Asa Mckercher
Biographic Data
| ID | 1528678 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Asa Mckercher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Asa |
| FAMILY NAME | Mckercher |
| SIGNATURE | MCKERCHER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Royal Military College of Canada |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9452-3854 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
More than Salmon Sex
Ronald Gostick, the Canadian Intelligence Service , and the “Paranoid Style” in Postwar Canada
This article examines the activities of Ronald Gostick who, in the 1950s and 1960s, was Canada’s leading far-right conspiracy theorist. While active for more than half a century, Gostick rose to prominence in the postwar period, years of great changes in Canadian politics, government, society, and culture. At the far right of political opinion, Gostick had much to say and write about these developments, which he traced to a vast Jewish-led conspi…
Three Whores at a christening’
Canadian Orientalism
The Bridge in the Parks
Find information about UTP Journals. University of Toronto Press is Canada’s leading academic publisher and one of the largest university presses in North America, with particular strengths in the social sciences, humanities, and business. The Book Publishing Division is widely recognized in Canada for its strength in history, political science, sociology, Indigenous studies, and cultural studies. Internationally, UTP is a leading publisher of me…
The Edmund Burke Society and Right-Wing Extremism in Late Twentieth-Century Canada
Emerging in Toronto in the late 1960s, the Edmund Burke Society (ebs) became a leading far-right outlet. From picketing Model United Nations meetings and gatherings of left-wing groups to staging pro-Vietnam War protests and engaging in racially motivated vandalism, the ebs became a bellwether of what journalists and social scientists identified as a “virtual explosion” of Canadian right-wing extremism. The far right has a long history in Canada,…
Securing the Undefended Border
How reliable an ally
The withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, and the subsequent collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government in August 2021, raised doubts in the United States and abroad about the limits and credibility of American power. For some observers, the situation seemed to parallel the fall of the South Vietnamese regime in April 1975. Given the comparisons being drawn between Saigon and Kabul, this brief paper examines a series of Canadian diploma…
Under your inspired leadership”
Drawing on newspaper and archival sources, this article examines post-war Canadian attitudes towards Dwight D. Eisenhower, particularly during his time in office as the United States President from 1953 to 1961. Eisenhower emerged from the Second World War as a trusted figure for many Canadians due to his inspiring leadership of the Allied cause. Once in the White House, however, his reputation began to suffer, and public opinion in Canada increa…
Christo Aivalis. The Constant Liberal
When Pierre Trudeau died in 2000, an uncle of mine from the oil-rich province of Alberta—Canada’s Texas—celebrated with champagne. The former Liberal Party prime minister of Canada from 1968 to 1984, Trudeau had enraged Conservatives with interventionist economic policies, progressive positions on issues such as abortion and homosexuality, slashed defense spending, and a foreign policy that included engagement with Canada’s Cold War foes. Worse, …
Canada and the World since 1867
This book is a history of Canada’s role in the world as well as the impact of world events on Canada. Starting from the country’s quasi-independence from Britain in 1867, its analysis moves through events in Canadian and global history to the present day. Looking at Canada’s international relations from the perspective of elite actors and normal people alike, this study draws on original research and the latest work on Canadian international and …
Too Close for Comfort
In the wake of the racial violence in the mid-2010s across the United States, several journalists, pointing to historic and contemporary discrimination against minorities in Canada, cautioned Canadians against being “smug about race.” Highlighting the plight of indigenous peoples, one contributor to the country's leading newsmagazine went even further, declaring, “Canada's race problem? It's even worse than America's.” Canadians have long been bo…
Other Diplomacies, Other Ties
Reason over passion
Within the literature on human rights, the 1970s are often viewed as a period in which rights achieved a breakthrough globally. While rights regimes, activist networks, and the overall discourse of human rights certainly came into their own during this decade, the rights revolution had its limitations, particularly at the international level. In the Canadian context, the government of Pierre Trudeau advanced a domestic rights program, culminating…
Cuba's Revolutionary World by Jonathan C. Brown
John W. Graham, Whose Man in Havana? Adventures from the Far Side of Diplomacy
Toward Canada in the World
As a field of study, Canadian Foreign Policy history has been on life support for the better part of three decades. While its resiliency speaks to the commitment of its practitioners, the fact that Canadian international history has largely been sidelined is troubling given both the field’s importance generally and its appeal to undergraduate students and the wider public. Yet, at the same time as Canadian Foreign Policy history has been in stasi…
No, Prime Minister
John Diefenbaker has been portrayed as having been out of his league in foreign affairs. In part, his lack of foreign policy successes have been blamed on his poor relationship with Canadian diplomats, who he feared were “Pearsonalities” loyal to former Liberal foreign minister Lester Pearson. Yet, historians have largely dismissed Diefenbaker's suspicions. First revisiting the poor relationship between Diefenbaker and the diplomats, this article…
Skyhawk, Skyshield, and the Soviets
For the past two decades, Canadian international historians have largely missed the Cold War, or at least a significant portion of it. Certainly, there has been no shortage of studies of Canadian foreign policy featuring the bipolar struggle, and yet historians have largely confined their attention to Canada's admittedly crucial relationship with the United States, while Canadian–Soviet relations have been ignored. Indeed, in the historiography o…
Camelot and Canada
John F. Kennedy’s thousand days as president coincided not only with the crisis years of the Cold War, but also with the most fractious period in the Canada–United States relationship since the War of 1812. Thanks in part to mounting Canadian nationalist sentiment, Kennedy confronted a host of issues with Canada magnified by Canadian concerns over their country’s close economic, cultural, military, and diplomatic links with the United States. The…
Sound and Fury
Taking account of recent attention both to Canada's human rights history and to efforts to provide more nuanced examinations of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's time in office, this article explores the place of human rights in Diefenbaker's foreign policy. In doing so, it examines the international context of Diefenbaker's Bill of Rights and other domestic achievements and looks also at the prime minister's handling of South African apartheid, …
Young, Well-Educated, and Adaptable
Dollars and sense? The Harper government, economic diplomacy, and Canadian foreign policy
Over its near-decade of governance, Canada's Conservative government developed an international agenda that narrowly construed international engagement as economic diplomacy. Rooted in the Conservatives' desire to establish themselves with voters as shrewd stewards of the Canadian economy, economic and commercial calculations took precedence, trumping even military spending and the Arctic, both defining portfolios for Prime Minister Stephen Harpe…
Renata Keller,Mexico's Cold War
Renata Keller, Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the legacy of the Mexican revolution." Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes, 41(2), pp. 287–288
A Helpful Fixer in a Hard Place
With the breakdown of relations between Washington and Havana after the Cuban revolution in 1959, officials in Ottawa found themselves in an unenviable position. Increasingly, Canadian diplomats and politicians felt caught between, on one side, their most important ally and trading partner, and, on the other, a country that had not caused harm to Canada in any significant way. Alarmed by this state of affairs, Canadian officials on several occasi…
The most serious problem’? Canada–US relations and Cuba, 1962
Relying on newly opened documents from Canada and the United States this article examines Washington's effort, from January to October 1962, to internationalise the embargo of Cuba and explores the Canadian response. It argues that the Canadian government sought to support American policy while still maintaining its independent course of action. Although officials in Ottawa did not feel the need to abandon their position, they did come to appreci…
A ‘Half-hearted Response’
Whereas previous studies of Canada's actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis have argued that Ottawa was a half-hearted ally of the United States, recently released documents provide far different conclusions. Seeking to complement previous works, which are focused largely on military events, this study shows how Canadian diplomats responded to the crisis and sought to support their vital ally in the events of October and November 1962
How reliable an ally
The withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, and the subsequent collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government in August 2021, raised doubts in the United States and abroad about the limits and credibility of American power. For some observers, the situation seemed to parallel the fall of the South Vietnamese regime in April 1975. Given the comparisons being drawn between Saigon and Kabul, this brief paper examines a series of Canadian diploma…
Reason over passion
Within the literature on human rights, the 1970s are often viewed as a period in which rights achieved a breakthrough globally. While rights regimes, activist networks, and the overall discourse of human rights certainly came into their own during this decade, the rights revolution had its limitations, particularly at the international level. In the Canadian context, the government of Pierre Trudeau advanced a domestic rights program, culminating…
Dollars and sense? The Harper government, economic diplomacy, and Canadian foreign policy
Over its near-decade of governance, Canada's Conservative government developed an international agenda that narrowly construed international engagement as economic diplomacy. Rooted in the Conservatives' desire to establish themselves with voters as shrewd stewards of the Canadian economy, economic and commercial calculations took precedence, trumping even military spending and the Arctic, both defining portfolios for Prime Minister Stephen Harpe…
The Centre Cannot Hold
Building on recent historiography that has questioned traditional assumptions regarding the altruism of post-war Canadian foreign policy, this article examines Canada's response to the emergence of the Afro-Asian bloc at the United Nations in 1960. Canadian diplomats initially greeted the emergence of the Third World, hoped to influence delegations from these newly emergent states and had notions of working as a bridge between the west and the re…
The most serious problem’? Canada–US relations and Cuba, 1962
Relying on newly opened documents from Canada and the United States this article examines Washington's effort, from January to October 1962, to internationalise the embargo of Cuba and explores the Canadian response. It argues that the Canadian government sought to support American policy while still maintaining its independent course of action. Although officials in Ottawa did not feel the need to abandon their position, they did come to appreci…
A ‘Half-hearted Response’
Whereas previous studies of Canada's actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis have argued that Ottawa was a half-hearted ally of the United States, recently released documents provide far different conclusions. Seeking to complement previous works, which are focused largely on military events, this study shows how Canadian diplomats responded to the crisis and sought to support their vital ally in the events of October and November 1962
Dealing with Diefenbaker
Analyzing the results of the 1963 Canadian federal election, which saw the Liberal party victorious after six years of Progressive Conservative rule, American Ambassador Walton Butterworth predicted that Canada would henceforth more stable, responsible, sophisticated and generally cooperative than at any time since 1958. That Butterworth would single out that year as being of such importance is interesting but not a surprise. Although Tory leader…
Southern Exposure
For the first four years of his premiership, Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker took an immense interest in Canada's relations with Latin America. Diefenbaker and his two foreign ministers, Sidney Smith and Howard Green, actively expanded Canadian links to the region and flirted with joining the Organization of American States. In turn, many Latin American political leaders welcomed Ottawa's focus on their region. However, us President John…
Principles and Partnership
Entitled “Canada and the United States: Principles for Partnership” and prepared at the behest of American President Lyndon Johnson and Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson, the so-called Merchant–Heeney report set out a series of guiding principles for the smooth conduct of bilateral relations. Drawing on their vast experience at managing this relationship, Arnold Heeney and Livingston Merchant, two former ambassadors, devised their guidebook …
An omen of things to come
Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power
"Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power: British Guiana’s Struggle for Independence, by Colin A. Palmer.." Canadian Journal of History, 47(3), pp. 692–693
The Labyrinth of North American Identities
North America is an odd place. For most Canadians, the continent is a dyad consisting of Canada and the United States, while Mexicans—like many Latin Americans—use norteamericano to refer exclusive
Diefenbaker's World
Notes1. Quoted in "Liberals attack Mulroney over Trudeau tirade," Toronto Star, 6 September 2007, available at: http://www.thestar.com/article/253953 (accessed 27 November 2011).2. JohnDiefenbaker, One Canada: The Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker, 3 vols, Toronto: Taylor & Francis, 1975–77.3. ChristopherYoung, "Dief's Canada bounded by paranoia," Montreal Gazette, 4 December 1976, 48.4. Quoted in "Harkness disputes Diefenbaker …
The Centre Cannot Hold
Building on recent historiography that has questioned traditional assumptions regarding the altruism of post-war Canadian foreign policy, this article examines Canada's response to the emergence of the Afro-Asian bloc at the United Nations in 1960. Canadian diplomats initially greeted the emergence of the Third World, hoped to influence delegations from these newly emergent states and had notions of working as a bridge between the west and the re…
Peter McKenna, Canada looks south
Steamed Up
Studies examining the initial response of the United States to Cuba’s revolution largely ignore the role of Congress, an oversight reflecting both a scholarly trend emphasizing the actions of the presidency in regards to American foreign policy making and the separation of powers in the U.S. constitution. Redressing the balance, this article examines how members of Congress reacted to the course of U.S.-Cuban relations throughout the crisis years…
Ultimate Destiny” Delayed
Until Canada joined in 1990, the issue of its membership in the Organisation of American States bedevilled Canadian foreign policy, which many observers saw as a decisive test of Ottawa’s interest in Latin America. Under the Liberal government of Lester Pearson, prime minister from 1963 to 1968, and the stewardship of his secretary of state for External Affairs, Paul Martin, Canada seemed poised to join OAS. But a mixture of foreign and domestic …
Canada’s Global Villagers
Ruth Compton Brouwer Canada's Global Villagers: CUSO in Development, 1961-1986 Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013. 317pp., $95.00 (cloth) ISBN: 978-0774826037I am sure young Americans would learn a great deal in this country and it could be an important experience for them, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru remarked to Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver in 1961. I hope, India's premier added, you and they will not be too…
Divided Together
A Helpful Fixer in a Hard Place
With the breakdown of relations between Washington and Havana after the Cuban revolution in 1959, officials in Ottawa found themselves in an unenviable position. Increasingly, Canadian diplomats and politicians felt caught between, on one side, their most important ally and trading partner, and, on the other, a country that had not caused harm to Canada in any significant way. Alarmed by this state of affairs, Canadian officials on several occasi…
The trouble with self-determination
In 1960, Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker embarked on a campaign to see the United Nations (UN) recognise and censure Soviet colonialism. This effort is often cited as an example of Diefenbaker's populism and his pandering to ethnic voters. But to the prime minister, it was unconscionable that, with Eastern Europe under Moscow's thumb, the UN should direct its opprobrium entirely towards Britain, France, and other colonial powers then in …
Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Jorge Pérez-López, Cuba under Raúl Castro
Camelot and Canada
John F. Kennedy’s thousand days as president coincided not only with the crisis years of the Cold War, but also with the most fractious period in the Canada–United States relationship since the War of 1812. Thanks in part to mounting Canadian nationalist sentiment, Kennedy confronted a host of issues with Canada magnified by Canadian concerns over their country’s close economic, cultural, military, and diplomatic links with the United States. The…
Sound and Fury
Taking account of recent attention both to Canada's human rights history and to efforts to provide more nuanced examinations of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's time in office, this article explores the place of human rights in Diefenbaker's foreign policy. In doing so, it examines the international context of Diefenbaker's Bill of Rights and other domestic achievements and looks also at the prime minister's handling of South African apartheid, …
Young, Well-Educated, and Adaptable
Dollars and sense? The Harper government, economic diplomacy, and Canadian foreign policy
Over its near-decade of governance, Canada's Conservative government developed an international agenda that narrowly construed international engagement as economic diplomacy. Rooted in the Conservatives' desire to establish themselves with voters as shrewd stewards of the Canadian economy, economic and commercial calculations took precedence, trumping even military spending and the Arctic, both defining portfolios for Prime Minister Stephen Harpe…
Renata Keller,Mexico's Cold War
Renata Keller, Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the legacy of the Mexican revolution." Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes, 41(2), pp. 287–288
John W. Graham, Whose Man in Havana? Adventures from the Far Side of Diplomacy
Toward Canada in the World
As a field of study, Canadian Foreign Policy history has been on life support for the better part of three decades. While its resiliency speaks to the commitment of its practitioners, the fact that Canadian international history has largely been sidelined is troubling given both the field’s importance generally and its appeal to undergraduate students and the wider public. Yet, at the same time as Canadian Foreign Policy history has been in stasi…
Political science (38 works) · Law (28 works) · Canadian Identity and History (27 works) · History (25 works) · Politics (24 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Canadian Policy and Governance (17 works) · Economic history (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Political economy (16 works)