40 years ago, it was no to Vietnam and yes to Canada . . .six stories
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/years+Vietnam+Canada+stories/3234498/story.html
It was No to Vietnam Yes to Canada
By Jack Knox
July 4, 2010
In the 1960s and '70s, thousands of Americans fled their country for
this one to dodge the Vietnam War. It's a migration that's still
reverberating on Vancouver Island. Six émigrés -- including two who
went to war -- tell us how Vietnam changed their lives.
Fourth of July today. Time for Americans to wave the red, white and blue.
Forty years ago, their country in turmoil, they were just as likely
to see their flag in flames.
Forty years ago, they flooded across the border by the tens of
thousands, choosing life in Canada over death in Vietnam.
It's a migration whose effects are still being felt on Vancouver
Island, it not being hard to follow a thread from the anti-war
movement of the 1960s and '70s to the environmental activism that came later.
Those who were in the thick of it say it's hard to overstate how
dominant, and divisive, the issue was. "I don't think anyone who
lived through the '60s was unaffected by Vietnam," says Victoria's
Steve Ashton. As a veteran, the ex-Marine helicopter pilot is a bit
of a rarity on the Island. Here, you're more likely to run into those
who shunned the war.
No one knows for sure how many Americans came to Canada during
Vietnam. Some say 100,000, though that seems high. Author John Hagan
pegged the number at more than 50,000 young Americans who moved north
in opposition to the draft and military laws.
A hundred draft dodgers and deserters came to Canada in 1964, 1,000
in 1965, 3,000 in 1967, then 5,000 to 8,000 a year by the time the
draft ended in '73.
"This was the largest politically motivated migration from the United
States since the United Empire Loyalists moved north to avoid the
American Revolution," Hagan wrote in his book Northern Passage:
American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada.
Hagan said census figures indicate more than half of the Americans
were still here in 1996, 20 years after the sweeping pardon that
allowed their return.
Vietnam was a wedge issue.
"There was and still is a strong tendency among many Americans to see
the northward migration of the American war resisters as wrongminded
if not irrational, and irresponsible if not illegal," Hagan wrote.
Canadians had a different take. In May 1969, Pierre Trudeau's Liberal
government, following public opinion that had shifted in favour of
the immigrants, announced it would open Canada's borders to deserters
and draft dodgers both (though the country embraced the former less
firmly than the latter).
Vietnam was portrayed as a sovereignty issue -- Canada acting
independently of the U.S. -- and a moral one, Canadians offended by
the idea of the U.S. government ordering its 18-year-olds to fight a
war in which they didn't believe. (Canada's own conscription crisis
of the 1940s was apparently forgotten.)
B.C. was particularly popular among the Americans, the coast's
farther reaches -- Tofino, the Gulf Islands -- becoming known as
destinations for the newcomers from down south.
Certainly they were often non-conformists, though this wasn't unusual
in the '60s.
You can argue about whether they contributed to or were drawn by the
West Coast's reputation as the home of the disconnected and disaffected.
Rural Vancouver Island is as far from the mainstream as you can be in
Canada without actually drowning.
As time went on, war veterans began to pop up among the draft
dodgers; the popular view cast the former as recluses, the latter as
dropouts from society. In reality, those who came and stayed tended
to be fiercely active and invested in their new home. It doesn't seem
a coincidence that Greenpeace was born in B.C., or that the big
environmental battles of the 1980s and '90s were fought in places
like Clayoquot Sound.
Maybe it's because we live in one of the prettiest places on the
planet, or maybe it's because of a deeply rooted culture of dissent,
but as environmentalist Ken Wu likes to say, "This area has the
greatest concentration of tree huggers in the world."
Whether they're the chicken or the egg is debatable, but a high
proportion of the émigrés who actively protested against the war
while in exile remained active in social causes, particularly the
environmental and women's movements.
"For me there's a connection, absolutely," says Saturna Island's
Priscilla Ewbank. It was déjà vu when she moved to B.C., heard people
scoff at the idea that wilderness needed protection, just as they had
scoffed at the idea that her native California would see its orange
groves, redwood forests and hacienda ranches replaced by acres of
pavement and air-conditioned malls. She was also thrilled to find
strong women like Rosemary Brown, Canada's first black MLA, active in politics.
Ewbank herself remains active in social causes these days. So do many
others among the now-grey-haired Americans who poured north. Today,
we look at half a dozen U.S.-raised Islanders whose lives were
altered by Vietnam.
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Adventure seeker lost his taste for battle
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Adventure+seeker+lost+taste+battle/3234524/story.html
By Jack Knox
July 5, 2010
Jerry West doesn't pretend that some sort of noble calling drove him
to Vietnam.
"I joined strictly for adventure and to get away," says the
California-raised Gold River man.
"One day in Chemistry 101, I said, 'What am I doing here,' walked out
and joined the Marines." That was 1965. He spent 19 months in
Vietnam, wound up as a forward artillery observer attached to an
infantry company, way out at the pointy end of things -- Da Nang,
Hue, all the way up to the DMZ. "I spent the last six months out in the bush."
He left Vietnam in 1967, ended up posted to Japan as a cryptographer.
It was there, while handling top-secret messages related to Vietnam,
that he soured on the war.
"At the end of the day, my conclusion was it was all f---ed, and I
became an antiwar organizer."
After a spell at the helm of the base's underground antiwar
newspaper, West and the U.S. Marine Corps reached the relatively
cordial conclusion that they should part on good terms.
The travel business eventually brought him to Canada in 1985; a woman
kept him here. He has been publisher and editor of the Gold River
Record newspaper for the past 15 years, using the platform to thunder
away about a variety of environmental and social issues.
That's not uncommon for those who came out of the Vietnam era. The
civil rights, antiwar and environmental movements were all
intertwined. "You get into one and wind up getting the whole bundle."
Growing up as a hunting-fishing farm kid, he figures he was a
conservationist first, though.
At 64, he is still a Canadian army reservist.
"And I'm an antiwar activist, so go explain that." National defence
is necessary, but international aggression is not, he reasons.
"There hasn't been a justifiable war since Korea that either one of
these countries has been involved in."
West still runs into plenty of draft dodgers on the Island's outer
reaches. "We get along fine. I'm in total agreement with the guys who
came up here."
The war talk he saves for other veterans, though. "There's no point
in talking about the military to people who weren't there," he says.
"If you were over there, you just know things that other people don't."
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Long after the war, his family remains apart
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Long+after+family+remains+apart/3234520/story.html
By Jack Knox
July 4, 2010
Forty years after David Denning refused to be drafted, his father
still won't talk to him.
"The war sort of tore families apart," says Denning, who came Canada
in 1970 at the age of 24.
"My father has never talked to me since."
Yes, he has tried reaching out, to no avail. "I'm close to the rest
of my family."
He sounds a bit reluctant to walk down this road again, to relive the
rawness of the Vietnam era, at least in public. "I don't talk about
it that much."
Denning lives on Saltspring Island now, is a photographer and
naturalist of some note. He has taught courses on biology, ecology
and natural history at University of Victoria and elsewhere, is
active in the Salt Spring Conservancy.
But back in the late 1960s he was a student at Reed College, a
liberal arts university in Portland, Ore. "It was a little like
Berkeley in that it was a hotbed of war resistance."
Upon graduation, 69 per cent of the guys in his class bought a
full-page ad in the local newspaper, saying they wouldn't go to Vietnam.
Denning burned his draft card at a rally, then wrote the authorities
to say he wouldn't sign up if called. "They drafted me shortly after that."
He ended up separated from the other draftees at the Oakland, Calif.,
induction centre -- basically assigned to Arlo Guthrie's Group W
bench with the undesirables. Stood alone as a seven-man panel
pressured him to enlist. He refused to be sworn in.
"They said 'OK, the FBI will be in touch with you.' "
Denning knew the system, knew there would be a time lag before he was
dragged off to prison. "Seven months later, I left for Canada." He
piled everything he owned in his Morris Minor 1000, drove to the
Peace Arch border crossing.
"It was quite easy. The guy at the border said, 'How long are you
going to be in Canada?' I said, 'A couple of weeks.' Then the guy
looked at my skis on the top of the car. It was June." Never mind.
Denning was in.
Likewise, what he thought was a preliminary meeting with a government
official in New Westminster ended with Denning winning
landed-immigrant status on the spot.
"It was a joyful moment walking out of that building, knowing I could stay."
He credits the prime minister of the day for setting the tone,
deciding that Canada would take the moral high ground, welcoming
draft evaders despite the risk of U.S. retaliation. "Pierre Trudeau
is my ultimate hero for that very reason."
Still, it was hard being separated from friends and family, the
threat of arrest in the U.S. hanging over his head. He would
occasionally make clandestine cross-border hikes through the woods.
"It was pretty nerve-racking."
In 1975, he found out the U.S. authorities had dropped the case
against him. Prosecutors figured the charges wouldn't stand up in
court, as Denning had been drafted out of turn, apparently as
punishment for declaring that he wouldn't go. He was free to return
to the U.S., though chose to do so only as a visitor.
"I never thought about going back. I was just in love with B.C., the
Island and the people here. It was home."
"I have never regretted coming here. It's the most wonderful place in
the world."
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A change in tune and into politics
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/change+tune+into+politics/3234518/story.html
By Jack Knox
July 4, 2010
Not every American who migrated north during Vietnam was avoiding
military service. Some just got mad and left.
So it was with David Essig. Working on his doctoral thesis in
economics at the University of Wisconsin in the late 1960s, he knew
his draft deferment would only last so long, had decided he would
become a draft dodger, move to Canada. "I was vehemently opposed to
the war in Vietnam."
Sure enough, he got called in for his army physical -- and failed.
Sorry, the army said, your eyesight's too poor.
"I wanted to be a draft dodger but they wouldn't take me. I couldn't dodge."
So Essig took a year off, went home to Washington, D.C. That's when
Richard Nixon bombed Cambodia, pushing Essig over the edge. "I said,
'To hell with it.' " He moved to central Ontario in 1971, has been in
Canada ever since.
"I felt welcomed and at home from the day I arrived," he says from
his home on Protection Island, off Nanaimo.
Once in Canada, Essig abandoned economics, turned to music full time,
ended up playing in a thriving folk scene with the likes of Stan
Rogers, Bruce Cockburn, Willie P. Bennett and Murray McLauchlan. He
moved to Thetis Island almost 20 years ago, spent almost 15 years as
an elected representative to the Islands Trust, nine of them as chairman.
That kind of investment in the political process is typical of many
in the antiwar movement who later turned their passions in other
directions. "The matter or the cause might have changed, but not the
motivation," Essig says.
Forty years on, it's no big deal when he runs across Americans,
including veterans, who had a different view of the war. "I think
everyone has put it behind them," he says. "We get along fine."
Besides, it's better to respect each other's opinion than to fight
yesterday's battles. "I just kind of keep my mouth shut and they just
kind of keep their mouths shut." He once played in a band with a
Canadian who volunteered to serve in the U.S. military in Vietnam;
they learned to keep that door closed.
"It's just not an issue anymore."
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She left disillusioned and never looked back
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/left+disillusioned+never+looked+back/3234516/story.html
By Jack Knox
July 4, 2010
Here's a surprising statistic: More young American women than men
moved to Canada during the Vietnam era.
Most arrived with guys who were avoiding military service (women were
exempt from the draft) but some came just because they were upset
with what was going on in the U.S. Many chose to stay for good, even
though, unlike draft dodgers and deserters, they were free to move
back to the States at any time.
"I never thought of going back," says Saturna Island's Priscilla
Ewbank, who was 21 when she came to Canada in 1969. "It was never a
question. I got off the Mayne Queen and I felt I was at home."
Conventional wisdom says the Americans who flooded the Gulf Islands
during Vietnam had dropped out of society, but for Ewbank, it was all
about opting in, making a conscious choice. She might raise sheep,
but she isn't one herself. She believes the stuff she learned back in
high school civics class in California, believes in participatory democracy.
So when a generation of American kids were yanked out of their
peaceful, prosperous lives for what seemed like no good reason in the
1960s, she and other students at the University of California at
Berkeley balked.
"The last thing we wanted to do was go to another country and kill
people, for what?" Vietnam wasn't the Second World War, wasn't a
matter of survival. She became disillusioned with her government.
"The contrast between what people in authority said and what they did
was so blatant."
Student dissent grew. Antiwar demonstrations filled the streets,
Jefferson Airplane the opening act for speakers at the rallies. "Be
the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box,"
sang Country Joe and the Fish.
"It was an astoundingly vibrant time to be alive," Ewbank says. "We
felt we could change things."
Couldn't stop the draft, though. When her husband of the time
graduated and lost his draft deferment, they headed north. They did
it the legal way: He found teaching work at Simon Fraser University
and they got landed-immigrant status before he could be called up.
"I felt consciously grateful to Canada for having taken us. That was
incredibly important to me."
She remains proud of Canada for having the guts to choose its own
path. "It was essentially a slap in the U.S.'s face that Canada would
offer refuge to Americans who opposed the war."
It dismays her to see Canada being pulled into a more conservative
American slipstream today, less willing to act independently.
"I am less proud of my Canadian country than I was earlier."
She senses a hardening attitude toward refugees, blames Stephen
Harper for squelching Canadians' traditional spirit of generosity.
Not that acceptance was universal in the 1960s. Gulf Islanders often
felt overwhelmed by the free-spirited -- or flat-out odd -- behaviour
of the Americans, didn't know what to make of them washing their long
hair in the ferry's sinks. Ewbank says the newcomers could be
arrogant and obnoxious.
She's part of the Saturna establishment now. Ewbank and husband Jon
Guy own the Haggis Farm Bakery, are partners in the Saturna General
Store and have a piece of the Lighthouse Pub.
She remains active in community life and invested in social issues,
was part of the Saturna contingent that travelled to Victoria to join
Alexandra Morton's wild-salmon march in May. Ewbank still believes in
the lessons learned in high school civics class. Taking part in the
process matters.
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Activist shook up the West Coast
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Activist+shook+West+Coast/3234523/story.html
By Jack Knox
July 4, 2010
C. J. Hinke didn't flee America so much as stomp off noisily,
slamming the door on his way out.
And, frankly, his penchant for dissent didn't stop after he crossed
the border. News stories from the 1980s and '90s often referred to
him as "controversial Tofino environmentalist," as though that were
his first name.
Others in the movement shunned him for driving nails into trees
during anti-logging protests, a practice that earned him the nickname Spike.
Hinke is hard to pigeonhole. A book publisher and bibliographer who
translated The Wizard of Oz and Charlotte's Web into Latin, he was
also charged -- though ultimately acquitted -- in large-scale drug
busts in Courtenay in 1992 and Australia 10 years later.
Today, he spends the academic year in Thailand, where he founded an
anti-censorship group.
An extensive collection in the University of Victoria archives
documents his past as an antiwar activist -- a succession of protests
and fiery letters to authority figures throughout his teenage years
in the U.S. In 1968, five days after his 18th birthday, he publicly
refused to register for the draft -- tried to get arrested, but the
authorities wouldn't take him.
The publisher of his hometown newspaper in Nutley, N.J., wrote an
editorial suggesting a one-way ticket to Vietnam.
Hinke won landed immigrant status after marrying a Canadian, moving
to Ontario before eventually settling on a small island in Clayoquot
Sound in 1974. A couple of years after that, while staying in a
holiday cottage in Point Roberts, Wash., he was picked up on the 1968
draft charges.
"Two weeks later, Jimmy Carter was inaugurated president and his
first official act was to pardon Vietnam draft violators," Hinke
wrote from Thailand. "I believe, as does The New York Times, that I
was the last person prosecuted for the Vietnam draft. Good timing, eh?"
It was his anti-logging activities in Meares Island and Clayoquot
Sound -- stories that his Society Protecting Intact Kinetic
Ecosystems had spiked 23,000 trees -- that earned him notoriety in
B.C. He once served 35 days in jail for blocking a logging road under
construction.
"I think that American political expats were far more opinionated and
outspoken and far more likely to take direct action, even alone, than
were homegrown Canadians," he writes. "In many cases, we became
leaders or movers and shakers of the West Coast's environmental
movement. I think the actions of American political expats served to
encourage and inspire Canadian activists in a positive direction."
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He saved the desperate from chaos
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/saved+desperate+from+chaos/3234525/story.html
By Jack Knox
July 4, 2010
Steve Ashton flew the third-to-last helicopter mission out of Saigon.
As the South Vietnamese capital collapsed in panic in April 1975,
Ashton made 22 trips from the backyard of the U.S. embassy to a
waiting aircraft carrier, ferrying out those desperate to escape.
"It was total, complete chaos. Think of the worst piece of combat or
riot footage that you have ever seen on television or in a movie,
then double it."
He says this on a sunny Victoria afternoon, parked on the porch of
Freedom Kilts, the store he owns in Fernwood.
The son of a career Marine, Ashton grew up with the corps, had been
around the world three times by age 10. His dad was one of the first
into Vietnam, in 1965.
Ashton didn't plan to go to war himself, though. By the early 1970s
he was a seminary student, had a draft deferment. Even without the
deferral, his chances of being called up were slim to none, thanks to
the number assigned to him by the draft lottery system.
The number assigned his 18-year-old brother, on the other hand, made
the kid a slam dunk for induction. "His chances of being drafted were
about 100 per cent."
So Ashton took the bullet, literally. Went to the recruiter, said to
take him instead.
"I felt I had a better chance than my brother would. I'm better
suited to that life, that temperament. My brother is just a very
gentle soul. ... He's a farmer. Absolute bliss to my brother is
sitting on a tractor, baling hay."
Ashton enlisted in the Marines in early 1972, was shipped to Vietnam
as a helicopter mechanic just before the peace treaty of 1973. Got
trained as a pilot when the corps ran short, ended up flying a big
CH-53 cargo chopper hauling supplies, pulling mines out of North
Vietnam's Haiphong harbour, as required by the peace treaty.
Although U.S. involvement scaled back dramatically, the fighting
continued in Vietnam for almost two years after the documents were signed.
Three times Ashton was shot down, his helicopter unarmed -- another
requirement of the treaty.
"Of course I was scared," he replies when asked, hiking up his kilt
to show a bullet scar in his thigh. His other leg has got one, too,
he says. There's another in his side.
"I was young, I was immortal, I was idealistic and I did what I
thought I had to do," he says of those days.
"Would I give up the experience? No. Was it a good experience? Not
always, but I grew up goddam fast. Does it temper who I am today? Yes."
Ashton moved to Victoria in 1997 after meeting his Canadian wife
while in Europe. He has his Canadian citizenship, chooses his words
carefully when speaking of Vietnam. "This is where I live now, and I
am very cognizant that there are people of other opinions." After
9/11 he planted Canadian and American flags on his porch. Someone cut
off the U.S. flag. That hurt.
"I'm proud I did what I thought was right at the time," he says of
going to Vietnam. He says he's fine with those who made a different
decision. "As long as it was right for them at their time, it's not
my job to judge someone else, just as I ask people not to judge me."
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