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Edited by Alison Mountz,
University of Alberta Press, 2026
Reviewed by
Stephen Harold Riggins
As I write this review, the outcome of the American conflict with Iran is still uncertain. It is possible that Canadians are on the verge of welcoming another generation of American military deserters, and we will have to renew volunteer associations to assist them. I’m told the number of American soldiers seeking information about selective conscientious-objector status is the highest in 25 years.
The largest politically motivated exodus of Americans since the arrival of the Loyalists during the American Revolution consisted of young Americans leaving the US during the Vietnam War. The statistics for the number of immigrants in both eras can only be estimates, but sociologist John Hagan concluded that roughly 100,000 came to Canada in the late 1960s and early 1970s. President Carter signed Proclamation 4483 in 1977, which allowed Vietnam War draft evaders to return to the US without a penalty. The Proclamation did not apply to military deserters. Hagan concluded that 50,000 draft dodgers and deserters have remained in Canada.
There are excellent studies of this American exodus of military deserters, draft resisters (dodgers), conscientious objectors, selective conscientious objectors, anti-war protesters, political refugees, and traumatized soldiers. One of the earliest substantial studies, by Roger Neville Williams, was published before the war ended. Williams’ collection of interviews in The New Exiles is especially interesting for the statements by military deserters who, he thought, had more to say than draft dodgers because they had combat experience. An unusual aspect of the history of this book is that Williams’ involvement with Vietnam began when he “hid” from his local draft board by working as a journalist in Vietnam. He correctly assumed that, at least for a while, no one from his draft board would think of searching for him in Vietnam.
There are two comprehensive studies by sociologists John Hagan (2001) and Renée Goldsmith Kasinsky (1976). Given their educations, it is understandable that they used similar methods of collecting information. In writing Northern Passage, John Hagan had the advantage that his account appeared relatively late. The disadvantage was that he moved from the US to Edmonton in 1971 for graduate work and moved to Toronto, the center of the American immigrant community of war resisters, only in 1974. The ten-year war ended the next year. But Northern Passage does have an evocative description of the “American ghetto” around Baldwin Street, historically a Chinese-Jewish neighborhood in economic decline, which became in the early 1970s a center of the American draft dodgers in Toronto. This is a very scholarly book concerned not only with individual experiences but also the wider subculture of the Vietnam War Movement. Both Hagan and Kasinsky were concerned with the politics of amnesty among American politicians.
Refugees from Militarism by Renée Goldsmith Kasinsky is my favorite among these early works. It is based on contacts in person or through questionnaires with 1,200 American refugees. She compensated for being exempt from the draft because of her gender by participating in organizations aiding draft dodgers and war resisters, and she could use her recent experiences as a legal American immigrant in Canada to understand some of the problems dodgers and deserters faced. Kasinsky was sensitive to working-class and middle-class differences and the class bias of Canadian immigration officers. Deserters were more likely to be working class; draft resisters, middle class. A topic still relevant despite the passage of decades is her discussion of assimilated and unassimilated minority subcultures in the American exodus. The former had essentially adapted to middle-class Canadian society, while the unassimilated were estranged from mainstream North American society in general.
Journalist Jack Todd, in Desertion in the Time of Vietnam (2021), has written eloquently about the shame he felt for years after deserting the American armed forces. Mark Frutkin’s autobiography Erratic North (2008) provides insights into the counterculture of the hippies and political radicals shaped in part by their reaction to the Vietnam War. Erratic North is also a family history, since Frutkin’s grandfather was a Belarusian draft dodger. Other people writing about Vietnam-era immigration to Canada include James Dickerson, Kenneth Fred Emerick, Douglas Fetherling, Alan Haig-Brown, Kenneth Killmer et al., and David Surrey.
The uniqueness of editor Alison Mountz’s book Crossing into Canada is that she examines two generations of war resisters. The first generation arrived during the late 1960s and early 1970s due to resistance to the Vietnam War. The second generation, arriving in the 2000s as a result of the Iraq-Afghanistan Wars, was smaller in number and confronted more barriers to attaining permanent resident status in Canada. They were military deserters rather than draft dodgers, since conscription had been abolished in the US. The second generation “voluntarily” joined the American armed forces, and this complicated Canadians’ reactions to their claims for refugee status. “Voluntarily” is a debatable word here because these men had few economic options.
Crossing into Canada consists of twelve first-person “oral histories” from the sixty gathered by the team of researchers headed by editor Alison Mountz, professor of geography at the University of Toronto. Seven chapters are about experiences related to the Vietnam War, five about the Iraq-Afghanistan Wars. The oral historians live on both sides of the US-Canadian border, since some protesters were forced to return home. The book includes chapters by a francophone-Canadian peace activist as well as chapters by two wives of draft dodgers. The experiences of wives and girlfriends are essential for understanding the difficult decision-making and early experiences in Canada of male draft evaders. One chapter is by a Hispanic-American, one by a Black-American.
Two oral historians are gay and one is lesbian. Although a common assumption is that the minority status of gays and lesbians can lead to sympathy for other minority groups, this is the first book about war protesters coming to Canada that includes oral histories by gay men and lesbians. According to “Michelle” (contributors to Mountz’s book are identified only by their first names): “We can live in a fairy-tale world where Canada is a refuge from militarism. But it’s not. And it wasn’t really during the Vietnam War either” (p. 117). In the 2000s, roughly three hundred American refugee claimants attempted to get permanent resident status. About fifty formally applied. Only fifteen were granted permanent resident status. Canadian immigration officials rejected the applications for permanent resident status of three of the four oral historians who served or would soon have served in the Iraq-Afghanistan Wars.
Crossing into Canada is an excellent book which deserves to be widely read. My criticisms should be understood as nitpicking. The feel-good conclusion, titled “Reflections,” is disappointing. I understand that no one would want to recruit people to be interviewees or authors and then criticize them in public. It is understandable that the editor does not explicitly critique personal stories. However, it should be possible to hint at their limitations.
The dissatisfactions with military service that the oral historians emphasize are the dishonesty of military recruiters, racism and xenophobia in the armed forces, ineffectiveness of the medicines prescribed for depression and anxiety, and unnecessary hazing in basic training. This is not news. There should be some recognition of the efforts by the armed forces and outside organizations up to the early 2000s to correct these problems. A statement such as “a lot of prejudice being taught” in the armed forces needs to be explored in the conclusion.
There is little evidence that the three LGBTQ historians have read the professional histories of gay and lesbian soldiers, such as Coming Out Under Fire by Allan Bérubé (1990), One of the Boys by Paul Jackson (2010), Ask and Tell by Steve Estes (2007), or Unfriendly Fire by Nathaniel Frank (2009). Such books would have given them a more nuanced understanding of the rationale of military policy and the reality of service. Sociologists have emphasized for a long time that rules on paper are not the same as the actually enforced rules.
Ideally, the book should contain a detailed account of the interviewing and editing. Mountz writes, “the primary role in the collection of oral histories was to listen” (p. 9). Yes, but the interviews were edited, returned to the oral historians, who were invited to further edit and rewrite their stories if they wanted. The chapters are thus more than first-person narratives. What else is not clear. In my own research using personal narratives, I refer to chapters like those in this book as “guided autobiographies.” There are degrees of guidance, from minimal editing to repeated rejections of drafts and suggested revisions. The place of Crossing into Canada on this continuum is not clear.
Mountz’s research was financed by the most prestigious funding agencies in Canada, and it consequently takes the form one expects in such a situation: a team of researchers, including students, and efforts to popularize the research. It may seem odd at first that chapters include a map emphasizing the complexity of the oral historians’ travel while deciding how to respond to imposed military service. The maps are actually an ideal way of summarizing their complicated journeys. An eighty-minute documentary film titled Safe Haven by New Day Films includes excerpts from some of the stories in this book. The film can be purchased for 14 days for $75.00. All of the oral histories will eventually be available at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library of the University of Toronto, which also preserves archival material by earlier researchers about the first generation.
Stephen Harold Riggins is a Professor Emeritus of sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. Ineligible for military service, he arrived in Toronto in August 1969.