why was the cold war called the cold war

policy, Canadian nationalists and anti-Americans began to ‘kick against the pricks,’ and demands for expensive and expansive domestic social welfare policies led to pressures for defence cuts. There were widespread concerns about U.S. Again Canadians participated with troops.ĭefence spending rose sharply in a booming economy, but very soon, pressures began to arise. In Asia, the Hong Kong debacle of 1941 aside, Canada had never been active until the Korean War opened another front in the ‘Cold’ War. These and economic concerns led to a newly internationalist Canada being an enthusiastic supporter of a North Atlantic Treaty, and the first peacetime stationing of troops abroad. At the same time, Canada’s two mother countries, Britain and France, and nations such as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy that Canadians had fought to liberate, were under threat from what was generally perceived as an expansionist Soviet Communism. Because they shared a continent with the superpower leading the democracies, their largest trading partner and ‘best friend,’ they soon found themselves living under the flight path for bombers and missiles from the Soviet Union, and that sharpened the collective mind and pushed them toward continued military cooperation with the United States.

Moscow’s brutalist policies under Stalin did nothing to ease growing concerns.

For them, it began in September 1945 with the defection of Soviet embassy cipher officer Igor Gouzenko and revelations of major Soviet spy rings in Canada.

Introductionįor Canadians, the Cold War was a matter of great importance-some of the time. For more information on accessing this file, please visit our help page.

Why was the cold war called the cold war