French government had abandoned the idea of Greater France in favour of a type of federal structure for the empire.19 They also mollified Canadian concerns that France would suppress nationalism in French Africa as it was trying to do in Algeria. In February 1957, Gaston Defferre invited Jean Désy to see the effects of the reforms on a three-week tour of French Equatorial Africa. Thereafter, the embassy in Paris began reporting more frequently on political, economic, and social conditions and developments in France’s subSaharan African colonies. Embassy officials paid particular attention to the territorial elections held at the end of March 1957 which had seen the Rassemblement Démocratique Africaine (rda), a moderate nationalist party, form the government in many of the colonies.20 Given the success of the rda, which sought autonomy but not independence for the French African colonies, Canadian observers concluded that the reforms France had undertaken since 1956 had decreased the likelihood that its African colonies would seek to cut all of their ties with France.21 This conclusion and the French approach to devolution of power comforted some Canadian officials who doubted that France’s African colonies were ready for complete independence. According to G.G. Crean in Paris, because of the colonies’ limited political, administrative, and economic development, “most objective observers would agree that a further period of tutelage and of large-scale economic assistance is desirable if chaos is to be avoided in the area.”22 Nonetheless, it

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remained to be seen whether French Africa’s moderate political leaders would remain content with internal autonomy, particularly since the independence of Ghana in 1957 provided an inspiration and a catalyst for Africa’s more extreme nationalist elements. For several years, under the impetus of the loi-cadre, France’s colonies in Africa gradually gained increasing amounts of autonomy until the political crisis caused by Algeria in mid-1958 brought about the return of Charles de Gaulle to power and the collapse of France’s Fourth Republic. When de Gaulle devised a new constitution for France that summer, he also reorganized France’s empire in Africa. His new constitution called for the creation of a Community of associated states to replace the French Union, though France would retain control of the Community’s foreign affairs, defence, economic and financial policy, and other matters. It seemed to offer the colonies a more prominent role in France’s more federated empire, but, in fact, it took away much of the substance of the Defferre reforms by greatly reducing the powers of the regional assemblies and government councils in West and Equatorial Africa. Moreover, the Community’s institutions, such as its Senate and its high court, were ill-defined and given only vague powers. De Gaulle did allow the inhabitants of the colonies to vote on accepting or rejecting membership in the Community, but he also made it clear that any colony that voted against the constitution opted for immediate independence and the complete cessation of all financial and technical assistance from France.23 This threat proved to be such a powerful argument in favour of continued association with France, that on 28 September 1958 only Guinea, under the leadership of Ahmed Sékou Touré, rejected the constitution and became independent. As promised, de Gaulle immediately withdrew French aid from Guinea, a lesson not only for Guinea but also for the rest of the colonies that had voted to join the French Community about the realities of French interests in Africa. The results of the referendum in the colonies largely vindicated de Gaulle’s vision of the French Community in Africa, yet many thoughtful observers believed that France’s victory could only be temporary. Pierre Dupuy, Canada’s new ambassador to France, observed that France could not hold nationalism in its colonies in check for long and that, with the creation of the Community, “the day of eventual independence for the African territories is no more than postponed.” He only hoped that the colonies would take advantage of French assistance in the interim to improve their political and economic prospects

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or they risked “economic chaos and political instability which would make them an easy prey for Communist penetration.”24 Dupuy’s fears about communist gains in French Africa were echoed more generally within the North Atlantic Council, which, in late 1958, created a committee to study the problem of communist penetration in the continent as a whole. The committee’s first report found that the Communist Bloc was actively building diplomatic missions in Africa and providing the continent’s newly independent countries with extensive amounts of economic, technical, and military assistance. Despite the establishment of the French Community, therefore, it was quickly becoming apparent to many in the West that “the Soviet attempt to penetrate Africa south of the Sahara constituted a real and imminent threat to Western strategic, political and economic positions on the African continent.”25 Just how the West would respond to this threat was not yet clear, but the independence of Guinea presented the West with an early test of its commitment to Africa. France’s withdrawal from the country after 1958 gave the Communist Bloc an opening to exploit Sékou Touré’s predilection for Marxism and gain a foothold in French Africa.26 It responded by sending technical advisors and Czechoslovakian weapons to the new country. Anxious to force Guinea to return to its fold, the French government initially discouraged its allies from making any attempt to match communist efforts by accepting Guinea’s membership in the United Nations in late 1958 or providing it with aid to replace what it had lost from France. Faced with the prospect of losing Guinea to communism, however, the French ultimately relented. Acknowledging the necessity of an us gift of rice and wheat in May 1959, a French delegate to nato explained that while her government “still hoped to maintain what they could of a special position in Guinea, [it] now realized that only by some degree of collective Western effort could the Western orientation of Guinea be preserved.”27 The French even began encouraging Canada and other Western countries to establish diplomatic relations with Guinea. At the same time, pressure had been mounting from another direction for the Canadian government to open diplomatic relations with Sékou Touré’s government. Through its French subsidiary Les Bauxites du Midi, the Aluminium Company of Canada (Alcan) possessed extensive bauxite interests on the Îles de Los and in Boké in Guinea, and it was worried about the security of its investment, which could total hundreds of millions of dollars, following the country’s independence. In particular, the company worried that its interests would be held

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hostage to political considerations, a fear that was not assuaged by Sékou Touré’s awkward mid-October message to John Diefenbaker, in which he threatened reprisals against Alcan if Canada withheld its diplomatic recognition of Guinea.28 The Diefenbaker government officially recognized the independence of the Republic of Guinea on 1 November, but even this gesture did not improve Alcan’s delicate position in the West African country. The company’s officials continued to track developments in Guinea nervously. At a meeting with embassy officials in Paris in early 1959, Alcan’s President Nathaniel Davis observed that Sékou Touré’s only interest in economic matters was their bearing on his political success and that the unpredictability of his decrees made it impossible for foreign companies to make long-term plans in Guinea. Davis complained about Sékou Touré’s unreasonable demands, including that companies relocate their head offices to Guinea, and he worried that Marxist controls, already applied to the production of bananas, coffee, palm products, and groundnuts for the Eastern Bloc, would shortly be extended to other sectors of the economy.29 According to Davis, because of its political instability, the business climate in Guinea was becoming increasingly unfriendly. Consequently, Alcan decided to delay its investments in Boké though for Sékou Touré’s benefit, Davis blamed the decision on falling demand for aluminium, which reduced Alcan’s need for bauxite.30 Instead, Alcan turned its attention to a project in Ghana, which it considered a more politically stable country. Despite the uncertainty in Guinea, Alcan did not abandon its interests in the country and retained plans to invest up to $112 million over three or four years to turn the deposits in Boké into the company’s major source of bauxite. To ensure that it would still have the opportunity to do so in several years time, Alcan wanted the Canadian government to establish a diplomatic mission in Conakry. This measure would increase Canada’s influence in Guinea while also helping to prevent the Soviet Union or another Eastern Bloc country from gaining access to the strategic resource contained in Boké’s bauxite’s deposits.31 The company also sought to curry favour with Sékou Touré and, on one occasion in autumn 1959, invited him to visit its facilities in Arvida, Quebec. Given the difficult relations between France and Guinea and the latter’s Marxist tendencies and friendly relations with communist countries, this invitation placed the Canadian government in an awkward position. Yet it ultimately acquiesced and issued a formal invitation for Sékou Touré to visit Canada during the course of his visit to

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the un and the United States, something the government would not have done, according to Howard Green, if it had not been for the pressure from Alcan. In the end, however, Sékou Touré relieved Green and his government of the necessity to welcome a guest they obviously considered dubious when, citing security problems at home, the Guinean president cancelled his proposed trip to Canada.32 Despite the pressure from Alcan, the Diefenbaker government had been reluctant to invite Sékou Touré for fear of the reaction from France. It had only proceeded with the invitation after ascertaining that the French looked favourably upon it. This attitude corresponded with its overall approach towards French Africa as a whole in this period.33 While Diefenbaker and Green acknowledged French Africa’s importance as a potential field of Cold War competition, Canada had very little interest itself in engaging directly in the struggle by opening an embassy in Guinea or pursuing extensive relations with the emerging French African states. Rather, the Diefenbaker government believed that the former colonial powers remained better positioned to preserve Western interests throughout Africa and that Canada’s best policy was to avoid coming between them and their former colonies. As a result, Guinea, and French Africa as a whole, remained a very low priority for Canada. This position affected the Canadian government’s attitude towards the evolution of the French Community in Africa from 1959 to 1960. In September 1959, not content with the limited autonomy they enjoyed under the Community, the French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa asked Charles de Gaulle to transfer all of France’s remaining powers to them. Thereafter, events moved quickly and by mid-1960 the first of the members of the Community had achieved their independence. By 1961 the rest of the French colonies in Africa followed suit, and the French Community ceased to exist. Canada’s embassy in Paris followed these developments closely. D.S. McPhail, the embassy’s second secretary, even visited most of the French African states in November and December 1959 while Ambassador Pierre Dupuy visited them himself a year later. The purpose of these trips was to evaluate Canada’s interests in the soon-to-be-independent countries. McPhail discovered that leaders such as Félix Houphouèt-Boigny of the Ivory Coast displayed a remarkable amount of goodwill towards Canada, seeing it as a former colony that had overcome severe developmental problems while preserving good relations with Britain and France. More importantly, he learned that Canada was considered the only developed Frenchspeaking country outside of Europe and that its offers of assistance

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would be free of the taint of neocolonialism. According to McPhail, all of this presaged well for Canada’s future relations with the French African states, but he still concluded that conditions in the territories did not yet warrant pursuing them industriously. With few trade or immigration interests, Canada was focused on the need to prevent the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc from gaining influence in French Africa. While Canada could help with this task by expanding diplomatic relations with the French African states and by providing them with some of the extensive assistance they needed, McPhail believed that only France could truly ensure the preservation of Western interests in its former colonies. Canada, therefore, needed to develop its relations with them cautiously to avoid disrupting their ties with France. As McPhail put it, “one Guinea [sic] at a time is enough.”34 Pierre Dupuy’s more extensive trip through Africa in late 1960 confirmed many of McPhail’s impressions. He visited all of the French African states in addition to Sudan, Kenya, Rhodesia, Nigeria, and Ghana, but because many of the French African states had obtained their independence earlier that year his conclusions also reflected their altered circumstances. In contrast to McPhail, Dupuy perceived an urgent need for expanded Canadian representation in Africa. His report dwelt at length on the large Soviet missions in the new countries, Eastern Bloc offers of economic and technical assistance, and other indications of communist interest in the continent. Dupuy even described Soviet activities throughout the continent as reminiscent of the way that the Soviet Union had established satellites in Eastern Europe after 1945. He left Africa with the decided impression that the situation was dire and urged the government, as quickly as possible, to open new diplomatic missions in Ethiopia, Cameroon, and Ivory Coast. To demonstrate Canada’s particular interest in French Africa, Dupuy also recommended that the government award scholarships for French-speaking African students to study at Canadian universities as the start of an economic and technical assistance program for the new countries.35 While Dupuy and McPhail differed about the urgency of Canadian diplomatic representation in French Africa, they agreed on the requirement for aid from Canada and other countries. Aid from Canada, they argued, was not only badly needed but would also help preserve the Western orientation of the newly independent French-speaking countries. Moreover, the absence of such aid was beginning to be noticed, not in French Africa but in Canada itself. The Canadian government had begun granting aid to the African members of the Commonwealth

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in 1959, and organizations like Montreal’s Junior Chamber of Commerce and Le Devoir noticed the discrepancy. Within a year, they were complaining that the Diefenbaker government was ignoring the French African states.36 At the time, the government’s only thought of aid for French Africa was of small, one-time gifts of scholarships to mark the independence of the French African countries. Yet pressure was already mounting for a more extensive development assistance program for these countries, to demonstrate Canada’s friendship for them and to prove that the government addressed the interests of French Canadians as well. Within the Department of External Affairs, senior officials like Marcel Cadieux and Norman Berlis were not convinced that one-time gifts would convince the French African countries of Canada’s friendship. Nor did they believe that the small number of scholarships would effectively raise educational standards in the new countries. Instead, they lobbied Howard Green for an annual $600,000 program focused on sending Canadian teachers to French Africa rather than on bringing African students to Canada.37 Their proposal won the support of UnderSecretary Norman Robertson and the department’s senior officers but encountered stiff opposition from others, including from their own minister. The Department of Finance, for example, wanted Canada to provide scholarships for French African students, but only if they were dispersed through un agencies rather than bilaterally to avoid tying the Canadian government into a permanent commitment of resources. For his part, Howard Green also wanted Canada’s aid for French Africa to take the form of scholarships. Moreover, he insisted that all nonCommonwealth countries in Africa have access to these funds, including $50,000 for the training of Foreign Service officers from the Sudan. Given that, for reasons of economy, Green had already decided to cut in half the amount of the proposed aid, Robertson and Cadieux were understandably alarmed at their minister’s insistence that even more African countries share an even smaller pool of Canadian aid. This would, they argued, reduce the impact of an already small aid program even further and, worse, defeat the purpose of its being specifically targeted to the French-speaking countries of Africa.38 Green was not convinced that Canada needed an ongoing bilateral aid program specifically with French Africa; he was only persuaded otherwise by the sustained efforts of his officials and, according to Marcel Cadieux, of Norman Robertson in particular.39 Robertson based his appeal on two separate points. Firstly, he argued that the

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French African states would naturally look for help to French-speaking Canada as they began to reduce their political, economic, and cultural dependence on France but that they would turn to the Communist Bloc instead if Canada failed to provide this assistance. He also contended, however, that the creation of an aid program specifically for French Africa was bound to be popular domestically with French Canadians.40 Finally convinced, Green took the proposal to Cabinet; in April 1961 the Canadian government duly announced the creation of its annual $300,000 educational assistance program for the French-speaking states of Africa. The domestic reaction to this announcement was everything that Green and the Diefenbaker government hoped it would be, at least within the press. Newspapers in English Canada generally approved of the plan to give aid to French Africa, focusing on its usefulness in helping to cement the West’s position in important parts of Africa. At a time when the first upheavals of the Quiet Revolution were also being felt, some editorials also mentioned the desirability for Canada’s domestic harmony of associating French Canadians with Canada’s external aid. For their part, as expected, newspapers and commentators in Quebec also applauded the government’s announcement, though many criticized the announcement’s lateness and the relatively paltry amount of aid involved, considering that Canada had been giving $3.5 million annually to the Commonwealth countries in Africa since 1959.41 Despite the generally favourable response the creation of the educational assistance program had generated in Canada, the program’s limitations as to both scale and scope quickly became apparent. In March 1961, even before it had been officially announced, the government of Mali alone submitted to the Department of Foreign Affairs a list of 107 teaching positions it hoped to have filled through Canadian aid for French Africa. Within three months, the governments of Senegal, Gabon, Cameroon, Madagascar, Niger, Togo, Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Tunisia, and the Belgian Congo had all similarly indicated that they hoped to receive educational assistance from Canada. Furthermore, in contrast to Howard Green’s expectation that the bulk of the aid would be in scholarships, these governments wanted Canadian teachers instead since, according to Tunisia’s ambassador to Canada Habib Bourguiba Jr, “[a] good teacher or professor can educate hundreds of students within a few years.” A scholarship, in contrast, only educated a single individual at a time.42 The $300,000 in aid allocated by the Diefenbaker government thus seemed inadequate to meet the needs of

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the new French African countries. Nor did the government have the human resources to meet the African countries’ stated preference for Canadian teachers. A six-week recruiting drive in Quebec yielded only seven suitable candidates for work in French Africa. No suitable teachers were found in either Ontario or New Brunswick. An eighth qualified candidate had been found, a woman, but the External Aid Office decided it would not be prudent to send a woman to Africa on her own in the first wave of Canadian teachers.43 Based on the results of this initial recruitment, Canada’s educational aid program for French Africa would have to be even more limited than its level of funding already seemed to indicate. In any event, it would have been difficult to do more because the Canadian government had enormous trouble finding appropriate placements for even seven teachers. Originally, the government had wanted to send teachers to Tunisia, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), and Mali but the Congolese government took too long to respond to the offer, Chad unexpectedly decided not to accept any teachers, and Canada had been unable to recruit any of the technical teachers that Tunisia wanted. As a result, the External Aid Office scrambled to place the few teachers it had recruited for the 1961–62 academic year and succeeded in sending six teachers to Cameroon and one to Mali.44 Problems continued to plague the program even after the arrival of the teachers in French Africa. Of the six teachers sent to Cameroon, five lived in hotels for extended periods because the Cameroonian government failed to deliver on its promise of acceptable accommodations, a situation that also led two of the next group of teachers to leave Congo (Brazzaville) shortly after their arrival there in 1962. The Canadian teachers also had trouble adapting to the French-style educational systems staffed by thousands of French teachers and administrators in the French African countries. Officially, the authorities in Paris welcomed Canadian aid to their former colonies, but French officials and teachers in Africa often resented the Canadian presence in what many of them still considered a French preserve. They also tended to minimize the qualifications of the Canadian teachers with the result that the Canadians often found themselves given the least desirable assignments at the lowest levels of the educational system, positions that were only open because no French teacher wanted them.45 These types of frustrations helped convince the External Aid Office that it had to screen its teachers carefully before sending them to live and work in French Africa.

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Over its first three years, Canada’s educational assistance program for French Africa experienced so many problems that only $539,000 of its funding of $900,000 was actually spent.46 Despite the early disappointments, some officials argued that the program’s biggest problem was its relative lack of funding, especially compared to the amounts of aid that Canada devoted to the Commonwealth states in Africa. Norman Robertson and Marcel Cadieux in particular lobbied to expand Canada’s aid for French Africa, highlighting its strategic and political importance to the West but also arguing that it could promote national unity by providing an outlet for French Canadian involvement in Canada’s foreign affairs.47 Their pleas, however, fell on deaf ears. According to Herbert Moran, the director general of the External Aid Office, other parts of Africa needed Canada’s assistance more urgently, a statement with which the secretary of state himself agreed wholeheartedly. Given Canada’s financial constraints in 1962, any additional money for French Africa would have had to have come from an existing program and Howard Green insisted that “there could be no question of an increase at the expense of external assistance to other areas, particularly to the Commonwealth.”48 Neither Green nor his government were convinced of French Africa’s importance to Canada and, consequently, could not be persuaded to devote more than the nominal amount of $300,000 to educational assistance for the French-speaking states of Africa. Though educational aid remained the principal expression of Canada’s interest in the French African states in the early-to-mid 1960s, when enough teachers could not be found the Diefenbaker government agreed to provide other forms of aid, including school supplies and help to create a bilingual police force in Cameroon.49 At the same time, other forms of contact between the governments began to expand. President Hamani Diori of Niger visited Canada in November 1961, followed by a goodwill mission led by Dahomey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Emile Derlin Zinsou, in October 1962. The purpose of these trips was generally to solicit increased amounts of Canadian aid, though Diefenbaker and Green remained leery of entering into formal commitments to the French African states. They declined Diori’s invitation to complete a Treaty of Friendship and Technical Co-operation with Niger, for example, on the grounds that it would raise Niger’s expectations of Canadian aid and encourage similar approaches from other countries.50 Still, they dispatched Paul Beaulieu, Canada’s ambassador to Lebanon, on a fact

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finding tour of French Africa in January 1962. The next month, they sent the hmcs New Waterford and hmcs Fort Erie on a goodwill visit to Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast. Slowly, the Canadian and French African governments were awakening to the potential that existed for their bilateral relations. There was no great rush on Canada’s part, however, to establish direct diplomatic relations with the French-speaking countries of Africa. In 1960, Canada possessed only four full diplomatic missions in all of Africa: high commissions in South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria, and an embassy in Egypt. A small office in the former Belgian Congo, promoted to a consulate general in August 1960, gave Canada a limited claim to representation in French-speaking Africa. By the end of 1961, however, there were twenty-nine sovereign states in Africa, leaving Canada greatly underrepresented in the continent as a whole. The government possessed limited diplomatic personnel and scarce financial resources to correct this situation, meaning that it could afford only one new mission in Africa in 1961. Norman Robertson wanted that one new mission to be located in one of the French African states to demonstrate Canada’s goodwill towards that increasingly important group of countries, active as they were in the un and in the Afro-Asian Bloc. He believed that it “would also be welcome to a large part of our domestic population.”51 Robertson suggested the Ivory Coast and its capital Abidjan as the site for Canada’s new embassy in Africa. Howard Green, in contrast, preferred Tanganyika, now Tanzania, a former British colony that had recently gained its independence. To Robertson, opening another mission in a Commonwealth country without doing the same in French Africa would have adverse effects both abroad and at home, creating the impression that Canada had no interest in cultivating the friendship of the French African countries while enflaming French-Canadian opinion as well.52 With arguments such as these, Robertson ultimately convinced Green to compromise. Canada would still open an embassy in Dar es Salaam in Tanganyika, but Green agreed to find the additional $72,000 in initial costs and the $100,000 in annual operating costs for another embassy to be located in one of the French-speaking African countries. Green himself, however, chose Cameroon and its capital Yaoundé for this mission despite the fact that his own officials as well as the us State Department and the British Foreign Office all considered Abidjan the more suitable site. He based this choice on the

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criteria that Cameroon had adopted both English and French as its official languages and because he enjoyed pleasant relations with Cameroon’s leaders, next to whom he sat at international meetings.53 The decision having been made to establish an embassy in Cameroon in November 1961, the Diefenbaker government thereafter proceeded to extend its diplomatic relations throughout the rest of French Africa as best it could. The French African states themselves were particularly anxious to formalize their relations with Canada and, though the Canadian government did its best to dampen their expectations, several of them had made overtures about exchanging ambassadors with Canada in 1961. Niger had even asked the Diefenbaker government to accept its representative to the un as non-resident ambassador to Canada.54 Having already committed to two new embassies in Africa, however, the Canadian government had little capacity to devote even more resources to the continent. Nonetheless, it did determine that it could establish diplomatic relations with the French African countries through a process of dual accreditation at minimal additional expense. Accordingly, Canada’s new ambassador to Cameroon was also accredited to Chad, the Central African Republic, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville); the high commissioner in Ghana became ambassador to Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Togo, and Guinea; and the high commissioner in Nigeria became ambassador to Senegal, Niger, and Dahomey. In this way, Canada established formal relations with all of France’s former colonies in Africa with the exceptions of Madagascar, Mali, and Mauritania at the estimated total cost of an extra $15,000.55 In 1962, the government found another cost-effective way to increase Canada’s representation in French-speaking Africa by promoting its consulate general in the former Belgian Congo to the status of an embassy, though it too remained under a non-resident ambassador. This expansion of Canada’s diplomatic relations with French Africa in late 1961 was favourably received throughout Canada, particularly by the French language press. The only significant criticism came from André Patry, a professor of international relations at Laval University, who welcomed the new embassy in Cameroon but denounced Canada’s overall relations with French Africa as woefully inadequate. Instead of dual accreditation, Patry felt that Canada needed resident missions to protect its political and economic interests in important countries like Morocco, Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Guinea. More urgently, he believed that opening missions in these countries would help

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preserve Western influence in Africa and help strengthen Canadian ties “with a continent rich with promise.”56 Patry’s interest in French Africa would evolve later in the decade, but in this period it was heavily conditioned by Cold War concerns. In this, Patry mirrored the Canadian government’s own attitude towards developments in French-speaking Africa in the early 1960s, as indicated by its approach to one of the most important issues in Africa during this period. In June 1960, Belgium granted independence to its colony in the Congo, but the new country was ill prepared for the independence which was thrust upon it so quickly and unexpectedly. To replace the thousands of Belgian administrators and technicians who left the Congo, for example, there were fewer than twenty Congolese university graduates and no trained professional or official cadres. The result was chaos. Within a week, Congo’s police force mutinied against its officers touching off a period of civil disorder, skyrocketing unemployment, and starvation that ultimately compelled Belgium to send soldiers back to the Congo to restore order. Further complicating the situation, the resource-rich province of Katanga, the source of much of the federal government’s revenue, announced its secession from the Republic of the Congo. Two broad considerations shaped the Diefenbaker government’s perception of these events. In the first place, it hoped to preserve the integrity of the Congolese federal government against separatist threats. Secondly, Canadian officials feared that the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc would profit from the civil war in the Congo to increase their influence in the country.57 With these considerations in mind, the Canadian government responded to appeals from the un secretary general by dispatching a signals unit to join the un’s peacekeeping force in the Congo. Several other Canadian officers also volunteered for the un commander’s staff, while the Canadian Red Cross sent two teams of medical personnel to the Congo.58 Overall, however, the Canadian government took little interest in the French-speaking countries of Africa from their independence in 1960 and 1961 to the defeat of the John Diefenbaker-led Conservative Party in the general election of April 1963. It had begun the slow process of expanding Canada’s diplomatic, political, aid, and economic relations with these countries, yet its attention was generally focused elsewhere, such as on the Commonwealth. It recognized the Cold War struggle for influence that was taking place between East and West in French Africa and also recognized that Canada had a role to play in preserving Western interests there, but believed that France was better able to defend

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those interests in its former colonies than Canada. Still, the belief that the French-speaking countries of Africa had a more particular importance for Canada, especially its French Canadian population, was growing on officials in the Department of External Affairs even though it had not had significant influence on the Diefenbaker government as a whole.

5 A Compelling Need: Canada and French Africa, 1963–66

After six years in opposition, newly elected Prime Minister Lester Pearson and Secretary of State for External Affairs Paul Martin faced a more challenging international environment in 1963 than they one they had known when the Liberal Party had last held power in 1957. The continued recovery of Europe and Japan and the independence of numerous colonies had eroded Canada’s relative international influence while its relations with the United States and within nato had become even more difficult. At home the provinces were beginning to challenge federal responsibility for foreign affairs, while the Canadian public itself was starting to question the country’s post-Second World War commitments to the United Nations, nato, the Commonwealth, and the United States.1 At the same time, the new government was especially concerned about the continuing deterioration of Canada’s relations with France, as the latter grew increasingly alienated from its Western allies in the early 1960s. The story of the troubled FrancoCanadian relationship is familiar, rooted in the problems within nato as well as strictly bilateral irritants such as Canada’s refusal to sell uranium to France or Trans-Canada Airline’s rejection of the French-built Caravelle plane.2 Improving Canada’s relations with France was one of the new Pearson government’s priorities upon taking office. As concerned as it was over France’s growing disenchantment with nato, domestic considerations also fuelled the government’s determination to improve relations with France. With Quebec in the midst of

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its Quiet Revolution, Pearson and Martin were concerned that the government of Quebec was beginning to pursue its own international relations and that it would turn to France as its natural partner in this endeavour. The Lesage government had already opened a délégation générale in Paris in 1961 and thereafter it enjoyed increasingly frequent exchanges and beneficial relations with the French government. Moreover, pressure was growing within Quebec for its government to become even more active in international affairs, as when Jean-Marc Léger wrote a series of articles in Le Devoir from 22 to 26 July entitled “Le Québec dans le monde francophone.”3 According to Léger, Quebec needed to establish its own contacts with foreign countries to continue the process of Quebec’s political, economic, and cultural modernization that the Canadian government could not, or would not, accomplish. Responding to the perception that the federal government ignored French Canadians’ interests, the Pearson government recruited more French Canadians for the civil service, bolstered the use of French within the government, created the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, and intensified political, technical, and cultural exchanges with France. This latter task was complicated, however, by the difficulties that plagued Franco-Canadian relations. Under the circumstances, more extensive relations with other French-speaking countries, especially those in Africa, offered the Pearson government another way to associate French Canadians with Canada’s foreign policy and deflect Quebec’s interest in pursuing its own foreign relations. The Diefenbaker government’s relations with these countries had been limited and grudging but Pearson and Martin decided that Canada needed to demonstrate its commitment to French Africa much more tangibly. With the change in political leadership in Canada, Norman Robertson and Marcel Cadieux finally found a receptive audience for their belief that Canada needed to expand its relations with French Africa, which previously had fallen on deaf ears. Robertson remained Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs following the Liberal electoral victory, but his illness left the running of the department to Cadieux before he himself became permanent Under-Secretary in May 1964. In this position, Cadieux became the most active advocate of reflecting Canada’s cultural duality in its foreign policy and the most passionate defender of the federal prerogative over all aspects of its foreign relations against the challenges emanating from Quebec. To advance both of these interests, it was Cadieux who, in late April 1963, wanted to build on Canada’s educational assistance program for French Africa to create a

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program for cultural exchanges within the French-speaking world of the type that already existed within the Commonwealth. To do this, however, would have required the collaboration of France, Belgium, and Switzerland; after consulting with his Cabinet colleagues Maurice Lamontagne and Lionel Chevrier, Paul Martin agreed to allow Cadieux to solicit the informal reaction of the governments in Paris, Brussels, and Bern to his idea.4 It quickly became apparent that none of these governments thought a multilateral educational and cultural relations program between French-speaking countries in Africa, the Americas, and Europe was either feasible or desirable. The biggest obstacle was France, which did not want its cultural relations, an important instrument of its national policy, subsumed within a broad multilateral program. It was not only the French who objected to Cadieux’s proposal, however; the Belgians had a different problem. With relations between the Flemish and the Walloons always a delicate subject, the Belgian government had no interest in a program that targeted only one of Belgium’s cultural communities and risked exacerbating the country’s internal divisions.5 In many respects, the failure to gain support from the other developed French-speaking countries for a multilateral cultural exchange program was a blessing for Canada. Given the scale and scope of France’s own cultural and technical relations programs, which enjoyed a budget of $74 million in 1962, France alone would have dominated the program, undermining the benefits for Canada of contributing to it. Having failed to build interest in a multilateral program, the Canadian government had few alternatives but to seek to strengthen its relations and exchanges with French-speaking countries bilaterally. Consequently, Cadieux and other officials returned to the idea of expanding Canada’s educational assistance program in French Africa despite its disappointments, including the fact that after two years it supported only eleven teachers in French Africa. In summer 1963, the Department of External Affairs, the External Aid Office, and the Department of Finance reviewed Canada’s aid programs to explore ways to increase the aid being given to French-speaking countries. This was a matter, Marcel Cadieux informed Director Herbert Moran of the eao, that Paul Martin considered especially important thanks to his belief that French Canadians were not participating fully in the provision of Canada’s aid. In May 1962, the eao had reported that Quebec received 28 percent of students brought to Canada by Canadian aid and provided 18 percent of teachers and advisers sent abroad, while

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companies in Quebec won 30.5 percent of the engineering contracts tendered by the eao. Furthermore, it was calculated that 31 percent of Canadian aid funds spent in Canada went towards purchases in Quebec.6 Seemingly in line with Quebec’s share of the national population, Martin and his officials nonetheless suspected that French Canada remained severely under-represented in Canada’s aid programs because the eao statistics did not differentiate between French and Englishspeaking people or institutions in Quebec. Despite acknowledging the need to improve Canadian aid for the French-speaking countries of Africa, the Pearson government remained unsure about how to accomplish this goal effectively and efficiently. During the final two years of the Diefenbaker government the eao had had trouble spending even a portion of the $300,000 in aid for French Africa, with its efforts to send teachers there in particular undermined by several factors. Few qualified teachers were willing to go to French Africa and of those who went many lived and worked in what they considered unacceptable conditions. These problems were compounded by Canada’s lack of diplomatic representation in Africa, making it difficult to administer the aid and for the African countries to communicate their needs in the first place. Moreover, vast numbers of French citizens and officials remained in the former colonies, and they often resented what they perceived as the encroachment of Canadian teachers and officials. These types of problems contributed to doubts about the viability of the educational assistance program. The Department of Finance, for one, revived its earlier position that Canada should concentrate on giving scholarships to French African students while Herbert Moran considered sending teachers to French Africa too difficult administratively to merit the attention of the eao.7 Misgivings were even expressed by Canadian diplomats in the field, with Ambassador Fulgence Charpentier in Cameroon arguing that Canada “really [has] a very small contribution to make in the field of secondary education.” According to Charpentier, France provided so many teachers in French Africa that Canada was left “to follow in [France’s] wake plugging up the holes they occasionally are unable to fill.”8 There remained passionate defenders of using Canadian aid to send teachers to French Africa, including the Department of External Affairs’ African and Middle Eastern Division, for example, but nongovernmental organizations soon added their voices to the growing pressure for change. During the review of its external aid, the government received a proposal from the Canadian Universities Foundation

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(cuf) for an exchange program within the French cultural community that included a commitment from Canada for two hundred scholarships to bring French African students to Canadian universities.9 At a cost of $800,000 the cuf’s plan was considered too expensive, but it bolstered the impetus for revising the focus of Canadian aid for French Africa emanating from various sources within the government. Responding to this pressure, Paul Martin agreed to an experiment that offered each of thirteen French African states one scholarship in 1963–64 as a way of gauging their interest in a more extensive scholarship and cultural exchange program worth up to $500,000. The response from French Africa was disappointing, however, with only one government taking advantage of the offer. To Canadian officials this response indicated one of two things, neither of which boded well for a more extensive aid program. Either the French African countries were indifferent to Canada’s offer or they were unable to field suitable candidates for the scholarships. Most qualified French African students already received scholarships to attend universities in France, but even so, as Fulgence Charpentier acknowledged, many French African leaders were leery of sending their brightest young citizens abroad to study for fear that few would return to an uncertain future in Africa.10 Undaunted by these difficulties, Pearson and Martin were determined to affect an ambitious expansion of Canadian aid as a tangible demonstration of Canada’s interest in the French-speaking countries of Africa. Instead of focusing on either teachers or scholarships, however, they authorized the provision of Canadian aid for a wider range of projects including technical assistance, food aid, and even capital assistance.11 They also vastly increased the available funding for these programs to $4 million in 1964, growing to $7.5 million in 1965, and even more thereafter. These dual measures expanded the scope of Canadian aid in French Africa, with one of the earliest beneficiaries being a new university run by a Canadian priest in Rwanda, the former Belgian protectorate in central Africa. In summer 1963, $50,000 in leftover funds from the educational assistance program had already been used to subsidize the salaries and expenses of eight Canadians recruited by Father Georges-Henri Lévesque, former dean of Social Sciences at Laval University, to work at the National University of Rwanda in Butare. With the university employing thirty-five Canadian professors and Canadians also occupying the positions of rector, assistant president, secretary general, treasurer, and director of personnel, it quickly attracted the attention of the Department of External Affairs. Marcel Cadieux himself

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went to speak at the university’s official opening in November 1963, and the next year the Canadian government provided it with close to $500,000 in assistance, the vast majority of all of the aid it gave to Rwanda that year.12 In the mid-1960s, with the new funding at its disposal, the eao had the means to support an array of developmental projects in French Africa. It funded agricultural and mining projects as well as a cadastral survey in Morocco and forestry, fishing, and sugar projects in Tunisia. Almost all of the French African states benefited from Canada’s increased assistance. The focus of Canadian aid, however, remained educational assistance and its signature feature, the provision of Canadian teachers. In 1965–66, the eao sent 165 teachers to French Africa, including twenty-seven to Morocco, where the year before there had only been five. Within three years, Canada was supporting forty-four teachers in Cameroon, fifty teachers in Tunisia, and fifty-one teachers in Senegal, while additional funds provided teaching supplies and built schools throughout French Africa.13 Though both the scale and the scope of Canadian aid for the French-speaking countries of Africa increased immensely after 1963, the programs continued to be plagued by problems and in 1964–65 the eao only spent $760,000 of the $4 million it had been allocated for them. At least part of the blame for the difficulties belonged to the eao itself, which under the leadership of Herbert Moran was clearly not enthusiastic about providing aid for French Africa, believing its priorities lay elsewhere, and lacked the bilingual personnel to administer it effectively in any event.14 This situation did not improve until Maurice Strong became director in late 1966 and appointed Henri Gaudefroy as director of the programs for francophone countries. Another obstacle that impeded the success of this aspect of Canadian aid was Canada’s relationship with France. In March 1963, Canadian officials had observed that, because of France’s influence in its former colonies “it is only with the full co-operation of the French government that our existing program for French-speaking African countries can be established on a satisfactory basis.”15 That cooperation, however, was noticeably lacking. Officially, the French welcomed Canadian aid as a way to ease their own burdens in Africa and to help foster the development of the French cultural community. Unofficially, given the still relatively small amount of Canadian aid, the French saw little benefit in facilitating Canada’s programs, and many French agencies and officials resented Canada’s intrusion into their spheres of influence. Lester

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Pearson and Paul Martin discussed these problems with Charles de Gaulle, Prime Minister Pompidou, and Foreign Minister Couvé de Murville during their trip to Paris in January 1964 and secured an agreement in principle to co-ordinate Canadian and French aid policies for French Africa.16 For the delighted Canadians this agreement raised the prospect that the delivery of Canada’s aid for French Africa would become more effective. It was also expected to contribute to a general improvement in Canada’s relations with France. Securing this agreement with the French was a significant political achievement for Pearson and Martin. Implementing it was another matter. Within only a few months, Canadian officials suspected that French obstruction of their aid efforts in French Africa continued unabated when, in March, the government of Madagascar informed Canada’s embassy in Paris that, because France already met all of its needs, it did not need any teachers from Canada. Herbert Moran doubted this claim, convinced that French officials had pressured Madagascar to reject Canada’s aid. The standard cooperation agreement between France and its ex-colonies stipulated that France had to consent before any recipient of its assistance could accept educational aid from another country, and it seemed to Moran that in this case that consent had been withheld. Even with de Gaulle’s endorsement of cooperation between Canada and France on matters of aid, Canada’s officials were concluding “it is possible that the co-operation of French officials will not be as full and forthcoming as we might wish.”17 The Department of External Affairs nonetheless hoped that the agreement in principle between Pearson and de Gaulle would lead to concrete forms of cooperation between Canadian and French aid programs and in April 1964 sent Nicholas Gwyn of the eao to Paris to begin discussions towards this end. Attending a French government conference on West Africa, Gwyn met with officials from France’s Ministry of Co-operation, the Secretariat for African and Malagache Affairs, and the Ministry of Education. Gwyn outlined Canada’s plans to expand its aid efforts in French Africa and was helpfully advised by French officials that Canada needed to send a team to study French Africa’s needs and to open diplomatic missions in countries where Canadian aid was to be concentrated. The officials also implied that there was room for France and Canada to co-ordinate their aid policies when they informed him that France alone could not meet all of the needs of the French-speaking countries in Africa, particularly in primary education and medical assistance. Still, Gwyn detected a certain degree of

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reserve from the French that he attributed to their concern for “la préservation de la culture française dans cette région” and for France’s ties with its former colonies.18 Despite these reservations, France’s Ministry of Education promised to distribute information about Canada’s educational assistance program and the teachers involved to the inspectors general of education in the French African states. Gwyn’s mission was thus moderately successful, and it inaugurated a period during which French and Canadian aid officials consulted each other with relative frequency about their programs in French Africa. When he arrived in Paris as Canada’s new ambassador to France the next month, Jules Léger had hoped to hold these consultations every six months. Though he failed to institutionalize the process, the two governments still made significant progress on an ad hoc basis between 1964 and 1966. In mid-1964, Canadian diplomats in Paris consulted French officials about the need for medical specialists in French Africa, while several months later, in autumn, the French ambassador in Ottawa contacted the eao about finding replacements for French specialists in Tunisia and Morocco. Jean Basdevant, director of Technical and Cultural Affairs in the French Foreign Ministry, visited Ottawa in May 1965, while Marcel Cadieux met with French aid officials in Paris in January 1966. Assistant Director P. Towe of the eao followed Cadieux to Paris later in the year to build on the results of a two-day meeting in March during which Canadian and French aid officials discussed specific proposals for coordinating their aid programs. Unfortunately, the increasingly frequent consultations did not have much of an effect on Canada’s aid for French Africa. They led to few instances of active co-operation and largely disappointing results when it did take place. After sending 20 teachers to Paris to be prepared for their postings in French Africa with French teachers in September 1966, for example, Canadian officials concluded that it would have been easier and just as effective to invite French officials to training sessions run by the eao in Canada.19 The overall failure to translate Franco-Canadian consultation into cooperation on aid in the mid-1960s stemmed from a variety of sources. For the French, the benefits of cooperation seemed weighted in favour of Canada since the relatively small scale of Canada’s aid for French Africa meant that France would not be able to reduce its own aid substantially. Additionally, while the French hoped that Canadian aid would strengthen the French-speaking cultural community in Africa, they feared that it might also have adverse effects on France’s

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influence in and traditional ties with its former colonies. Nevertheless, it appears that it was actually the Canadian government that was most leery about pursuing effective cooperation.20 Even though it genuinely wanted to facilitate the delivery of its aid in French Africa and to improve its overall relations with France, the Pearson government avoided joint development assistance projects with France. Part of the reason for this lay in the institutional bias against aid for French Africa within the eao,21 yet the government had other concerns as well. Lester Pearson and Paul Martin had decided that aid for French Africa was one of the principal means by which they hoped to demonstrate to French Canadians that their government reflected Canada’s bilingualism and biculturalism in its foreign policy. Consequently, they worried that close collaboration with France’s much larger aid efforts would obscure the visibility of Canadian aid, thereby diminishing the domestic political capital that the government expected to gain from it, particularly in Quebec. Pearson and Martin also worried that an increasingly aggressive Quebec might attempt to intrude into any foreign aid projects that Canada undertook with France. As demonstrated by the establishment of the Quebec delegation in Paris in 1961, the opening of a French cultural and technical exposition in Montreal by André Malraux in 1963, and the technical accord signed in 1965, relations between France and Quebec had been intensifying throughout the early 1960s. Ministers from Quebec were welcomed with particular ceremony in Paris, cultural exchanges between France and the province flourished, and the French seemed to care little for traditional diplomatic practices or for the Canadian government’s claim that it alone had the right to conduct all of Canada’s foreign relations. Additionally, while it treated Quebec with a status verging on that of a sovereign country, the French government deliberately slighted Canada, as in 1966 when de Gaulle’s refusal to receive him as a head of state compelled Governor General Georges Vanier to cancel his official visit to France. De Gaulle took an active interest in Quebec throughout this period and encouraged the development of France’s close and direct relations with the province. Motivated in part by the desire to reinforce France’s international influence, partly by the desire to reduce us influence by weakening one of its closest allies, and partly by the belief that Quebec would ultimately become independent, de Gaulle actively promoted Quebec’s aspirations towards international competence in the mid-1960s. He was hardly alone in his proQuebec sentiments, however. An entire network of prominent French

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politicians, intellectuals, and officials, such as Alain Peyrefitte, Philippe Rossillon, Jean-Daniel Jurgensen, and Pierre Louis Mallen, worked assiduously to promote Quebec’s interests. In contrast, Maurice Couvé de Murville and his officials at the Quai d’Orsay were deeply troubled by the activities of de Gaulle and the so-called “Quebec Mafia” and worked as assiduously to preserve France’s relations with Canada.22 As a result, when two French officials went to Canada to help train teachers being sent to French Africa barely a month after de Gaulle’s infamous “Vive le Québec libre” speech in Montreal, Jules Léger was able to proclaim that France and Canada still maintained a beneficial relationship. Nonetheless, given the support for Quebec and hostility towards Canada emanating from the Élysée Palace and elsewhere within the French government, the Canadian government remained leery about cooperating with France on aid for French Africa. The inability to forge a successful partnership with France on aid had a lasting effect on Canada’s relations with French Africa. Without access to the expertise and the administrative capacity that such a partnership would have provided, the Canadian government was left to its own devices and its expanding aid program for French Africa in 1964 and 1965 quickly revealed the inadequacy of its diplomatic relations in the region. With embassies only in Cameroon and Congo, the bulk of Canada’s aid in French Africa was administered through non-resident ambassadors and missions, and these were simply not up to the task. Benjamin Rogers, Canada’s non-resident ambassador to Morocco outlined the problem. Whereas the eao had only sent five teachers to Morocco in 1964–65, a year later there were twenty-seven Canadian teachers and eight health-care workers in the country. Without an official in Rabat to cope with the “multitudinous problems that are bound to arise,” Canadian officials were forced to rely on the goodwill of the British Embassy in Morocco for help. While the British had been generous with their time, their generosity had limits. Moreover, Rogers argued that relying on British assistance obscured Canada’s visibility in Morocco and undermined its sovereign dignity.23 British offices similarly handled Canadian consular affairs elsewhere in French Africa, but this was an ad hoc arrangement that could not be expected to last given the growing demands of Canadian aid for French Africa. To Ambassador Rogers and virtually everyone else in the Department of External Affairs, the solution to this problem was to expand Canada’s diplomatic representation in French Africa. Compared to resident embassies in four of the eleven former British territories in Africa

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and a resident trade commissioner in a fifth, in 1964 Canada had only two embassies in the twenty-one French-speaking countries of Africa. Furthermore, it did not have diplomatic relations of any kind with Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda, and Mauritania. Not only did this situation impede the effective administration of Canadian aid and the pursuit of other Canadian interests, it also continued to prompt accusations in Quebec that the federal government ignored the needs of French Canadians.24 These considerations, along with the growing importance of the African states in the United Nations and world affairs, reinforced the belief that Canada needed more diplomatic missions in French Africa. With embassies in Cameroon and Congo, however, Canada already had an adequate presence in the French-speaking countries of Equatorial Africa. When it contemplated opening new missions in 1966, therefore, the department’s attention turned to North and West Africa where, initially, it favoured Algeria and Senegal as the most desirable locations for Canada’s two new embassies. From the outset of the process, however, political considerations dominated the decision about where to situate new embassies. Indeed, for officials like Canada’s chargé d’affaires in Leopoldville, “[I]t is not necessary – and indeed might obscure the primacy of our political interest – to advance other interests such as trade, the prospects of which are likely to be very modest at best, as having a significant place at present in any proposal to increase our missions in Africa.”25 Since most of Canada’s aid would continue to be administered by nonresident officials regardless of where the two new embassies were located in French Africa, the need for a mission in a country that received a large amount of aid emerged as a compelling but not a determining factor. The eao would have been content with an embassy in Algeria, Morocco, or Tunisia in North Africa and in any of the larger Frenchspeaking states in West Africa. Similarly, Canada’s trade interests had little impact on the decision about where to open its new embassies in French Africa. In all, Canada’s trade with the French-speaking countries of Africa remained negligible, declining from a total of $15.3 million in 1963 to $12.5 million in 1966. The amount of trade between Canada and French Africa was so small and, without the awarding of significant Canadian credits, so unlikely to increase in the short term that the location of the new embassies made little difference to the Department of Trade and Commerce. M.T. Stewart, Canada’s commercial counsellor in Madrid, expressed a common view when he observed that “Our own trade with Morocco is so small … that it really does

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not matter which office has it.”26 The potential for significant trade with French Africa did exist, especially with countries like Morocco, from which Canada’s K.C. Irving Co. eventually expected to import up to $3 million per year in phosphates. Yet that potential had not yet been realized and Trade and Commerce did not even plan to open offices in the new embassies. Even if they had little ultimate effect on the decision about where to situate the embassies, trade was at least part of the decision-making process. The same was not true of the interests of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, which remained conspicuously absent from the discussions of Canadian interests in French Africa from 1964 to 1966. The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration did not join his colleagues Paul Martin and Mitchell Sharp, Minister of Trade and Commerce, in co-authoring the memo submitted to Cabinet in July 1965 to justify the need for new embassies in French Africa. Nor was increased immigration from the French-speaking countries of Africa identified as one of the anticipated benefits of the new embassies that Martin and Sharp proposed to open.27 The Canadian government did resettle thirty families from Algeria on farms in Canada in this period, but they were French citizens repatriated to France following Algeria’s independence and their files had been processed by the immigration office at the embassy in Paris. Other than in Morocco, where immigration officials identified the Jewish community as a source of potential immigrants, the Canadian government was simply not yet interested in attracting immigrants from French Africa.28 Since neither the Departments of Trade and Commerce and Immigration and Citizenship nor the eao had any specific interest in an embassy in any particular French African country, it was the political interests of the Department of External Affairs that ultimately determined the location of Canada’s new embassies. These political interests largely involved the familiar Cold War desire to secure, as far as possible, the Western orientation of the French-speaking countries of Africa. The Soviet Union and China had opened large embassies in most of these countries and provided them with generous amounts of technical, economic, and even military assistance, and the despatches from Canadian diplomats in Paris and Africa frequently commented on apparent communist gains throughout the region.29 Canada’s expanded diplomatic representation was thus considered important to “help these countries develop along lines friendly to the West” and counteract Chinese and Soviet efforts to influence or overthrow French Africa’s governments.30 The department’s

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officials recognized that Canada alone could hardly affect the outcome of the Cold War in French Africa, particularly since communist gains were greatest in countries like the Central African Republic or Chad where Canada could not afford a resident diplomatic mission. Nevertheless, they believed that French-speaking Canada had a useful, if secondary role to play in preserving Western interests throughout the region. In West Africa, the department’s attention focused on Senegal and Ivory Coast. Both were among the largest and most developed countries in the region and they both had stable, moderate, and pro-Western governments under the leadership of Léopold Senghor and Félix Houphouèt-Boigny, respectively. Some Canadian officials felt that Ivory Coast offered slightly better economic potential for Canada, but Senghor seemed the more likely of the two leaders to assert his country’s independence from France, making it more important for Canada to cultivate his friendship.31 Ultimately either country would have been suitable, but the greater opportunity for political influence with Léopold Senghor and the fact that Canada already had an embassy in Ghana, next door to Ivory Coast, swung the balance of opinion in favour of Senegal. While Canada’s needs in Ivory Coast would continue to be met by the high commission in Ghana, an embassy in Senegal would spread Canada’s representation and potential influence across a wider geographical area and improve the administration of Canadian aid in Senegal and its neighbours. Senegal was an easy choice for the Department of External Affairs, but it faced a much more difficult decision in North Africa. The department’s first choice had been to open an embassy in Algeria, the biggest, richest, and most powerful of the Maghreb states. France continued to dominate Algeria’s economy and provided it with large amounts of aid but exercised very little influence in the country, which had become one of the most radical and anti-Western states in Africa after its bloody struggle for independence. For Canadian officials, it was of paramount importance to broaden Algeria’s contacts with the West to try to limit its anti-Western drift. Simultaneously, they doubted that Canada could have much of an effect on Algeria’s political orientation. Moreover, they worried that its government was too unstable and conditions in the country too unsettled to warrant opening an embassy until the situation improved.32 As these concerns mounted the department concluded that, though Algeria remained key to its long-term plans in Africa, it needed to look elsewhere for a more suitable environment in which to open an embassy in North Africa.

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The elimination of Algeria as a viable option left the department with a choice between Morocco and Tunisia, the other two Frenchspeaking countries of North Africa. The difficulty in choosing between the two was apparent in August 1965, when the Cabinet approved a total of six new embassies for Africa within two years, including one in North Africa, but without specifying where that embassy would be.33 Both Morocco and Tunisia were stable and, though Morocco had flirted with more radical policies earlier in the decade, they both maintained generally friendly relations with the West based on the conservative nature of their governments, mistrust of communism, and large amounts of Western aid. Furthermore, they both received roughly equal amounts of Canadian aid. Yet a canvassing of officials throughout the Department of External Affairs, Trade and Commerce and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration revealed that Morocco was the preferred of the two countries. With a larger population of twelve million people compared to four million for Tunisia, abundant mineral resources, and greater economic prospects, it seemed to offer greater potential for close and beneficial relations with Canada. Additionally, since its capital of Rabat was home to fifty-one diplomatic missions compared to only thirty-nine in Tunisia’s capital of Tunis, Morocco offered Canada greater scope for political influence and for the gathering of information.34 Tunisia’s main attractions were the active role that its diplomats played at the United Nations and in the Arab League as well as its more active pursuit of relations with Canada, though Canadian officials suspected that this was largely motivated by the desire to attract more Canadian aid. The opinions of the Departments of Trade and Commerce and Citizenship and Immigration bolstered the initial conclusions of the Department of External Affairs. Thanks to its plentiful natural resources, more diversified economy, and the shipping ties that linked it to Canada, Morocco offered better trading prospects. The Deputy Minister of Trade and Commerce even predicted that Canada’s exports to Morocco could double within several years. In contrast, he anticipated little growth in Canada’s trade with Tunisia, a primarily agricultural country with few prospects for economic development or diversification. With its larger population, Morocco also offered greater potential for immigrants than Tunisia, and Assistant Deputy Minister of Immigration R.B. Curry anticipated that with an embassy in Rabat it would be possible for Canada to try to recruit immigrants from more than just the country’s Jewish community. It would also relieve the British Embassy of the

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responsibility for the early phases of the process for applicants seeking to immigrate to Canada.35 Yet neither of these departments planned to post officials to the new mission in North Africa immediately, no matter where it was located. While Morocco was thus the leading candidate for Canada’s mission in North Africa in autumn 1965, Tunisia had its own advocates within the Canadian government. The eao backed Tunisia, based largely on the argument that it could implement more important aid projects there than in Morocco. With more advanced developmental planning, argued Herbert Moran, Tunisia was better positioned to take advantage of the funds for capital and developmental projects that expanding Canadian aid for French Africa was making available.36 Tunisia’s interest in cultivating relations with Canada and its greater involvement in world affairs also made it the choice of the African and Middle Eastern Division in External Affairs and of Jules Léger, the ambassador to France. The most convincing argument in favour of Tunisia was not based on these considerations but on an argument that stemmed from one of the Canadian government’s most important domestic political problems. As part of its efforts to establish its own relations with French-speaking countries, the government of Quebec had just made its own overture to Tunisia, and Tunisia’s crippling need for aid made it susceptible to Quebec’s offer of assistance, whatever the difficulties it might cause for Canada as a result. Ambassador Garneau in Switzerland argued that, with an embassy in Tunis, the Canadian government would be in a position to influence the government of President Bourguiba in Tunisia and prevent it from accepting Quebec’s embarrassing and damaging offer of aid.37 Quebec had already expanded its political, social, technical, and cultural ties with France, and the prospect of Quebec establishing similar relations with Tunisia terrified the Department of External Affairs. This last argument proved decisive. Marcel Cadieux had initially favoured Morocco over Tunisia, and in December 1965 he observed that based on most criteria Morocco was still the better location for Canada’s new embassy in North Africa. Yet Quebec’s approach to Tunisia posed a significant threat to the interests and the prerogatives of the Canadian government, of which Cadieux was one of the most passionate defenders. Determined to preserve the federal government’s exclusive right to conduct foreign relations for Canada, Cadieux concluded that, despite all of the factors that pointed to Morocco, the new embassy should nonetheless be opened in Tunis instead.38 Morocco

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demonstrated little interest in Quebec, but the possibility that Tunisia might succumb to the province’s initiatives was real. Cadieux therefore advised Paul Martin that Canada had no choice but to strengthen its influence with Tunisia. Thomas Carter, the head of the African and Middle Eastern Division summed up the situation: “[A]s far as the establishment of special relationships with the province of Quebec is concerned,” he said, “we can better afford to leave Morocco uncovered than Tunisia.”39 Accordingly, Canada opened embassies in Senegal and Tunisia in 1966 as part of a vast expansion of its diplomatic representation in Africa that saw embassies opened in Ethiopia and eventually Kenya as well. Each of the new missions cost an initial $120,000 with $217,500 in annual expenses for operating costs and the salaries of the ambassador, two foreign service officers, an administrative officer, two clerks, two stenographers, a communicator, and locally engaged staff.40 Since it also posted additional senior officers to the missions in Cameroon and Congo, this expansion of its representation in Africa severely strained the human and financial resources of the Department of External Affairs. Particularly troubled by this was the Treasury Board, since it had already wanted to reduce the department’s budget for operating and capital costs by $2.85 million even before the expense of the new embassies.41 Yet Paul Martin convinced his Cabinet colleagues and especially Finance Minister Walter Gordon that Canada needed to expand its diplomatic representation in Africa. Martin was particularly adamant that Canada needed more representation in French Africa. This was, he informed Gordon, “of particular concern to me at this time and there is a compelling need for us to move with some alacrity.”42 Clearly, above all other considerations, it was the desire to address French Canadian interests in Canada’s foreign policy and, even more importantly, to contain a growing threat from Quebec to Canada’s international relations that supplied this need. The establishment of embassies in Senegal and Tunisia had broader implications for Canadian relations with the French-speaking countries of Africa as a whole. Though the embassies enhanced Canada’s diplomatic representation in the region, balancing its representation in anglophone Africa in particular, they did little to improve the administration of Canadian aid in the majority of French-speaking African countries. For six years, Canada’s aid for French Africa had been plagued by problems stemming in part from trying to spread a small amount of aid between too many recipients and the inability of non-resident officials to

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administer the aid effectively. The review of Canadian external assistance conducted in summer 1963 had already concluded that, to be effective, Canada’s aid needed to be concentrated on a limited number of recipient states, preferably ones with embassies from which the aid could be administered.43 The expansion of Canada’s representation in French Africa presented the opportunity to test this idea; in late 1966 the Pearson government decided to focus its assistance for French Africa on Senegal, Tunisia, and Cameroon, where Canadian diplomats were on hand to oversee and implement the aid projects.44 The remaining French-speaking states of Africa continued to receive Canadian teachers, scholarships, and other limited forms of aid but no longer benefited from Canada’s larger capital and developmental projects. Though it effectively reduced the extent of Canada’s relations with many of the countries of French Africa, this decision increased the efficiency of its aid program for the region. Whereas the eao had only spent $539,000 of $900,000 on aid for French Africa from 1961 to 1964 and $1.3 million of $4 million in 1964–65, concentrating its aid on countries where Canada possessed an embassy helped the eao deliver more than $10 million of $11.1 million in aid budgeted for 1966–67.45 From 1963 to 1966, therefore, the Canadian government expanded and intensified its relations with the French-speaking countries of Africa, a manifestation of the growing reciprocal interest between Canada and the French African states.46 While its economic interests in them remained limited, Canada’s political interests in and its aid for the countries of the region grew rapidly. Importantly, however, the basis of the Canadian government’s interest in French Africa had begun to shift in 1963 following the election of the Liberal government under Prime Minister Lester Pearson and Secretary of State for External Affairs Paul Martin. Unlike the Diefenbaker government, which had evaluated Canada’s interest in French Africa largely through the prism of the Cold War, Pearson and Martin believed that Canada also needed to respond to domestic pressures from French Canadians, especially in Quebec, for close relations with the French-speaking states of Africa. Canada’s relations with France continued to sour in the mid-1960s, but the new government believed that it could still reflect Canada’s cultural and linguistic duality in its foreign policy by pursuing expanded relations with French Africa. It also hoped that these relations would demonstrate its commitment to strengthening the French fact in Canada itself and contribute to the country’s own domestic harmony in a period of tremendous upheaval in Quebec.

6 Jostling over French Africa

Towards the end of the 1950s, the people of Quebec grew increasingly restless with the parochialism of Quebec society and the Duplessis government. For decades, the French-speaking people of Quebec had lived within a cultural milieu that idealized traditional features of Quebec’s agricultural, Catholic Church-dominated past with its conservative family and social structures as the pillars of French Canadian culture and identity. To many individuals in Quebec, this focus on the past resulted in a dangerously backward French Canadian society badly in need of reform to help it survive and prosper amidst the widespread changes of the twentieth century. The Liberal Party’s victory under Jean Lesage in the provincial election of 1960 subsequently unleashed a flurry of governmental and societal activity that, over the succeeding decade, modernized and secularized Quebec society and challenged the established order both within the province and within Canada in general.1 During the 1960s, Quebec’s government greatly expanded its powers and assumed new prominence in virtually all aspects of Quebec society including education, social welfare, the economy, and cultural and linguistic affairs. In becoming one of the principal agents of change in Quebec, the provincial government benefited immensely from fervent new expressions of French Canadian nationalism in Quebec, which emphasized the importance of the state and of the government of Quebec in particular, in the defence of French Canadian interests.

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French Canadian nationalism was not a new phenomenon in Canada. Up to the 1950s, however, mainstream French Canadian nationalism in Quebec had been, with a few exceptions, largely concerned with protecting French Canadian culture and the status of the French-speaking minority within Canada as a whole. Though French Canadian nationalism often clashed with competing visions of the country, these crises typically involved attempts to define Canada rather than to subvert or destroy it. Quebec’s Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems reflected this dimension of French Canadian nationalism in its conclusions, known as the Tremblay Report, published in 1956. Harshly critical of the centralization of power within Canada by the federal government, the Tremblay Report advocated re-balancing the responsibilities of the federal and provincial jurisdictions according to the Compact Theory of Confederation, the late-nineteenth-century argument that the provincial and federal governments were equal in status and sovereignty. In addition to restoring Quebec’s lost powers and autonomy vis-à-vis the federal government, however, the Report also sought for the province a special role or place within the confederation as the representative and voice of one of Canada’s founding peoples.2 As the historic home of the French Canadian people and the only jurisdiction within Canada that had a French Canadian majority, the Tremblay Report argued that Quebec had a responsibility for protecting French Canadians and their culture. In this, it echoed another version of the old Compact Theory of Confederation which held that Canada itself had been the result of an agreement, a compact, between its Frenchand English-speaking peoples. The Tremblay Report was thus firmly grounded in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century intellectual and constitutional traditions of French Canadian nationalists like Honoré Mercier and Henri Bourassa. The onset of the Quiet Revolution brought to the fore a different, and for Canadian unity more sinister, manifestation of French Canadian nationalism. In the early 1960s, a more narrowly defined sense of nationalism emerged from the ethno-cultural version of French Canadian nationalism that, though focused predominantly on Quebec, had embraced all French Canadians throughout Canada. Instead, nationalists in Quebec began to focus their attention and ambitions almost exclusively on the province. Writing the French minorities in the rest of Canada off as virtually a lost cause, the new breed of nationalists believed that building a strong homeland in Quebec alone was the only way to preserve, protect, and promote the French-speaking people and

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their culture in North America.3 In essence, a sense of civic nationalism based on loyalty to a defined geographic locality and the institutions that governed it was beginning to merge with and even replace the older, broader sense of nationalism derived from membership in an ethno-cultural community. French Canadian nationalists in Quebec were becoming Quebec nationalists. This change had ominous implications for Canada in that it contributed to the growth of the separatist movement in Quebec. It sprang from a number of sources but was fuelled in part by the constraints imposed upon the province by Canada’s constitution and its federal system of government.4 From a nationalist perspective in Quebec, the federal government of Canada was either unable or unwilling to promote the modernization of French Canadian society but simultaneously impeded Quebec’s own government from doing so itself by denying it all of the powers it needed. Although the nationalists’ complaints related mostly to domestic affairs, many of them also decried Quebec’s inability to pursue its own foreign relations since the federal government jealously guarded its claim of exclusive responsibility for this field under Canada’s constitution. In the early 1960s, however, Canada’s foreign relations were still overwhelmingly oriented towards the United States and Britain; the federal government’s interest in French-speaking countries seemed minimal at best. Canada’s apparent neglect of French-speaking countries in its foreign relations thus prevented French Canadians in Quebec from developing the contacts with other French-speaking peoples that were considered so necessary for the survival and the vitality of their culture. As a result, many nationalists in Quebec became convinced that their provincial government should pursue its own foreign relations to fill the void left by the federal government; when they looked abroad, they looked first to France. As they did, it became apparent that Charles de Gaulle and a broad range of individuals throughout France and in its government reciprocated their interest. To increase French influence abroad and promote the independence of Quebec, which these individuals considered inevitable, the French government supported Quebec’s modernization, pressed for closer links with the government of Quebec, and rejoiced in the dynamism and prosperity of the French-speaking people in English-dominated North America.5 Under de Gaulle’s leadership, it also eagerly supported the Quebec government’s efforts to conduct its own foreign relations. After the Lesage government took its first step in this direction by opening a quasi-diplomatic délégation générale in Paris in 1961, relations between the province and France developed

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quickly and intensely.6 By the time Quebec and France concluded an accord on technical and cultural cooperation in 1965, the province’s aggressive pursuit of its own foreign relations worried the Canadian government greatly, especially in light of the changing nature of nationalism and the concomitant rise of separatist sentiment in the province. While France naturally attracted their initial attention, Quebec’s leaders only slowly developed an awareness of and interest in the larger community of French-speaking states created by the independence of France’s colonies and dependencies in Africa and elsewhere. One of the first individuals to do so was a young journalist by the name of JeanMarc Léger. During the final years of the Duplessis era in Quebec, Léger differed from many of his contemporaries in that, while they dreamt of a more expansive Quebec reaching out to re-establish ancient cultural ties with France, he was already discovering the existence of a broader francophone community. He had spent three months touring the territories of French West and French Equatorial Africa in 1956, meeting leaders such as Félix Houphouet-Boigny and Léopold Senghor, and was greatly impressed by French Africa’s dynamism as it began the transition from colonial rule to self-government. According to Léger, French Africa was engaged in a political, economic, and social revolution that accomplished in a decade a level of development that had taken centuries in Western societies.7 This impression of French Africa’s dynamism had a lasting effect on Léger. In the 1960s, he would become secretary general of the Association des universités entièrement ou partiellement de langue française (aupelf), an organization created after Mgr Irénée Lussier of the University of Montreal convened a conference of the world’s French-language universities, including universities in French Africa, in September 1961. In the same period, Léger also became president of the Comité Afrique-Canada. In both of these positions, he lobbied assiduously for the expansion of Canada’s relations with the French-speaking countries of Africa.8 Convinced of French Africa’s potential and importance, Léger was immensely frustrated by the slow growth of these relations in the early 1960s. In July 1963, in a series of articles in Le Devoir, this frustration erupted in severe criticism of the paucity of Canada’s diplomatic representation and aid for the French-speaking states in Africa. For Léger, Canada’s neglect of French Africa and the French-speaking world was not an easily corrected problem. Instead, it was emblematic of a fundamental characteristic that rendered the Canadian government incapable of representing French Canadians in world affairs. Canada, he

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argued, was an Anglo-Saxon country with an Anglo-Saxon country’s foreign relations based overwhelmingly on the United States and the Commonwealth. Its federal government had little understanding of the needs of the French Canadian people and their culture and could never advance their international interests effectively. This analysis led Léger to conclude that, if the French Canadian people were to develop beneficial relations with other French-speaking peoples including those in Africa, the government of Quebec had to do it itself.9 This argument had a powerful effect in Ottawa, where it helped persuade the newly elected Pearson government that it needed to expand Canada’s aid for French Africa as proof that Canada did indeed pursue French Canada’s interests abroad. Jean-Marc Léger was not alone in advocating Quebec’s pursuit of its own foreign relations. A professor of international relations at the University of Montreal named André Patry believed like Léger that French Canadians belonged to a broader linguistic and cultural community and that Quebec needed to develop its own international identity and presence to benefit from it. Patry even tried to convince Premier Jean Lesage in autumn 1961 that Quebec needed its own diplomatic corps and that it should open cultural offices in Dakar, Senegal, and Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in addition to Paris, Brussels, and Geneva.10 Patry did not go so far as Léger and embrace the idea that Quebec ultimately needed to separate from Canada; he was convinced that Canada’s constitution entitled Quebec to conduct its own foreign relations in matters of provincial jurisdiction without the need for such a drastic course of action. He did believe, however, that the province needed to challenge the federal government’s power in the field of international affairs. Moreover, he felt that as the “national” home of Canada’s French-speaking people, Quebec had the right, and a compelling need, to establish relations with other French-speaking states. Individuals within Quebec’s government, including Minister of Youth Paul Gérin-Lajoie and Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Claude Morin, joined Léger and Patry in pressing for an expanded international role for the province. During a speech he gave in Montpellier, France in 1961 Gérin-Lajoie even stated that Quebec wanted to establish its own aid program for French Africa, including scholarships to bring French African students to Quebec’s universities.11 Despite the efforts of these individuals, Quebec’s government initially had little interest in pursuing relations with the French-speaking countries of Africa. Jean Lesage’s own primary interest in foreign

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affairs in this period was in inviting foreign capital and foreign companies to invest in the province, something beyond the capacity of the French African states.12 Gradually, however, Jean-Marc Léger, André Patry, who became the premier’s senior advisor on international affairs in 1963, and some of Lesage’s other friends and advisors persuaded him that Quebec should open contacts with other French-speaking countries in addition to France.13 The results of its initial overtures, however, were meagre. The provincial government provided scholarships for the Gabonese students brought to Montreal by the Comité Afrique-Canada, but representatives of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia showed little interest when officials from Quebec discussed opportunities for exchanges through Canada’s educational assistance program with them in New York in 1961.14 Even more disappointingly, Quebec’s offer to operate a medical clinic in Morocco in autumn 1963 was rejected by the Moroccan government. Searching for a high profile project with which to establish Quebec’s presence in French Africa, André Patry arrived at the idea of having Quebec supply the personnel and administration for a clinic that operated under the overall umbrella, and financing, of Canada’s aid programs. Patry had high hopes for this project since, if successful, it would validate his argument about Quebec’s constitutional ability to pursue international activities in clearly provincial jurisdictions like health care. He even enlisted the help of Canada’s ambassador to Morocco, who, after being assured by Herbert Moran of the eao that he did not need Ottawa’s authorization to discuss the project on a private and informal basis, met with the Moroccan Minister of Public Health. The latter’s reaction was not what Patry expected. The minister had no interest in Quebec, or Canada, opening a medical clinic in his country. Instead, he proposed sending Moroccans to Quebec for training as doctors and nurses.15 Denied the hope of using a high profile clinic to establish Quebec’s presence in French Africa, Patry abandoned the entire project. Rebuffed in its overture to Morocco, the government of Quebec turned its attention to the federal educational assistance program. The eao had relied on the province for a great deal of help with this program since its inception in 1961, particularly in recruiting and evaluating prospective teachers. In 1961–62, for example, Quebec’s officials located almost fifty teachers willing to teach in French Africa. Of the thirteen teachers considered suitable for service overseas, only seven were actually sent abroad by the eao in the first year of the aid program.16 Quebec’s officials also helped design Canadian aid for French

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Africa through a joint committee on which they served with representatives of the eao, the Department of External Affairs, and Quebec’s French-language universities. Paul Gérin-Lajoie unsuccessfully attempted to gain control of this committee for Quebec in spring 1962, arguing that it should have more representatives than the federal government on the committee and that his Department of Youth should be responsible for evaluating the needs of the French African states.17 In general, however, Quebec’s government appeared content with the supportive role it played in the federal aid program, at least initially. Yet following the failure to interest Morocco in Patry’s clinic, the province began to demand a more prominent role in the delivery of Canadian educational aid for French Africa. Not coincidentally, these demands also surfaced after the Pearson government increased the amount of aid it allocated for French Africa to $4 million. The expanded amount of aid attracted the attention of Paul Gérin-Lajoie and André Patry in a way that the paltry aid available for French Africa in the Diefenbaker years had not. Tantalized by the opportunities presented by the enlarged federal program, they now saw in it the means through which to challenge federal exclusivity in external affairs and help Quebec establish its presence in Africa. Beginning in 1964, the government of Quebec mounted a determined campaign to gain effective control of Canada’s educational assistance program for French Africa based on two principal arguments. The first relied on the 1937 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruling that the federal government could not implement an international treaty in a field of provincial jurisdiction without the concurrence of the provinces.18 This ruling implied that the constitution did not give the federal government exclusive responsibility for foreign affairs in Canada. Instead, its authority in international affairs was only absolute in fields in which it enjoyed exclusive jurisdiction. For Gérin-Lajoie, Patry, and others in Quebec, it therefore followed that the provinces retained the exclusive ability to represent themselves internationally in areas of provincial competence and that Quebec’s pursuit of international competence in educational matters did not violate Canada’s constitution.19 Furthermore, if Quebec allowed the federal government to act alone internationally in fields like education in which, constitutionally, it had at best a limited claim to responsibility, the federal government could claim that the province had ceded its exclusive jurisdiction internationally and even domestically.20 According to this perspective, Quebec had to assert its power over education even internationally or risk losing it

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entirely. The second argument built upon the idea, popular in Quebec, that Confederation had been the result of a bicultural compact between Canada’s French and English-speaking peoples.21 Quebec, the home of the vast majority of French Canadians, was the representative in this compact of one of Canada’s founding nations. Its government, therefore, had a special role to play and needed special powers to protect the French Canadian language and culture. By extension, it also had a need for direct relations with other French-speaking states. Based on these twin arguments, Quebec’s officials believed that the province had both a legal and a moral right to assume direct control of Canada’s educational assistance program for French Africa. Finding neither of these arguments persuasive, the federal government remained determined to protect its authority over international affairs and marshalled its own arguments in defence of that position. International law, it argued, only gave the power to enter into international agreements to the central government of a federal state rather than to its component units. More importantly, the residual clause of Canada’s constitution made the federal government responsible for the country’s external affairs, for which it had also become solely responsible as the heir of all of the rights and powers exercised by Britain for Canada from 1867 to 1931.22 The federal government’s position on this issue was clear. While it was willing to cooperate with the provinces, as expressed by Prime Minister Pearson in particular, it insisted that Canada could only speak with one voice internationally: its own. The provinces had no authority to conduct foreign relations or to pursue international activities on their own. Furthermore, the federal government denied that Quebec alone represented French Canadians in Canada. Based on their representation in the House of Commons and the existence of substantial French Canadian minorities throughout Canada, the federal government argued that, in fact, it was the only authority that represented all French Canadians. Consequently, the government of Quebec could not claim special rights and powers within the federation. The federal government held that Quebec could not, on either basis, advance a valid claim entitling it to direct responsibility for Canada’s educational aid for French Africa. The Pearson government was thus not disposed to accept Quebec’s ambitions regarding the educational assistance program for French Africa that had begun to mount by the end of 1964. No longer satisfied with Quebec’s supportive role in the recruitment and evaluation of teachers for the program, Paul Gérin-Lajoie and his officials sought a

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series of concessions from the Department of External Affairs and the External Aid Office. To begin, they wanted Quebec’s newly created Department of Education rather than the eao to employ all of the teachers recruited in Quebec for service in French Africa. Gérin-Lajoie also wanted the department’s officials to take part in all decisions involving teachers from Quebec. Finally, he wanted to co-sign, as Quebec’s Minister of Education, all correspondence sent to the teachers as well as to the French African states.23 Effectively, Gérin-Lajoie wanted Quebec to exercise joint administrative responsibility for the educational assistance program in Canada, with a highly visible role for the provincial government in its delivery in French Africa. Jean Lesage even asked the prime minister to recognize that Quebec’s officials had the right to contact French African governments directly to obtain information they needed for the program.24 This was only the start of the province’s ambitions. Ultimately, Gérin-Lajoie and Gaston Cholette, the director of cooperation in the Department of Education, believed that the federal government should cede complete responsibility for almost all of Canada’s aid programs and funds for French Africa to the government of Quebec. The two governments negotiated over their respective roles in educational aid for French Africa between October 1964 and June 1965 but could not reach an agreement. The federal authorities were prepared to make some concessions, including notably that Quebec could hire the teachers and pay them directly, subject to federal reimbursement, while seconding them to the eao for the duration of their contract in French Africa. This concession displeased Paul Martin, who believed that allowing the province to pay the teachers’ salaries directly gave the impression that Quebec was supplying the aid, but he ultimately accepted it as a compromise. On other issues, there were no compromises to be made. Since university professors did not ordinarily fall under the jurisdiction of Quebec’s Department of Education, the federal negotiators refused to allow them to be hired and paid directly by the province for service abroad. They also refused to allow provincial officials to contact foreign governments directly, insisting that any information on teaching conditions in French Africa had to be obtained through the offices of the Department of External Affairs. For federal officials like Marcel Cadieux and Herbert Moran, aid for French Africa was an integral part of Canadian foreign policy. and they would not have federal involvement in it minimized, which they recognized was Quebec’s real intent.25 Cadieux in particular believed that federal aid for French Africa was vital to the struggle against separatism in Quebec, and Claude

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Morin’s suggestion that Quebec wanted to establish its international identity through many small precedents, the way that Canada had done earlier, did not allay his suspicions about the ulterior motives of many Quebec officials.26 The Pearson government’s refusal to transfer to Quebec joint responsibility for and the effective administration of the educational assistance program for French Africa angered Paul Gérin-Lajoie and Claude Morin. They were particularly enraged that the federal government had not finally responded to Quebec’s proposals until late August 1965, which they suspected had been done deliberately to prevent Quebec from reacting before the next group of teachers left for Africa in September.27 Denied the authority over the program they had wanted to use to begin building Quebec’s identity in Africa, they rejected any agreement with the federal government for 1965–66 and prepared to renew their demands the following year. Jean Lesage approached Lester Pearson about renewing negotiations to define Quebec’s role in educational aid in spring 1966, but, since Gérin-Lajoie and Morin refused to dilute the province’s demands, the prospect for an agreement was just as dim as it had been the year before. Quebec’s new proposal contained only one significant change from the one that had already been rejected, a statement of the province’s intention to establish an aid program for French Africa that Morin believed was necessary to prod the federal government into agreeing to the province’s demands.28 Federal officials correctly interpreted this threat as a hardening of Quebec’s position but rather than making them more amenable to compromise it hardened their own resolve. Informal discussions between Morin and Marcel Cadieux were initiated on the basis of the new proposal, but, to avoid having Quebec’s role in educational aid raised as an issue during the province’s upcoming election, the federal government postponed formal negotiations until autumn. The surprising victory of the Union Nationale Party in the summer 1966 provincial election complicated the situation for the federal government, which had already had seemingly irresolvable differences with the more moderate Lesage Liberals. The province’s new government was even more overtly nationalist and Premier Daniel Johnson had written a book entitled Equality or Independence. Recognizing the futility of trying to reach a compromise with Quebec under the circumstances, the federal government abandoned plans to renew negotiations, and after almost two years of intermittent discussions Quebec’s involvement in providing educational aid for French Africa remained unchanged.

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Embittered by their inability to gain responsibility for Canada’s aid for French Africa, Morin and Patry, who remained senior officials under the Johnson government, decided that Quebec needed to make good on its earlier threat to implement its own direct aid for the region. This idea was not new. It had been touted as a possibility in Quebec since summer 1964, when Patry had told Gérin-Lajoie that, according to his contacts among French African officials, the French African states considered Canada an Anglo-Saxon country and worried that accepting its aid would ultimately undermine their French culture. GérinLajoie himself had discussed the possibility of aid from Quebec with France’s Minister of Co-operation in March 1965, and, though Raymond Triboulet was less than enthusiastic about the idea, Quebec’s delegate general in Paris assured Gérin-Lajoie that the rest of the French government did not share his reservations. Jean Lesage even allocated the symbolic sum of $300,000, the initial amount of Canadian aid for French Africa, for “technical assistance” in spring 1966, though this was seen largely, at least by Lesage, as a tactic to help Quebec during its anticipated negotiations with the federal government.29 Other individuals like Morin and Patry, more aggressive than Lesage, hoped to translate this budgetary gesture into actual aid, and by 1965 they were being actively encouraged in this direction by the French government. Although still jealous of its own influence in French Africa, the latter wanted the province to focus its attention mostly on the continent’s English-speaking countries.30 Patry, Morin, and Paul Gérin-Lajoie had actually made Quebec’s first attempt to establish an aid relationship with a French-speaking African country in autumn 1965. At the time, their biggest problem had been in finding a government in French Africa with which to enter into such a relationship, since none in West or Equatorial Africa demonstrated any interest. Eventually, they focussed on Tunisia, the small North African country with a tremendous need for development assistance. Earlier that year, Taieb Slim, the Tunisian ambassador to Canada, had visited Quebec City and expressed his government’s interest in technical cooperation with Quebec. He had also invited Quebec’s Minister of Education to Tunis to discuss the kinds of projects the two governments might undertake together. Quebec’s government had not pursued this contact then, but the disappointing progress of its negotiations with the federal government over educational aid in summer 1965 revived its interest. After he rejected the federal offer of a slightly expanded role in the provision of teachers for French Africa as totally inadequate for Quebec’s

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ambitions, Gérin-Lajoie made plans to travel to Tunisia in October to complete an entente with the government of President Habib Bourguiba. This deal, he believed, would demonstrate Quebec’s international competence in its areas of responsibility and compel the federal government to acknowledge that the province was its equal partner in those international matters touching on provincial jurisdiction.31 Rumours that Quebec was about to sign an agreement on technical cooperation with Tunisia quickly began to circulate, causing a great deal of concern in Ottawa. The province had already signed one such agreement with France in February, and the federal government worried that the conclusion of a second one would further undermine federal authority in foreign affairs by encouraging even more countries to deal directly with Quebec. Faced with this threat to its interests, the Pearson government marshalled its resources to defeat the Quebec-Tunisia initiative. At the United Nations in September and October, Paul Martin met with both Ambassador Slim and Tunisia’s Foreign Minister, Habib Bourguiba Jr, reminding them that only Canada’s federal government had the power to sign international agreements. He also told the Tunisian representatives that Canada would strongly resent any direct negotiations or the signing of an agreement between the North African country and Quebec. The strength of Martin’s reaction had the desired effect and Habib Bourguiba Jr assured him that the Tunisian government would not sign an accord with Quebec.32 Taieb Slim subsequently informed a disappointed André Patry of this development. Patry tried to salvage the situation by suggesting that the two governments postpone signing the entente until a more favourable time, but to no avail. Federal intervention had precipitated the collapse of Quebec’s agreement with Tunisia. Undeterred, Patry told Slim that Quebec was committed to obtaining for itself the right to negotiate and sign international agreements in its fields of jurisdiction.33 Thereafter, he and others in Quebec’s government increased the pressure that eventually persuaded Premier Lesage to include money for a direct technical assistance program in the Ministry of Education budget in 1966. They also organized a tour of Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Tunisia for a group of engineers from Quebec. For almost three weeks in November and December 1965, Marcel Robidas of Quebec’s Department of Industry and Commerce accompanied ten engineers on a tour intended to investigate business opportunities and, ostensibly, to “ascertain in what way the Quebec authorities might best assist the Canadian aid programme in Africa.”34 From a federal perspective, Robidas

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behaved quite properly throughout and never discussed aid from Quebec with any of the French African officials he met. The Department of External Affairs nonetheless suspected that the trip had ultimately been designed to help the government of Quebec gain information and make crucial contacts with which to pursue its own aid projects.35 Intended at least in part to make the federal government more amenable to the province’s demands vis-à-vis educational aid for French Africa, the threat to federal interests implied by the engineering tour and the inclusion in Quebec’s budget of a sum for technical assistance produced the opposite effect in Ottawa. The suggestion that Quebec would pursue its own aid projects made the Pearson government even more determined to preserve federal authority over foreign affairs and hardened the Department of External Affairs against the province’s revised proposal regarding the educational assistance program in spring 1966.36 With the federal government adamant against making concessions, even faced with the threat of independent aid by Quebec, Quebec’s officials concluded that threats no longer sufficed. It was under these circumstances that Claude Morin and André Patry advised newly elected Premier Daniel Johnson to implement Quebec’s own aid projects in French Africa, though Jean Chapdelaine, Quebec’s delegate general in Paris, did not believe that the province could afford its own aid program.37 With Johnson’s approval, Patry quietly renewed his contacts with Ambassador Slim in late summer 1966 and offered him $150,000 from the government of Quebec for a project of Tunisia’s choice. Once again, Slim expressed interest in the offer and even agreed, at Patry’s request, to conclude a verbal accord alone so that the agreement could be kept secret until it was finalized. From Patry’s perspective, this secrecy was vital to prevent the federal government from systematically obstructing Quebec’s efforts to reach out to French Africa as it had been doing for years. Patry felt that, if the federal government could be presented with a fait accompli, it would realize that Quebec was determined to respect Canada’s constitution and engage in international activities only in those fields allocated to the provinces and that Quebec’s demands posed no threat to federal interests.38 At this juncture, the increased diplomatic attention that the Canadian government had been paying to Tunisia in 1965-6 began to pay dividends. Despite Patry’s efforts at secrecy, the secretary general of Tunisia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Réné Garneau, Canada’s outgoing ambassador to Switzerland and Tunisia, about Quebec’s aid offer.

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M. Mestiri explained that his government wished to devote the $150,000 to a medical clinic but would only accept it with the approval of the Canadian government.39 This disclosure caught the Department of External Affairs by surprise. A.J. Pick, scheduled to take up his post as Canada’s first resident ambassador in Tunis a few weeks later, hurried to confirm it with Ambassador Slim but the ambassador denied any knowledge of Quebec’s renewed offer. A day later, Slim phoned Pick and reiterated his government’s position that it would not conclude an agreement with Quebec without first obtaining the Canadian government’s approval. Given Slim’s earlier disavowal, however, neither Pick nor the department’s other officials were reassured by this message.40 At first, federal officials considered the possibility that Quebec’s government had not authorized Patry’s initiative, that it had been “one of those independent initiatives by Quebec officials.”41 However, when Garneau reported on 19 September 1966 that two senior officials from Quebec had recently visited Tunis, they recognized that the offer was part of a campaign by Quebec’s government to establish its international competence and its own international identity in such provincial jurisdictions as health and education. While visiting the Côte d’Azur, Premier Johnson’s Chief of Staff Mario Beaulieu and Marcel Massé of Quebec’s Ministry of Education had requested an invitation to Tunis, which they had been granted as private individuals on unofficial business. Once there, they used the occasion of an informal dinner to press Quebec’s claim for international competence, with Massé in particular decrying the damage that Canadian educational aid for French Africa did to Quebec’s interests and announcing that the province wanted direct responsibility for all of its teachers sent abroad.42 Taieb Slim’s behaviour indicated that Patry and others had succeeded in cultivating at least some support for Quebec in Tunisia.43 Its government was also eager to accept Quebec’s aid. Yet, clearly, it did not want to antagonize the Canadian government in the process. Secretary General Mestiri replied to Massé by stating his government’s position that Tunisia needed the approval of Canada’s federal government before it accepted any aid from Quebec under the umbrella of the CanadaTunisia entente on aid. Similarly, Habib Bourguiba Jr, Tunisia’s Foreign Minister, assured Alfred Pick on his arrival in Tunis at the end of September that Tunisia would not deal directly with the province of Quebec.44 By 1965-6, Tunisia’s relations with France, though recovering, still suffered from the effects of earlier crises, including Bizerte in 1961 and the nationalization of French-owned properties that had resulted

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in the suspension of French aid to Tunisia in 1964. Tunisia also faced ongoing pressure to conform to Egypt’s leadership of the Arab League and the threat that the revolutionary turmoil of post-independence Algeria would spill across the border.45 Faced with a precarious security and development situation, President Bourguiba and his government were keenly aware of the importance of expanding their country’s network of foreign friends and partners. This consideration lay at the heart of Tunisia’s response to the renewed offer of aid from Quebec in autumn 1966. To further Tunisia’s economic development, the Tunisian government wanted to accept aid from both Canada and Quebec. At one point, in the aftermath of the entente that Quebec had signed with France, it even thought it could do so. The Canadian response to Quebec’s first proposed agreement with Tunisia in autumn 1965 demonstrated that that was not possible as long as the two Canadian governments remained embroiled in their increasingly bitter dispute over responsibility for foreign affairs. Ambassador Pick highlighted the Tunisian government’s dilemma during his first interview with the Foreign Minister after his arrival in Tunis when he expressed his expectation that Canada’s aid relationship with Tunisia would continue to grow. Seemingly banal, this statement subtly implied that Canada’s growing aid for Tunisia might be reconsidered. In fact, contingency plans were being debated in Ottawa to penalize Tunisia for dealing with Quebec either by reducing Canadian aid for Tunisia by the amount of aid it accepted from Quebec or by suspending Canadian aid altogether. Ironically, Quebec’s officials were also contemplating stipulating as a condition of accepting its aid that Tunisia refrain from accepting Canadian aid in areas of provincial jurisdiction.46 Caught between the federal government and the government of Quebec, Tunisia was forced to choose between the two. Though pockets of support for Quebec remained, the Tunisian authorities generally concluded that under the circumstances it would be unwise to defy Canada and deal directly with the province. This decision not only upheld international protocol, which dictated that foreign governments could only conclude agreements with Canadian provinces through the federal government, but it also preserved Tunisia’s relations with Canada. Canadian aid to Tunisia had been growing rapidly after 1964 and the opening of a Canadian embassy in Tunis in 1966 raised the prospect that it would continue to grow thereafter. Quebec simply could not match Canada’s financial wherewithal. Aiming to maximize

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the aid it received and compelled to choose between the two, the Tunisian government chose Canada. Quebec’s increasingly close relations with France in this period may also have affected this decision. With Tunisia trying to reduce its own dependence on France, its government may have been leery of giving France an indirect avenue of influence on it through Quebec. Ultimately, Tunisia agreed in September 1966 not to accept aid from Quebec until the federal and provincial governments determined how it fell under the umbrella of Canada’s relations with the North African country. Tunisia hoped that Canada and Quebec would ultimate settle their constitutional differences, allowing it to accept aid from the province. Because of their irreconcilable differences regarding their respective rights over foreign affairs in the mid-1960s, this agreement never took place. André Patry, Claude Morin, Gaston Cholette, and others in Quebec blamed the interference of the federal government for the collapse of the province’s second attempt to reach a deal on aid with Tunisia. From their perspective, federal pressure had succeeded for a second time in thwarting Quebec’s efforts to establish its own international identity in French Africa. Though fearful of further “humiliations,” these setbacks did not cause the government of Quebec to abandon its aspirations in the international sphere.47 Instead, it felt compelled to make even bolder gestures and to seek international partners that would not be so easily influenced or intimidated by the Canadian government. For its part, Canada’s federal government remained just as determined at the end of 1966 to prevent Quebec from completing agreements directly with foreign governments. Having failed to negotiate a satisfactory agreement regarding aid for French Africa, the tension between Canada and Quebec over responsibility for foreign affairs escalated, precipitating a mounting series of crises in the late 1960s. The government of Quebec decried federal intransigence and obstructionism, while the federal government considered Quebec’s ambitions a threat to federal authority and Canada’s national unity from a province already gripped by growing separatist sensibilities. Despite their differences and the mounting tension between them, the governments of Canada and Quebec co-operated effectively on the delivery of educational assistance for the French-speaking countries of Africa throughout the 1960s. Quebec’s officials had been helping to design this aid program since 1961 and by the mid-1960s were helping conduct briefings to prepare teachers for their assignments in Africa. Quebec’s Department of Education was also solely responsible for

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recruiting the 239 teachers from Quebec that were working in Africa by 1967 under the auspices of federal aid for French Africa.48 This remained Quebec’s largest contribution. It was also vitally important. Educational assistance remained Canada’s principal form of contact with most of the French African states throughout the 1960s. It was also the means through which Quebec eventually hoped to establish its own international identity and competence. Consequently, Canada and Quebec had an interest in ensuring that the teachers they sent abroad reflected well upon them both. Through its control of the recruitment process, the government of Quebec bore a heady responsibility for the success of the entire Canadian operation despite failing to secure the higher profile and administrative responsibility that the Lesage and Johnson governments and their officials had wanted. Quebec’s government continued to help deliver federal aid for French Africa even during the acrimonious period after negotiations were abandoned in 1966, though it suspended the participation of its officials in briefing sessions for teachers in August 1966 to protest the federal government’s failure to acquiesce to Quebec’s demands.49 Nonetheless, the political and constitutional dispute between Canada and Quebec did not significantly affect the day-to-day operation of the educational assistance program for the French-speaking countries of Africa. For Quebec, such cooperation helped minimize the impact of removing hundreds of teachers from Quebec’s own expanding educational system. Quebec’s officials also expected that sending the province’s teachers to work in French-speaking countries would have an important effect on their nationalism, an intangible benefit expected to help heighten Quebec’s profile abroad while strengthening its government’s position in dealing with the federal government at home.50 The slow growth of Canada’s relations with the French-speaking states of Africa had contributed to the growing belief in Quebec that Canada’s government neglected the province’s interests in its foreign relations. This belief bolstered demands for the provincial government to conduct its own foreign relations in order to protect and advance French Canadian interests. Quebec’s pursuit of this right became a key point of contention in the political and constitutional disputes between the province and the federal government in the mid-1960s. The failure to resolve their differences regarding Quebec’s relations with French Africa by the end of 1966 set the stage for an even more bitter dispute over the next two years.

7 The Road to Libreville

Presidents Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia and Léopold Senghor of Senegal began to discuss the desirability of an international organization of French-speaking states in late 1965. At the time, they proposed a modest organization to help the French-speaking countries of Africa preserve their shared linguistic and cultural heritage. Elsewhere in French Africa, the idea was greeted with skepticism. President HouphetBoigny of Ivory Coast, for one, did not think that Africa needed another international organization, while the governments of Algeria, Guinea, and Morocco considered the French language a painful reminder of their colonial past and were not anxious to promote its continued use. Still, the idea began to attract attention and eventually even French ministers such as Edgar Fauré and Michel Dèbre started to consider its merits, though Charles de Gaulle himself doubted the viability of such an organization.1 As the discussions continued, Bourguiba and Senghor’s modest proposal expanded. Instead of merely the Frenchspeaking countries of Africa, enthusiasts began to envision an organization that included all French-speaking states. According to several African observers, there was even to be an important role for Canada in it. Mustapha Tlili of the magazine Jeune Afrique thought Canada would be the ideal host of a meeting to discuss the evolution of la francophonie, the francophone Commonwealth.2 Canada’s participation, he felt, would also help allay African fears that France would use the organization for neo-imperialist purposes.

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In Ottawa, Canadian officials had decidedly mixed feelings about the proposed community of francophone states. Participation in la francophonie offered distinct opportunities for Canada, but it also carried significant risks. Lester Pearson and Paul Martin had committed themselves to improving and expanding Canada’s relations with French-speaking countries shortly after the election of their government in 1963. Joining the francophone community offered Canada another avenue through which to pursue this goal and reinforce Canada’s interest in the francophone world, and in the French-speaking states in Africa in particular. It also offered the federal government the opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to expressing Canada’s bilingualism and biculturalism in its foreign policy, an important component of the federal national unity strategy in the face of the growing separatist threat in Quebec. Furthermore, federal officials observed that la francophonie might serve other Canadian interests including helping to consolidate Western influence with numerous developing countries, promoting democratic practices in Africa and elsewhere, and bolstering Canada’s influence with important members of the Afro-Asian Bloc in the United Nations. There was also the prospect that, as the only potential member of both la francophonie and the Commonwealth, Canada might emerge as a useful bridge between the members of the two organizations and the United States as well.3 On the other hand, Canadian officials realized that the idea of a commonwealth of francophone states was not universally popular with its potential members. Countries like Algeria, Morocco, and the Indochinese states, for example, were all striving to put their colonial past behind them and did not look favourably on an organization that glorified the old imperial culture or tried to preserve even indirect links with France, the old colonial power. Consequently, la francophonie might not be that useful for Canada in building ties with Frenchspeaking countries in the developing world. Moreover, Belgium and Switzerland were expected to be leery of joining the organization for fear of provoking further trouble with their increasingly disgruntled domestic francophone communities. Their absence from la francophonie would raise the prospect that its French African members, among others, would look for Canada to act as the political and economic counterweight to France within the community.4 Canada’s aid for and relations with the French African states had been growing rapidly since 1963 but were still dwarfed by the resources that France devoted to its former colonies in Africa. Membership in la francophonie thus might

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subject the Canadian government to financial pressures that it could not afford to meet. It might also, by seeming to make them rivals for influence in French Africa, exacerbate the difficulties in Canada’s relations with France, a situation that the Canadian government had been trying to prevent since the 1950s. More importantly, Canadian officials recognized that “the advocates of a more independent attitude for Quebec would consider [the francophone community] as a natural forum in which to promote their cause.”5 This was particularly true given the nature of the proposed organization, with its almost exclusive emphasis on culture. In 1965–66, the government of Quebec was already engaged in an intense campaign to gain control of Canada’s educational aid program for French African based on the argument that it fell within the province’s jurisdiction. It could be expected to fight even more aggressively to participate in an international community devoted to the French language and culture as part of its efforts to assert its right to represent itself internationally in areas of provincial responsibility. Based on this consideration alone, la francophonie posed a significant threat to Canada’s domestic harmony and national unity. Of course, if the federal government chose not to participate in it Quebec would be happy to try to occupy the field itself. Nonetheless, some Canadian officials, including Thomas Carter and the European Division within the Department of External Affairs, believed that it might be better for the Canadian government to pursue its relations with other French speaking countries on a bilateral basis rather than through an international organization. Marcel Cadieux had other ideas. From his perspective, the federal government could not ignore or neglect la francophonie. Doing so, he felt, risked letting “the feeling develop that federal policies do not take sufficient account of the aspirations of French Canada in the international sphere.”6 The federal government was already embroiled in a bitter dispute with Quebec over the latter’s efforts to establish its own separate international identity. It could not afford to hand the government of Quebec further means with which to try to persuade public opinion in the province that the Canadian government was not representing its interests abroad. As a result, when Léopold Senghor visited Canada in September 1966, he was told that the Canadian government’s position on la francophonie was “one of sympathetic and active interest.”7 Motivated by Cadieux, the federal government was also determined to take a leading role in creating the organization. This would

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reassure French Canadians of federal interest in the francophone community and allow the government to try to make it more accommodating of the federal position in the event, as was anticipated, that Quebec pursued its own membership in it. The Pearson government was uneasy about the overwhelming emphasis on language and culture that was being considered for la francophonie in 1966, since this emphasis would only encourage Quebec’s expectations. Its concerns could be addressed in either of two ways, both of which would undermine Quebec’s ability to claim that it deserved to represent itself in the organization because of its jurisdiction over linguistic and cultural affairs. The first was for la francophonie to be simply an umbrella organization for private nongovernmental associations like the aupelf. This would minimize the involvement of all governments, including Canada’s but also potentially that of Quebec as well. The other option, the one the Pearson government preferred, was for la francophonie to adopt a more formal, Commonwealth-type structure and to expand its focus to include political or economic issues such as aid that fell more clearly under federal responsibilities.8 It was not going to be easy, however, to influence the francophone community in either of these directions, especially the latter. The Belgian and Swiss governments, for example, were receptive to the idea of a primarily nongovernmental organization but opposed a more formal, political structure for fear of exacerbating the linguistic and cultural tensions that existed within their own domestic communities. President Sékou Touré of Guinea also rejected the idea of a tightly knit francophone community, seeing in it the vehicle for the reintroduction of French imperialism in Africa.9 Evidently, few other governments shared the Pearson government’s preference for a more formal and political francophone community. Instead, to the extent that they favoured the creation of a francophone commonwealth at all, the governments of other French-speaking states seemed content with a governmental organization devoted almost exclusively to the French language and culture. This orientation suited the government of Quebec perfectly. The more loose and flexible the organization’s structure, the more specific its focus on culture, the greater the role that Quebec could hope to play in it while a more political organization benefited the federal government.10 It also suited the French. France already maintained intimate political relations with most of its former colonies, and its government had little interest in

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helping countries like Canada intrude into what it considered “un terrain de chasse gardé.” France intended to keep its political and especially its aid relationship with the French-speaking countries of Africa strictly bilateral.11 Its government expected that limiting la francophonie to fields of linguistic, cultural, and social development would defuse some of the suspicions in Africa about the motives behind France’s participation in the organization. France and Quebec had similar ideas about the purpose of la francophonie and the provincial government relied on France to promote Quebec’s interests in it. France’s relations with Canada had continued to deteriorate in the mid-1960s, at least in part because of the encouragement that de Gaulle and others in the French government had been giving to Quebec’s efforts to assert its international identity and rights.12 France’s withdrawal from nato in mid-1966 reinforced the gulf that divided France from its erstwhile allies and confirmed that its relations with Canada were not likely to improve quickly. Quebec’s government knew that if it were to join the francophone community, its best hope was through Paris. This was a prospect of which the Canadian government was only too aware. In late July 1966, Ambassador Jean Coté met with Léopold Senghor in Dakar in advance of the Senegalese president’s upcoming visit to Canada. When their conversation turned to la francophonie, Coté took advantage of the opportunity to press upon Senghor the Canadian government’s position that it was the only authority in Canada that had the right to represent Canadians in international organizations. Senghor replied that he respected Canada’s constitutional problems and that “neither General de Gaulle nor himself” wished to encourage separatism in Canada.13 Since Coté had not mentioned either the French president or Quebec separatism, the ambassador concluded that de Gaulle and Senghor had discussed Quebec’s interests in la francophonie the previous week when Senghor had been in Paris. Despite Senghor’s attempt at reassurance, it was clear to Coté and other Canadian officials that, when de Gaulle discussed la francophonie with the leaders of the French African states, he also raised the subject of Quebec and its ambitions. Given that de Gaulle endorsed Quebec’s analysis of the province’s constitutional right to conduct its own foreign relations in provincial jurisdictions without the need to separate from Canada, the Pearson government considered this an ominous but not unexpected development. With French support for Quebec and its goal of joining la francophonie becoming increasingly evident, the Canadian government realized

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that it had to rely on the French African countries to help thwart Quebec’s membership. Under the circumstances, it could not afford to allow de Gaulle and the French government to interpret the Canadian constitution for them. They needed to be informed that, according to an analysis conducted by Department of External Affairs’ Legal Counsellor Allan Gotlieb, allowing Quebec to join the francophone community would acknowledge that Canada’s provinces had their own international identities. It would also “constitute ‘recognition’ by the members of [la francophonie] that Quebec is a ‘state’ in the international sense.”14 Gotlieb concluded that such recognition would fracture Canada’s international identity and threaten its unity. The need for the Canadian government to make a greater effort to explain Canada’s constitution to French African leaders was reinforced by Léopold Senghor’s visit to Canada in September 1966. In Ottawa, Senghor disappointed federal officials when he explained that he envisioned only a limited role for Canada in la francophonie based on a loose agency for cultural and educational institutions such as the aupelf and associations for Frenchspeaking lawyers and doctors. He did please Lester Pearson and Paul Martin, however, when he reiterated that he did not want the francophone community to exacerbate Canada’s difficulties with Quebec or to encourage the province towards independence. Nonetheless, the president of Senegal was also sufficiently impressed with Daniel Johnson’s articulation of Quebec’s position during his stop in Quebec City to agree to send a representative to an international meeting that Johnson planned to convene to discuss teaching in French.15 Jean Coté, who had accompanied Senghor throughout his visit to Canada, observed that the president had tried to avoid involvement in Canada’s constitutional difficulties but that “the delicate issues of Canadian federal-provincial relations had somewhat caught [him] unaware.”16 Coté felt that Senghor had been utterly sincere when he stated that independence was not a solution to the problems of French Canadians, but he had still found Johnson’s arguments about Quebec’s constitutional powers compelling. That he also expressed a desire for Senegal to pursue relations directly with Quebec through the same type of accord that Quebec had with France was further indication that, to a certain extent at least, Senghor considered Quebec’s government to be the representative of French Canadians. In part, this reflected the Canadian government’s failure to demonstrate for his benefit that French Canadians lived throughout Canada and not just in Quebec. It also indicated the difficulties that the Canadian government faced in

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trying to persuade French African leaders that Quebec had no right to represent French Canadians in la francophonie. Far from being able to influence the direction, shape, or structure of the organization, then, the Canadian government found itself having to fight a rearguard action to inform others about its position vis-à-vis its constitutional dispute with Quebec. The French government’s announcement in November 1966 that though it would not lead any initiatives regarding la francophonie it would respond favourably to others’ invitations provided a significant boost to the organization’s enthusiasts.17 The French had warmed to the idea of a francophone community, and this gave impetus to plans for a range of projects from an association of French-speaking parliamentarians to a conference of ministers of education from French-speaking states and the Institut international de droit des pays d’expression française (idef). How to ensure that invitations to participate in these associations were sent to Ottawa rather than Quebec City became the Canadian government’s primary concern. In December, Marcel Cadieux told France’s ambassador that “there was only one address in Canada for correspondence relating to Francophonie and that was Ottawa.”18 Moreover, he said that Canada would not tolerate any attempts to interfere in its domestic affairs or to put Quebec in Canada’s place in la francophonie. When he was asked how the Canadian government could be represented at international meetings dealing with education, Cadieux responded that it had been representing itself for twenty years in unesco. Cadieux’s warning to the French ambassador came after the Secretariat of African and Malgache Affairs in the Élysée Palace had arranged for Quebec’s Justice Minister to receive an invitation to the meeting of the idef in Lomé, Togo, in January 1967. Though sponsored by justice ministers from fifteen French-speaking countries, the idef was a nongovernmental association. Still, the Pearson government worried that Quebec alone had been invited to represent French Canadians in the organization. Cadieux discussed the problem with a senior official in the French Foreign Ministry but with little effect. The Quai d’Orsay was generally sympathetic to Canadian concerns in this period but, since France’s policies towards Canada and Quebec were directed from de Gaulle’s offices in the Élysée, it could do little to help. Subsequently, the Canadian government had no choice but to approach the idef directly for an invitation. Canadian diplomats in Paris appealed to René Cassin, its president, and explained that the federal government of Canada shared jurisdiction

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for justice with the provinces. Even more fundamentally, they said, it was only the federal government rather than provincial governments that had the right to participate in international organizations on behalf of Canadians.19 Cassin apologized for any embarrassment the idef may have caused by issuing an invitation to Quebec alone and promptly arranged for an invitation to be sent to Lucien Cardin, Canada’s Justice Minister. In the end, Quebec’s Justice Minister declined to send a delegate to the meeting in Lomé, but after finally securing an invitation for Canada Paul Martin had no intention of letting the opportunity to reinforce Canada’s interests in or responsibility for participation in the francophone community pass by. When Cardin advised Martin that he could not make the trip to Togo, the Secretary of State for External Affairs asked Pierre Trudeau, then parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, to go in his place. Trudeau and two other delegates, Albert Bohémier and Jacques Boucher, left for Togo on 18 January. They participated in all of the conference’s sessions and stressed the importance of such meetings in fostering cooperation among French-speaking jurists in North America, Africa, and elsewhere. They also discussed the possibility of hosting a future meeting of the idef in Canada. In general, however, the meeting was uneventful. Once it was over, Trudeau paid informal visits on behalf of Lester Pearson and Paul Martin to the leaders of Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Tunisia. Everywhere he went Trudeau explained Canada’s interest in la francophonie, its bilingual character, and its constitutional framework with the hope of clearing up the confusion about Canada and the division of powers between the federal government and Quebec that seemed to plague French African governments.20 As Trudeau discovered, confusion and misconceptions about Canada, Quebec, and their respective constitutional powers were rampant throughout the governments of the French African countries. In Senegal, for example, Trudeau was told that President Senghor intended to invite Quebec to a meeting of francophone ministers of education. It was only with the greatest difficulty and after reiterating that the federal government enjoyed exclusive responsibility for foreign affairs in Canada that Trudeau persuaded Senghor that any invitation to an international meeting had to be addressed to the Canadian government instead. Similarly, in Tunisia, he had to explain to President Bourguiba that Canada was a bilingual country and that the French language and culture flourished throughout Canada and not just in Quebec.21

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Trudeau enjoyed greater success when he articulated Canada’s problems in a manner that resonated with French African leaders themselves. Thus in Cameroon he argued that the federal government had to be responsible for Canada’s participation in la francophonie to protect the country’s unity from the threat of tribalism.22 This, at least, was an argument with which French African statesmen could sympathize since many of them already feared that la francophonie might exacerbate tribal, linguistic, and ethnic tensions in their own countries. Trudeau doubted that he had eradicated all of the confusion about Canada and Quebec in French Africa, but he nonetheless considered his trip a successful step towards securing Canada’s rights in the francophone community. Still, he felt that the Canadian government needed to do still more; it was after reading Trudeau’s report that Marcel Cadieux dedicated five foreign service officers to issues related to la francophonie within the Department of External Affairs.23 Like others in Ottawa, Trudeau had reached the conclusion that if Canada did not forcefully assert its claim to membership in the community of French-speaking states Quebec would rush to fill the void. In at least one respect, however, Trudeau returned from Africa persuaded that Quebec’s international ambitions posed little or no threat to Canada. As a member of the federal Cabinet’s Committee on Federal-Provincial Relations, he had worried about allowing Quebec, or any other province, to establish its own foreign aid program. Yet the aid workers he met in Africa convinced him that provincial aid would be “so marginal, and so dependent on federal cooperation, as to present very little danger to Canadian unity.” Furthermore, the Canadian aid workers so impressed him with the strength of their feelings for Canada that Trudeau predicted “that not one man in a hundred would remain separatist after a year with our External Aid programme.”24 Paul Martin had asked Trudeau to visit French Africa as part of a campaign to counter the nationalist propaganda emanating from Quebec that misled governments in France and Africa about “the complexities of the Canadian constitutional situation.” Martin believed that the problem could be corrected by explaining to these governments the nature of Canada’s constitution and the federal government’s expectations regarding contacts between foreign countries and Canada’s provinces. Other individuals were not convinced that defending federal interests would be so easy. Jules Léger and Marcel Cadieux both felt that de Gaulle’s “predominant, not to say unbalanced, interest in the French-Canadians of Quebec” and France’s willingness to intervene in Canadian internal

The Road to Libreville

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affairs complicated this task.25 They believed that the Canadian government needed to be more forceful in its own defence. Since French support for Quebec was unlikely to diminish until de Gaulle left the political scene, Léger felt that Canada needed to cultivate the support of the French-speaking countries in Africa even more aggressively. It also needed to intensify its efforts to make la francophonie receptive to federal interests by including within it fields of federal rather than provincial jurisdiction. Finally, believing that Quebec’s participation in the francophone community only threatened Canada if it took place in defiance of the federal government, Léger also argued that there needed to be an agreement with the province about la francophonie.26 This would allow Quebec to participate in it under the umbrella of the federal government’s overall responsibility for foreign affairs. Given the failure of federal-Quebec negotiations over educational assistance for French Africa between 1964 and 1966, no one in Ottawa anticipated that the federal government would be able to reach an agreement with the Johnson government about la francophonie. Paul Martin was prepared to advance Canada’s interests in the organization more forcefully, and in March he outlined how in a speech to Montreal’s Junior Chamber of Commerce. He announced that the Canadian government wanted to host a conference where representatives of French-speaking countries would gather to create an Association internationale de solidarité francophone.27 This would be an umbrella organization for coordinating the activities of private, nongovernmental associations dedicated to promoting the French language and culture. In this way, the Pearson government hoped to demonstrate its interest in the francophone community, to fend off Quebec’s bid for membership, and to reassure French Canadians that it reflected their interests in its foreign policy. The proposal’s focus on nongovernmental associations would keep Quebec from aspiring to a prominent role, but it was also represented the Canadian government’s final acknowledgement that it was futile to pursue a formal structure and political orientation for la francophonie. Over the following months, Canadian diplomats promoted Martin’s idea throughout French-speaking Africa. It was generally well received, and the governments of Ivory Coast, Togo, and Upper Volta in particular endorsed the Canadian initiative and its emphasis on nongovernmental associations. There was also skepticism, especially in Tunisia, where the country’s small private sector did not possess and could not support the type of private organizations that Martin’s proposal targeted.28 The

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French themselves had doubts about the feasibility of the plan and Ambassador Leduc told Canadian officials in Ottawa that his government was surprised that Canada was going forward with the initiative since most French African governments were clearly not ready for it. According to Canadian diplomats in Paris, however, the French were just bitter that Martin had pre-empted the committee recently established by Raymond Bousquet that the French government had expected to play a leading role in the evolution of the francophone community.29 Undaunted, the Canadian government went ahead with its plans to promote the conference for representatives of French-speaking countries with all of the leaders scheduled to arrive in Canada later that year for Expo 67. With the government pressing its interests in la francophonie as best it could, that left only the problem of Quebec to be solved. Jules Léger still believed that the federal government could reach an agreement to allow Quebec to belong to the organization while maintaining federal predominance in foreign affairs, but Martin and Cadieux were not convinced. They were not prepared to concede that Quebec had the right to establish its own international identity. Nor were they prepared to cede the federal government’s claim that it alone could represent French Canadians internationally. In contrast to Léger, who wrote an unpublished article that seemed to advocate allowing Quebec to conduct its own foreign relations, Martin and Cadieux took a dim view of Quebec’s international aspirations and were determined to preserve federal authority over all aspects of foreign policy.30 Lester Pearson did send a letter to Daniel Johnson in April offering to cooperate with Quebec vis-à-vis the francophone community but only if Quebec in turn respected federal rights. Yet the chance of a negotiated resolution to their dispute disappeared in May when the Canadian government signed a cultural accord with Belgium. This accord compelled Quebec to work with and through the federal authorities if it wished to develop cultural relations with Belgium, and it was bitterly resented by the province’s government. The latter later retaliated by trying to prevent the Canadian ambassador to Belgium from accompanying the Prince and Princess of Belgium to Quebec for their official visit to Expo 67.31 Because it believed that it could persuade other countries not to deal directly with Quebec, the Pearson government was not prepared to negotiate a settlement with the province at the expense of federal interests. For its part, the government of Quebec was just as adamant that it had the right to represent itself in international organizations. With the federal government leery of setting a precedent and provoking even further

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demands from Quebec, and with Quebec’s government confident that other governments supported its cause, neither was willing to compromise. Quebec’s confidence stemmed in part from the aupelf meeting in Montreal in early May when representatives from Senegal, Ivory Coast, Dahomey, and Congo (Kinshasa) all declared that they wanted the province to participate in the next meeting of the francophone ministers of education in early 1968.32 It also drew strength from the continued support of Charles de Gaulle and the French government. Deeply entrenched in their own positions, the governments of Canada and Quebec were heading towards a confrontation. The previous summer, Premier Johnson had indicated that his government would invite the world leaders participating in Expo 67 to visit Quebec City in an official capacity. Predictably, the federal government had objected to this plan; a compromise was reached whereby Quebec’s invitations were included in the official invitations that the Pearson government sent to foreign governments. Despite this compromise, Johnson refused to allow the Department of External Affairs to coordinate arrangements for the dignitaries visiting Quebec’s capital. André Patry, Quebec’s newly appointed Chief of Protocol, informed the consular corps in Quebec City that they had to make all arrangements for visiting Quebec City directly with his office, which would ignore all requests forwarded by Ottawa. Shortly thereafter, in December 1966, the federal government informed the diplomatic community in Ottawa that it alone was responsible for corresponding with foreign governments and that any communications with the government of Quebec had to use it as an intermediary. These announcements effectively forced foreign governments to choose between dealing with Ottawa and Quebec City when planning their participation in Expo 67. Intent on meeting with members of Quebec’s government, many of the French African states chose to coordinate their representatives’ visits directly with Quebec.33 For the Pearson government, this disturbing development raised the prospect that Quebec would, in the words of Claude Morin, try to take advantage of Expo 67 to embarrass the federal authorities, perhaps by signing as many agreements with as many French African states as it could.34 Quebec’s government was at least expected to use its meetings with the French African visitors to press its claim to international competence in fields of provincial responsibility. Consequently, Pearson, Martin, and others within the federal government watched anxiously as the first of these visitors arrived. Tunisia’s Under-Secretary for Industry and Commerce and the Malagasy ambassador to Canada officiated

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at the celebration of their countries’ official day at Expo, and the rest of their visit passed without incident. Neither the federal nor the Quebec governments even held discussions of any kind with these officials. The visit of Charles de Gaulle to Quebec City and Montreal beginning on 24 July, however, dramatically changed the dynamic of Expo 67.35 With his “Vive le Québec libre” speech, de Gaulle publicly declared his sympathy for Quebec’s nationalist cause and, after being rebuked by Lester Pearson, promptly returned to France. The incident provoked tremendous fears in Ottawa that French African leaders would follow the French president’s example. Over the following days and weeks, the federal government devoted even more attention to the remaining eleven French African delegations scheduled to visit Canada for Expo 67. The next to arrive were from Gabon and Morocco. Their representatives visited Ottawa and then Quebec City, holding discussions on a range of subjects in both cities before heading to Montreal. Federal officials concluded that the Moroccans were more supportive of the federal position vis-à-vis its responsibility for foreign affairs and la francophonie than the Gabonese, but neither of these delegations risked getting involved in the constitutional dispute between Canada and Quebec. Then, on 11 August, the president of Rwanda visited Quebec City and had his Minister of Planning sign a joint declaration with Premier Johnson regarding cultural exchanges between the two governments and Quebec’s commitment of $150,000 to the University of Butaré.36 Johnson and President Grégoire Kayibanda had worked out the details of the declaration in private meetings instigated by Père Lévesque, the rector of the university. For Johnson, this was a tangible demonstration that Quebec could enter into direct relations with countries other than France. He also hoped that a public declaration would make it harder for Kayibanda to reject Quebec’s aid once it had been accepted. Though clearly unhappy that Rwanda had signed an agreement with the government of Quebec, the Pearson government was not sure if it established the legally binding rights and obligations of standard international agreements. There were fewer doubts in Quebec where the press trumpeted the agreement, giving it a status akin to the accord that the province had signed with France in 1965.37 It was only in November, however, that the Canadian delegation to the United Nations in New York finally obtained, after weeks of asking, a note in which the Rwandan government explained its interpretation of the joint declaration. This note declared that the government of Rwanda only considered the

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declaration an expression of friendship between Rwanda and Quebec.38 In a nod to federal responsibility for foreign affairs, it added that the declaration could not have been a binding international accord since it had been concluded without the Canadian government’s approval or assistance. No doubt, the annual $750,000 in aid that Canada gave to Rwanda and to the National University of Rwanda in Butaré had helped its government reach this conclusion. In the meantime the federal government still had to weather the visits of eight more French African delegations to Expo 67, including those of Ivory Coast, Senegal, Cameroon, and Niger, without any further damage to its position vis-à-vis Quebec’s international aspirations. To accomplish this feat, it needed to convince the visitors from French Africa not to sign any agreements with the government of Quebec without federal approval. Accordingly, the Department of External Affairs hastily arranged even further meetings between them and senior federal politicians and officials and French Canadian Cabinet Ministers became even more prominently involved in the official functions in their honour in Ottawa. The fact that these measures had not already been planned well in advance enraged Lester Pearson, but they seemed to work.39 There were no further incidents throughout the rest of Expo 67, though Daniel Johnson’s illness, which forced his government to cancel all remaining official visits to Quebec City, likely had some effect on this situation. In all, the federal government was reasonably satisfied by the results of the visits by the representatives of the French African states to Canada during summer 1967. There had been some problems and misunderstandings about Quebec’s international powers, but federal officials felt that they had made valuable contacts with important leaders from French-speaking Africa and had impressed upon them Canada’s interest in la francophonie as well as its claim to responsibility for all aspects of Canada’s foreign affairs. Yet the government of Quebec had equal if not greater cause for satisfaction. Several French African governments had proven themselves either willing to deal directly with Quebec at Expo 67 or at least sympathetic to its interests. Quebec could also count on the active support of French embassies throughout Africa.40 More importantly, Charles de Gaulle himself had publicly declared his support for Quebec, and given his prestige this had the potential to influence French African opinion greatly. In response to the criticism in the French and international press of de Gaulle’s speech in Montreal, an editorial vetted by President Senghor’s own press office appeared in the Senegalese newspaper

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Dakar-Matin and depicted the French president as the champion of Quebec’s embattled French-speaking people. It concluded that de Gaulle had been unjustly criticized and denounced the Canadian government for treating French Canadians like second-class citizens.41 In Cameroon, President Ahmadou Ahidjo told Canada’s ambassador that de Gaulle had been justified in what he had said, a sentiment echoed by other leaders including the archbishop of Yaoundé.42 Canadian diplomats worried that the esteem in which de Gaulle was held throughout the French-speaking countries of Africa and their dependence on France for financial and technical assistance would induce many of them to follow the lead of France and its president on the issue of Quebec and la francophonie. After Expo 67 the Pearson government still hoped that it could minimize the threat to its interests by pursuing Paul Martin’s idea for an umbrella organization linking private associations within French-speaking countries. With the approach of the next meeting of the French and French African ministers of education, however, events were rapidly moving beyond the control of the Canadian government. In July and August, Quebec’s Minister of Education, Marcel Massé, had actively lobbied French African leaders visiting Montreal for an invitation to the meeting, scheduled for February 1968 in Libreville Gabon. His efforts bore fruit. In November, Canada’s outgoing ambassador to Niger learned that President Hamani Diori intended, as president of the organization planning the meeting, to issue an invitation to the government of Quebec. Officially, Canadian diplomats were told that Diori and the French Minister of Education had decided upon this course of action because Canada did not have a minister of education. Privately, they also learned that President Diori considered the government of Quebec the representative of French Canadians.43 The Canadian government was not comforted by the assurance that though the invitation would be addressed to Quebec it would be sent to Ottawa. Shortly thereafter, Canada’s new ambassador to Niger, Thomas Malone, presented his credentials and told President Diori that, since it would be inappropriate to invite Quebec in any capacity to an international meeting, the invitation to the meeting of the ministers of education should be addressed to the Canadian government instead. Malone went on to explain that French Canadians did not just live in Quebec – he pointed to New Brunswick as an example – and this fact surprised Diori so much that he asked the ministers and other dignitaries who had attended the ceremony if they had been aware of it.44 This

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intervention had the desired effect, and Diori agreed to invite Canada to the meeting instead of Quebec. Yet Malone cautioned his colleagues in Ottawa that under pressure from de Gaulle, to whom he was devoted, and from France, from which Niger received $8 million in annual aid, Diori might still change his mind. From their conversations with the government of Niger as well as the government of Senegal it was clear to Canadian officials in Ottawa and in Africa that France was attempting to orchestrate Quebec’s participation at the meeting of francophone ministers of education. Ambassadors Coté in Senegal and Malone in Niger found the leaders of the governments to which they were posted reasonable, friendly, and willing to listen to their explanations of Canada’s interests in la francophonie and of the division of powers between the federal government and the provinces within the Canadian federation. They did not believe that these leaders harboured any hostility towards Canada. They had simply misunderstood Canada’s political, cultural, and demographic situation and relied upon the French to interpret it for them. Malone’s dealings with President Diori in particular had demonstrated that French African governments could be convinced that allowing Quebec to participate in international associations would cause severe political and constitutional problems for Canada. In December 1967 and January 1968, therefore, Marcel Cadieux instructed Canadian diplomats throughout Africa to make similar efforts to convince the other French African governments that only Canada’s federal government could represent French Canadians at international meetings.45 These efforts largely succeeded. Presidents Félix Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast, Habib Bourguiba, and Sangoulé Lamizana of Upper Volta all indicated that they were unwilling to intervene in Canada’s domestic affairs while the government of Guinea even urged Canada to take a firmer stand against France’s encouragement of separatism in Quebec.46 Since de Gaulle and the French government still seemed intent on having Quebec invited to the upcoming conference on education in Libreville, Canadian diplomats remained unsure of the extent to which Canada could rely on their help if France insisted on pressing Quebec’s case. This uncertainty, and the anxiety it caused in Ottawa, raised concerns within the Pearson government that focusing its efforts on persuading the French-speaking countries of Africa against entering into direct relations with Quebec might not succeed. This left it with little choice but to try to conclude some kind of an agreement with the Johnson government about la francophonie, even though the prospects of reaching an

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agreement were not promising. The Department of External Affairs had held informal discussions with the previous government of Quebec on this subject in summer 1966, but, just like their negotiations over the educational assistance program, the talks collapsed because they had utterly failed to find the basis for a mutually satisfactory compromise.47 Thereafter, efforts to renew the discussions had been limited, sporadic, and uneventful until 1 December 1967, when Lester Pearson sent Daniel Johnson a proposal. After stating that Canada could not fulfill its own interest in the francophone community without Quebec’s active participation, Pearson suggested that representatives of the provincial government could lead or play a leading role in Canada’s delegation at meetings of la francophonie dealing with provincial responsibilities. At meetings dealing with subjects within the jurisdiction of the federal government, Canada’s delegation would still include Quebec’s representatives but in a subordinate role.48 This proposal implied that Quebec’s Minister of Education could attend the conference in Gabon provided that he went as the leader of a Canadian delegation. This offer had little effect on the government of Quebec. Just before Christmas, Claude Morin told the French ambassador to Canada that Quebec would not compromise. Nor would it accept any invitation that came to it from Ottawa, even if its representative was selected to lead the Canadian delegation. Francois Leduc replied that the French government would do exactly what Quebec wanted and because of the influence that it exerted over Gabon, the meeting’s host, Quebec’s government could expect to receive an invitation shortly.49 By early January, it had become clear to federal officials that Johnson was not going to respond to Pearson’s proposal, and Marc Lalonde, a senior advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office, was sent to try to circumvent Johnson by asking Jean-Guy Cardinal, Quebec’s new Minister of Education, to lead Canada’s delegation to the Libreville conference. Saying that he had no intentions of going to Gabon, Cardinal declined the offer.50 On 11 January, two officials within the French Foreign Ministry, which had always been more sympathetic to the Canadian government than the Élysée Palace, tried to find a way to avoid the impending crisis. Not knowing that Quebec had already rejected this option, JeanDaniel Jurgensen and André Bettencourt suggested to Quebec’s delegate general in Paris that the Canada-Quebec dispute could be resolved if the Canadian government simply appointed Jean-Guy Cardinal its official delegate to the meeting of ministers of education.51 In any

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event, this suggestion came too late. Quebec’s government had already received its invitation from Gabon and was determined to use it. J.E. Thibault, Canada’s newly appointed ambassador to Gabon, discussed the situation with Gabon’s Foreign Minister on 9 January, as did ambassador A.F. Hart on 13 January in Niamey. They were assured that Jean-Guy Cardinal had been invited in a purely personal capacity and that the invitation had been a mistake despite the fact that the secretary of state in the Quai d’Orsay later confirmed that, as federal officials suspected, Quebec’s invitation had been initiated in Paris.52 Thereafter, Paul Martin instructed Thibault to return to Libreville to reiterate Canada’s request for an invitation to the forthcoming meeting, but because he had not yet formally presented his credentials as ambassador, he was prevented from meeting with either President Omar Bongo or any other members of Gabon’s government. Martin attempted to circumvent this problem by appointing Thibault as Canada’s chargé d’affaires in Gabon, but even this ruse failed to secure him a meeting with the president.53 As a result, the Canadian government’s last chance to secure an invitation to the Libreville Conference passed. After being rebuffed in his attempt to meet with President Bongo on 31 January, Thibault passed by Libreville’s City Hall and saw Quebec’s flag prominently displayed amongst those of the other states due to arrive for the start of the conference several days later. This was indicative of the reception that Quebec’s delegation – Minister of Education Cardinal, Deputy Minister Arthur Tremblay, and Julien Aubert – received in Libreville. They were treated as if they represented an independent, sovereign state, and they played a prominent role throughout the conference proceedings.54 For the Canadian government, Quebec’s treatment reinforced the belief that its invitation had not been a mistake and represented clear interference in Canada’s affairs.55 Marcel Cadieux wanted the federal government to respond to this attack forcefully through a formal protest from Lester Pearson or Paul Martin to the conference organizers. He also wanted the federal government to punish the true authors of the invitation, France and Quebec, by undermining Quebec’s credit in the United States, challenging its actions in the Supreme Court, cancelling the sale of plutonium to France, and abrogating visa and trade agreements or even breaking diplomatic relations with France. He believed that if Canada failed to respond strongly it had to accept that Quebec had secured its own international status and identity, at least in some spheres. Unwilling to accept this, he

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wanted to “let the French and the world know that there is still some life left in us and that we will react with all the vigour and strength at our command to protect ourselves against external intervention.”56 Paul Martin disagreed with Cadieux. He felt that “no amount of escalation will budge [de Gaulle] on the essentials of his ill-inspired policies” and that any action that Canada took against France would do even more harm to Canada by giving de Gaulle an excuse to ignore the Canadian government entirely. Canada, he felt, could not afford the luxury of “gestures of annoyance”; he only sanctioned an oral protest that Jules Léger delivered to the French government on 20 February.57 Instead, Martin believed that the dispute had to be resolved within Canada by cooperating with the government of Quebec, and here too if the federal government responded carelessly if risked spoiling any hope of a compromise. This left only one target for Canada’s anger, and Lester Pearson and Paul Martin chose to send their message to France through the same surrogate that de Gaulle and France had used to invite Quebec to the Libreville conference. After Gabon’s ambassador to Canada justified the invitation to Quebec by stating that “Quebec enjoys autonomy in the cultural field,” Pearson suspended Canada’s diplomatic relations with Gabon and refused to allow Gabon’s ambassador to present his credentials in Ottawa.58 The Pearson government also realized that to avoid a repeat of this blow to its interests in la francophonie it now had to rely even more heavily on help from the other French African countries in the wake of the Libreville conference. This necessity made it even more important to court them with the most effective tool that the federal government had at its disposal. Fortunately, as Marcel Cadieux told Paul Martin, the “francophone African states are very much interested in [Canada’s] aid programmes.”59 Canada could not hope to match the aid that France gave the French-speaking countries of Africa, but it could demonstrate that its friendship was desirable. It could demonstrate, in effect, that Canada’s friendship would be more valuable to them than Quebec’s could ever be. Henri Gaudefroy, the director of francophone programs in the External Aid Office, had planned to send an aid mission to Tunisia, Cameroon, and Senegal in early 1968. Because of the growing Canada-Quebec dispute over the Libreville Conference, however, this technical mission took on a much greater significance for the Canadian government. Pearson and Martin had already decided to double Canadian aid for French Africa to over $23 million, but they also overruled the eao’s plan to concentrate this aid by eliminating nine countries

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from the program. Under the circumstances, Canada needed to expand its relations with all of the French African countries, not curtail them.60 In October 1967, Paul Martin asked Lionel Chevrier, former Cabinet Minister, high commissioner to Britain, and commissioner general for Expo 67, to lead the expanded aid mission to Africa. By early February 1968, his task, which the federal government considered vital, was to convince the French African states that they stood to benefit from their relations with Canada but that these benefits would be lost if they dealt directly with Quebec in international affairs. The Chevrier Mission began on 9 February, just as the Libreville Conference was ending. It spent six weeks in Africa, with stops in Morocco, Tunisia, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Niger, and Senegal. It even stopped in Paris, though Pearson refused to allow Chevrier to consult the French government.61 Chevrier spent several days in each of the French African countries discussing potential and actual Canadian aid. In Morocco, Chevrier committed Canada to assisting, among other projects, a cadastral survey, a hospital in Rabat, a centre for mining research, and tourism development in Tangiers. In all, Chevrier committed Canada to $9.4 million in aid for Morocco over five years, a large increase from the twenty teachers and the same number of scholarships that had previously been Morocco’s share of Canadian aid. Chevrier was equally lavish with the other countries, committing Canada to over $35 million in grants and loans over several years. Yet Chevrier also took advantage of his meetings with French African leaders to reiterate Canada’s position about its constitutional responsibility for foreign affairs and its opposition to allowing Quebec to conduct its own foreign relations. He reinforced this message by pointedly ignoring Gabon, despite the fact that he had originally been scheduled to visit that country as well. The Canadian government’s message was thus clear. If the French African states respected Canada’s position they could expect increasing amounts of Canadian aid. If not, they risked, like Gabon, the withdrawal of Canadian aid and worsened relations with Canada.62 Some governments and individuals in French Africa resented both this message and Canada’s treatment of Gabon, which they considered unduly harsh. The fact that the Canadian government had not responded in like manner to France, the real instigator of the crisis, reinforced for them the injustice of Canada’s reaction. Yet Chevrier also reported that this opinion was not universally shared in French Africa, especially in countries like Ivory Coast and Cameroon, where opinion was more favourable to Canada.63 Canada’s overall message seemed to

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have the desired effect. On 8 March, a Congolese diplomat told Ambassador Coté in Dakar that his government was worried since the next meeting of the French and French African ministers of education would be held in Kinshasa. The ambassador said that “Canadian aid was too important to his country for [it] to risk it by acting as Gabon did and he wondered what his government should do.” For Coté, this conversation indicated that the Chevrier Mission and “the Canadian government’s decision about Gabon may already be bearing fruit.”64 Despite this positive sign, the Canadian government’s problems were only beginning. Along with France, many French African countries still wanted Quebec to participate in the francophone community directly. Others were especially vulnerable to pressure from France. The government of Quebec itself was emboldened by its triumph at the Libreville conference to demand its own place at all subsequent meetings of la francophonie. There remained, therefore, a great deal of work for the Canadian government to do if it wanted to prevent Quebec from entrenching its claim to be able to represent itself internationally. This work was made easier by Canada’s growing aid program, the sympathy that many French African states felt for a central government faced with the prospect of internal disunity, their inherent respect for international practices, and their reluctance to submit to pressure from France. Yet the crisis surrounding the Libreville conference was only the beginning of a long struggle that would condition every aspect of Canada’s relations with the French African countries until 1972 and beyond. With the retirement of Lester Pearson and his replacement as prime minister by Pierre Trudeau in April 1968, however, it would be up to a new government to continue the struggle.

Conclusion

The Libreville Conference of February 1968 inaugurated a difficult period in Canadian foreign relations. For several years thereafter the struggle to secure Canada’s right to participate in la francophonie while preventing Quebec from securing its own separate membership in the organization preoccupied the Canadian government. Until at least 1971–72 this preoccupation conditioned almost all aspects of Canada’s relations with the French-speaking countries of Africa for the simple reason that the Canadian government relied on help from these countries to counter France’s overt support for and advancement of Quebec’s claims to international competence. Yet the Libreville Conference had also demonstrated that, even though many of them sympathized with the Canadian position, few of the French-speaking countries of Africa were prepared to oppose Quebec’s participation in la francophonie actively while almost all of them were extremely vulnerable to French pressure on Quebec’s behalf. After the Libreville Conference, Quebec continued to press for its own invitation to participate in subsequent meetings of the francophone states held in Paris, Kinshasa, Niamey, and elsewhere while France continued to manoeuvre to deliver the invitations. Consequently, the Canadian government continued its attempts to convince the French African states that it rather than Quebec should be the principal agent of Canada’s involvement in la francophonie. These efforts were not without

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their successes. In January 1969, for example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo invited Canada rather than Quebec to participate in the next meeting of the Ministers of Education of French-speaking states held in Kinshasa. That the French contrived at the last moment to have a separate invitation sent to Quebec for the Kinshasa conference, however, demonstrated the difficulties that the Canadian government would have in consolidating its victories in the face of French determination and French African diffidence. Under the circumstances, the Canadian government quickly determined that French African sympathy, insofar as it existed, would not be enough to protect federal interests in la francophonie against the concerted efforts of France and Quebec. This realization slowly dawned on the federal government of Canada between 1967 and 1969, with important effects on its subsequent relations with Quebec. Because of the support it received from France and the influence that France brought to bear in French Africa, Quebec was in the enviable position vis-à-vis the federal government of largely being able to dictate how, when, and where it chose to participate in the emerging community of francophone states. In order for the Canadian government to ensure that la francophonie did not harm federal interests, therefore, it needed to reach an agreement with Quebec regarding the latter’s participation in the community. Yet because of Quebec’s success in gaining entry to the intergovernmental meetings of francophone countries, it was much more important for the federal government than for the government of Quebec to strike a deal. When Canada’s federal and provincial governments discussed changes to Canada’s constitution regarding the international competence of the provinces in the late 1960s and early 1970s, therefore, the dispute over la francophonie considerably strengthened Quebec’s negotiating position. The Canadian government was thus forced to try to find a compromise with a government in Quebec that had less of a need to do so. Moreover, the Canadian government’s pursuit of a settlement of the francophonie dispute occurred at a time when the separatist movement was gaining strength in the province. To many individuals in Ottawa, it was necessary to prevent Quebec from acting independently on the international stage not just to preserve the authority of the federal government but, more importantly, to maintain the unity of Canada itself, as separatists delighted in Quebec’s involvement in the international community of francophone states and expected Quebec’s participation in la francophonie to advance their goal of independence. A few short months after the Libreville Conference, a new government took power

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in Canada under the leadership of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. It would be up to this government to resolve, as best it could, the complex mix of intertwined domestic and international issues raised by the participation of Canada and Quebec in la francophonie. It would be up to the Trudeau government to try to resolve a dispute that had profound repercussions on Canada’s foreign relations, especially its relations with France and the French African countries, on Canada-Quebec relations, and on the evolution of Canadian federalism and of Canada’s constitution. As they had been for the earlier Pearson government, the biggest obstacles that the Trudeau government faced in pursuing this goal were Quebec, with its aggressive pursuit of its own international identity, and France, which supported Quebec to advance Gaullist foreign policy aims, strengthen French culture, and promote France’s grandeur. As long as both of them insisted on Quebec’s inclusion in la francophonie in a way that the federal government of Canada considered inimical to its most fundamental interests, the latter had a very difficult task before it. Nonetheless, this task had not been made any easier by the Canadian government’s inability to convince the French African countries to reject Quebec’s participation in the Libreville Conference and subsequent manifestations of the emerging francophonie. With this failure, the Canadian government paid the price for the way that its relations with the French-speaking countries of Africa had evolved to 1968. Though largely friendly, the foundations of these relations were neither deep enough nor strong enough to counter the dependence of the French African states on France, with the result that many of them were unwilling or unable to resist the pressure that France brought to bear on Quebec’s behalf. France’s colonies and dependencies in Africa had only gained their independence from France between 1956 and 1961, and the Canadian government could not have expected to replicate by 1968 the breadth and the strength of the ties that continued to link France and the newly independent French-speaking countries of Africa. Yet, even before their independence, the Canadian government had adopted an approach towards French Africa whose consequences would only appear later. After the Second World War, successive Canadian governments conditioned their policies towards such issues as the inclusion of Algeria within nato’s territory, United Nations’ debates over Morocco and Tunisia, the Algerian war for independence, or the independence of Guinea according to French sensitivities and expectations of support.

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Because the governments considered France an important ally in the Cold War, they were extremely concerned by France’s growing alienation from nato throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s. To avoid further alienating France, they provided as much support as they could to French colonial policies in Africa, often at the expense of Canada’s own interests. This pattern of deferring Canadian interests in French Africa to those of France persisted into the years following the independence of the French African states when the desire to maintain French influence in Africa in order to preserve Western interests and contain the spread of communism as the Cold War spread to the continent combined with the fear of antagonizing France to affect Canadian policy. These considerations, coupled with the perceived dearth of direct Canadian interests in French-speaking Africa, resulted in the belief that Canada could afford to develop its relations with the countries of French Africa slowly. The Canadian government only gradually acknowledged that their shared linguistic and cultural heritage provided Canada with a compelling motive to establish strong relations with French Africa, particularly once the people and the government of Quebec began to exhibit a greater awareness of and interest in the French-speaking peoples of the world. After 1963 the Pearson government expanded Canada’s relations with French African countries rapidly as a way of exhibiting Canada’s bilingual and bicultural character in its foreign relations, yet even so it kept a close eye on France’s reaction to Canadian activities in French Africa. It was not until France withdrew from nato’s military command in 1966 that the Pearson government finally began to pursue the development of Canada’s relations with French African countries unfettered by concerns about the possible effect on Canada’s relations with France. Because the Libreville Conference took place only two years after that, however, there was scant opportunity for Canada to develop the type of relations with French-speaking states in Africa that it would need to defend its interests during the creation of la francophonie between 1968 and 1971. Critics of Canadian foreign relations in Quebec during the 1960s often accused the federal government of neglecting to develop the relations with other French-speaking countries that French Canadians needed and wanted, an allegation that was then used to justify efforts by the government of Quebec to develop its own international identity. While Canada’s relations with the French African countries in particular did develop slowly, especially in the early 1960s, the reasons for this

Conclusion

141

are more complex than was believed at the time. It did not reflect disinterest in French Africa; Canadian governments had been taking an active interest in French African issues and developments since the late 1940s. Rather, it reflected the overarching importance of the Cold War and of Canada’s relations with France itself to Canadian foreign policy during the two decades from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1960s. Canada’s apparent neglect of French Africa was due in large measure to the deference that the Canadian government showed to France, another more politically important French-speaking country. In essence, the Canadian government placed a higher priority on preserving its relations with France than on developing its relations with the French-speaking countries of Africa, with counterproductive results. Canada’s relations with France continued to deteriorate throughout the 1960s, while the slow growth of its relations with French Africa seriously undermined the Canadian government’s ability to counter France’s support for Quebec’s international and constitutional aspirations. Two decades of Canadian policies towards France and French Africa from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1960s thus left the Canadian government a bitter legacy with profound effects on Canada, its international relations, its system of federalism, and even its national unity.

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Appendix A

Canada’s Exports to French Africa, 1963–67 (in thousands of dollars) Country

1963

1964

Algeria Cameroon Congo (Kinshasa) Ivory Coast Dahomey Gabon Guinea Madagascar Morocco Mauritania Senegal Togo Tunisia Others

3,970 24 921 17 – 14 – – 963 258 – 349 1,970 91

1,220 39 1,127 66 – 146 4 – 667 168 – 443 327 214

228 157 872 49 – 31 81 108 391 657 – 317 86 226

965 199 956 88 161 294 728 45 297 123 184 585 196 117

2,674 249 586 246 120 560 42 32 3,725 114 1,314 354 93 291

$8,558

$4,421

$3,203

$4,938

$10,300

total

1965

1966

1967

Source: nac, rg 20, Vol. 2867 file 810-F6-1, Commerce canadien avec le Maghreb et l’Afrique francophone.

Appendix B

Canada’s Imports from French Africa, 1963–67 (in thousands of dollars) Country

1963

1964

1965

1966

1967

Algeria Cameroon Congo (Kinshasa) Ivory Coast Dahomey Gabon Guinea Madagascar Morocco Mauritania Senegal Togo Tunisia Others

458 147 1,921 227 – 859 2,501 – 540 – – – 2 310

79 43 1,911 622 – 687 1,707 – 1,162 – – – 19 1,263

97 121 1,661 247 – 274 1,066 668 278 – – 6 19 68

47 57 1,081 814 – 1,064 2,088 538 1,406 – 340 – 12 201

245 106 1,374 700 5 317 2,265 250 2,465 12 13 1 512 31

$6,865

$7,493

$4,505

$7,648

$8,296

total

Source: nac, rg 20, Vol. 2867 file 810-F6-1, Commerce canadien avec le Maghreb et l’Afrique francophone.

Notes

i n t ro du c t i o n 1 For an analysis of France’s ongoing influence in French Africa after the end of the French Empire, see Tony Chafer, The End of Empire in French West Africa: France’s Successful Decolonization? 2 See, for example, André Patry, Le Québec dans le monde, and Claude Morin, L’Art de l’impossible. See also Louis Balthazar, Louis Bélanger, Gordon Mace, et al., Trente ans de politique extérieure du Québec 1960–1990.

chapter one 1 See C.P. Stacey’s account of Canada’s inter-war foreign policy in Canada and the Age of Conflict, Volume 2: 1921–1948. 2 Approximately 350 officers and ncos of the Canadian Army served with British forces in North Africa until 1943, seventeen rcn corvettes escorted convoys from Britain to North Africa after Operation Torch, and three rcaf bomber squadrons supported the invasion of Italy from bases in Tunisia in June 1943, but this was the extent of Canada’s contribution to military operations in the French colonies during the war (David J. Bercuson, Maple Leaf Against the Axis: Canada’s Second World War, 151). 3 For a more complete analysis of Canada’s involvement in this question see Martin Thomas, The French Empire at War, 134–9.

146

Notes to pages 7–11

4 Dale Thomson, Vive le Québec libre, 35–6. 5 Report on Monsieur Dupuy’s Visit to Vichy as Chargé d’affaires ad interim – November-December 1940, 7 January 1941 (N[ational] A[rchives of] C[anada], rg 25 [Department of External Affairs], Vol. 5694 file 1-V(s)). 6 Report by Monsieur Pierre Dupuy, Canadian Chargé d’affaires ad interim on his visit to Vichy, January-March 1941, 8 April 1941 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5694 file 1-V(s)). 7 Robert Speaight, Vanier: Soldier, Diplomat and Governor General, 278. 8 Mes[sage] ex-3182, S[ecretary of] S[tate for] E[xternal] A[ffairs] to Canadian Minister, Washington, 9 December 1942 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5692 file 1-A(s) pt 1). 9 Halifax made these observations in a draft memo on colonial issues circulated among the Allied governments. Tel[egram] wa-1535, Canadian Minister, Washington to ssea, 31 March 1943 (nac, rg 25 Vol. 5772 file 180(s)). 10 As quoted in Anne Orde, The Eclipse of Great Britain: The United States and British Imperial Decline, 1895–1956, 142. 11 Michael M. Harrison, The Reluctant Ally: France and Atlantic Security, 14–15. 12 For de Gaulle, France’s interests “preclude[d] any idea of [colonial] autonomy and all possibility of evolution outside the French imperial bloc” (as quoted in Jean-Pierre Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 1944–1958, 87). 13 As quoted in Orde, 141–2. 14 The Fellowship also argued that the colonies needed extensive economic assistance to raise their standards of living. R.A. Cameron to Prime Minister, 10 February 1944 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8491 file 4734-A-40). 15 Memo, Louis Rasminsky to Hume Wrong, 15 December 1942 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5772 file 180(s)); and Memo, J.R. Barton to A.D.P. Heeney, 15 December 1942 (ibid.). 16 As King wrote in his diary, the situation in India presented him with what might be “the most important mission of my life, linking my grandfather’s sacrifices in establishing self-government in Canada with the realization of self-government for the peoples of India.” National Archives of Canada, The Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, 6 March 1942, king.archives.ca; 14 March 1942, king.archives.ca. 17 Mackenzie King to Churchill, Tel. 79, 15 March 1942 in John Hilliker ed., D[ocuments on] C[anadian] E[xternal] R[elations] Vol. 9: 1942-3, 991–2. 18 H.S. Ferns, “Mackenzie King and Self-Government for India, 1942,” in British Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 2, no. 1 (1987): 112.

Notes to pages 11–15

147

19 Churchill to Mackenzie King, Tel. 63, 18 March 1942, dcer Vol. 9, 996. The British secretary of state for India, Leo Amery, tried to blunt the sting of Churchill’s reply in a letter written to King several days later. Nonetheless, Amery also advised King to “stay your hand” until it was determined if Cripps succeeded or failed. Amery to Mackenzie King, 17 March 1942, ibid., 995–6. 20 Ferns, 120. 21 Tel 30, ssea to uk Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, London, 3 February 1945 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5772 file 180(s)). 22 As articulated by Hume Wrong, the functional principle held that “the influence of the various [allied] countries should be greatest in connection with those matters with which they are most directly concerned” (as quoted in Stacey, 333). 23 King told Norman Robertson that he was particularly concerned when President Roosevelt told him in late 1942 that, to combat American criticism of British colonial policy, Roosevelt felt compelled to issue statements urging progressive colonial measures upon the British. Tel 274, ssea to uk Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, London, 23 December 1942 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5772 file 180(s)). 24 Letter A-90, John Holmes to ssea, 20 March 1945 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5772 file 180(s)); Memo – Territorial Trusteeship, George Ignatieff to Hume Wrong, 22 March 1945 (ibid.); and Memo, Canadian Embassy, Washington, to L.B. Pearson, 18 April 1945 (ibid.). 25 See Lester Pearson to Norman Robertson, 2 June 1947, and Telegram, ssea to British Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, 31 May 1947, in Norman Hillmer and Donald Page ed., dcer Vol. 13: 1947 (Ottawa: External Affairs and International Trade Canada 1993), 1372-4. 26 Des[patch] 810, Ambassador, Paris to ssea, 16 December 1947 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 3283 file 6938-B-40). 27 Denis Smith, The Diplomacy of Fear. 28 Escott Reid, Time of Fear and Hope, 213–4. 29 The French request was included in a draft treaty submitted to the Washington talks by the Brussels powers. Mes[sage] Ex-2788, ussea to Canadian Ambassador, Washington, 4 December 1948 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4800 file 282(s) pt 4.2) and Reid, 219. 30 Letter. ssea to Canadian Ambassador, Washington. 16 December 1948 in Hector Mackenzie ed., dcer Volume 14: 1948 (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1994), 468, and Minutes of Meeting of Working Group, Washington, 17 December 1948 in ibid., 470.

148

Notes to pages 15–20

31 Washington Exploratory Talks on Security – Tenth Meeting, 22 December 1948 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5800 file 283(s) pt 5.2). 32 Memo. ssea to Prime Minister. 4 January 1949 in Hector Mackenzie ed., dcer Vol. 15: 1949 (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1995), 478 and Minute by Ambassador in United States. 4 January 1949 in ibid., 489. 33 John Holmes writes of the general sympathy for colonial peoples in the Canadian government in The Shaping of Peace, Vol. 2, 117–8. On the press coverage of the conclusion of the North Atlantic Treaty, see John Macfarlane, “French-Canadian Views on Collective Security, 1945–1950,” (paper given to the Canada and War Conference, Ottawa, May 2000). 34 Dale Thomson, Louis St Laurent: Canadian, 203–5, and John English, The Worldly Years: The Life of Lester Pearson 1949–1972, 108. 35 Tel Wa-16, Ambassador, Washington to ssea, 5 January 1949 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4800 file 283(s) pt 5.2); and Tel 24, Ambassador, Paris to ssea, 12 January 1949 (ibid.). 36 Tel Wa-121, Ambassador, Washington to ssea, 15 January 1949 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5801 file 283(s) pt 6.1). 37 As quoted in John A. Munro and Alex Inglis eds, Mike: The Memoirs of the Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson, Volume 2 (1948–1957), 55. 38 Steven Lee, Outposts of Empire, 6. See also Denis Stairs, The Diplomacy of Constraint and James Eayrs, In Defence of Canada, Volume 5: Indochina, Roots of Complicity. 39 United States Document, Main Basis for Soviet Foreign Policy, 16 June 1951 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4539 file 50030-af-40 pt 2); Brief for the uk Deputy on the North Atlantic Council of Deputies, Main Basis of Soviet Foreign Policy, 16 June 1951 (ibid.); and Memo from European Division, Soviet Foreign Policy, 18 June 1951 (ibid.). 40 John Chipman, French Power in Africa, 93–7. 41 In Tunisia, for example, the French resident-general possessed a veto over all legislation, French members held a majority of the positions on the Council of Ministers until August 1950, at which time the membership was evenly divided between French and Tunisians, and the small French population of 150,000 supplied approximately 75 percent of Tunisia’s civil servants. Des D-820, Political Situation in Tunisia, Ambassador, Paris to ssea, 11 September 1950 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8387 file 11033–40 pt 1.1). 42 Des 1568, French Policy in Morocco, Ambassador, Paris to ssea, 30 October 1951 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 3283 file 6938-B-40). 43 Des 649, Political Situation in Morocco: Moroccan nationalism, Ambassador, Paris to ssea, 27 April 1951 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 3012 file 3618-C-40 pt 1).

Notes to pages 20–4

149

44 The first effort was defeated when the Canadian delegation suggested deferring consideration of the situation in Tunisia and Morocco until later. See Canada, Department of External Affairs, Canada and the United Nations, 1951–52, 26–8. 45 See Canada, Department of External Affairs, Canada and the United Nations, 1952–53, 16–9. 46 Mes 2, High Commissioner, New Delhi to ssea, 23 April 1952 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8387 file 11033–40 pt 1.3). 47 Escott Reid was one of the most ardent supporters of a “special relationship” between Canada and India within the Department of External Affairs; see Escott Reid, Envoy to Nehru. 48 Memo, Tunisia and the United Nations, S. Morley Scott to Acting ussea, 21 April 1952 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8387 file 11033–40 pt 1.2). 49 Memo, Tunisia and the United Nations, C.S.A. Ritchie to Acting ussea, 22 April 1952 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8387 file 11033–40 pt 1.3). 50 Oral Statement in reply to Indian Aide Memoire of April 23, (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8387 file 11033–40 pt 2.1). 51 In May 1952, French Foreign Minister René Pleven told Georges Vanier that there would be a grave crisis in Franco-American relations if the United States did not desist from its support of the North African nationalist movements. Mes 397, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, New York to ssea, 30 June 1952 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8387 file 11033–40 pt 2.2); and Mes 482, Ambassador, Paris to ssea, 22 May 1952 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8387 file 11033–40 pt 2.1). 52 See Memo, ssea to Cabinet, Tunisian and Moroccan Questions at the 7th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, 6 October 1952 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8388 file 11033–40 pt 4.1); and Memo, L.D. Wilress to ssea, 26 August 1952 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8388 file 11033–40). 53 Tunisia – Policy Guidance, 2 October 1952 (ibid.). Public, or at least editorial opinion also seemed to favour holding un discussions on Tunisia and Morocco – both the Globe and Mail and the Winnipeg Free Press, for example, editorialized that the United Nations could play a beneficial role in helping to ease tensions over Tunisia and Morocco. The Canadian government’s policy, however, was determined well in advance of these editorials. See The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 10 October 1952, 6; The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 15 December 1952, 6; and The Winnipeg Free Press, 24 October 1952, 21. 54 Canada, Canada and the United Nations, 1952–53, 18. 55 Statement by the Honourable Paul Martin in the First Committee on the Tunisian Question, 9 December 1952 in Canada, Department of External

150

56 57 58

59

Notes to pages 24–9

Affairs. Statements and Speeches and Op Cit. Tunisia – Policy Guidance, 2 October 1952. Lee, Outposts of Empire, 126 and 136. James Eayrs, In Defence of Canada, Volume 4: Growing Up Allied, 150–1. Cabinet Minutes, 31 July 1952 (nac, rg 2, [Privy Council Office Records] Series A-5-a); and Cabinet Minutes, 14 August 1952, (nac, rg 2, Series A5-a). Thomson, Louis St Laurent, 203–5

chapter two 1 For a description of the internal history of the nationalist movements in Tunisia and Morocco, see for example Stéphane Bernard, The FrancoMoroccan Conflict, 1943–1956, or Dwight L. Ling, Morocco and Tunisia: A Comparative History. 2 See Canada, Department of External Affairs, Canada and the United Nations 1953–54, 20–3. 3 Guy de Carmoy, The Foreign Policies of France, 1944–1968, 150. 4 Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, chapters 2–4. These chapters give a complete analysis of the roots of French resistance to the idea of an independent Algeria. 5 The French were not alone in this belief. Some members of the foreign policy establishment in Ottawa, such as Henry Davis, also believed that losing Algeria would diminish the influence of France in world events. Des 1091, H.F. Davis to ssea, 6 June 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7043 file 6938-40 pt 9). 6 See ussea to European Division, 6 September 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4421 file 12177–40 pt 1); European Division to ussea, 21 July 1955 (ibid.); and European Division to ussea, 23 August 1955 (ibid.). 7 Canadian diplomat M.N. Bow expressed this thought in the summer of 1955. European Division to ussea, 21 July 1955 (ibid.). 8 See Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, France and the United States, 204 and the instructions to the British delegation to the United Nations on Algeria in the fall of 1955 as revealed in United Kingdom Commonwealth Relations Office to dea, 8 October 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4421 file 12177–40 pt 1). 9 According to Canadian diplomat Henry Davis the problem was that “[s]oothing declarations from Messrs. Dulles and Dillon may reassure the French government, but are just not sufficient to offset the wide and damaging publicity of Time and Life magazines, roving senators and other influential Americans who allegedly grasp at any occasion to distort facts or give a one-sided picture of the situation [in Algeria].” Letter 1333, Tunisia –

Notes to pages 29–32

10 11

12

13

14

15

16 17

18 19

20

151

A Test Case of French Policy, H.F. Davis to ussea, 11 July 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7334 file 11033–40 pt 7.1). See also the accounts of FrancoAmerican and Franco-British relations during this period in Martin Thomas, The French North African Crisis: Colonial Breakdown and Anglo-French Relations 1945–1962. ussea to European Division, 6 September 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4421 file 12177–40 pt 1). According to Robert Bothwell, the desire to maintain friendly relations with the Third World states was one of the principal objectives of Canadian foreign policy during this period in the Cold War. See Bothwell, The Big Chill: Canada and the Cold War, 49. European Division to ussea, 23 August 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4421 file 12177–40 pt 1); and ussea to ssea, 15 February 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6846 file 3616-C-40 pt 2.1). Lester B. Pearson, “Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Press Conference, 21 March 1956” in Canada, Department of External Affairs, Statements and Speeches, 1948–1962. M.N. Bow, for one, suggested that Canada follow the British example and pledge complete political and moral support for France’s position in Algeria and North Africa. European Division to ussea, 21 July 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4421 file 12177–40 pt 1). After mid-1955, the American government also increasingly wanted France to grant self-determination to the Algerian people. See Irwin Wall, “The United States, Algeria and the Fall of the Fourth Republic,” Diplomatic History, vol. 18 (Fall 1994): 490. See Frederick Quinn, The French Overseas Empire. Gladwyn Jebb of the British Foreign Office, for example, worried that a coup inspired by events in Algeria might bring the Communists to power in Paris. United Kingdom Report, Gladwyn Jebb to Selwyn Lloyd, 30 January 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7043 file 6938-40 pt 9). Canada. Department of External Affairs, Canada and the United Nations 1954–55, 19. According to Lester Pearson, for example, “Arab nationalism is clearly one of the key battlegrounds in the new competition which is emerging between the Soviet bloc and nato.” Mes S-437, ssea to Canadian Ambassador in Paris, 24 April 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4887 file 50115-J-40 pt 8). On 29 August 1955, the Canadian chargé d’affaires in Cairo received an oral statement from the Egyptian government stating that the “Egyptian government considers the use of nato forces and equipment in North Africa to be a hostile action directed against all Arabs, not only by France but

152

21

22 23

24 25

26 27 28

29

30 31

Notes to pages 33–7

also by all countries participating in nato that acquiesced in these matters.” Weekly Divisional Note, Morocco and Algeria, rad Ford, 7 September 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6858 file 4283-40 pt 5.1). Cabinet Documentary Note (Supplementary), North Africa, 23 May 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6847 file 3618-C-40 pt 2.2); and Canadian Mission to Morocco and Tunisia, P. Beaulieu (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6116 file 50378–40 pt 1.2). Mes S-252, ssea to Canadian Delegation to North Atlantic Council, Paris, 20 March 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7722 file 12177–40 pt 2). Letter S-181, ussea to Canadian Ambassador, Paris, 16 February 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8388 file 11033–40 pt 6.2); and Letter 468, ussea to Canadian Embassy, Paris, 27 April 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7334 file 11033–40 pt 7.1). Mes S-511, ssea to Canadian Embassy, Paris, 23 May 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6847 file 3618-C-40). Memo, Military View of the Strategic Importance of Tunisia, General Charles Foulkes to ussea, 7 August 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6115 file 50378–40 pt 1.1); and Memo, Military View of Strategic Importance of Morocco and Libya, Chairman, Chiefs of Staff to ussea, 27 September 1956 (ibid.). Memo, ussea to ssea, 24 July 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7334 file 11033–40 pt 7.2). Letter, Laval Fortier, Department of Citizenship and Immigration to ussea, 24 July 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6115 file 50378–40 pt 1.1). Let 241, J. Binoche à Ambassadeur de France au Canada, 18 April 1956 ([Les] A[rchives du] M[inistère des] A[ffaires] É[trangères, Paris], [Série] Am[érique 19]52-63, [Sous-série] Canada, Vol. 180). Ironically, Canada’s willingness to seek permission before approaching potential immigrants in North Africa directly was appreciated by many officials within the French government over the years. Other countries were not so considerate of French feelings. See the files on the efforts of countries such as Australia, Paraguay, and Argentina to recruit immigrants from French North Africa in C[entre des] A[rchives d’] O[outre] M[er], fonds 81 F 1039 for further details. Memo, Immigration from North Africa and Canada’s Relations with North Africa, ussea to ssea, 15 August 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6115 file 50378– 40 pt 1.1). Letter, H.F. Davis, Paris to R.A.D. Ford, Ottawa, 18 October 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6116 file 50378–40 pt 1.2). Letter 510, Canadian Ambassador, Madrid to ussea, 24 October 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6116 file 50378–40 pt 1.2).

Notes to pages 37–42

153

32 Joint Report of the Canadian Mission to Morocco and Tunisia (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6859 file 4283-C-40 pt 1.1). 33 See the Egyptian Foreign Minister’s statement regarding nato’s complicity in the war in Algeria in Weekly Divisional Note – European Division, Morocco and Algeria, R.A.D. Ford, 7 September 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6858 file 4283-40 pt 5.1). 34 Department of National Defence Report, Deliveries of Materials and Supplies, undated (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4849 file 50105-G-40 pt 4); and nac, rg 2, Series A-5-a, Cabinet Minutes, 15 March 1956. 35 Harrison, The Reluctant Ally, 35. 36 Deborah Haight, Religious Society of Friends to ssea, 8 September 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 3012 file 3618-C-40 pt 1); and Memo, nato and North Africa, ussea to ssea, 16 September 1955 (ibid.). 37 Magali Deleuze, L’Une et l’autre indépendance, 1954–1964: les médias au Québec et la guerre d’Algérie, 192. 38 Still, French Ambassador Francis Lacoste believed that this hostility could be overcome by patient explanations of France’s interests in and plans for Algeria. Jules Beaurcy, Consul General de France à Toronto à Gaspard de Villelume, chargé d’affaires de France, Ottawa, 24 November 1955 (amaé, Am 52-63, Canada, Vol. 180); Let 908, Francis Lacoste, Ambassadeur de France au Canada à Christian Pineau, Ministre des Affaires Étrangères, Paris, 15 June 1956 (amaé, Am 52-63, Canada, Vol. 98); and Tel 270, Ambassadeur de France au Canada à mae, 22 February 1957 (amaé, Am 52-63, Canada, Vol. 99). 39 Thompson, Louis St Laurent, 485–6. 40 John Newhouse, De Gaulle and the Anglo-Saxons, 8, and Harrison, 40–1. 41 Cabinet Discussion with General Gruenther, 22 November 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4796 file 50102-P-40 pt 1). 42 Tel S48, ussea to ssea at Canadian Delegation to the United Nations, 28 January 1957 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7722 file 12177–40 pt 4); and Tel 402, ssea to ussea, 29 January 1957 (ibid.). 43 John G. Diefenbaker, “Statement by the Prime Minister in the General Assembly of the United Nations, New York, 23 September 1957,” in Canada, Department of External Affairs, Statements and Speeches, 1948–1962, and H. Basil Robinson, Diefenbaker’s World, 6. 44 Rioux, 295. 45 Memo, The Algerian Question, ussea to ssea, 11 September 1957 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7723 file 12177–40 pt 5.1). Expressions of sympathy for Algerian nationalism also began appearing more frequently in internal External Affairs communications during this period. See, for example, Letter S-258,

154

46 47

48 49

Notes to pages 42–7

A.J. Pick to the Canadian Embassy, Oslo, 24 September 1957 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7723 file 12177–40 pt 5.2). Briefing Note for the nato Ministerial Meeting in December 1957, Algeria, 4 December 1957 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4797 file 50102-S-40 pt 2). See Memo, nato and North Africa, Defence Liaison 1 Division to ussea, 4 March 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4859 file 50105-L-40) and Ling, Morocco and Tunisia, 138. Duroselle, 210, and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, 553–4. Tel 273, Canadian Embassy, Paris to External, 6 March 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7044 file 6938-40).

chapter three 1 Newhouse, De Gaulle and the Anglo-Saxons, chapter 2, and Charles de Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope: Renewal 1958–62, Endeavour 1962-, 199–200. 2 Des 561, Crisis in France: the Problems Remaining, chargé d’affaires, Paris to ssea, 9 July 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7044 file 6938-40). 3 For a description of the new constitution, see de Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope, chapter 1, and Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle, Volume 2: le politique, 1944– 1959, chapitre 24. 4 The French Foreign Ministry had asked for Canadian officials to observe the voting in Algeria, but the Department of External Affairs declined on the basis that the Arab world would resent a Canadian “stamp of approval” on the referendum and its results. Canadian officials also disputed the usefulness of sending observers in an informal capacity, since the French government would not be bound to respect their findings. Mes S-329, ussea to Canadian Embassy, Paris, 8 September 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7724 file 12177–40 pt 8.1). 5 Don Cook, De Gaulle, 314–15. 6 Tel 598, Canadian Embassy, Paris to External, 6 June 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7044 file 6938-40); and Memo, The Question of Algeria at the United Nations, 15 August 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7724 file 12177–40 pt 8.1). 7 Tel 949, Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations, New York to External, 20 June 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7044 file 6938-40). 8 Op cit, Memo, The Question of Algeria at the United Nations, 15 August 1958. 9 Memo, ussea to ssea, 11 August 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7724 file 12177–40 pt 8.1); and Memo, H.F. Davis to ssea, 21 August 1958 (ibid.).

Notes to pages 47–52

155

10 Tel 905, Canadian Ambassador, Paris to External, 18 August 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7724 file 12177–40 pt 8.1) and Op cit, Memo, H.F. Davis to ssea, 21 August 1958. 11 Duroselle, 211, and Newhouse, 79. 12 Memo, Recognition of the fln Government-in-Exile, ussea to ssea, 24 September 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5494 file 12177–40 pt 22). 13 Mes S-380, ussea to Canadian Embassy, Cairo, 29 September 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7724 file 12177–40 pt 8.1). 14 Mes S-378, ssea to Accra, 28 September 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7724 f ile 12177–40 pt 8.1). 15 Final Report – United Nations 13th Session, the Question of Algeria, 19 February 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7724 file 12177–40 pt 9.2); Tel 295, Canadian Ambassador, Paris to External, 23 March 1959 (ibid.); and Newhouse, 87. 16 De Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope, 202, Marvin R. Zahniser, Uncertain Friendship: American-French Diplomatic Relations Through the Cold, 272–85, and Trevor Lloyd, Canada in World Affairs, Volume X: 1957–1959, 156. 17 De Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope, 202–6. 18 Canada, Department of External Affairs, Canada and the United Nations – 1958, 5-6. 19 Letter, ussea to Commissioner, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 9 May 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7724 file 12177–40 pt 7.2). 20 Lacoste said that “la passivité du Gouvernement canadien est incompréhensible et ne peut manquer de heurter profondément le sentiment national français.” Tel 1249, Ambassadeur de France au Canada à mae, 1 novembre 1957 (amaé, M[ission] L[iasion] A[lgérienne], Action Extérieure, Vol. 117). 21 Draft Letter, Prime Minister to George Nowlan, Minister of National Revenue, 29 May 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7724 file 12177–40 pt 10); and Letter, ssea to George Nowlan, Minister of National Revenue, 12 June 1959 (ibid.). 22 Tel 709, Canadian Embassy, Paris to External, 24 July 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7723 file 12177–40 pt 7.1). 23 Mes S-303, H.F. Davis to Canadian Embassy, Paris, 21 July 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7723 file 12177–40 pt 7.1); and Mes S-321, H.F. Davis to Canadian Embassy, Paris, 30 July 1959 (ibid.). 24 See Thomas, The French North African Crisis, 97. 25 For a more complete description of de Gaulle’s pronouncement, see John Talbot, The War Without a Name: France in Algeria, 1954–1962, 151–3, and de Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope, chapter 4.

156

Notes to pages 53–6

26 Memo, Yvon Beaulne to H.F. Davis, 25 September 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7725 file 12177–40 pt 11.2) and Tel 1241, Canadian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, New York to External, 27 September 1959 (ibid.). 27 Final Report – 14th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, 15 September – 13 December 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5142 file 5475-dw-64-d-40 pt 1 [file pocket]). 28 See Horne, 362–72, and Talbot, chapters 7–10. 29 Carmoy, The Foreign Policies of France, 150–1. 30 Commenting on a forthcoming visit by Tunisia’s Ambassador to Canada to Prime Minister Diefenbaker, the Secretary of State for External Affairs observed that “despite all the difficulties with France in recent years, [Tunisian President] Bourguiba’s friendly feelings for the West and his persistent efforts to keep Tunisia in the Western family of nations deserve, I believe, full recognition.” Memo, ussea to Prime Minister, 10 July 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7334 file 11033–40 pt 8.1). 31 See, for example, Report of Trade Tour – North Africa, William Brett, Assistant Commercial Secretary, Canadian Embassy Paris, February 1960 (nac, Record Group 20 [Department of Trade and Commerce], Vol. 2871 file 310-M9-1); Letter, Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Trade and Commerce to ussea, 24 September 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7838 file 12791–40); and Treatment of Jews in Morocco and Tunisia, External to Canadian Embassy, Paris, 29 January 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5410 file 11033-C-40 pt 2, Tel S-39). 32 Memo, G.F. Bruce, Economic Division ii to ussea, 23 April 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6969 file 5475-ea-7-40 pt 2.1); and Letter, Marshal Steanns, D. Bruce Shaw and W.S. Stanbury, Canadian Red Cross to Prime Minister (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6859 file 4283-C-40). 33 Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, for one, demonstrated a willingness to play the West against the East in March of 1959 when he informed the British government that if he could not “get the arms he requires from the United Kingdom and the usa, he would have to turn elsewhere.” Savingram 111, United Kingdom Document, Arms for Tunisia, 23 March 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7586 file 11044-dh-40 pt 1). 34 For a description of the difficulties the department experienced in recruiting French-speaking diplomats, see Don Barry and John Hilliker, Canada’s Department of External Affairs, Volume ii: Coming of Age, 1946–1968, 187. 35 Memo, Opening of New Posts, European Division to H.F. Davis, 28 January 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6859 file 4283-C-40). 36 Memo, Extension of Representation Abroad, H.F. Davis to E. Gill, 5 February 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5410 file 11033-C-40 pt 2).

Notes to pages 56–9

157

37 Memo, H.F. Davis to ussea, 4 March 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7334 file 11033–40 pt 8.2); Memo, Marcel Cadieux to ussea, 4 March 1960 (ibid.); and Memo, 1967 World Fair in Montreal – Request for Tunisia’s Support, H.F. Davis to ussea, 4 March 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7334 file 11033-C40 pt 2). 38 Memo, Tunisian Ambassador’s Call on the Minister, African and Middle Eastern Division to ussea, 19 April 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7748 file 12354–40). 39 G.G. Crean’s meetings with the Tunisian president, Foreign Minister, and secretary general of the Foreign Ministry in June 1960, for example, were dominated by discussions of Algeria. Tel 670, Canadian Ambassador, Paris to External, 16 June 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7334 file 11033–40 pt 8.2). 40 Deleuze, L’Une et l’autre indépendance, 112–23, 162–8. 41 This total included $27 million in armaments; $28 million in ammunition; $8 million in vehicles; $13.5 in communication equipment; $20 million in aircraft and aircraft parts; and $26.5 million in ships. Memo, Mutual Aid for France, L.P. Tardif, 28 November 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4508 file 50030-L-5-40 pt 3). 42 Memo, W.H. Barton to ussea, 3 March 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4508 file 50030-L-5-40 pt 3); and Memo, The Algerian War and nato, W.H. Barton to Middle Eastern Division, 20 October 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6142 file 50405-A-40 pt 3.2). 43 Letter, Mongi Slim, Tunisian Ambassador to Canada to ssea, 14 November 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5410 file 11033-C-40 pt 2); and Memo, European Division to Consular Division, 29 November 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 6859 file 4283-C-40). 44 Memo, G.S. Murray to ussea, 13 December 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5493 file 12177–40 pt 16). 45 Canada, Canada and the United Nations, 1960, 14–15. 46 Carmoy, 205. 47 Ling, Morocco and Tunisia, 139. 48 Memo, Bizerte Crisis, J. Founier to ussea, 11 August 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5409 file 11033–40). 49 Letter, Donald Macdonald, Secretary-Treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress to ssea, 16 August 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5409 file 11033–40); and “Politics and Principle,” The Globe and Mail, 24 August 1961. 50 Memo, Tunisian Crisis and the U.N. Elections, U.N. Division to ussea, 26 July 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7335 file 11033–40 pt 8.3) and Memo, Special Session of the General Assembly – Tactical Appraisal, ussea to ssea, 15 August 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5409 file 11033–40).

158

Notes to pages 59–64

51 Memo, Bizerte at the United Nations, ussea to Prime Minister, 2 August 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5409 file 11033–40). 52 It was not until October 1964 that the last of the French troops were withdrawn from Tunisia, however. 53 Memo, Canada’s Stand on the Tunisian Issue, ussea to ssea, 28 August 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5409 file 11033–40); and Tel 1110, Canadian Embassy, Paris to External, 31 August 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5409 file 11033–40 pt 9). 54 Letter 254, Tunisia – Educational Assistance, Canadian Ambassador, Bern to ussea, 16 August 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5410 file 11033-C-40 pt 3); and Tunisian Request for Military Assistance, Jean Fournier to Defence Liaison I Division, 16 February 1962 (ibid.). 55 Press release, Office of the Prime Minister of Canada, 3 July 1962 (Archives of the Diefenbaker Centre, Saskatoon, Diefenbaker Papers file mg01/xxii/ 458 Vol. 7). 56 Howard Green, “Review of Canadian Foreign Policy – Transcript of the cbc Program Inquiry, 14 November 1961,” in Canada, Department of External Affairs, Statements and Speeches, 1948–1962.

chapter four 1 For more details on the rebellion in Madagascar and on political developments in French Africa in general after 1945, see Robert Aldrich, Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion, chapter 8. 2 Letter, Canadian Exports to Madagascar, G.R. Heasman, Director Trade Commissioner Service to Canadian Commercial Secretary, Capetown, 24 March 1947 (nac, rg 20, Vol. 2787 file 810-M1-1); and Letter, M.W. Mackenzie, Deputy Minister of Trade and Commerce to Edmund Oldfield, 20 November 1948 (ibid.). 3 Letter, Trade with Madagascar, G.R. Heasman to Canadian Commercial Secretary, Capetown, 17 July 1947 (nac, rg 20, Vol. 2787 file 810-M1-1). 4 Report, Economic Conditions – Belgian Congo, L.H. Ausman, Canadian Trade Commissioner, Leopoldville, 4 October 1948 (nac, rg 20, Vol. 2301 file 7-C17-1 pt 5). 5 In the mid-1950s, for example, La Libre Belgique criticized Alcan’s participation in a project to develop the hydroelectric and aluminium potential of the Belgian Congo. Des 279, C.P. Hébert, Canadian Ambassador, Brussels to ssea, 18 May 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 3270 file 6386-40 pt 1). 6 Kenneth Norrie and Doug Owram, A History of the Canadian Economy, 2nd Edition, 257, and Letter, H.H. Hemming, Vice President Frobisher Lim-

Notes to pages 64–70

7 8 9 10 11

12 13

14 15

16

17 18 19

20 21

22 23 24 25

159

ited to A.D. Heeney, ussea, 1 June 1951 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 3178 file 4794-40). Valerie Knowles, Strangers at Our gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540–1995. Lionel Groulx, Le Canada français missionnaire, 263. Ibid., 263–329. Ibid., 267–8. “Prestige belge au Congo,” La Libre Belgique, 10 December 1946 (Les A[rchives du] M[inistère des] A[ffaires] É[trangères,] B[russels], file A.F. 1–1, 1946-7) and Note, Direction Générale (P), 12 December 1946 (ibid.). Memo, Canadian Relations with an Awakening Africa, ussea to ssea, 9 December 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 165 file 12354–40 pt 1). Throughout the 1950s, through the Colombo Plan, Canada’s foreign aid was still overwhelmingly oriented towards the Commonwealth. Hilliker and Barry, 223. Memo, Expansion of Commonwealth Membership, G.L. Seens and G.C. McInnes, 7 November 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7748 file 12354–40). Memo, Expansion of Commonwealth Membership, R.A.D. Ford to Commonwealth Division, 21 November 1955 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7748 file 12354–40). Des K-186, French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa, ussea to Canadian Ambassador, Paris, 1 March 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4432 file 12530–40 pt 1). Des 744, Voyage officiel en Afrique occidentale française, Canadian Ambassador, Paris to ssea, 29 June 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4432 file 12530–40 pt 1). Aldrich, 301. Des 859, Movement towards Self-Government in French Territories Overseas, H.F. Davis, Paris to ssea, 30 July 1956 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 3283 file 6938-B-40). Aldrich, 301–2. Des 291, French Overseas Territories: Political Evolution, H.F. Davis, Canadian Embassy Paris to ssea, 2 April 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7792 file 12529–40). Des 660, Canadian chargé d’affaires, Paris to ssea, 7 August 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7792 file 12529–40). Aldrich, 302, and de Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope, 56. Des 719, Canadian Ambassador, Paris to ssea, 29 August 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7792 file 12529–40). Tel 1097, Canadian Delegation to nato, Paris to External, 1 June 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4859 file 50105-L-40).

160

Notes to pages 70–3

26 On Sékou Touré’s ideological leanings, see R.W. Johnson, “Sekou Toure and the Guinean Revolution,” African Affairs, vol. 69, no. 277 (Oct. 1970), 350–65. 27 Note sur la politique étrangère du Canada, 30 octobre 1958 (amaé, Am 52-63, Canada, Vol. 100) and Tel 941, Rice for Guinea, Canadian Delegation to nato, Paris to External, 7 May 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4850 file 50105-G-40 pt 6). 28 The message read: “Gouvernement République Guinée accuse reception votre message 11 courant. Confirme validité engagement économique liant Guinée et Canada avec espoir que relations se dévélopperont dans sécurité accrue au profit tous capitaux canadiens investis où à investir. Vous demande préciser conformement notre message 2 octobre intention votre gouvernement à l’égard république Guinée ayant que celle-ci ne prenne certaines décisions d’ordre économique.” [sic]. Tel, President, Republic of Guinée to Prime Minister of Canada, 13 October 1958 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7830 file 12700-A-40 pt 1.1). 29 Memorandum on Aluminium Limited’s Investments in Guinea, J.H. Bailey, Canadian Commercial Secretary, Paris, 4 March 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7830 file 12700-A-40 pt 1.1). 30 Memorandum of Conversation with Mr Sékou Touré, President of the Republic of Guinea, Nathaniel Davis, 28 January 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7830 file 12700-A-40 pt 1.1). 31 Letter, Canadian High Commissioner, Accra to G. de T. Glazebrook, Commonwealth Division, 16 February 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7830 file 12700A-40 pt 1.1); and Memo of Conversation, G.G. Crean, Canadian Embassy, Paris and M. Eichenberger, President Bauxites du Midi, 21 May 1959 (ibid.). 32 Memo, Suggested Visit by the President of Guinea, ssea to Prime Minister, 27 August 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7830 file 12700-A-40 pt 1.1); and Tel 1649, Canadian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, New York to External, 7 November 1959 (ibid.). 33 Mes K-125, Invitation to the President of Guinea, H.F. Davis, Ottawa to Canadian Embassy, Paris, 15 September 1959 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7830 file 12700-A-40 pt 1.1). 34 Letter, D.S. McPhail, Paris to Henry Davis, Ottawa, 11 March 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5232 file 6938-B-40 pt 2). 35 Report, Canadian Mission to Africa, November-December 1960, Canadian Ambassador, Paris, 22 December 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 11041 file 20-12-afr file pocket).

Notes to pages 74–6

161

36 See nac, rg 25, Vol. 5258 file 8260-15-40 pt 1, and “Aider les pays sousdéveloppés de langue française comme les autres,” Le Devoir, 17 December 1960. 37 Memo, Canadian Educational Assistance to French-speaking African States, ussea to ssea, 19 October 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5258 file 826015-40 pt 1). 38 Memo, Educational Assistance for French-speaking African states, 21 November 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5258 file 8260-15-40 pt 1); and Memo, Educational Assistance for French-speaking African states; and training of Sudanese Foreign Service Officers, N.F. Berlis to ussea, 23 February 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5258 file 8260-15-40 pt 2.1). 39 Letter, Marcel Cadieux to Jules and Gaby Léger, 20 February 1961 (nac, M[anuscript] G[roup] 32 A 3, Vol. 56.6). 40 Draft Memo to Cabinet, Educational Assistance for French Speaking African States, ssea, 30 December 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5258 file 8260-1540 pt 1). 41 The disappointment with the delay in providing aid for French Africa actually predated the program’s creation. When the government first announced its intention to provide scholarships for French Africa in November 1960, Professor Jacques Morin of the University of Montreal publicly expressed his regret that the announcement had not been made two years before, when the government had announced its aid program for Commonwealth Africa. Letter, Scholarships for French-Speaking African Countries, Jacques Ivan Morin to Le Devoir, 12 November 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5258 file 8260-15-40 pt 1). 42 Note, Besoins de la République du Mali en professeurs, Le Ministre de l’Éducation Nationale, Mali, 27 March 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5258 file 826015-40 pt 2.1); Report of Addis Ababa Conference May 15-25, 1961, Emilien Morissette (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5258 file 8260-15-40 pt 2.2); and Memo, Educational aid to French-language African states, Marcel Cadieux to Information Division, 19 April 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5410 file 11033-C-40 pt 2). 43 Mes J-928, Canadian Plan of Educational Assistance to French-Speaking African States, N.F. Berlis to Cadieux, New York, 22 September 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5258 file 8260-15-40 pt 3). 44 Progress Report of the Canadian Programme of Educational Assistance to the French-speaking African States, 20 July 1962 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 5). 45 Tel xao-53, Teachers in Cameroun Republic, T. Carter to External Aid Ofice (eao), 13 April 1962 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 4);

162

46 47 48 49

50 51 52 53

54 55

56

57

58

Notes to pages 77–80

Memo. Educational Assistance for the Independent French-Speaking African States: Report of the Activities under the Programme since its Iinception, H.J. Hodder, eao to H.O. Moran, 19 February 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 6); and Letter xao-25, Programme of Educational Assistance for Independent French-Speaking African States, H.O. Moran to Canadian Embassy, Paris, 11 December 1962 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 5). Hilliker and Barry, 336. Memo, Aid to Africa, M Cadieux to African and Middle Eastern Division, 3 January 1962 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 4). Tel 439, Aid to French-Speaking Africa, ssea (in Geneva) to External, 18 March 1962 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 4). Record of Cabinet Decision, Meeting of 31 July 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5258 file 8260-15-40 pt 3); and Tel 2845, Technical Assistance to Cameroon, Canadian Delegation to the United Nations, New York to eao, 21 November 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5594 file 12882-3-40 pt 1). Memo, ssea to Prime Minister, 8 February 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5542 file 12529-1-40 pt 1). Memo, Establishment of a New Canadian Diplomatic Mission in West Africa, ussea to ssea, 3 March 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7748 file 12354–40). Memo, Extension of Canadian Representatives Abroad, ussea to ssea, 20 July 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 7748 file 12354–40). Tel 2951, Canadian Representation in Africa, Canadian Embassy, Washington to External, 20 September 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5542 file 12529-B-140 pt 1); Tel 3425, Ivory Coast Camerouns Administrative Information, Canadian High Commission, London to External, 21 September 1961 (ibid.); and Hilliker and Barry, 177. Op cit, Memo, ussea to ssea, 20 July 1961. Memo to the Cabinet. Establishment of Canadian Diplomatic Relations with French-Speaking States in Africa, ssea, 19 December 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5504 file 12354–40 pt 3). André Patry, “Canada en afrique,” Le Nouveau Journal, 13 December 1961, as quoted in Memo, Opening of Mission in Yaoundé – French Language Press Coverage, ussea to ssea, 19 December 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5504 file 12354–40 pt 3). See, for example, Memo, S.M. Scott to Arnold Smith, 13 July 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5208 file 6386-40 pt 6); and Memo, Congo, Ross Campbell to ussea, 18 July 1960 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5208 file 6386-40 pt 7). Canada, Department of External Affairs, Canada and the United Nations, 1960, 21–2.

Notes to pages 82–7

163

chapter five 1 Hilliker and Barry, 257. 2 See, for example, Thomson, Vive le Québec libre, and John English, The Worldly Years: The Life of Lester Pearson, 1949–1972, 314–45. For personal accounts of these years from some of those more directly involved, see Paul Martin, A Very Public Life, Volume 2, chapter 18, and Eldon Black, Direct Intervention: Canada-France Relations, 1967–1974. 3 Le Devoir, July 22-26, 1963. 4 Memo, Bi-Culturalism, Marcel Cadieux to ussea, 23 April 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5057 file 2727-15-40 pt 1). 5 Memo, Programme of Cultural Cooperation with French-Speaking Countries, M. Cadieux to ssea, 19 August 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5057 file 2727-15-40 pt 1). 6 Letter. Review of Canadian Aid Activities, M. Cadieux to H. Moran, 23 August 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 6); and Letter, H. Moran to M. Cadieux, 30 August 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5957 file 2727-15-40 pt 1). 7 Memo, Review of Canadian Bilateral Aid Programme, W.F. Stone to Edmonds, Information Division, 22 August 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 6); and Op Cit., Letter, H. Moran to M. Cadieux, 30 August 1963. 8 Letter xao-55, Programme of Educational Assistance for Independent French-speaking African States, 1964–65, Canadian Embassy, Yaoundé to eao, 17 November 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 6). 9 Memo, Canadian Universities Foundation Project for a French Cultural Community Scholarship and Fellowship Plan, ussea to ssea, 30 August 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5057 file 2727-15-40 pt 1). 10 Letter 379, Cameroon Students Abroad, Canadian Ambassador, Yaoundé to ussea, 30 July 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 6). 11 Draft Report, Direction of Canadian Aid, 23 September 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 6). 12 Memo, H.O. Moran to ssea, 5 July 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 6); Memo to Cabinet, ssea, 5 July 1963 (ibid.); and Notes sur la République du Rwanda, African and Middle Eastern Division, 17 November 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10071 file 20-1-2-rwanda pt 1). 13 Letter 291, Canadian Diplomatic Representation in Morocco, Canadian Ambassador, Madrid to ussea, 2 July 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10065 file 20-12-2-afr pt 2.1); Memo, Canadian Embassy, Yaoundé to ussea, 8 August 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10043 file 20-1-2-cam pt 1); and Letter xao-18,

164

14

15

16 17

18 19 20

21

22 23

24

25

Notes to pages 87–92

eao to Canadian Embassy, Dakar, 20 March 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10057 file 20-1-2-sen pt 1). La Collaboration France-Canada dans le domaine de l’aide aux états francophones, 1960–1967, L’Équipe chargée du projet de la francophonie – 1974, p 14 (nac, mg 32 A 3, Vol. 32 file 14.2 afrique). Memo, Educational Aid Programme between French-Speaking countries, G.H. Southam to ussea, 15 March 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5057 file 272715-40 pt 1). The communiqué released at the end of these discussions is reproduced in Bulletins des Affaires extérieures, vol. 16 (2), février 1964. Tel 493, Educational Assistance to Algeria and Morocco, Canadian Embassy, Paris to eao, 1 April 1964 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10097 file 20-1-2-fr pt 1.2); and Letter, H.O. Moran to M. Cadieux, 2 April 1964 (ibid.). Op Cit., La Collaboration France-Canada dans le domaine de l’aide aux états francophones, 1960–67, 5. Ibid., 8-12, 13, and 36-7. A Canadian report prepared in 1974 similarly concluded that “Tout au moins au niveau officiel, les autorités françaises semblent avoir poursuivi avec plus de vigueur que les autorités canadiennes l’idée de la coopération dans le domaine de l’aide”; ibid., 13. In March 1964, Herbert Moran doubted whether an expanded aid program for French Africa was even viable, given his belief that “most Frenchspeaking states … have available to them assistance at levels close to their present or short-term absorptive capacity.” Letter, H.O. Moran to M. Cadieux, 25 March 1964 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10097 file 20-1-2-fr pt 1.1). Éric Roussel, Charles de Gaulle, 831–3, Bosher, 22–37, and Paul Martin, A Very Public Life, 576. Op Cit., Memo, Canadian Ambassador, Madrid to ussea, 27 April 1965 and Letter 291, Canadian Diplomatic Representation in Morocco, Canadian Ambassador, Madrid to ussea, 2 July 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10065 file 20-1-2-2-afr pt 2.1). See Memo, Diplomatic Representation: Africa and Middle Eastern Division, R. Collins to Deputy ussea, 1 August 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5504 file 12354–40 pt 4); and Tel me-94, Canadian Diplomatic Representation in Africa, External to Canadian Embassy, Paris, 3 March 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10064 file 20-1-2-afr pt 1.5). Letter 347, Canadian Diplomatic Representation in Africa, Canadian chargé d’affaires, Leopoldville to ussea, 27 October 1964 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10064 file 20-1-2-2-afr pt 1.5).

Notes to pages 93–6

165

26 Letter, New Diplomatic Missions in Africa, M. Cadieux to J.H. Warren, Deputy Minister of Trade and Commerce, 22 April 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10064 file 20-1-2-2-afr pt 1.5); Commerce canadien avec le Maghreb et l’Afrique francophone, undated (nac, rg 20, Vol. 2867 file 810-F6-1); and Inter-office correspondence, Responsibility for Morocco, Canadian Commercial Counsellor, Madrid to Executive Director, Trade Commissioner Service, 22 October 1963 (nac, rg 20, Vol. 2871 file 810-M9-1). 27 Memo to Cabinet, Canadian Diplomatic Representation in Africa, Paul Martin and Mitchell Sharp, 26 July 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10065 file 201-2-2-afr pt 2.1). 28 Tel, Algerian Immigration: Proposed Note to French Government, ussea to Canadian Embassy, Paris, 29 April 1964 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10097 file 20-1-2-fr pt 1.2); and Op Cit., Letter 291, Canadian Ambassador, Madrid, to ussea, 2 July 1965. 29 See, for example, Letter, Jules Léger to M. Cadieux, 27 January 1965 (nac, mg 32 A 3, Vol. 1.11); and Letter 272, Les Pays francophones d’Afrique noire l’Occident, Canadian Ambassador, Yaoundé to ussea, 4 June 1965 (nac, rg 20, Vol. 2865 file 810-C15-1). 30 Draft Memo to Cabinet, Canadian Diplomatic Representation in Africa, 4 May 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10064 file 20-1-2-2-afr pt 1.5). 31 Memo, Location of New Missions in Africa, African and Middle Eastern Division, 7 April 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10064 file 20-1-2-2-afr pt 1.5). 32 Tel 582, Representation in the Maghreb, Canadian Embassy, Paris to External, 31 March 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10064 file 20-1-2-2-afr pt 1.5). 33 Record of Cabinet Decision, Canadian Diplomatic Representation in Africa, Meeting of 18 August 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10065 file 20-1-2-2afr pt 2.1). 34 Morocco’s brief period of radicalism in the Casablanca Group had been motivated by its claim to territory in neighbouring Mauritania. Memo, Proposed Diplomatic Mission in North Africa in Fiscal Year 1966–67 – Choice Between Morocco and Tunisia, ussea to ssea, 9 August 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10065 file 20-1-2-2-afr pt 2.1). 35 Letter, J.H. Warren, Deputy Minister of Trade and Commerce to M. Cadieux. 12 October 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10065 file 20-1-2-2-afr pt 2.2); and Letter, R.B. Curry, Assistant Deputy Minister – Immigration, Department of Citizenship and Immigration to M. Cadieux, 26 October 1965 (ibid.). 36 Letter, H.O. Moran to M. Cadieux, 13 October 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10065 file 20-1-2-2-afr pt 2.2).

166

Notes to pages 96–9

37 For an analysis of Quebec’s efforts, see chapter 6 below. Tel 347, Ouverture d’une mission en Afrique du Nord, Canadian Ambassador, Bern to External, 22 November 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10065 file 20-1-2-2-afr pt 2.2). 38 Memo, Opening of New Canadian Diplomatic Missions in Africa during 1966–67, ussea to ssea, 16 December 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10065 file 20-1-2-2-afr pt 2.2). 39 Letter, Opening of New Missions in Africa in 1966–67 – Morocco or Tunisia and Kenya, T. Carter to ussea, 2 December 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10065 file 20-1-2-2-afr pt 2.2). 40 Op Cit., Draft Memo to Cabinet, Canadian Diplomatic Representation in Africa, 4 May 1965. 41 Report to the Cabinet from the Treasury Board, Canadian Diplomatic Representation in Africa, 12 August 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10065 file 20-1-22-afr pt 2.1). 42 Letter, ssea to Walter Gordon, Minister of Finance, 15 July 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10065 file 20-1-2-2-afr pt 2.1). 43 Op Cit., Draft Report, Direction of Canadian Aid, 23 September 1963. 44 See, for example, Memo, Aid Programme in Africa – Geographical Distribution, T. Carter, African and Middle Eastern Division to Economic Division, 23 December 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8825 file 20-1-2-3). 45 Hilliker and Barry, 336. 46 In late 1962, for example, Algeria requested the establishment of a Canadian mission in Algiers while both the Rwandan and Malagasy governments sought the accreditation of Canadian ambassadors to their countries in 1965. Also in 1965, the Tunisian government announced its intention to open a resident embassy in Ottawa while requests from French African states for aid, official visits, and other expressions of interest from Canada were frequent throughout this period. See Op Cit., Memo, Diplomatic Representation: African and Middle Eastern Division, R.E. Collins to Deputy ussea, 1 August 1963; Memo, Visit of the Ambassador of the Malagasy Republic, A.M. Baldwin to File, 6 July 1965 (nac, rg 20, Vol. 2787 file 810-M1-1- pt 1); and Memo, Establishment of Diplomatic Relations with Rwanda, A.E. Ritchie to ssea, 22 July 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10065 file 20-1-2-afr pt 2.1).

chapter six 1 For a general description of the Quiet Revolution, see Léon Dion, La Révolution déroulée, 1960–1976, Pierre Godin, La Fin de la grande noirceur, and Dale Thomson, Jean Lesage and the Quiet Revolution.

Notes to pages 100–4

167

2 Donald J. Horton, André Laurendeau: French Canadian Nationalist 1912– 1968, 167. 3 In 1961, for example, Marcel Chaput’s Why I Am a Separatist predicted the doom of the French-speaking minorities in Canada, “arguing that Confederation had become ‘the graveyard of the minorities.’” As cited in Marcel Martel, French Canada: An Account of Its Creation and Break-Up, 1850– 1967, 21–2. 4 For a study of the origins of the separatist movement see William D. Coleman, The Independence Movement in Quebec, 1945–1980. 5 Roussel, 381–3, and Bosher, chapters 2-3. 6 The literature on Quebec-France relations in the 1960s is extensive. See, for example, Dale C. Thomson, Vive le Québec libre, Claude Morin, L’art de l’impossible: la diplomatie québecoise depuis 1960, and Louis Bélanger, “La France,” in Louis Balthazar, Louis Bélanger, Gordon Mace, et al., Trente ans de politique extérieure du Québec 1960–1990. 7 Jean-Marc Léger, Afrique française, Afrique nouvelle, 10. 8 In summer 1963, for example, the aupelf lobbied the Canadian government for two hundred scholarships to bring French African students to Canada, while in September of the previous year the Comité AfriqueCanada was instrumental in helping bring twenty-two female students from Gabon to begin secretarial studies in Montreal. Letter, Jean-Marc Léger to ssea, 4 April 1963 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 6). 9 Jean-Marc Léger, “Le Québec dans le monde, iii,” Le Devoir, 24 July 1963, 2. 10 Letter, André Patry to Jean Lesage, 25 October 1961 (A[rchives] N[ationales du] Q[uébec], P422 S2, 3A 011 03-02-004B-01, 1995–01-008 Art[icle] 2, file 4); and Letter, André Patry to Jean Lesage, 9 December 1961 (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011-03-02-004B-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 2, file 4). 11 According to Dale Thomson, this speech reflected Gérin-Lajoie’s personal aspirations rather than the policy of the government of Quebec. Thomson, Jean Lesage and the Quiet Revolution, 142. 12 Ibid., 114. 13 Lyne Sauvageau et Gordon Mace, “Les Relations extérieures du Québec avec l’Afrique et le Moyen-Orient,” in Balthazar, Bélanger et Mace, Trente ans de politique extérieure du Québec, 1960–1990, 256. 14 André Patry, Le Québec dans le monde, 71. 15 Letter, H.O. Moran to André Patry, 24 October 1963 (anq, P422 S3, 3A 011-03-02-002A-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 5, file 1); and Letter, Jean Bruchesi, Canadian Ambassador to Morocco, to André Patry, 22 December 1963 (ibid.).

168

Notes to pages 104–8

16 Letter, N. Berlis to M. Cadieux, New York, 6 October 1961 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5258 file 8260-15-40 pt 3), and Memo, H.O. Moran, eao to ussea, 5 February 1962 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 4). 17 Letter, Paul Gérin-Lajoie, Minister of Youth, Quebec to ssea, 21 March 1962 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 5259 file 8260-15-40 pt 4). 18 The ruling came in the Labour Conventions case. Edward McWhinney, Quebec and the Constitution, 1960–1978, 38–9. 19 Louise Beaudoin, “Origines et développement du rôle international du Gouvernement du Québec,” in Paul Painchaud, ed., Le Canada et le Québec sur la scène internationale, 453. 20 Memo, Objectifs à atteindre dlans la négociation avec le Bureau fédéral de l’aide extérieure au sujet de la participation du Ministère de l’Éducation à l’envoi d’enseignants à l’étranger, Gaston Cholette to Paul Gérin-Lajoie, 8 February 1965 (anq, E42, 2C 012-04-01-003B-01, 1990–09-002 Art. 420, file 4.5.1A). See also Beaudoin, 454. 21 For an historical analysis of this bicultural compact, see Ralph Heintzman, “The Spirit of Confederation: Professor Creighton, Biculturalism and the Use of History,” in Canadian Historical Review 1971, 52(3): 245–75. 22 See, for example, the federal Attorney General’s argument in Letter, Ed Fulton to Attorney General of Prince Edward Island, 26 January 1962 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 4375 file 11589–40 pt 1); and Elliot J. Feldman and Lily Gardner Feldman, “The Impact of Federalism on the Organisation of Canadian Foreign Policy,” Publius, vol. 14 (Fall 1984): 49. 23 Op Cit., Memo, Cholette to Gérin-Lajoie, 8 February 1965. 24 Letter, Jean Lesage to Lester B. Pearson, 19 February 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10141 file 30-12-que pt 1). 25 Memo, Proposed Agreement with Quebec – Recruitment of Teachers for eao Programmes, ussea to ssea, 30 July 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10140 file 30-12-que pt 1); Memo, Proposed Agreement with Quebec – Teacher Programme, H.O. Moran to ssea, 10 July 1965 (ibid.); and Note, La Politique de coopération technique du Québec, 13 décembre 1965 (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011-03-01-004B-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 2, file 3). 26 Claude Morin, Les Choses comme elles étaient, 191–2. 27 Memo, Entente avec le Bureau de l’aide extérieure sur l’envoi d’enseignants dans les pays francophones, Claude Morin to Jean Lesage, 27 August 1965 (anq, E42, 2C 012-04-01-003B-01, 1990–09-002 Art. 420, file 4.5.1A). 28 Memo, Co-operative Arrangements with Quebec and Other Provinces – External Aid, ussea to ssea, 10 May 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10141 file 30-12-que pt 3); and Memo for the Premier, Claude Morin, 27 August 1965 (anq, E42, 2C 012 04-01-003B-01, 1990–09-002 Art 420, file 4.5.1A).

Notes to pages 109–12

169

29 Letter, André Patry to Paul Gérin-Lajoie, Minister of Education, Quebec, 12 July 1964 (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011-03-02-004B 01, 1995–01-008 Art. 2, file 4); Letter, J.G.H. Halstead, Canadian Minister, Paris to ussea, 5 March 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10492 file 55-3-1-fr-quebec pt 2.1); and Memo for the Premier, Claude Morin, 27 August 1965 (anq, E42, 2C 012 04-01003B-01, 1990–09-002 Art 420, file 4.5.1A). 30 Ministre des Affaires Étrangères à Ambassadeur de France au Canada, 15 May 1965 (amaé, Am 64-70, Canada, Vol. 243). 31 Memo, Projet d’entente avec la Tunisie, Paul Gérin-Lajoie to Jean Lesage, 7 October 1965 (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011-03-02-004B-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 2, file 5). 32 Tel 1557, Gérin-Lajoie en Tunisie, ssea in New York to External, 22 September 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10140 file 30-6-que pt 1). 33 Entretien avec l’Ambassadeur de Tunisie, André Patry, 14 October 1965 (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011-03-01-004B-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 2, file 5). 34 Mes E-2563, Quebec Engineering Mission to Franceophone Africa, J.R. McKinney to Canadian Embassies in Paris, Rome, Yaoundé, Accra, Lagos and Bern, 17 November 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10141 file 30-12que pt 2); and Memo, Aid to Francophone Africa, Canadian Permanent Delegation, unesco to External Aid Office, 17 December 1965 (ibid.). 35 See Tel 2508, Mission d’ingénieurs Québecois en Afrique, Canadian Embassy, Paris to External, 20 December 1965 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10141 file 30-12-que pt 2); Letter 40, Quebec Engineering Mission to Francophone Africa, Canadian Embassy, Yaoundé to External, 8 February 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10141 file 30-12-que pt 3); and Op Cit., Memo, Canadian Permanent Delegation to unesco to eao, 17 December 1965. 36 Memo, Co-operative Arrangements with Quebec and the Other Provinces – External Aid, ussea to ssea, 10 May 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10141 file 30-12-que pt 3). 37 Memo, Bureau de l’Aide extérieure, Claude Morin to Premier of Quebec, 8 July 1966 (anq, E42, 2A 014-01-06-001A-01, 1988–08-001 Art. 16, file 4.5.3); and Letter, Aide technique aux pays sous-dévéloppés, Jean Chapdelaine, Quebec Delegate General in Paris to Minister of Education, 28 March 1966 (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011-03-02-004B-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 2, file 6). 38 La coopération technique avec l’Afrique, André Patry, undated (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011-03-02-001A-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 4, file 6). 39 Tel 317, Quebec Offer to Tunisia, Roberts, Canadian Embassy Bern to External, 8 September 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10058 file 20-1-2-tun pt 1). 40 Memo, Quebec Offer to Tunisia, A.J. Pick to M. Wershof, 13 September 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10141 file 30-12-que pt 4); and Quebec Offer to Tunisia, A.J. Pick to M. Wershof, 14 September 1966 (ibid.).

170

Notes to pages 112–16

41 Quebec Offer of Aid to Tunisia, Memo, H.B. Robinson to ssea, 16 September 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10141 file 30-12-que pt 4). 42 Tel 327, Canadian Ambassador, Bern to External, 19 September 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10058 file 20-1-2-tun pt 1). 43 Patry, for example, actively pursued contacts with representatives from Tunisia and other French African countries at the United Nations in New York. See André Patry, Le Québec dans le monde. 44 Op Cit., Tel. 327, Canadian Ambassador, Bern to External, 19 September 1966 and Letter, Canadian Ambassador, Tunis to M. Wershof, 27 September 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10058 file 20-1-2-tun pt 1). 45 Mohsen Toumi, La Tunisie de Bourguiba à Ben Ali, 188–9, and Nicole Grimaud, La Tunisie à la recherche de sa sécurité, 91–108. 46 Op Cit., Canadian Ambassador, Tunis to M. Wershof, 27 September 1966; Tel 3932, Quebec Offer to Tunisia, ussea in London to M. Wershof, 9 September 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10058 file 20-1-2-tun pt 1); and Document de travail, Quelques aspects d’une politique de coopération du Québec avec les pays en voie de dévéloppement, Gaston Cholette, Directeur général de la coopération international, Ministère de l’Éducation, Québec, 7 September 1966 (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011-03-02-004B-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 2, file 3). 47 Gaston Cholette, for example, wrote that Quebec needed to proceed cautiously in its next ventures to avoid further humiliating defeats by the federal government. Memo, Gaston Cholette to Claude Morin, 12 December 1966 (anq, E42, 2C 012-04-01-003B-01, 1990–09-002 Art. 420, file 4.5 A). 48 Coopération entre le Québec et les pays en voie de dévéloppement, Charles Bilodeau, undated (anq, E42, 2A 014-01-06-001A-01, 1988–08-001 Art. 16, file 4.5.3). 49 Note, Gaston Cholette to Claude Morin, 20 September 1966 (anq, E42, 2C 012-04-011-003B-01, 1990–09-002 Art. 420, file 4.5.1.B); and Letter, Arthur Tremblay, Ministère de l’Éducation du Québec to P.M. Towe, eao, 25 August 1966 (ibid.). 50 Letter, André Patry to Jean Lesage, 25 December 1965 (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011-03-02-004B-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 5, file 5); and Memo, La politique du Québec dans le domaine de la coopération technique, André Patry, 6 September 1965 (ibid.).

chapter seven 1 See Robert Aldrich, Greater France, 323; Letter, Francophonie, Jean Chapdelaine, Quebec Délégué Général, Paris to Claude Morin, 11 July

Notes to pages 116–21

2 3

4 5 6 7 8

9

10 11 12 13 14

15

16

171

1966 (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011 03-02-005B-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 3, file 5); and Letter 56, Un Commonwealth francophone, Canadian Ambassador, Paris to ussea, 14 January 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 1). Letter, Jules Léger to M. Cadieux, 18 January 1966 (nac, mg 32 A3, Vol. 1.12). See Memo, Possible Canadian Initiative Regarding a French Commonwealth, T. Carter to J. George, European Division, 28 January 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 1); and Report, A French Commonwealth or a Francophone Community, European Division, 14 July 1966 (ibid.). Ibid. Op cit., Memo, Carter to George, 28 January 1966. Tel 3935, ussea [in London] to External, 11 September 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 2). Memo, Visit of President Senghor, September 19-21 – La francophonie, ussea to ssea, 13 September 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 2). Memo, Senghor and Bourguiba Proposal for a French-Speaking Commonwealth, African and Middle Eastern Division, 28 July 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 1). Tel 612, Francophonie, Canadian Embassy, Brussels to External, 25 August 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 1); and Memo, La Suisse et la francophonie, J.G.H. Halstead to ussea, 27 December 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10684 file 26-2 pt 1). Letter, Francophonie, Jean Chapdelaine, Paris to Claude Morin, 11 July 1966 (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011 03-02-005B-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 3 file 5). Tel 1852, Francophonie, Canadian Ambassador, Paris to External, 31 August 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 2). See, for example, John Bosher, The Gaullist Attack on Canada, 1967–1997, and Alain Peyrefitte, De Gaulle et le Québec. Letter, President Senghor’s Visit, Jean Coté, Dakar to Thomas Carter, 3 August 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10057 file 20-1-2-sen pt 1). Memo, Constitutional Implications of Quebec’s Participation in the Proposed French Community, A.E. Gotlieb to European Division, 27 September 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10685 file 26-2-cda-que pt 1). Memo, La francophonie – President Senghor’s Visit, ussea to ssea, 27 September 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 2); and Tel 1988, Communauté francophone, Canadian Ambassador, Paris to External, 19 September 1966 (ibid.). Memo to File, Senghor Visit – Departmental Meeting to Review Visit, Thomas Carter, African and Middle Eastern Division, 3 October 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 2).

172

Notes to pages 122–6

17 Tel 2470, Position française sur la francophonie, Canadian Embassy, Paris to External, 15 November 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 2). 18 Memo, Francophonie, J.G.H. Halstead to A. E. Gotlieb, 10 December 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10685 file 26-2-cda-que pt 1). 19 Op Cit., Étude sur la Colloque de l’idef à Lomé, 8 and 12. 20 Ibid., 14–15 and 18; and Memo, Report on a Trip to Certain FrenchSpeaking African States, Pierre Trudeau to Prime Minister, 15 February 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 3). 21 Tel 39, Trudeau Visit, Canadian Ambassador, Dakar to External, 8 February 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 3); and Letter 69, Visit of Parliamentary Secretary of the Prime Minister, Canadian Ambassador, Tunis to ussea, 10 February 1967 (ibid.). 22 Op Cit., Memo, Trudeau to Prime Minister, 15 February 1967. 23 Memo, Francophonie – Establishment Requirements, ussea to Personnel Division, 24 February 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 3). 24 Op Cit., Memo, Pierre Trudeau to Prime Minister, 15 February 1967. 25 Memo, France-Canada and France-Quebec Relations, ssea to Prime Minister, 24 January 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10045 file 20-1-2-fr pt 5); and Memo, Visit to France by Premier Johnson, ussea to ssea, 11 April 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10140 file 30-6-que pt 1). Cadieux was referring in particular to Daniel Johnson’s recent lavish official reception in Paris, of which the federal government had only learned from newspaper accounts. 26 Letter 171, Francophonie, Canadian Ambassador, Paris to ussea, 7 February 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 3). 27 Speech, Canada and la francophonie, ssea, Montreal, 11 March 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10684 file 26-2-cda pt 1). 28 Tel 443, Francophonie – Reactions in Ivory Coast and Upper Volta, Canadian High Commissioner, Accra, 8 May 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10684 file 26-2 pt 1); Tel 523, Togo – Francophonie, Canadian High Commissioner, Accra to External, 25 May 1967 (ibid.); and Tel 30, French Association for Francophonie, Canadian Ambassador, Tunis to External, 9 March 1967 (ibid.). 29 Letter, James George, Paris to J.G.H. Halstead, Ottawa, 22 March 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10045 file 20-1-2-fr pt 5). 30 Op Cit., Letter 171, Canadian Ambassador, Paris to ussea, 7 February 1967; and Memo, Article by Mr Léger for the International Journal, ussea to ssea, 30 March 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10045 file 20-1-2-fr pt 5). Because of its controversial argument, Paul Martin and Marcel Cadieux refused to allow the article to be published.

Notes to pages 126–30

173

31 Report, Accord Culturel Canada-Belgique – 8 mai 1967, L’Équipe chargée du projet sur la francophonie, 1974, pg 63 (nac, mg 32 A3, Vol. 14.7); Letter, Lester Pearson to Daniel Johnson, 9 May 1967 (anq, P422 S3, 3A 011 03-02-002A-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 5 file 4); and Letter, Daniel Johnson to Lester Pearson, 9 May 1967 (ibid.). 32 Note, Discussions avec des ministres Africains de l’Éducation nationale, Julien Aubert, directeur de la Service de la coopération avec l’extérieur, Ministère de l’Éducation, Quebec à Claude Morin, 15 May 1967 (anq, E42, 2C 012-04-01-003B-01, 1990–09-002 Art. 420 file 4.5 A). 33 Étude, Visites d’état de pays francophones d’Afrique au Canada à l’occasion de l’exposition universelle de Montréal, 1967, L’Équipe chargée du projet sur la francophonie – 1974, 5-6 (nac, mg 32 A3, Vol. 43, file afrique 1974 14.1). 34 Memo to the Prime Minister, 9 May 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. file 30-7-que pt 2). 35 For a more complete description and analysis of the events surrounding this incident, see Dale Thomson, Vive le Québec libre, and Éric Roussel, Charles de Gaulle, chapter 35. 36 Op Cit., Étude, Visites d’état de pays francophones d’Afrique au Canada à l’occasion de l’exposition universelle de Montréal, 1967. 37 La Presse, for example called the declaration an entente culturelle (14 August 1967). 38 The text of the note was transmitted to Ottawa in Tel 3695, Canadian Permanent Delegation to the United Nations, New York to External, 30 November 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. file 30-14-que pt 2). 39 Memo, Visit of President Houphouet Boigny, August 22-26, H. Basil Robinson to Prime Minister, 17 August 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10041 file 20-1-2-afr pt 1). 40 A week after de Gaulle left Canada the French Embassy in Ottawa observed that France needed to give Quebec all the support that it could. Tel 1119, Ambassadeur de France au Canada à mae, 2 August 1967 (amaé, Am 6468, Canada. Cote 8-11). 41 Letter 175, Senegalese Reaction to de Gaulle’s Visit to Canada, Canadian chargé d’affaires, Dakar to ussea, 3 August 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8879 file 20-sen-1-3). 42 Letter 350, Cameroonian Reactions to General de Gaulle’s Visit, L. Bailey, Canadian Embassy Yaoundé to ussea, 5 September 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10043 file 20-1-2-cam pt 1). 43 Tel 2039, La francophonie, Canadian High Commissioner, Lagos to External, 6 November 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10685 file 26-2-cda-que pt 1);

174

44

45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52

53

54

55

Notes to pages 130–3

and Memo, Jean Coté’s call on President Senghor, G. Riddell to ussea, 30 November 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10683 file 26-1 pt 4). Mes me-1062, Francophonie, ssea to Canadian High Commissioner, Lagos, 15 November 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10684 file 26-2-cda pt 1); and Tel 2130, Canada/Niger – Francophonie, Canadian High Commissioner, Lagos to External, 27 November 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10685 file 26-2-cda-que pt 1). Mes fr-1, Francophonie, ussea to Canadian High Commission, Lagos, 30 November 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10685 file 26-2-cda-que pt 1). Tel 3695, Francophonie – talk with Marof, Canadian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, New York to External, 1 December 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10685 file 26-2-cda-que pt 1). Letter, Thomas Carter to Jean Coté, Dakar, 25 August 1966 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10057 file 20-1-2-sen pt 1). Letter, Lester Pearson to Daniel Johnson, 1 December 1967 (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011-03-02-005B-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 3, file 5). Memo, Claude Morin à Daniel Johnson, 22 December 1967 (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011-03-02-001A-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 4, file 7). Memo, A.E. Blanchette to ussea, 5 January 1968 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10689 file 26-4-cme-1968 pt 1). Letter, Jean Chapdelaine to Claude Morin, 11 January 1968 (anq, P422 S2, 3A 011-03-02-004B-01, 1995–01-008 Art. 2, file 8). Tel 34, Canadian Ambassador, Yaoundé to External, 11 January 1968 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10689 file 26-4-cme-1968 pt 1); Tel 124, Canadian High Commissioner, Accra to External, 24 January 1968 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10690 file 26-4-cme-1968 pt 2); and Memo, France-Canada Relations, ssea to Prime Minister, 17 January 1968 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10046 file 20-1-2-fr pt 1.2). Tel 74, Libreville Conference, Canadian Ambassador, Yaoundé to External, 30 January 1968 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10690 file 26-4-cme-1968 pt 2); and Memo, Libreville Conference, ussea to Prime Minister, 2 February 1968 (ibid.). Letter 47, Francophonie – Libreville Conference, Canadian Ambassador, Yaoundé to ussea, 6 February 1968 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10690 file 26-4cme-1968 pt 2). See also John P. Schlegel, “Containing Quebec Abroad: The Gabon Incident, 1968,” in Don Munton and John Kirton eds, Canadian Foreign Policy, Selected Cases. According to France’s Ambassador in Gabon, the only mistake involved in sending the invitation to Quebec had been to route it through Gabon’s Embassy in Washington rather than through Quebec’s Agent General in Paris.

Notes to pages 134–6

56 57

58

59

60

61

62 63

64

175

Letter, Ambassadeur de France au Gabon à mae, 29 January 1968 (amaé, D[irection] des affaires A[fricains et] M[algaches] 1959–69, Gabon, Vol. 9). Memo, Francophonie, ussea to Prime Minister, 27 December 1967 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10689 file 26-4-cme-1968 pt 1). Memo, France-Canada Relations, ssea to Prime Minister, 17 January 1968 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10046 file 20-1-2-fr pt 12); and Draft Memo, FranceCanada Relations, ssea to Prime Minister, 31 January 1968 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10046 file 20-1-2-fr pt 12.2). Memo, Libreville Conference, ssea to Prime Minister, 8 February 1968 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10690 file 26-4-cme-1968 pt 2); and Mes fr-42, Libreville Conference, ussea to Canadian Embassy, Washington, 16 February 1968 (ibid.). Marcel Cadieux made this comment to Paul Martin in Memo, Francophonie, ussea to ssea, 8 February 1968 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10684 file 26-2cda pt 1). The countries to be phased out were Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Guinée, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Upper Volta. Given President Diori’s important role in the evolution of la francophonie, Niger’s exclusion was considered particularly shortsighted by Canadian officials. Report, Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone 1960–1970, L’Équipe chargée du projet sur la francophonie, June 1975, 26–8 and 45–7 (nac, mg 32 A3, file 14.3). In any event, the French government had decided that, since Quebec had not been consulted, France would not cooperate with or facilitate the Chevrier Mission. M. Alphand, Direction Amérique à Ambassadeur de France au Canada, 1 February 1968 (amaé, Am 64-70, Canada. Cote 8-11). For a description of the mission, see Mabel Tinkiss Good, Chevrier, chapter 14 and op cit. Report, Le Canada et l’Afrique francophone 1960–1970. Tel 40, Gabon Incident, Canadian Embassy, Tunis to External, 12 March 1968 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 8651 file 20-1-2-gabon pt 1); and Tel 349, Canadian-Gabonese Relations, Lionel Chevrier [Canadian High Commission, Accra] to External, 13 March 1968 (ibid.). Tel 98, Francophonie, Canadian Ambassador, Dakar to External, 9 March 1968 (nac, rg 25, Vol. 10690 file 26-4-cme-1968 pt 3).

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Index

Ahidjo, Ahmadou, 130 aid (Canadian): Canada-Quebec dispute over, 104–8, 134–6; and Canada’s relations with France, 87–8; concentration of, 97–8; expansion of, 86–7; importance of, 73–4, 85; problems with, 75–7, 85; public response to, 75; Quiet Revolution and, 75 Africa: communist gains in, 66 Afro-Asian Bloc, 23, 47 Algeria: effects of war on relations between France and Tunisia and Morocco, 38, 42– 3, 54–5; inclusion in North Atlantic Treaty, 14–17; nationalist uprising, 27 Algerian war: Canadian public opinion and, 39, 57 Aluminium Company of Canada, 70–2 anti-colonialism: in Canada, 10; and nato, 16; and United Nations, 21, and the us, 9–10 Association des universités entièrement ou partiellement de langue française, 102, 121, 127 Atlantic Charter, 8, 10 aupelf. See Association des universités entièrement ou partiellement de langue française

Bandung Conference, 30–1. See also anticolonialism Bauxites du Midi: See Aluminium Company of Canada Beaulieu, Paul, 37, 77–8 Belgian Congo: Canadian embassy in, 79; independence of, 80; postwar Canadian trade with, 63. See also Congo, Democratic Republic of Belgium, 84, 126 Bizerte Crisis, 58–60; Canadian policy towards, 59–60 Bongo, Omar, 133 Bourguiba, Habib, 113, 116 Bourguiba, Habib Jr, 56, 59, 112 Bow, M.N., 28, 31 Brazzaville Conference, 9 Brunet, R, 37 Cadieux, Marcel: and aid for French Africa, 74, 77; on cultural exchanges with French-speaking countries, 83–4; on France-Quebec relations, 124–5; on la francophonie, 118, 122; on Quebec, 107–8; and Tunisia, 96 Cameroon, 78–9

188

Index

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 36–7, 50–1 Canadian Universities Foundation, 85–6 Cardinal, Jean-Guy, 3, 132–3 Charpentier, Fulgence, 85 Chenik, Mohammed, 20 Chevrier, Lionel, 134 Chevrier Mission, 134–6 China, 55, 93 Churchill, Winston, 9, 11 Cold War: and Africa, 65; effects on Canadian policy towards Africa, 93–4 Commonwealth, 13; and the Algerian war, 48–9 communism: threat of in Asia, 18 Communist Bloc: opportunities in Congo for, 80; relations with African countries, 70; relations with Guinea, 70–1; support for Algerian nationalists, 32, 47 Conference of francophone ministers of education, 3, 127, 130–3, 137 Congo, Democratic Republic of, 138 Coté, Jean, 120 Crean, Gordon Gale: on Charles de Gaulle, 45; on French position on Algeria, 51; on independence for French Africa, 68 Davis, Henry: on Canada’s relations with Tunisia, 56; on French policy in Algeria, 51; resentment of French attitude, 47 decolonization, 21; and Canadian interests in Africa, 65–6; World War Two and, 9 Defence Appropriation Act, 24, 38 Defferre, Gaston, 67; and colonial reforms, 68 de Gaulle, Charles: and Algeria, 46, 52; and the Fifth Republic, 45–6; and the French Community, 69; and military revolt in Algeria, 58; return to power 44, 45; and the us and uk, 49–50; and Quebec, 90–1, 101, 120, 129 Department of Citizenship and Immigration (Canada): interests in French Africa, 93; interests in Morocco and Tunisia, 36–7, 95–6 Department of Finance (Canada), 74, 85 Department of Trade and Commerce

(Canada), interests in French Africa, 92–3; interests in Morocco and Tunisia, 36–37, 54, 95–6 Désy, Jean, 34, 36, 67–8 Diefenbaker, John, 41; recognizes independence of Algeria, 60; on relations with French African states, 77 Diori, Hamani, 77, 130–1 Dulles, John, 43 Dupuy, Pierre, 47; on French rule in Africa, 69–70; trip to French Africa, 72–3; wartime missions to France, 7 educational assistance for French Africa. See aid Egypt, 32 Expo 67, 127–30 External Aid Office, 76, 96; and aid for French Africa, 90, 92–3 fln. See Front de libération nationale Ford, Robert, 65–6 Foreign Exchange Control Board (Canada), 63–4 Fortier, Laval, 35–6 Foulkes, Charles, 35 France: and Algeria, 27–8; colonial reforms, 41–2, 68; colonies and World War Two, 8–10; and la francophonie, 120, 122; and French colons in Algeria, 40–1, 53; and nato, 14–18, 50; public opinion and Algeria, 31; and Quebec, 101–2; relations with Canada, 82, 84, 87–90 120; relations with the us, 50; sensitivity to criticism, 23 la francophonie, 3–4; call for creation of, 116; Canadian response to, 117–18, 119; response of other countries to, 119–20 Free French, 7 French Community, 69; Canadian policy towards, 72–3 French Equatorial Africa, 62, 68; Canadian interests in, 64 French North Africa. See Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia

Index French Union, 9, 19; establishment of 13 French West Africa, 62, 67; Canadian interests in, 64 Front de liberation nationale, 50, 53 Functional principle, 11, 147n22 Gabon, 133–4 Gérin-Lajoie, Paul: and educational assistance for French Africa, 105, 106–7; and Quebec aid, 103, 109 Globe and Mail, 59 Gotlieb, Allan, 121 Gouvernement provisoire de la République algérienne: Canadian policy towards, 48; negotiations with France, 58; support for, 49 gpra. See Gouvernement provisoire de la République algérienne Green, Howard: and aid for French Africa, 74–5, 77; on Algeria and the un, 57; and the cbc, 51; on diplomatic missions in Africa, 56, 78–9; on nationalist movements, 61; on nuclear testing in the Sahara, 50; and Sékou Touré, 72 Groulx, Lionel, 64–5 Gruenther, Alfred, 40 Guinea: independence of, 69; relations with Canada, 70–2; relations with France and the West, 70. See also Aluminium Company of Canada Gwyn, Nicholas, 88–9 Halifax, Lord, 8–9 Houphouèt-Boigny, Félix, 72 idef. See Institut international de droit des pays d’expression française India, 10–11, 13; support for colonial nationalist movements, 21 Indochina, 24–5 Institut international de droit des pays d’expression française, 122–3 Johnson, Daniel, 108, 126 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 105

189

Kayibanda, Grégoire, 128 Kennedy, John F., 43 Lacoste, Francis, 51 Léger, Jean-Marc, 83; interest in French Africa, 102–3 Léger, Jules: on Algeria and the Algerian war, 28, 41; and Canada’s interests in Africa, 36, 47; on French colonial policies, 29–30; on French military presence in Tunisia, 35; and independence of African colonies, 65–6; and France-Quebec relations, 124–5 Lesage, Jean, 103–4, 107, 109 Lévesque, Georges-Henri, 86, 128 Libreville Conference. See Conference of francophone ministers of education Mackenzie King, William Lyon: on colonial policy, 11–12; on French colonies, 7; on self-government for India, 10–11, 13; on the uk and us, 11–12 Madagascar: Canadian aid for, 88; postwar Canadian trade with, 62–3 Malone, Thomas, 130–1 Martin, Paul, 82; and Canada’s relations with African countries, 83, 86, 97; on colonial nationalism, 24; and la francophonie, 125; on French Canadians and aid, 84; on Quebec and aid, 107 Massé, Marcel, 112, 130 McPhail, D.S., 72–3 Mendès-France, Pierre, 26–7 Missionaries (Canadian), 64–5 Mollet, Guy, 43 Moran, Herbert: and aid for French Africa, 77, 85; on France, 88 Morin, Claude, 107–8, 109, 111 Morocco: independence of, 34; nationalist agitation in, 19–21, 23; relations with Canada, 34–7, 54–6, 57, 135; relations with France, 54; support for nationalist movement in Algeria, 42–3 Mutual Aid (Canada), 38–9, 57 National University of Rwanda, 86, 128

190

Index

nationalist movements: in Algeria, 27; in Tunisia and Morocco, 26 nato. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization Nehru, Jawaharlal, 21 Niger, 77, 79 non-aligned movement: See Bandung Conference North Atlantic Council: and fears of communist gains in Africa, 70; as forum for discussion of colonial problems, 22, 33 North Atlantic Treaty, 14–18 North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 18; and Charles de Gaulle, 49–50; disenchantment of France with, 50, 82; effects of Suez Crisis on, 40–1; withdrawal of France from, 120 Patry, André: on aid for Morocco, 104; on Canada’s relations with French African countries, 79–80; interest in French Africa, 103; Quebec and aid, 109, 111 Pearson, Lester B., 36, 82; on Algeria and nato, 16–17; on France and Indochina, 25; and Gabon, 134; on independence for Algeria, 41; on relations with French African countries, 83; and suppression of colonial nationalism, 30; Quebec and French Africa, 106, 126, 132 Pflimlin, Pierre, 43–4 Pick, A.J., 112–13 Provisional Government of France in Algiers, 8 Quay d’Orsay, 122 Quebec: and Canadian aid for French Africa, 104–8; Department of Education, 114–15; and French Africa, 102; interest in la francophonie, 120; international aspirations, 101; nationalism in, 100–1; Quiet Revolution in, 99; relations with France, 83, 90–1; relations with Morocco, 104; relations with Tunisia, 96, 109–10 Ritchie, Charles, 21–2

Robertson, Norman, 74–5, 77, 78 Robinson, H. Basil, 51 Rogers, Benjamin, 91 Rwanda, 86, 128–9 San Francisco Conference, 12 Scott, Morley, 21 Sékou Touré, Ahmed: re: Alcan, 71; and Guinea’s independence, 69; re: invitation to Canada, 71–2 Senegal, 94, 97, 121 Senghor, Léopold, 116, 119, 121 Slim, Taieb, 109, 111–12 Smith, R. Campbell, 37 Soviet Union: diplomatic representation in Africa, 55, 93; and Hungary, 61; and origins of Cold War, 14; relations with Tunisia and Morocco, 55; support for nationalist movements, 19, 65 St Laurent, Louis: on Canadian arms for Indochina, 25; on independence of India and Pakistan, 13; and nato, 16–17; and Nehru, 21 St Pierre and Miquelon, 7 Suez Crisis. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization Thibault, J.E., 133 Treasury Board (Canada), 97 Trudeau, Pierre, 123–4, 139 Tunisia: Canadian embassy in, 95–7; independence of, 34; nationalist agitation in, 19–21; and Quebec, 109–14; relations with Canada, 34–7, 54–6, 57, 60; relations with France, 54, 58–59; request for military assistance from uk and us, 42; support for nationalist movement in Algeria, 42–3; and the un, 21–2, 23 United Kingdom: relations with France, 48; response to Algerian war, 29; and the un, 24, 52–3 United Nations: and Algeria, 31–2, 49, 52–3, 57–8; Bizerte Crisis and, 58–60; and colonies, 13; and Morocco and Tunisia, 22, 23–4, 26 United Nations Security Council, 20–1

Index United States: and Algeria, 24, 29, 43, 47– 8, 49, 52–3; anti-colonialism, 9–10; on cooperation with Canada, 22; military aid for France, 39; relations with France, 50; support for colonial powers, 18 ussr. See Soviet Union

Vanier, Georges, 8, 17, 20 Vichy France, 7–8 Wrong, Hume, 15–17 Zinsou, Emile Derlin, 77

191