How do politicians, diplomats, and interest groups negotiate the tangled web of Canada–US relations? So Near Yet So Far provides in-depth look at the multiple dimensions of this complex relationship, especially in the period since 9/11. Based on almost 200 interviews with current and former government policy makers, opinion-shapers, and interest group leaders in both countries, the book analyzes the motives and mechanics of managing cross-border relations at several levels, including political-strategic, trade-commercial, cultural-psychological, and institutional-procedural. A concluding chapter assesses the implications of current policy trends for Canada’s foreign and international economic policies. So Near Yet So Far will be of interest and value to practitioners, scholars, and citizens of both countries who want a better understanding of how the Canada–US relationship works – and can be made to work more effectively. Balanced and fair in its analysis, it gets to the core issues without distorting perspectives on either side of the border.

To Know Our Many Selves profiles the history of Canadian studies, which began as early as the 1840s with the Study of Canada. In discussing this comprehensive examination of culture, Hoerder highlights its unique interdisciplinary approach, which included both sociological and political angles. Years later, as the study of other ethnicities was added to the cultural story of Canada, a solid foundation was formed for the nation's master narrative.

Forty-five years after the fall of Saigon, John Boyko brings to light the little-known story of Canada's involvement in the American War in Vietnam. Through the lens of six remarkable people, some well-known, others obscure, bestselling historian John Boyko recounts Canada's often-overlooked involvement in that conflict as peacemaker, combatant, and provider of weapons and sanctuary. When Brigadier General Sherwood Lett arrived in Vietnam over a decade before American troops, he and the Canadians under his command risked their lives trying to enforce an unstable peace while questioning whether they were merely handmaidens to a new war. As American battleships steamed across the Pacific, Canadian diplomat Blair Seaborn was meeting secretly in Hanoi with North Vietnam’s prime minister; if American leaders accepted his roadmap to peace, those ships could be turned around before war began. Claire Culhane worked in a Canadian hospital in Vietnam and then returned home to implore Canadians to stop supporting what she deemed an immoral war. Joe Erickson was among 30,000 young Americans who changed Canada by evading the draft and heading north; Doug Carey was one of the 20,000 Canadians who enlisted with the American forces to serve in Vietnam. Rebecca Trinh fled Saigon with her husband and young daughters, joining the waves of desperate Indochinese refugees, thousands of whom were to forge new lives in Canada. Through these wide-ranging and fascinating accounts, Boyko exposes what he calls the Devil’s wiliest trick: convincing leaders that war is desirable, persuading the public that it is acceptable, and telling combatants that the deeds they carry out and the horrors they experience are normal, or at least necessary. In uncovering Canada’s side of the story, Boyko reveals the many secret and forgotten ways that Canada not only fought the war but was forever shaped by its lessons and lies.

Do Canada and the United States share a special relationship, or is this just a face-saving myth, masking dependency and domination? The Politics of Linkage cuts through the rhetoric that clouds this debate by offering detailed accounts of four major bilateral disputes. It shows that the United States has not made coercive linkages between issues. In the early Cold War years, the exercise of American power over Canada was held in check by a genuinely special diplomatic culture but since then has been held back only by interest groups and institutions. This revisionist account of Canada-US relations is essential reading for anyone interested in Canadian politics, American foreign policy, or international diplomacy.

The negotiation of the Canada–U.S. Free Trade agreement in 1985–88 initiated a period of substantially increased North American, and later, global economic integration. However, events since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 have created the potential for major policy shifts arising from NAFTA’s renegotiation and continuing political uncertainties in the United States and with Canada’s other major trading partners. Navigating a Changing World draws together scholars from both countries to examine Canada–U.S. policy relations, the evolution of various processes for regulating market and human movements across national borders, and the specific application of these dynamics to a cross-section of policy fields with significant implications for Canadian public policy. It explores the impact of territorial institutions and extra-territorial forces – institutional, economic, and technological, among others – on interactions across national borders, both within North America and, where relevant, in broader economic relationships affecting the movement of goods, services, people, and capital. Above all, Navigating a Changing World represents the first major study to address Canada’s international policy relations within and beyond North America since the elections of Justin Trudeau in 2015 and Donald Trump in 2016 and the renegotiation of NAFTA.

Forget all you think you know about the Kennedy years. With narrative flair and sparkling storytelling, acclaimed historian John Boyko explores the crucial period when America and its allies were fighting the Cold War's most treacherous battles, Canadians were trading sovereignty for security, and everyone feared a nuclear holocaust. At the centre of this story are three leaders. President John F. Kennedy pledged to pay any price to advance his vision for America's defence and needed Canada to step smartly in line. Fighting him at every turn was Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker, an unapologetic nationalist trying to bolster Canada's autonomy. Liberal leader Lester Pearson, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat, sought a middle ground. Boyko employs meticulous research and newly released documents to present shocking revelations. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Canadian warships guarded America's Atlantic coast and Canada suffered a silent coup d'état. Canada was involved in Kennedy's sliding America into Vietnam. Kennedy knew the nuclear missiles he was forcing on Canada would be decoys, there only to draw Soviet nuclear fire. Kennedy's pollster and political adviser travelled to Ottawa under a fake passport to help defeat the Canadian government. And, perhaps most startlingly, if not for Diefenbaker, Kennedy may have survived the bullets in Dallas.

Original essays that argue the significance of the shared North American history of Canada and the United States rather than Canadian-American relations.

No two nations have exchanged natural resources, produced transborder environmental agreements, or cooperatively altered ecosystems on the same scale as Canada and the United States. Environmental and energy diplomacy have profoundly shaped both countries’ economies, politics, and landscapes for over 150 years. Natural Allies looks at the history of US-Canada relations through an environmental lens. From fisheries in the late nineteenth century to oil pipelines in the twenty-first century, Daniel Macfarlane recounts the scores of transborder environmental and energy arrangements made between the two nations. Many became global precedents that influenced international environmental law, governance, and politics, including the Boundary Waters Treaty, the Trail Smelter case, hydroelectric megaprojects, and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreements. In addition to water, fish, wood, minerals, and myriad other resources, Natural Allies details the history of the continental energy relationship – from electricity to uranium to fossil fuels –showing how Canada became vital to American strategic interests and, along with the United States, a major international energy power and petro-state. Environmental and energy relations facilitated the integration and prosperity of Canada and the United States but also made these countries responsible for the current climate crisis and other unsustainable forms of ecological degradation. Looking to the future, Natural Allies argues that the concept of national security must be widened to include natural security – a commitment to public, national, and international safety from environmental harms, especially those caused by human actions.

In 1958 Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts proclaimed at the University of New Brunswick that "Canada and the United States have carefully maintained the good fences that help make them good neighbours." He could not have foreseen that his presidency would be marked not just by some of the tensest moments of the Cold War but also by the most contentious moments in the Canadian-American relationship. Indeed, the 1963 Canadian federal election was marked by charges that the US government had engineered a plot to oust John Diefenbaker, Canada's nationalist prime minister. Camelot and Canada explores political, economic, and military elements in Canada-US relations in the early 1960s. Asa McKercher challenges the prevailing view that US foreign policymakers, including President Kennedy, were imperious in their conduct toward Canada. Rather, he shows that the period continued to be marked by the special diplomatic relationship that characterized the early postwar years. Even as Diefenbaker's government pursued distinct foreign and economic policies, American officials acknowledged that Canadian objectives legitimately differed from their own and adjusted their policies accordingly. Moreover, for all its bluster, Ottawa rarely moved without weighing the impact that its initiatives might have on Washington. At the same time, McKercher illustrates that there were significant strains on the bilateral relationship, which occurred as a result of mounting doubts in Canada about US leadership in the Cold War, growing Canadian nationalism, and Canadian concern over their country's close economic, military, and cultural ties with the United States. While personal clashes between the two leaders have become mythologized by historians and the public alike, the special relationship between their governments continued to function.