Bomb shelters, baby boomers and a Quiet Revolution. Discover the words of an era when Canada faced nuclear fears abroad, protest at home and a struggle over its own constitution.
These terms were extracted from Canadian History: Post-Confederation by John Douglas Belshaw, eCampusOntario (originally published by BCcampus, 2016) which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The privilege and responsibility on the part of scholars to conduct enquiry and communicate findings free of sanction by external authorities.
The protests, however, were deeply rooted in decades-old traditions of free speech protests and still older concerns for academic freedom.
A herbicidal defoliant, used by the United States Army to destroy jungle cover in the Vietnam War.
Canadian firms profited heavily from the war as they supplied necessary materiel to the United States, including the controversial defoliant Agent Orange.
A highway built during WWII to facilitate the movement of troops and materiel from the United States to its northern territory (not yet a state), Alaska. It was constructed between Dawson Creek, BC, and Delta Junction, Alaska, and completed in 1942. It served to open the Yukon to greater traffic and activity.
To aid the movement of troops and supplies into the North, work began on the Alaska Highway in Fort Nelson, BC, in 1942.
Founded in 1968, an advocacy group established to counter the United States government's Indian Termination policies of the 1950s and 1960s. Inspired by the civil rights movement it was influential among Canadian First Nations activists.
The rise of Second Wave Feminism in these years (see Section 7.10) provided yet another critique of the status quo, as did the emergence of the American Indian Movement (AIM) (in which many Canadian Aboriginal men and women participated).
A political and social system predicated on racial discrimination and/or segregation; associated with the Republic of South Africa from 1948 to 1994.
Diefenbaker went on record as hostile to apartheid and was able to persuade the Commonwealth countries (other than Britain and New Zealand) that racial equality was a principle of the association.
A federation in which one or more constituent parts enjoys more autonomy and/or authority than one or more of the other constituent parts. In the case of the Meech Lake Accord, it was suggested that recognition of Quebec as a distinct society would create an asymmetry in confederation.
There was some support, to be sure, but accusations of elitism and the creation — through the distinct society clause —of what was called asymmetrical federalism raised concerns from coast to coast.
An interceptor jet aircraft designed and built by A.V.Roe (Avro) Canada in the 1950s, capable of Mach 1.98. Production of the Arrow was stopped in what remains, in the mind of many Canadians, a controversial political decision.
It was under Diefenbaker, as well, that the promising Avro Arrow program was scrapped.
In Toronto, the location of Canada's leading financial offices, banks, and corporations, as well as the Toronto Stock Exchange.
But he broke with Trudeau in 1975 over the issue of wage and price controls and spent the next nine years working on Bay Street as a corporate lawyer.
Suburbs to which commuters return at the end of the day to do little other than sleep before commuting out to jobs elsewhere; applies especially to those suburbs that are largely free of industry and other sources of employment.
Each of these began as peripheral, spillover, bedroom communities associated with a larger urban centre and, in that respect, they were very typical.
A musical group involving as many as two dozen players; associated with jazz and swing music from the interwar and early post-WWII years.
The dominant threads in popular music in the early 1950s were strongly connected with the big band sound, close harmony vocal groups (often made up of siblings), and the more accessible forms of jazz.
The Charter of the French Language, passed into law in 1977 which advanced the provisions of the Official Language Act (Bill 22) of 1974, and which made French Quebec's official language. Bill 101 established the primacy of French in day to day life.
Bill 101), which established the primacy of French in all aspects of life.
One of several amendments to the Charter of the French Language (see Bill 101); introduced and proclaimed in December 1988 in response to a Supreme Court ruling that would end the unilingual French signage provisions of the Charter. It is significant for its reference to the "notwithstanding clause" of the federal Charter of Rights.
Rather than concede the point, Bourassa drew up new legislation, Bill 178, which used the notwithstanding clause to renew the commitment to French-only signs.
Any method or practice aimed at reducing fertility or preventing the complete gestation of an infant; may include abstinence, the use of chemicals/drugs, termination, and prophylactics.
The significance of birth control changed through the 20th century.
A list of people suspected of having Communist sympathies who were denied work as a result.
Moreover, involvement in a labour organization or a strike — particularly in a leadership capacity — could result in a worker’s name being added to a blacklist.
A surge of popularity enjoyed in North America by British musicians, artists, writers, and film makers in the 1960s.
Echoing the appeal of “British Invasion” bands of the decade, public fascination with Trudeau was promoted as Trudeaumania.
Federal legislation that enabled the patriation of the Canadian constitution and the possibility of its amendment in Canada, rather than in Britain.
In 1982, residents voted in a plebiscite that asked if they were in favour or against a division of the Northwest Territories.
Introduced by the federal government in 1965; the first publicly funded pension plan in Canada; transfers earnings from working people to retired citizens.
Pearson quickly accepted the nuclear warheads for Bomarc missiles, rushed into place universal health care under the Medical Care Act (1966), and introduced the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).
Replaced the Dominion-Provincial Student Loan Program (1939-1964); guaranteed the banks' risk in extending loans to post-secondary students under the auspices of the program.
Canada Student Loans were another product of the Pearson administrations.
The rescue of six American diplomats during the Iranian Revolution of 1979 to 1980.
The Canadian Caper was ultimately successful; the arrival home of the American hostages in January produced a burst of pro-Canadian feeling south of the border.
Under the authority of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), CanCon regulations were established to ensure a quota of Canadian creative product in various media, particularly television and radio.
Beginning in 1968, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) began a project to stimulate artistic output under Canadian content (CanCon) rules.
An independent government agency established in 1968 to regulate and supervise all elements of the broadcasting systems.
Beginning in 1968, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) began a project to stimulate artistic output under Canadian content (CanCon) rules.
Established in 1963 and reported out in 1966; recommended a devolution of authority from Ottawa to the North West Territories; headquartered at Yellowknife.
In 1966, the Carruthers Commission recommended that the federal government begin to transfer these responsibilities to the people of the Northwest Territories.
Publicly funded pre-university colleges in Quebec.
During the Quiet Revolution, Quebec created CÉGEPs to prepare students for university or a trade.
A 100th anniversary; in Canada, is used as shorthand to refer to the 1967 celebration of 100 years of Confederation.
The Centennial celebrations in 1967 (including Expo ’67) contributed to Pearson’s legacy as a maker of Canadian nationalism.
The concentration of commercial, business, and finance enterprises generally in the centre or downtown of most cities. Some cities, like Toronto, have several such hubs.
The leading cities, however, turned the availability of land in what was now called the Central Business District (CBD) to advantage by erecting the country’s second generation of skyscrapers.
Created under the National Housing Act, 1944; enabled low income families (including demobilized servicemen and women) to obtain low cost mortgages; created social housing; funded construction of new rental housing; and continues to function in 2016.
CMHC brought homeownership within reach of a generation that had, less than a decade earlier, experienced record-setting levels of unemployment, cash shortages, and falling wages.
Also known simply as the Charter; incorporated by the British government in the Canada Act, 1982; comprises the first part of the Constitution Act, 1982.
Trudeau’s success in patriating the constitution produced the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canada Act.
In the United States, beginning in the mid-1950s, this was a movement to secure the rights promised in court decisions. Widespread protest, frequent violence, and growing support throughout the USA — much of which was televised — influenced Canadians who sought to address inequities in their own society.
United States news broadcasts brought coverage of the often violent civil rights movement into Canadian living rooms.
The prolonged period of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, based on ideological conflicts and competition for military, economic, social, and technological superiority, and marked by surveillance and espionage, political assassinations, an arms race, attempts to secure alliances with developing nations, and proxy wars.
This chapter, however, focuses more specifically on the links between social, economic, and political changes that took place in the Cold War years.
The American policy that sought to limit the expansion of Communism abroad.
Involvement in peacekeeping missions began in this period as an attempt to find diplomatic solutions became a Canadian priority, in contrast with the American strategy of containment.
The number of births occurring in a community or nation per 1,000 population.
The crude birth rate rose from 20.1 in 1937 to 24.3 in 1945 and kept going up until it peaked in 1947 at 28.9.
A movement to replace church authority with state authority in the running of schools and other institutions.
The declericalization of Quebec’s schools moved education from church to state control.
Protest events; includes marches, sit-ins, and occupation of offices, as well as other forms.
Protest rallies, marches, sit-ins, and demonstrations — or demos — were the tactic of choice.
The relaxation of tensions and improvement of relations between the West and the East in the Cold War during the 1970s.
This was in keeping with Trudeau’s own foreign affairs perspective, and it was also in sync with the emerging American philosophy of détente.
This when a senior level of government hands some of its authority to a lower level or ostensibly lower level of administration. In Canada in the 1960s, authority over the North-West Territories devolved to the new administration in Yellowknife, NWT.
Gradually, control of education, local government, and social services were handed over to both territories, a process known as devolution.
The northernmost of three Cold War radar systems aligned from west to east to identify incoming Soviet missiles in the event of an attack.
During the 1950s, the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was built across the North to provide radar surveillance and protection from a Soviet airborne invasion or missile attack via the Arctic Circle.
A term devised during the Quiet Revolution to describe Quebec vis-à-vis the rest of Canada; a "distinct society clause" was created that would recognize and enshrine that difference. In the Charlottetown Accord, this was spelled out as recognition of "a French speaking majority, a unique culture and a unique civil law tradition."
There was some support, to be sure, but accusations of elitism and the creation — through the distinct society clause —of what was called asymmetrical federalism raised concerns from coast to coast.
The theory that if Communism made inroads in one nation, surrounding nations would also succumb one by one, like a chain of dominos toppling one another.
The domino theory held that a victory by North Korea might lead to further Communist expansion in Asia.
Principally refers to American men who avoided mandatory, selective service in the Vietnam War by fleeing to Canada in the 1960s and 1970s.
The arrival of American draft dodgers added around 30,000 young Americans to the population and further contributed to a deepening generation gap.
The alliance of pro-Soviet (or USSR-dominated) countries in Eastern Europe in the post-WWII era, consisting of Poland, East Germany, Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and, more loosely, Albania. Yugoslavia, another communist-dominated country, regularly declared itself separate from the Eastern Bloc; formalized in the mutual security agreement, the Warsaw Pact, 1955.
In 1947 the Soviets created Cominform to tighten political control over the communist parties in the Eastern Bloc.
An elite, colloquially in the 1960s; the conventional social and economic order.
One outcome was the establishment of Nunavut as a separate territory in keeping with Inuit ambitions.
A "World's Fair" held in Montreal in 1967; part of the Centennial celebrations.
The Centennial celebrations in 1967 (including Expo ’67) contributed to Pearson’s legacy as a maker of Canadian nationalism.
A population within a community that supports the efforts of an external force to topple that community or nation; examples include Cold War fears of Canadian communists who were loyal to Moscow rather than Ottawa.
This was itself a novel twist on the venerable Canadian fear of a fifth column led by Moscow.
Arising out of PM Lester Pearson's decision to replace the Red Ensign in the early 1960s.
First, and probably most notably, he was responsible for initiating the Flag Debate, out of which came the successor to the Red Ensign, the Maple Leaf flag.
Sexual relations outside of the institution of marriage; critical of the idea of marital monogamy.
Some sought to abolish traditional ideas regarding love and marriage; free love was practiced openly, and there was some support for the emergent cause of gay rights.
A movement that begins in earnest in the early 20th century, calling for the elimination of laws barring public discussion of any number of topics; some subjects regarded as seditious — including calls for violent overthrow of the regime — have been subject to intermittent bans.
The protests, however, were deeply rooted in decades-old traditions of free speech protests and still older concerns for academic freedom.
A formula for amending the British North America Act (1867) developed in the 1960s; rejected by Quebec in 1965; provided the framework for subsequent discussions in 1982.
Quebec’s rejection of the Fulton-Favreau Formula in 1965 left Canada without a way to amend its own constitution.
1864, 1906, 1929, 1949; a succession of international agreements on the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians.
The numbers were dubious, the whole idea was in conflict with the Geneva Convention, and Acheson’s transparent propaganda ploy blew up in his face when prisoners in the Koje-do Island POW camp demanded that they be returned to the North and to the PRC.
Post-WWII espionage case involving a clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa who disclosed the existence of a spy ring in Canada.
By February 1946, the public was aware of the Gouzenko Affair, which played out in the press and in Parliament.
In Quebec, the period from 1944 to 1959 in which policies were introduced under the Union Nationale government of Maurice Duplessis.
Outline the forces behind the Grand Noirceur and the Quiet Revolution.
A youth movement originating in the 1960s that was anti-war (specifically, opposed to the war in Vietnam), critical of social conventions, and associated with experimentation with psychedelic drugs.
Hippies rejected the conventions of traditional society.
A married woman whose principle (unpaid) occupation is the maintaining of her household, including preparing food, cleaning clothes, providing pre-school education, and cleaning house.
Ryan’s campaign appealed strongly to Quebec housewives who felt doubly diminished by their social status and Payette’s condescension.
In legal and demographic terms, a child born to unmarried parents (or "out of wedlock").
What is more, although the share of births that were illegitimate climbed during the war years from 3.9 to 4.5% of the total number of births, illegitimacy declined to a mid-1950s trough of about 3.8%.
Cold War-era surface-to-air missiles with no less than a 5,000 km range; typically nuclear-tipped.
In both the East and the West, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) were being developed with a greater range and payload than conventional bomber aircraft.
A term coined by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to refer to portions of Eastern Europe that the Soviet Union had incorporated into its sphere of influence and that no longer were free to manage their own affairs.
On 5 March 1946, Churchill gave a speech declaring that an Iron Curtain had descended across Europe.
The locus of the 1890s gold rush in the Yukon Territory, along the Klondike River valley; used to describe the gold rush as a whole.
The Klondike gold rush of 1896 brought an influx of gold seekers to the North (especially from the United States), and the Canadian government responded by creating the Yukon Territory in 1898.
A war that began in 1950 and ended inconclusively in Armistice in 1953; this was Canada's first Cold War era military engagement, and it involved significant casualties.
The Korean War, as well, served to establish a kind of Cold War protocol.
The slogan used by Jean Lesage's Liberals in Quebec in 1960 election, ushering in the Quiet Revolution.
With the slogan “Maître chez nous,” Jean Lesage’s Liberals promised Quebecers control of their own affairs.
An agricultural producers' marketing tool; often established by the producers themselves or by government, which acts as a buyer of output and then a marketer. Constitutes a kind of monopoly in that producers cannot sell their goods through any other means. See also wheat pools.
The role of the state in agriculture became increasingly important and took the form of research, marketing boards, and regulation of output.
1987; an agreement reached between all the provincial premiers and the Prime Minister that provided for a constitutional amending formula, a distinct society clause for Quebec, senate and Supreme Court reforms, and a devolution of some immigration issues to the provincial level. Despite a promising start, the Accord failed to achieve final approval.
This was the only thing that was accomplished with alacrity in the brief life of the Meech Lake Accord.
The federated Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto.
Known as Metro, the new administrative body took in the City of Toronto and the suburban municipalities of Etobicoke, York, North York, East York, and Scarborough.
The idea that Canada might occupy a position between "great power" states like Britain and the United States and, after the World War II, at a level between the superpowers (the US and the USSR), the second tier of military and economic powers (e.g.: Britain and France), and other nations; tied to Lester Pearson's vision of peacekeeping and Canada as a referee or fair broker.
Like King, he envisioned Canada occupying the position of middle power, playing a critical role and brokering peace between high-flying superpowers and the major powers.
The Cold War belief that the sheer number of thermonuclear devices and delivery systems in the hands of the Soviet Union and the United States meant that neither side would survive an assault initiated by the other. By assuring their mutual destruction, they would be deterred from initiating a nuclear war.
After 1953 especially, the fear of mutually assured destruction (MAD) amplified fears in the Western world of the threat posed to its particular social and economic world by the Soviet Union and the expanding reach of communist regimes.
The imposition of state ownership over a corporation or sector; examples include the provincial nationalization of hydroelectricity providers (e.g.: Ontario Hydro, Hydro-Québec, and BC Hydro) and the water transport monopoly in British Columbia (BC Ferries).
Described as the “Minister for Everything,” Howe nationalized industries, rapidly expanded industrial production, and got the government involved in the Manhattan Project.
The series of referendums dealing with Quebec separatism (or sovereignty-association) and proposed changes to the constitution, beginning in 1980.
It was only the first campaign it what became known as the Neverendum.
Associated with campus radicalism in the 1960s and the writings of German philosopher Herbert Marcuse; less interested in the class struggle and labour power than with social justice.
Socialist elements in these movements tended to align with what was called the New Left.
Arising from a pact signed with the United States in 1957; provides detection and defence against Soviet missile and other airborne attacks on North America.
But, in 1958, he carried forward the Liberal government’s commitment to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) agreement with the United States.
Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) allows any provincial, federal, or territorial government to override some select rights in the Charter for a fixed period of time.
Rather than concede the point, Bourassa drew up new legislation, Bill 178, which used the notwithstanding clause to renew the commitment to French-only signs.
1993; set the stage for the Nunavut Act, 1999 that created the new territory of Nunavut; the first major land claims agreement negotiated by the federal government since Treaty 11 (1920 to 1921).
In 1993, the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement was signed between Inuit of the Eastern Arctic and the federal government.
This was a combination of events in October 1970 including the kidnapping of James Cross and Pierre Laporte, attempts to ransom the two men, the execution of Cross by his abductors, and the use of the War Measures Act for the first time in peacetime.
On 13 October, eight days into the October Crisis, Trudeau was informally questioned by journalists on the steps of Parliament.
Photo-journalists who principally target celebrities and public figures and whose technique is sometimes intrusive.
Sinclair came from the Liberal establishment in British Columbia (her father was a cabinet minister under Louis St. Laurent), but she was 22 at the time of her marriage and subjected to the first wave of political paparazzi.
The transfer to Canada from Britain of the British North America Act (an Act of the British Parliament) and thus enabling its amendment in Canada.
This left the path open for Ottawa to request of Westminster that the constitution be patriated to Canada.
Under the United Nations in the Cold War and post-Cold War era, the use of military and other military personnel in non-combatant roles to maintain peace between adversaries so as to enable the peace-making process.
Following the Suez Crisis in 1956 (see Sections 9.5 and 9.7), Canada engaged in a series of peacekeeping missions.
Refers to the first successful oral contraceptive, approved for public use in 1960.
The period from 1945 to 1991 was one of dramatic technological and social change.
Established in 1964, the Federation was the descendant of a long line of organizations advocating education and support around birth control.
Thereafter, the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada became a more prominent part of the public discussion about fertility limitation.
A music sub-genre within the larger rock and roll (rock'n'roll) genre; adheres to obvious structural qualities, tends to be melodic, and aims at a younger audience.
A transition phase saw the rise of closely managed studio productions, which are now more associated with pop music.
1968, a brief period of liberalization of government policies and democratic rights in Czechoslovakia; countered by the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops under the command of the Soviet Union.
Campus protests peaked in 1968, the same year as militance in Paris was cresting and the Prague Spring.
Also the Office of the Prime Minister or the PMO; the centre of political decision making in the Parliamentary system, consisting of the Prime Minister and her/his chief political advisors; in Ottawa, located in the Langevin Block on Parliament Hill.
St. Laurent inherited the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) from Mackenzie King and led the Liberals to their largest majority ever in 1949.
Cold war era conflicts conducted by third party countries in which the United States and the Soviet Union had a stake, rather than a direct conflict between the two superpowers.
Its origins can be traced to several sources but it rapidly became a war of postures and proxy wars between the two heavy-hitters, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
A variant of rock'n'roll that appeared for the first time in the late 1970s; marked by an anti-establishment, anti-authority stance.
Punk Rock was, in its late 1970s incarnation, an expression of alienation from the pop music industry’s emphasis on extravagance in the studio and on the stage.
A period of rapid and consequential change in the character of Quebec politics and society beginning in the late 1950s.
Outline the forces behind the Grand Noirceur and the Quiet Revolution.
A Canadian Progressive Conservative who takes an essentially 19th century conservative position on the social obligations of the upper classes; a position sometimes described as noblesse oblige.
Diefenbaker (aka: Dief) represented the left-wing of the conservative tradition in Canada — he was a Red Tory — and was committed to the ideal of the common good.
A federal government initiative in the mid-20th century to move Aboriginal peoples in the North to locations where they would serve as a sign of Canadian sovereignty and/or where services (education, healthcare, administration, and the church) might be more effectively centralized. A program to which Inuit in particular were subjected, their lives disrupted, and their economies severed.
It was not until 2010 that the federal government issued an apology for these relocation programs.
A term used to describe all Canada apart from Quebec; has the advantage of avoiding the idea of dualism (as in English- vs. French-Canada).
Efforts to reform the constitutional relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada, moreover, continued to flounder.
Also rock'n'roll and rock & roll; a musical style originating in the 1950s characterized at first by a synthesis of blues, jazz, country, western, and boogie-woogie; became in the 1960s and later an umbrella term for many styles that incorporated any of these elements, including a strong youth component; regarded at mid-century as rebellious in its presentation and content.
All forms that would contribute in some measure to what became known in the early 1950s as rock and roll (aka.
Created in 1963 and reported out in 1969; co-chaired by A. Davidson Dunstan and André Laurendeau (who was succeeded at his death by Jean-Louis Gagnon); identified underrepresentation of Franco-Canadians in many areas of public life, second-rate services in French in national and relevant provincial systems, and poor opportunities for Francophones in post-secondary institutions outside of Quebec; recommended the establishment of a Commissioner of Official Languages.
The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism reported out in 1969, and there was a new urgency after October 1970 to implement some of its recommendations.
Movement of people — generally younger people — off the land and into the cities; associated with urbanization and also with the collapse of village and town economies.
Rural depopulation also meant that rural communities shrank.
Convened by Pope John XXIII in 1959; ended 90 years of papal infallibility by opening dialogue regarding doctrine and the relationship between the Catholic Church and the modern world; upset many long-standing convictions about unchanging features of Catholic life; in Canada, contributed to the sense of social, spiritual, and secular fluidity that was bound up in the Quiet Revolution.
There were international events that encouraged a questioning of the status quo, of which the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) beginning in 1962 was among the most prominent.
A complex of social changes associated with the 1960s; loosening of moral codes as regards premarital sex, illegitimacy, divorce and remarriage, pornography, and sex for pleasure (as opposed to procreation).
As a result of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, some parts of life that had been considered out of bounds — like speaking about someone’s sex life — were no longer taboo.
Espionage agents who are deeply embedded in the host community and dormant, awaiting activation.
Igor Gouzenko (1919-1982) disclosed the existence of a spy ring that included sleeper agents working under deep cover in Canada.
The movement of individuals, households, or communities through social hierarchies; generally associated with upward mobility — but downward is also a possibility.
The fact that more baby boomers were able to attend university was viewed by some as evidence of social mobility.
Competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to establish a dominant commercial, scientific, and military presence in near space; initiated with the launch of the Soviet satellite, Sputnik I in 1957; marked by American determination to reach the moon first.
Canada’s involvement in the space race begins in earnest with the launching of the Alouette I satellite in 1962, which made Canada only the fourth country in space.
A low orbit space craft developed by NASA in the 1970s and launched first in 1981; includes reusable sections and the craft is capable of reentry and a controlled surface landing on return. Nine Canadians have flown in Space Shuttle missions.
Around the same time, Canada was invited by NASA to participate in the coming Space Shuttle program; the end product was the Shuttle Remote Manipulator System, also known as the Canadarm.
The first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957; credited with starting the space race between the USSR and the United States.
The date matters because of the coincidental launch that day of the first space satellite, the Russian Sputnik.
The low density housing districts beyond the city limits; the expansion of cities beyond their boundaries into bordering municipalities, creating low density and car-dependent districts with few amenities other than housing.
The setting for modernity was urban, but the lives of most Canadians in the 20th century increasingly became defined as something different: suburban.
The 1956 invasion of Egypt by Israel, followed by France and Britain with the objective of seizing the Suez Canal. The failure of England and France to inform their former Allies — especially the United States — of their plans led to a rift between Britain and the USA in particular. Canada's response, led by Lester Pearson, was to propose a large multi-national peacekeeping force in the region.
Following the Suez Crisis in 1956 (see Sections 9.5 and 9.7), Canada engaged in a series of peacekeeping missions.
A drug prescribed to pregnant women for morning sickness; available in Canada from 1959 to 1962; resulted in catastrophic side effects, including severe disfigurement and defects in more than 100 infants in Canada alone.
The case for the Pill advanced rapidly in part because it had the sanction of science behind it (even though that same science was reeling at the same time from the thalidomide disaster).
Les trois colombes, a term used mainly by commentators to describe the trio of Jean Marchand, Gerard Pelletier, and Pierre Trudeau when they were recruited to the federal Liberal Party in the 1960s.
But he regarded their ability to achieve change as very limited and was persuaded to join the Liberal Party in 1965 as part of a trio of Quebec recruits known as the Three Wise Men (or les trois colombes).
Term used principally by journalists to describe public and media fascination with Pierre Trudeau in the course of the 1968 Liberal leadership convention and then the general election; alludes to the phenomenon of Beatlemania, associated with the British Invasion.
Echoing the appeal of “British Invasion” bands of the decade, public fascination with Trudeau was promoted as Trudeaumania.
The narrative of Canadian history that privileges the idea of the French and British as co-equal founders of Canada; ignores roles played by Aboriginal nations and implicitly reduces the importance of Canadians drawn from other ethnicities and countries; is at the heart of dualism.
His “One Canada” mantra was enough to derail the two-century–old discourse of two founding nations and to begin the process of legitimizing diversity in Canada.
An international body established in 1942; originally was the rough equivalent of the Allied Nations in the Second World War; expanded to a post-war role in 1945 as an intergovernmental assembly and series of agencies tasked with reducing international tensions and addressing international social and economic crises.
The United Nations (UN), which had been established in 1945, was quick to react.
Provision of health insurance coverage to all members of society; pioneered in German in the 1880s; similar programs appeared first in the British Commonwealth in New Zealand (1939); in Canada, introduced first in Saskatchewan in 1962 and nationally in stages in 1966-72.
Pearson quickly accepted the nuclear warheads for Bomarc missiles, rushed into place universal health care under the Medical Care Act (1966), and introduced the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).
Introduced in 1944; provided funds to enable the transition to civilian life of Canadian troops; included free university education, payment for time served, life insurance, and money for civilian clothes. The Charter also guaranteed that ex-servicemen and women could reclaim their former jobs, which had the effect of displacing women who had worked in industry during wartime.
No initiative was as comprehensive in this respect as the 1944 Veterans Charter.
An agreement to patriate the British North America Act, which included an amending formula, new civil, personal, and language rights, and provisions for regional equalization; achieved agreement from nine provinces and narrowly failed to secure Quebec's approval from Premier Robert Bourassa.
The election in 2015 of a government led by Justin Trudeau (b. 1971) has sharpened the public’s memory of his father, Pierre Elliot Trudeau (1919-2000).
Introduced as part of the Anti-Inflation Act, 1975 as a response to an inflation rate approaching 11%; marked the beginning of a move away from the post-war settlement in that it established new restrictions on organized labour. The controls and the Anti-Inflation Board were dismantled in 1978.
Trudeau’s 1975 to 1979 administration responded with wage and price controls and limited the ability of trade unions to bargain for improved incomes as a means of controlling inflation.
Colloquial term for the migration of middle and working class European-Canadians from declining and multi-ethnic city centres for the suburbs; associated earlier in the United States with racial tensions in cities and more homogeneously Euro-American suburbs.
Growing diversity in urban cores contributed to still more movement to the suburbs by more established Canadian households in what has been called white flight.
Colloquial term used to describe security campaigns conducted in capitalist democracies during the Cold War which targeted, mainly, communists but also homosexuals and any other group regarded as potential seditious.
There were anti-communist purges in trade unions, the civil service, and elsewhere in Canada even before the McCarthyite witch hunts in the United States.
An umbrella term used to describe mostly non-European, non-North American styles of music, including indigenous and hybridized form. The term is problematic in that it includes essentially everything while, at the same time, implicitly otherizing anything that is not North American mainstream.
World music influences began to shape Canadian performers as well, as could be seen in Toronto especially.
Countercultural youth movement originating in the United States in 1967; combined anarchist views with environmentalist perspectives.
Some of the political energy went to the Yippie (Youth International Party) movement.