Of Trade & Nationalism

We will search for substitutes immediately. There are North Americans who specialize in evading the blockade and selling. The law of profit is more important to them than any other thing.

--Cuban Economic Czar Ernesto ("Che") Guevara; discussing the U.S. embargo of Cuba

The Bristol Britannia with the Cubana Airlines markings bobbed to a halt on the runway of Ottawa's Uplands Airport, and out stepped ten Cubans who had flown nonstop from Havana. At their head stood Regino Boti, Fidel Castro's U.S.-hating Minister of Economy. They had come to Canada, proclaimed Boti, with $150 million "to find out what we can purchase." His face abeam, Trade Minister George Hees told newsmen: "You can't do business with better businessmen anywhere."

More Talk Than Deals. From south of the border came strongly worded protests: Canada is sending Cuba "everything this country is denying it," charged Louisiana Senator Russell Long. He urged the U.S. to stop buying Canadian oil and then watch the Canadians "race to Washington to tell us they are quitting dealing with Castro."

On closer examination, it was clear that there was more talk than trade in the Cuba-Canada picture. Despite a doubling of exports to Canada, from $809,000 in October 1959 to $1,675,000 in October 1960, Canada's shipments to Cuba for all 1960 were running $3,000,000 below 1959's $12 million. Castro's economic agents talked big deals, but so far have signed few contracts. A U.S. embassy official looked into reports that U.S. wheeler-dealers were sending embargoed goods to Canada, then transshipping them via the U.S. in sealed freight cars to the Havana railway ferry at West Palm Beach, Fla. He reported back that "not a single provable case has turned up."

Respect for Views. Canada would indeed like to increase trade--and not simply because the prospect of a slice of the former $545 million-a-year U.S.-Cuba trade looked irresistible. A tide of nationalism and of disenchantment with U.S. leadership is running in Canada. Hardly a day goes by without calls for Canada to assert its own leadership and go its own self-interested way. Last week Prime Minister Diefenbaker rose in the House of Commons to explain Ottawa's official position. Said he: "We respect the views of other nations in their relations with Cuba just as we expect that they respect our views in our relations."

The mood of Canadian independence of the U.S. could also be seen in the results of a Gallup poll in which Canadians were asked whether they should become neutral in the Swiss tradition in the event of an atomic war between the West and East. While 58% lined up with the West. 42% were not so sure, and of these, 22% were actively for neutralism. Wrote Hugh MacLennan, one of Canada's top novelists, in the Toronto Star: "At the moment, the U.S. is considered a greater threat to world peace than Russia."

Many Canadians wondered whether the unfriendliness was not being overdone. Said Toronto's Liberal Senator David Croll: "Anti-Americanism seems to be part of a new sort of Canadianism these days. We are not going to build up our sovereignty by anti-Americanism." Yet the sentiment is there, rising not so much out of resentment of the U.S. as out of a new conception of themselves by Canadians. It will be a fact of life between the traditional friends in the months to come.

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