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Would you believe
that RCMP operatives used to spy on Tupperware
parties? In the 1950s and '60s they did. They also
monitored high school students, gays and lesbians,
trade unionists, left-wing political groups,
feminists, consumer’s associations, Black
activists, First Nations people, and Quebec
sovereignists.
The establishment of a tenacious Canadian security
state came as no accident. On the contrary, the
highest levels of government and the polce, along
with non-governmental interests and institutions,
were incolved in a concerted campaign. The security
state grouped ordinary Canadians into dozens of
political stereotypes and labelled them as
threats.
Whose
National Security? probes
the security state's ideologies and hidden agendas,
and sheds light on threats to democracy that
persist to the present day. The contributors'
varied approaches open up avenues for
reconceptualizing the nature of spying.
Including:
- “APEC Days at
UBC: Student Protests and National Security
in an Era of Trade Liberalization,”
Karen Pearlston
- “Remembering
Federal Police Surveillance in Quebec,
1940s-70s,” Madeleine Parent
- “The Red
Petticoat Brigade: Mine Mill Women's
Auxiliaries and the Threat from Within,
1940s-70s,” Mercedes Steedman
- “Spymasters,
Spies, and their Subjects: The RCMP and
Canadian State Repression, 1914-39,”
Gregory S. Kealey
- "In Whose Public
Interest? The Canadian Union of Postal Workers
and National Security," Evert
Hoogers
Gary Kinsman, Dieter K. Buse, and
Mercedes Steedman teach at Laurentian
University in Sudbury.
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