Editor's Note

This issue begins with an article by Asa McKercher analyzing the Canadian government's ambivalent role in the confrontation between the United States and Cuba during the Cold War. From the start, Canadian officials were in an uncomfortable position. On the one hand, Canada throughout the Cold War was a close ally and friendly neighbor of the United States, and Canadian leaders did not want to antagonize their U.S. counterparts unduly. On the other hand, Canadian policymakers and legislators saw no reason for a confrontation and regarded U.S. policy as unwise and counterproductive (and if Canadian legislators had been aware of the full extent of the Kennedy administration's covert operations designed to undermine and assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, they might have been even more alarmed). At various points in the early 1960s, Canadian officials at the highest levels considered trying to serve as mediators in the dispute, but they found...