The Paul Wells Show - Historian Tim Cook on the Canada-US alliance

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

During the Trump years, historian Tim Cook saw our neighbours treating us “deplorably.” That got him thinking about the historical relationship between Canada and the U.S. So he decided to write a book about Canada and the U.S. during the Second World War.  He talks to Paul about Canada's struggle to assert its sovereignty while remaining an important ally to the Americans, and how that relationship sheds light the world we live in today.  Tim Cook’s new book is called The Good Allies: How Canada and the United States Fought Together to Defeat Fascism during the Second World War. Season 3 of The Paul Wells Show is sponsored by McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy.

I want to say a word about the people who are supporting this podcast. McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy offers more than just a master's program. They strive to bring together different perspectives and disciplines through public lectures and seminars, strike a better balance between theory and practice in their research, and emphasize the various complexities of the policy process in their conferences. But if you are interested in earning a Master of Public Policy with global reach in just one year, applications are open now for next fall. Learn more at mcgill.ca slash maxbellschool. You know what they say, those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it. Am I going to have to say that again?

This week. It's difficult for Canada to say no, but we have. We have in our history and we have stood strong. Historian Tim Cook on getting along with the neighbours. I'm Paul Wells, the Max Bell Foundation Senior Fellow at McGill University. Welcome to The Paul Wells Show. Hi, did you miss me? I took some time off over the summer and then I took a little extra time. And now we're back for our third season.

As always, I'm going to bring you lots of conversations with leaders and thinkers who are working on tackling the biggest problems of our time. The other day I went over to Tim Cook's house to interview him. Logistically, this was pretty easy. Cook is the chief historian and director of research at the Canadian War Museum. He's probably the country's leading military historian with 20 books to his credit. But at my house, about 10 minutes drive east of Parliament Hill, we think of him as Tim from around the corner. We've been neighbours for years. So Tim

Cook and I plunked ourselves down at his living room table with his very good dog looking on and recorded this interview. The topic of the day was his latest book, The Good Allies, How Canada and the United States Fought Together to Defeat Fascism During the Second World War. More broadly, the topic was the relationship between Canada and the United States, which has almost always been wonderful and warm and mutually supportive, and almost always tricky to maintain. That was true when Mackenzie King and FDR were running their countries, and it's still true today for Justin Trudeau and whoever's next. In large measure, Cook's new book is about William Lyon Mackenzie King, a loner and a weirdo who didn't trust Americans, but who had a winning politician's gift

for recognizing obvious things. That the neighbors were bigger than us, that they would mostly do what they wanted, but that they could never have enough friends. All of that gave Canada an opening to promote its own interests if Canada would only take it. Are there lessons in that

for today's generation of Canadian leadership? Well, there should be. Tim Cook, thanks for joining me in your house. My pleasure. This is your first interview about this book. My first interview. So you're going to get me speaking with great honesty and not having had run all my lines yet. This is like your 18th book? This is technically the 19th, if you include some edited ones. Not every historian sees book writing as a big part of their mandate. Why do you?

I'm a public historian, so I'm a little different than maybe some you've talked to in the Academy. I think to understand who I am, you need to know that I work at the Canadian War Museum. I've been there for over 20 years. I believe in the importance of telling these stories. And I know Canadians want them. They want their history. They want to know, in my case, about military history, political history, or this book, Canada, United States.

I used to play hockey, and I'd be in the dressing room, and guys would ask me, you know, what I was working on. They'd see me on television. They wanted to know the history, but they weren't going to pick up an academic journal. They weren't going to pick up an academic book for the most part. And so it's important to tell these stories, but we've got to find a way to reach our audiences. And I've been lucky to be, I suppose, honing that craft for many years. And much of that, I think, comes from my work at the War Museum, thinking of the audiences there, thinking about ways to connect with people.

Now, why a book about Canada and the U.S. in the Second World War? This one emerged two places, really. One, a physical place, and one, the world in which we live in. The physical place was visiting the World War II Museum in New Orleans. It's a great museum. This is the one with Tom Hanks and Spielberg associated with it. They have more money than God. It's just, it's a great museum.

So it's fairly new. Fairly new. And it's supposed to be encyclopedic insofar as it sort of covers all aspects of World War II. But there are only two references to Canada in the entire museum. And even the D-Day map doesn't have a Canadian flag. Now, fair enough, we fought under a different flag at that time. But that gives you a bit of a sense that our story is not well known. And I don't blame Americans for that. Paul, I know you've got a lot of American friends. I don't expect them to know

Canadian history like we know it. In fact, I see it, it's our job, our job to tell our history. And so that was really the first driving force. And the second one was, I have to be honest, the Trump years, where the administration really treated us, an allied nation, one that worked with them to protect North America and the Northern Hemisphere. You knew it, you covered it, right, but treated us deplorably. And I thought, naively, if only they knew their history a little better. Now, I'm not sure that anybody in the White House is picking up this new book. But those two ideas, that really it's up to us to tell this history, and that it's an important history. Because I think it's a time, you've read the book, but it's a time when we really stepped up. From 1939 to 1945, 1.1 million Canadians in uniform, fighting overseas in multiple theaters of war, on the oceans, in the air, but also defending North America.

And that's a story that isn't often told, and it's one I wanted Americans and Canadians to know. It's interesting you say and Canadians, because I'm left with the impression that it's not only the Americans who need reminding of that time. I think you're right. I think doing history in this country is difficult. It's always under assault, both from the changing ways that we teach history to just the regular apathy

that comes with living in a digital world. I'm often asked that question or a variation of it of how do we get young people to better connect with their history? And I have to be brutally honest sometimes, and you know, it really doesn't always resonate with them, nor should it, right? They live in a digital world. They're moving forward. History is often lost on youth, but it shouldn't be lost on everyone. I mean, I think those of us who have lived in this country for a while, and I think back to the 1995 referendum, where we nearly lost the country. And one of the messages that came out of that is that we needed to do a better job in telling our history, because it's the stuff that keeps us together.

It's the glue that binds a country together. And I think that may be a story that goes through cycles. And we're at a bit of a dark place now in our history in the reckoning, the rightful reckoning with Indigenous people and Indigenous history. But this is a story, I felt at least, worth investing two years of my time in, both reminding Americans and Canadians, as you say, that there was a time when this country stepped up in the fight against fascism, an absolutely necessary war that had to be won. Few people questioned that at the time. Few people who have any sense of their own history would question it today.

And it's a time when Canadians did something hard together. Now, the book is over 500 pages long, and there's a lot of different angles onto this drama. But would I be right to say the central argument of the book is that the Americans and the Canadians were able to accomplish important jobs abroad because they had the home front sorted. And that getting that home front sorted is to some extent the untold story of this collaboration. Yeah, I think you've nailed it there. And we focus a lot on those fighting forces abroad. I've done that in multiple books, stories of men and women in combat.

It's vivid history. It's stuff of life and death. But the home front is just as vivid, just as important. And you can't be fighting the fascists abroad if North America is not secure. can't be fighting the fascists abroad if North America is not secure. The second point I think that's important is that Canada was all in during the course of the war, but all in in supporting Britain. And so Britain is on the front lines. Once France falls in June of 1940, once the Nazis control Western Europe, Britain is the last hope, because of course the Americans are neutral. We've been in the war, and we are standing with the British, and yet ours is still a very

limited war up to that point. That cataclysm, the fall of France, and we are all in after that. But the only way to do that is with American support. And this very strange thing, of course, is happening from September of 39 to December of 41, is that we are at war, and the Americans are neutral. Just think of that today, if the United States was at war, and we were neutral, how would we navigate that? How would we secure our borders? How would we try to work with the White House or various governors? It's incredibly complex. To some extent, I mean, and in very practical ways, it comes down to a story about the relationship between two leaders, Mackenzie King and Franklin Roosevelt. Give me a little thumbnail sketch of both of these guys.

It does. And Franklin Roosevelt, the leader of the free world, although I think that takes a hit in September of 39, when the United States remains neutral. Certainly, it's a shock. King was furious at him. He was furious. He had looked to the United States as the great democracy. And really, since coming to power, he had assumed and Roosevelt had promised to the United States as the great democracy. And really, since coming to power, he had assumed and Roosevelt had promised that the United States would defend Canada if it was ever invaded. Makes a historic speech in Kingston in the summer of 1938. And here are the Americans neutral. And so Mackenzie King, who, you know, is one of those fascinating characters in our history, I think you and I probably taught as this clownish figure who could never make a decision, who

of course famously or infamously talked to his dead mom in seances and his dead dog. He's a joke. And yet, on the other hand, and closer to reality, he's our longest serving prime minister. He trounces opponents over and over again. He's consistently underestimated by everyone. And he wins, and he wins, and he wins. And he governs, and he leads. And he is a critical figure in bringing Canada into the war, balancing the interests in Canada at that time, really between French Canada and English Canada, but understanding he also needs to balance between those Canadians who are nationalists,

who think that we should really not be involved in this war overseas, and the imperialists who are largely English Canada. And on top of that, he's balancing how he will support Britain and how he will do that by leaning into the United States. And so King is a central figure. And he really forges a strong relationship with Roosevelt. And most people who witnessed that relationship thought it was odd because they're very different men. Roosevelt, vivacious, gregarious, outgoing, could work a room and everyone seemed to love him. And then Mackenzie King, much quieter, shyer,

not certain of himself. And we know this because he kept this incredible diary throughout his life. And so they seem like very different men, and yet they found ways to work together. King, like a lot of successful politicians in our country, was obsessed with playing defense. There's a fascinating quote that you open one of your chapters with where he says, it is what we prevent rather than what we do that counts most in government. It's like a horrifying thing to have on your political obituary. And yet he's trying to prevent big things. He's trying to prevent a land invasion of North America.

He's trying to prevent being so helpless that the Americans have to move in and thus having the effect of ceding Canadian sovereignty to the Americans. And he's trying to prevent the loss of face vis-a-vis the big neighbor that that would entail. And those themes keep coming back and back in your story. Yeah. Without a doubt, Mackenzie King was safe and cautious too often, especially in comparison to the great thrusters in Sir Winston Churchill and Roosevelt. And he was compared poorly in relation to both of them. And in fact, Canadians during the Second World War often talked about their leaders, but they were referring to Churchill and Roosevelt. And that hurt Mackenzie King.

And yet it's difficult to find fault with a lot of what Mackenzie King does in the war. Yes, he's cautious. Yes, he has to be dragged into the positions, but he empowers very strong ministers like C.D. Howe and Ralston and LaPointe and Louis Saleron, who will follow him as prime minister. He has a great civil service. We really punch above our weight during the course of the war. You have to acknowledge that Mackenzie King was engaging in a delicate dance. And he really does play an important role early in the war in forging strong relations with the United States. And I appreciate what you said up front, because

that relationship with the U.S. is crucial to how we will help the thruster, Churchill, the bulldog, you know, defiant, fighting on the beaches to the end. You don't find speeches like that from Mackenzie King, right? But what he does, Mackenzie King, is he lays this powerful relationship with Roosevelt and the White House. He solidifies security in North America, how we're going to defend North America together. He sorts out the hideously complex elements of finance and trade to allow our factories to begin to pump out the war-winning weapons, which are still astonishing. Hundreds of thousands of machine guns, 16,000 aircraft. Maybe our greatest contribution, 850,000 trucks that are used by the British, our Soviet allies after June of 1941 when Hitler turns on Stalin and others.

Canada is an incredibly powerful industrial nation. And no one could have guessed this even three or four years earlier when we are still in the slough of the depression. One of the big events in that trajectory is FDR's lend-lease policy, which is essentially he's going to bankroll the British war effort. Yeah, lend-lease is always seen through Washington and London, that gaze, right? London is almost bankrupt. It needs this money. Roosevelt inches the United States closer to war, although it'll pay for it later. But the problem there is that Canada needs that money too, right? It needs British money and American money, and the British aren't going to buy anything from us if they can get it on lease from the Americans. And so King understands this, and his whole cabinet, they're terrified about what will happen.

The British are saying, just take Lindley's, what they're telling Canada, just take it. Mackenzie King says, I can't. I can't because it will probably involve a loss of sovereignty. We will become an American satellite state. And so it goes down to Washington. He works his contacts with Roosevelt in real sort of summit diplomacy, in Mackenzie King style, listening to Roosevelt, talking, spending time together, swimming in the pool. And Roosevelt understands that he needs a strong Canada. He needs a strong Canada on the

northern border, even though the U.S. is not at war. And so he allows Canada basically to opt out of that. And he creates a separate deal. And that is instrumental to propelling Canada forward. It allows us to do what I think the thesis of the book is. We lean into the Americans in order to help Britain. And we are always worried that in leaning into the Americans, in becoming a more North American nation, that we will lose sovereignty here. And King is very good, I think, at knowing where the red lines are. He ends up building a much closer relationship with the Americans

than I believe he would have felt comfortable with at the beginning of the thing. And two of the big milestones there are an agreement that's reached at Hyde Park and an agreement that's reached a little later at Ogdensburg in New York. What happens in those two meetings? Yeah, so 1940 and 41, crucial meetings, again, King and Roosevelt, the first security, the second finance. And that is critical to setting up the Canadian war effort. This is King who understands before the war that Canada needs to become a more North American nation. And yet, as he writes in his diary, his heart is still with the British Empire, as he always calls it, not the British Commonwealth. But to defend North America, we need to have the security pact,

we need to have the trade pact with the United States. And that is King, and that's his great success. In 1940 and 41, before the Americans are drawn into the war with Pearl Harbor, and of course Canada as well against Japan, when two of our battalions are attacked in Hong Kong. And that's probably where King plays his greatest role. We have to admit that once Britain and the United States are fully into the war from December of 1941 onwards, and as they forge this close alliance, we get pushed aside. And that causes a lot of angst in Ottawa, even though there's a pretty solid understanding that, no, we don't rank up there with Britain. However, what gets left unsaid in that relationship, I think, very much, is that we are the number one partner with the United States in terms of defending North America. And I think that's where maybe historians have gone astray a bit in thinking about the special relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt.

It's a fascinating story. We all love reading about it. There are films made on this. No films on Mackenzie King and Roosevelt, of course, are none worth watching. But we are there for the Americans. And a critical example of this, I think, is defending the East Coast. So when Japan strikes the United States at Pearl Harbor and all through the Pacific and drawing the U.S. into this two-front war, and Canada as well, Germany, under Hitler, declares war against the United States in a huge strategic blunder, as you can understand why. It would have been very difficult for Roosevelt, after Japan had just attacked the United States, to continue to tell the American people, we need to fight both Germany and Japan. It would have been a really difficult maneuver. Hitler makes it easy for him. However, the United States is fighting in a two-front war,

and the U-boats are ready for this, and they begin to savage American shipping off the east coast, and the Americans had blundered badly and had very few warships there. It's the Royal Canadian Navy that's been in the war since September of 1939 that really comes to the Americans' rescue. We help take the fight to the U-boats. We run convoys. And I think that tells the Americans that they can rely on us. And we do the same on the West Coast.

We help to defend Alaska. Three or four RCF squadrons are stationed there. We send anti-aircraft guns there. We take part and we fight with the Americans first in the Aleutian campaign in August of 1943. So we're doing all of these things. So once we've established the security and the economics, once our factories are pushing out hundreds of millions of shells and aircraft and others, we're actually fighting with the Americans. And as I was researching and writing this, of course, it was a bit before the frenzied nature of the 2% NATO spending, which is really ramped up. But you see echoes of that. And, you know,

the past can be a guide. It doesn't always map evenly onto the present. But I found that over and over again, how Canada and the United States found ways to work together. And even though the struggle today is a little different, we're having many of the same conversations. The quote that you open the book with, King again, he says, the secret aim of every American leader, including Franklin Roosevelt, is to dominate Canada and ultimately to possess the country.

He suspected FDR being annexationist. Do you think he was right about FDR? And do you think that this is also Joe Biden's secret hope? Yeah. I think King was wrong. And Roosevelt really didn't seem to have any interest in Canada, certainly not annexing it. You know, King's diaries are fascinating.

And library archives digitized them years ago, and they're available on their website. Not easy to find, but you can look and you can read. There are about 30,000 pages. It's the most important single document ever created, in my mind, by any Canadian in our history. And in there, we see King at his best and his worst, because the diary was a way for him to relax at the end of the day, to put down what happened, his version of events, but also his fears and anxieties. He's a very lonely man. He was not married, you know, no kids, living in what is Laurier House by himself. And it was a place for, you know, a cathartic tool. But that's a quote, I think, if not entirely correct, is something that every Canadian

prime minister has had to worry about in some way. Perhaps not losing our sovereignty, losing our country, but how we deal with the Americans, how we stand forcefully for what we believe in while still being good allies. And I think that's what King is getting at. And time and time again, and I talk about it various times in the book, if it's on the financial front, as we've discussed, of not taking the sweet American deal of lend-lease, but fighting for something better. We do that. After the war, the Marshall money that goes to rebuild Europe, again, we decide not to take that. And King works with Roosevelt and others, and there's another deal that we are able to make there. If we just think of those two examples examples putting aside security and defending the east and the

west coast and the north this is the great worry as you've alluded to of mckenzie king needing the americans to allow us to unleash our full potential but not giving away the country and i suppose you're a scholar of Canadian politics. That's probably something that every prime minister has worried about in one way or the other. Well, you talk about the NATO 2% target thing. I mean, it seems to me that this is a question that's arising now. Almost the only consistent point of disagreement

between Ambassador Cohen and the Biden administration and the Trudeau government has been about whether we're doing enough to protect the Arctic. And the implied concern is one that I was struck by how often it comes up in the context of the Second World War, which is we can't be so lax about our obligations that the Americans feel compelled to take those obligations up themselves, because that would be a loss of sovereignty. Do you buy the parallel? And do you think that—

I do. Does this book end up being a reminder to Canadians of Canadian responsibility? I think it does. And I do see the parallel. Different times and different actors and different threats, but we always need to listen to what worries the Americans at a particular time and place where we are in our history. If it's the great communist threat during the 50s and 60s or, you know, Japan in the 1980s or China today, or pick your threat and pick your area. It's difficult for

Canada to say no. But we have, we have in our history, and we have stood strong. But we need to give and we need to negotiate. And that's clear in the book. One of the fascinating characters in the book is Lester B. Pearson, future prime minister, who is our ambassador down in Washington, he understood that we had to stand by the Americans. We had to be tough, but we had to also understand what was causing them fear. And I think there are lessons there. And so today with the 2%, it's hit the point, I think that's quite obvious to everyone, that we need to step up.

Now, reach full 2%, how we do that, how we talk about that, that's all material for politicians to engage with and journalists and others to hold their feet to the fire. But when your major ally is saying that you must do this, and when those quiet conversations move from closed rooms to open discussion, you know, we need to be there. And I think many Canadians, if public opinion polls are true, believe this as well. But there are ways to talk about 2%. And again, I'm a historian, so more comfortable looking backwards than forwards. But when we talk about NATO commitments, I think it's obvious to everyone is that we put for a long time almost all of our eggs in the basket

of defending Western Europe, while leaving the Arctic almost completely empty. That probably can't continue. One way that Canada and the United States can again work together is in the Northern Hemisphere. Think of Arctic sovereignty, Arctic security. Those are areas where interests align and where some of that defense spending will clearly go in the coming years. And so in that way, I think the Second World War is a good example of a way when Canada continued to negotiate on all of these fronts. We haven't talked about the cultural front, but that's one where we stood a little tougher there. And we are worried about American culture dominating us, something that continues all through the Cold War and to this day, of course. to this day, of course, and the establishment and strengthening of NFB and CBC, crucial during the Second War to tell our story. So all of this comes together, I think, in this incredible period in our history, 1939 to 1945, a long time ago, which still seems to offer lessons, I think,

to the contemporary Canada in multiple areas. And I hope the book has drawn out some of those. Do you ever get questions at your book events where someone says, look, this is all very nice. This is ancient history, but Canada is now a peaceful nation, a peacekeeping nation, and this war stuff is behind us. It's not who we are. Yeah, I have had that question. I think it's a good question. It's a legitimate question. The Canada of 2024 is different than that of 1944. And the way I talk about it is,

well, a couple of things. One, you're going to get a biased view from this historian who's devoted his entire life to studying military history than you might from the average person in the street. But I think it's important to understand our history. It's our history. It's what defines us. It's about the only thing that is unique to us. It's one of the few things that we can talk about and shape.

And that, frankly, as we started off the conversation, almost no one else cares about. So it's really up to us to tell these stories and to understand the past. And there's a lot there to continue to unpack and explore. We are a different country, but I would suggest that it's hard to understand Canada, the Canada we inherited, or maybe our parents inherited, Paul, without understanding the Second World War, it completely changes our country. And I talk about this in the book, we become a North American nation, a wealthy, prosperous country, especially with most of the world in ruins. The creation of the social security net is directly related to the war. You know, Canada facing outward, and the key role that we played for decades at the United Nations and as part of NATO. There's more, but all of that comes from the Second World War. This is our

history and it's up to us to tell it. And I think there are lessons here. Without going so far as to saying, okay, what's the blueprint for Canada in 2024? Let's go back to 1944 and see if we can figure out if what Canadians did there will apply today. There's a lot that doesn't apply without a doubt. But if you think everything is new, you really will be unmoored. Tim Cook, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. I don't know if you noticed at the top of the show,

but I have a new title and a new home. Thanks to the generous support of Calgary's Max Bell Foundation, I'm now a senior fellow at McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy. And while it's not easy to say all of that five times fast, it means I'm going to be in Montreal more often and that I'll be able to do some excellent things with this podcast as the season continues. The basic idea of the podcast hasn't changed. In-depth conversations with leading thinkers about how we can tackle the biggest challenges of modern life. I hope you'll keep joining us. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica. My producer is Kevin Sexton. Our executive

producer is Stuart Cox. Laura Reguerre is Antica's head of audio. We'll be back next Wednesday.