Exiles in Canada

...Williams's emphasis...

...Reviewed by Bernard Weiner At a gruesome cost, the American J-*- war on Indochina has yielded many beneficial side effects, not the least of which has been to reveal the militarist nature of U.S...

...Finally, Williams shows how many of the early draft dodgers, who were essentially non-political, have become "radicalized" precisely because they are in Canada...

...Working underground or in the military, or joining the political exile colony in Canada, are much more appropriate responses, he feels...

...Williams presents several fascinating verbatim case histories of draft dodgers and deserters, many of whom par- ticipated in atrocities as a normal day- to-day activity in Vietnam...

...society and the need for radical reform...

...Williams quotes one resist- er who "had heard about American imperialism but had never seen it...

...He also writes to make a case: to criticize the resistance movement in the United States...

...It is also, and this is most im- portant, a place which permits these young, men to maintain a non-violent stance...

...The immorality and horrors of that war have also driven between 50,000 and 100,000 young persons into volun- tary exile in Canada...

...Gaylin, a psychiatrist who did in-depth studies of a selected num- ber of war resisters in two Federal pen- itentiaries, found that the psycholog- ical effects on the young men were depressingly brutal, and that the pre- viously pacific resisters were now latent or actual revolutionaries as a result of their contact with the American judi- cial penal system...

...The war has literally forced millions of our finest young people (and older ones too, for that matter) into a position of critical analysis out of which can only emerge the political dynamic for com- prehensive social change...

...the majority are draft dodgers, but an increasing num- ber are now deserters, many from Viet- nam itself...

...There has been a growing anti-Amer- ican sentiment in Canada for several years, due to this predominant U.S...

...Many are apolitical...

...The New Exiles is not the best- crafted book you have ever read, but it is full of the stuff that helps explain social and political phenomena in real, human terms...

...In Canada—in a somewhat different culture, with a more open media, and with little official harass- ment—the American exiles have an even freer platform from which to shape perspectives of their abandoned homeland...

...As Williams says, "If Can- ada, in the years ahead, becomes pro- nouncedly more 'anti-American,' it will be, in part, because the United States has sent Canada 50,000-100,000 young anti-Americans who know the nature of the beast...

...Time and again, Williams points oul the essential working-class nature oi the war—"the educated could study, the ignorant could die"—and comes down hard on the college-oriented draft resistance movement...

...The inva- sions of Cambodia and Laos and the killings at Kent and Jackson State swamped exile-aid committees in To- ronto, Montreal, and Vancouver with new immigrants, sometimes as many as eighty a day in each office...

...In a way, Williams' book is a com- panion volume to Willard Gaylin's ex- cellent analysis of American draft re- sisters, In the Service of Their Coun- try: War Resisters In Prison (Viking, 1970...

...to encourage further immigra- tion...

...Only a blind man can't see it in Can- ada . . . America owned Canada...

...It also—no small feat for any writer—helps create the myths and heroes which the new generation must have as it stumbles its way into a changing future...

...Many draft dodgers tended to look down their noses at the working-class deserters from Vietnam...

...His heroes are those of the middle-poor who ac- cepted induction (largely because the) were not familiar with the many ways to get out), but, once in, awoke to the realities of the militarist mentality and either organized dissent from withir or deserted—from bases in the United States or in Europe, or from Vietnam, Williams shows how the northern exodus has increased drastically after each new American insanity...

...Strange and sad...

...Exiles in Canada The New Exiles: American War Re sisters in Canada, by Roger Neville Williams...

...to en- courage passage of laws in the United States exonerating the exiles (not "am- nesty," which implies that the resisters are the criminals to be forgiven, rather than the governmental leaders whc carried out the war madness) so thai the exiles might visit their families and friends in the United States withoul fear of prosecution, and, most impor- tant, to point out the class nature ol the anti-war and anti-draft move- ments...

...Indeed, he defen- sively argues that the move to Canada should not be seen as an "escapist cop-out," as Tom Hayden and other radicals have characterized it, but rath- er as a positive alternative: a move towards "personal liberation" and at the same time a base from which to attack—politically—the American monolith...

...to get some Cana- dian immigration laws changed...

...to support and defend as moral heroes those who chose to abandon imperialist ventures...

...But even in this Canadian sanctuary, the class nature of the exodus was manifested...

...It was becoming increasingly difficult for many outraged young rad- icals to remain in the United States without turning into violent revolu- tionaries and for that reason many young radicals left—they didn't want to become revolutionaries...

...Many others, however, exemplify a growing radical political consciousness as expressed by Roger Neville Williams in his important and moving book...

...they emigrated solely to escape the blood- shed in Vietnam and now want to for- get America's agonies as they carve out their new lives in the Canadian bush...

...ownership of Canadian industry, and more and more of the "new Canadians" from the United States are joining in the battle...

...Williams spends much time pressing his point that jail-packing as a viable anti-war tactic is, and was, a grand illusion for the resistance...