Paved with Good Intentions: Canada's Development NGOs from Idealism to Imperialism

Nikolas Barry-Shaw & Dru Oja Jay Paved with Good Intentions: Canada's Development NGOs from Idealism to Imperialism Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2012Reviewed by Howard A. DoughtyI vividly recall attending a small Christian Sunday School in very early 1950s. Each week I'd put a dime in one side and a quarter in other side of a small envelope with two pockets-one for maintenance of my rural Presbyterian Church and ot her for Foreign Missions. It never occurred to me that smaller coin did anything but good for poor, diseased and starving people who lived and died in what French demographer Alfred Sauvy called le tiers monde and was soon to become widely known in English as the Third World. My inchoate intentions and token contributions were primly clothed in moral rectitude.In addition to a naive yet also patrician attitude toward foreign aid and its recipients, Canadians of a certain age may be forgiven for once having a smug conceit and a smothering complacency with regard to Canadian military and diplomatic affairs. Punching slightly above our weight in World War II and in United Nations' action in Korea, there was no doubt in our minds that our soldiers were manifestly virtuous and stood squarely on side of freedom as principle democracy as process in dramatic showdowns with various forms of totalitarianism.Throughout 1950s and beyond, Canadian forces were called upon to keep peace in unsettled places such as Cyprus, Kashmir, Lebanon, Palestine and, tragically, Rwanda. In fact, entire peacekeeping project and role of blue helmets came about in large part because of efforts of Canadian diplomat and future prime minister, Lester B. Pearson. His 1957 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his negotiating skills during Suez crisis was appropriately followed in 1988 by awarding of prize collectively to UN peacekeepers.Although Canada was unambiguously allied with United States through defence alliances of North Atlantic Treaty Organization and North American Aerospace Defense Command, it maintained a reputation as a trustworthy and marginally independent voice in world affairs. Although serving as an American proxy in, for instance, International Control Commission, established in 1954 and not dissolved until 1973, which was responsible for policing of Demilitarized Zone temporarily separating North and South Vietnam, Canadian political leaders including Prime Ministers John George Diefenbaker, Lester Bowles Pearson and Pierre Eliot Trudeau also distinguished themselves by keeping some distance between Canada and protracted American hostilities in Vietnam, 1965 invasion of Dominican Republic and other adventures and misadventures undertaken by Canada's largest trading partner and country with which it shares most intimate cultural bonds. Although, for example, Canada did not exactly maintain a measured detachment from brutal US-supported coup d'etat in Chile, it was notable that Canada refrained from joining Organization of American States until 1990, perhaps due to fact that OAS was perceived as very much an instrument of American foreign policy and that involvement was potentially embarrassing association in view of Canada's refusal to cut diplomatic and trade ties with Cuba despite considerable US pressure to do so. In any case, in 1990 during Brian Mulroney's second term in Canada's highest office, that reluctance melted, though to his credit, Mulroney held firm to his opposition to apartheid in South Africa, risking animosity of both American President Ronald W. Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of United Kingdom. It's complicated.Not to be forgotten are some relatively high profile exercises in development assistance to underdeveloped or, more optimistically, developing nations. Canada, for example, was an important participant in Colombo Plan, an early multilateral aid program supplying assistance to countries in South and South-east Asia. …

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