Overview

March 29, 2023, marks the 50th anniversary of the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. It hardly seems possible that it has been nearly 50 years since the Vietnam War was at its zenith. In 1998 author James L. Dickerson went to Canada to meet with and interview Americans who had gone to Canada in opposition to the war in Vietnam. This is a revised and updated edition of the book that was published in 1999, made even more poignant by the realization that today America's crumbling democracy is likely to send a new wave of Americans to Canada in search of freedom and a better way of life. At the time of the Vietnam War, if you had asked those who fought against the war-and those who fought in the war-if the day would ever come when it would cease to matter, you would have been greeted with derisive laughter. The Vietnam War, whether you were for it or against it, is who we were then -and still are today, if you are old enough to remember it. In this new updated and revised edition of this American-Canadian history book, author Dickerson answers the question: whatever happened to the men and women who went to Canada? Incredibly, only 7 million of Canada's current 38 million population are of an age to have any memory of the thousands of American war resisters and deserters who fled to Canada during the Vietnam War. That's because, according to Statistics Canada, 31 million Canadians living today were born after 1957, too young to have been influenced by the arrival of Vietnam War resisters. That is of current interest because of the belief of many political observers that disillusioned Americans will once again flood into Canada in the years ahead as American democracy is threatened by those who strive to install an authoritarian style of government in the United States similar to those that rule Russia, China, and North Korea. If that happens, Canada will be one of the few democracies left in the world. Ironically there may come a time when the sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters of American war resisters may be called to fight a war against an authoritarian Dis-United States of America in need of Canada's natural resources. With contextual information regarding the polices of both the U.S. and Canadian governments toward the war and its resisters, Dickerson offers evidence that a generation of America's best and brightest was lost to Canada. His inclusion of female resisters contributes a new perspective to the debate that continues to rage almost 50 years after the last American troops in Vietnam were sent home to an ungrateful nation to resume their lives amid the destruction caused by the war.

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Reviews

Not until the end of this excellent inquiry does the reader learn that Dickerson, the author of the popular music books Women on Top and Goin' Back to Memphis, moved to Canada to avoid the draft. His anger and that of the seven resisters who are the main characters of this book make for a highly charged story. Rather than an oral history of their lives, this is a most readable reconstruction of events, primarily from contemporary magazine articles of the migration of 500,000 Americans, half of them women, to Canada, where they were welcomed by a government headed by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. This is in sharp contrast to Dickerson's indictment of an America that turned its back on its children, both war resisters and emotionally and physically scarred veterans, as it struggled to redeem its collective soul. -Library Journal. Of the approximately 191,522 [this number does not include women] Americans who fled from the U.S. to Canada to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War, a significant number did not return, even after amnesty was granted by President Carter. Many of those war resistors, as Dickerson refers to them, stayed and remade their lives in Canada. Dickerson, himself a resister, weaves the tumultuous history of the Vietnam War era into the backdrop of the resisters' own experiences settling into their adopted country. Their personal stories vary, including those of a former ROTC student, an archaeologist who received his draft notice in Yugoslavia, and a female premed student who fled the U.S. with her draft-eligible husband. Many of the resisters were also deeply affected by events other than Vietnam that marked the 1960s stateside, such as the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. They found life in Canada clearly better than fighting an unpopular war or returning to their own troubled country. Recommended for collections that focus on the Vietnam War.-Marene Chamberlain, Booklist. ., . an engaging read that skillfully uses several individual anecdotes to create a wider portrait of American society in the 1960s and 1970s. -The Canadian Historical Review.

Author Information

James L. Dickerson is an award-winning investigative journalist who has worked for five newspapers as a staff writer and written over 30 books, including Colonel Tom Parker: The Curious Life of Elvis Presley's Eccentric Manager, which was purchased by Warner Bros. for Baz Luhrmann's 2022 film about Elvis, starring Tom Hanks as The Colonel. He is also author of the memoir Living on Deadline and Devil's Sanctuary: An Eyewitness History of Mississippi Hate Crimes.

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