Draft Resisters, Left Nationalism, and the Politics of Anti-Imperialism

The politics of Canadian left nationalism, opposition to the war in Vietnam, and critiques of us imperialism occupied shared, overlapping, and in many cases intersecting intellectual and cultural space in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Principally centred in Toronto as they were - though not exclusively - this article traces the ways that us draft resisters and expatriates became both advocates of left nationalism and contentious subjects within nationalist debates. For some, left Canadian nationalist draft resisters and other expatriates represented a symbol of independence and defiance vis-a-vis the United States. In turn this iconographic representation was challenged by some Canadian nationalists who saw American expatriates as yet another unwanted us import, part of American political influence and cultural, embodied representations of us hegemony on Canadian soil.