We Gotta Get Out of This Place

It started with a trickle. Roughly 100 Americans avoiding the draft or deserting from the military fled to Canada in 1964 as the United States became more deeply entangled in the Vietnam War.

That number grew to more than 1,000 draft evaders the following year and an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 per year between 1968 and 1973, when the United States started to end its military operations in Vietnam.

By and large, Canada treated American draft evaders and military deserters, referred to collectively in this story as war resisters, as immigrants and not outlaws or cowards, as many Americans considered them at the time.

Canadian customs officials avoided asking young men questions about their draft status. As the war dragged on in Southeast Asia, Canadian officialdom became ever more permissive toward war resisters of all stripes.

John Hagan, professor emeritus of sociology at Northwestern University and the author of "Northern Passage," about the migration, estimates that 50,000 American men fled to Canada to avoid the draft or desert from the military between 1964 and 1975. Roughly as many women, typically the romantic partners of these men, migrated to Canada during this era.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter offered amnesty to any draft evader still in Canada if they requested a pardon. The process was far murkier for deserters, who constituted an estimated 20% of the exile community in Canada. They were still subject to arrest if they reentered the United States.

Many remain in Canada to this day. Roughly half of all Americans who fled to Canada in the Vietnam era chose to stay in Canada. The decisions these young men made in their early adulthood continue to shape their lives into their 70s and 80s. Few of those who stayed in Canada show reservations about the life-changing decision they made all those years ago.

"When I asked them about their decision to come to Canada, they would say inevitably and universally that coming to Canada was the best thing that could have ever happened to me," said Hagan, who shares a history with the men he studies.

He grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and graduated from the University of Illinois at the height of the Vietnam War. He chose to go north to avoid being drafted, making the unusual decision at the time to attend graduate school in Canada. After earning his PhD in sociology from the University of Alberta, Hagan spent two decades in Canada before returning to the United States.

Hagan fit the mold of many young men who went north to avoid the draft. Draft evaders were more likely to be white, middle class and have at least some college education. Deserters who sought asylum in Canada tended to be less well educated, non-white and from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Initially, Canada refused to legally admit deserters, but the government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau changed that policy in 1968. He said that immigration officials would not ask migrants about their military status when interviewing them. For a time, more Americans emigrated to Canada than from any other country in the world.

Toronto and Vancouver, the largest cities in English-speaking Canada, became the most popular destinations for war resisters. Baldwin Street in Toronto and the Kitsilano neighborhood in Vancouver were hotbeds of this visible subculture. Interviewees described regular Sunday basketball and softball games played by draft evaders and deserters in both cities.

Many war resisters who stayed in Canada found work in higher education, the arts or the professions. In a more general sense, a striking number of highly accomplished Canadians came from the war resister community.

For decades, Canada suffered "brain drain" as its best-educated citizens left the country for its more prosperous southern neighbor. The arrival in Canada of many well-educated and civically engaged people among the draft resisters helped reverse the trend.

"The movement changed Toronto a great deal," Hagan said. "It was a part of how Toronto became more open to immigration." In the late 1970s, Canada started accepting tens and thousands of refugees from war-torn Southeast Asia, the first wave of significant migrations of non-European migrants to the country. Toronto, in particular, has become one of the world's most diverse cities as a result.

"We sent a large number of people north, better educated than average," said Mike Tulley, a war resister who settled in Edmonton. "It has probably skewed Canada's culture a little bit toward the U.S. but along with that culture came a resistance to the dominant culture of the U.S. that was part of the psyche of the war resisters."

Celebrated Toronto-based jazz musician Bill King, a military deserter, said that many Americans who fled to Canada arrived with strong educational and entrepreneurial backgrounds. "What I heard from everybody here is, 'We're so glad you came because you brought so much to this country.' "

In places like Toronto, numerous groups aided war resisters upon their arrival. Mark Satin of the Toronto Anti-Draft Program, the largest local organization of its kind in Canada, in 1968 wrote a "Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada," which sold over 100,000 copies. The book offered advice on how to answer questions from immigration officials, advice on settling in Canada and finding work and insights into the country's politics and culture.

One draft resister who benefitted from Satin's guidance was Eric Nagler. He was trained as a child psychologist and was a heralded banjo player well-known in the New York folk music community. He went on to be known across North America in the 1980s and 1990s as a musician and performer on two popular Canadian-produced children's programs, "The Elephant Show" and "Eric's World."

Nagler began looking northward in 1968, when his student deferment ended after he earned a master's degree. After crossing the border from Vermont, he initially stayed with friends of his fiancé in Montreal. Soon, he moved to Toronto to take a position at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

"I was against the war, but I didn't want to go into the Army primarily because I would have been swallowed up in there. I would be anathema. They would hate me. I would never be able to get along in that structured environment," Nagler said.

"The Toronto Anti-Draft Program gave me all the Ps and Qs on everything I needed to do and set me on the path," he added. Satin gave him a copy of the invaluable book at the organization's office. Nagler later volunteered with the group, helping other young men settle into life in Canada.

"In the States, anybody who was sympathetic with me who wanted to talk about it would call me an Army resister and when I came across to Canada it was 'Oh, you're a draft dodger, welcome,'" he said, noting how welcoming Canadians were of the "reverse brain drain."

Nagler opened the first folk music store in Canada, the Toronto Folklore Center. He later returned to the United States in hopes of performing as a folk musician but was arrested for draft evasion. He was found not guilty in 1972 but still chose to return permanently to Canada.

Jazz pianist, magazine publisher and music director King founded the Beaches International Jazz Festival, one of the largest in Canada. King spent six weeks in Toronto in 1963, studying with legendary pianist Oscar Peterson. After he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1969, King deserted and headed with his wife for Toronto, a city he already knew and loved. An antiwar organization called the Diggers helped him find housing and settle down. King later volunteered with the organization.

King secured a recording deal with Capitol Records within six months of coming to Canada, a triumph for his career but also a source of tension between him and Canadian-born performers.

"There was always that resentment, that you're coming in to take our work or you're getting a lot of attention," King said. "People had been here all their lives and didn't have a major record deal." King was mindful of this as he pursued his music career, making sure to cultivate opportunities for Canadian artists through the festival and his jazz publications.

King returned to the U.S. for two years in the late 1970s to process out of the Army. As a touring musician and music director, he did so to be able to tour in the United States.

"My two years back in the States made me think, 'I don't want to be part of this. I like the life I had in Canada. We really liked Canada because it was so open to everybody,' " King said.

King had a difficult time reconnecting with his family in southern Indiana, particularly his father, a wounded World War II veteran who suffered from PTSD. It took time but King thinks the intervening decades healed many of the personal wounds he and his family faced during the Vietnam Era.

"People see war in a different way now and they don't want to be manipulated," King said.

Rural British Columbia became a similarly prominent beachhead for war resisters as many draft evaders from the West Coast settled in the area. The formerly conservative region was significantly transformed by the presence of thousands of American newcomers. The region's cultural sensibilities now skew bohemian and progressive in large part due to the war resisters' many decades in these communities.

The Kootenays, a region in southeastern British Columbia, have been particularly influenced by the long-term presence of American-born war resisters. Many of the region's most influential citizens moved to the area after dodging the draft in the United States.

Nelson, British Columbia, one of the region's largest communities, went so far as to build a statue in 2004 commemorating the city's embrace of U.S. war resisters. American veterans' organizations, notably the Veterans of Foreign Wars, threatened to boycott Nelson and its tourism-dependent economy, leading the city to scrap the plan. The statue later found a home in the nearby town of Castlegar.

Gary Wright, a former mayor of New Denver, British Columbia, exemplifies the kind of civic-minded settler that made the region his home during the Vietnam War.

Wright settled in Canada in 1968 after being placed on an FBI watchlist of student anti-war activists. He had attended the University of Montana and was involved with Students for a Democratic Society, a left-wing student activist group. Wright helped war resisters get into Canada or otherwise evade the draft.

After volunteering with the Quakers to help send medical supplies to Hanoi, Wright's passport was lifted by the United States government. He decided then to move to Canada. After an unsuccessful attempt to acquire landed-alien status in Vancouver in 1967, he crossed the border in Alberta in 1968 with a job offer in hand from the University of Western Ontario's psychology department. It proved to be unnecessary.

"The customs officials there were German immigrants who'd left Germany in the 1930s," Wright said. "So they were in favor of letting anybody in from any place that was kicking against their government."

After a year as a research assistant in Ontario, Wright returned to the Mountain West and settled in British Columbia. He moved to New Denver, a town in the Slocan Valley region of the Kootenays, because his pregnant wife thought it would be a good place to raise children. In the meantime, he'd been drafted by the United States Army.

"I felt at home right away. I felt welcome," Wright said. "I knew it was going to be my permanent home before I crossed the border. I renounced my (U.S.) citizenship before I had Canadian citizenship." Once he became a Canadian citizen, Wright became heavily involved with civic life, even becoming the mayor of New Denver. He regards his involvement in community affairs in Canada as an extension of his youthful activism.

"We were involved with public life in the United States," Wright said. "There are a lot of politicians here [who arrived as war resisters], many provincial cabinet ministers up here.

"Down in the States, we were liable to get arrested for being active," added Wright. "Up here, we get elected."

Wright in 2012 received the Queen's Service Medal, "which I thought was terribly ironic since I'd been on the FBI's wanted list for 10 years," Wright said.

He said he expected to cut all ties with family when he left the U.S., but his two siblings moved close to Spokane, Washington, just a four-hour drive from New Denver. He was able to see his siblings' families frequently.

In many respects, the most complex legacy of American war resisters in Canada is the experience of military deserters, many of whom still have an ambiguous relationship to the United States. Consider Mike Tulley, an accomplished audio engineer who settled in Edmonton, Alberta.

Tulley attended high school in Oroville, California. He matriculated to Stanford University and studied physics before withdrawing to focus on antiwar activism. He was drafted into the U.S. Army and tried to become a medic but was selected instead for the combat infantry.

When he received orders to go to Vietnam, he deserted and actually returned to college for a time. Tulley learned through a friend that his name was on an FBI surveillance list and decided to head north. He moved to Edmonton and stayed with a friend from Stanford who worked at the University of Alberta. Tulley's girlfriend from Stanford came north and settled in Edmonton after she finished her degree.

"I knew so little about Canada when I got here that I wasn't sure if Alberta was one of those provinces that spoke English or French," said Tulley.

Tulley worked for a time in Toronto as an audio engineer before returning to Edmonton, where he worked as an audio and industrial engineer while continuing to engage in political activism, particularly on behalf of organized labor.

"I went out for a walk one evening, somewhere on Edmonton's North Side, and walked around the block and realized that I didn't have any fear," he said, noting that this was when he realized he was comfortable living in Canada. "I wasn't constantly looking over my shoulder for some cop who was going to pull me over and ask for ID and that would get me back in the Army.

"I realized early on that I was going to live here for the rest of my life," he added. "I wasn't waiting for things to change so I could go back to the U.S."

The World Trade Center attacks in 2001 significantly affected Tulley's ability to cross the border. U.S. Customs officials raised a suspicious eye at him and held him for hours at a time but he had been previously able to visit the States.

The expansion of information available online to border officials after 9/11 made it more difficult for deserters to cross the border without fear of arrest. Tulley has not been back to the United States since 9/11.

Tulley, like all of the interviewees for this article, has no regrets about his decision to go to Canada and settle permanently. Taken together, it would be hard to find a prouder group of Canadians.

"We need to identify ourselves as separate from the United States and that isn't always easy to do. The fact that Canada would accept draft dodgers because there was no law about the draft was a very important point of difference between the two countries," Nagler said, asserting that this distinction is reflected in what he describes as the relative peacefulness of Canadians.

"I have never second guessed this," King said. "I knew I was right about this right from the beginning. It's always the young ones that are used in war. The Russians are doing this right now."

Hagan, the professor emeritus at Northwestern, notes how the decision of so many Americans to resist conscription and military service has helped reshape the political culture of the United States as well as Canada.

"What I more and more hear is people coming on to the political talk shows, saying, 'We know about the mistakes in Iraq,' 'We know about the mistakes in Vietnam,' and they'll tick off four or five of the wars that the United States has been involved in," Hagan said. "I'm surprised. I hadn't heard that expressed in a clear, unequivocal way for much of my life."

Regardless of a commentator's place on the political spectrum, it seems as if they will include such a caveat about America's recent foreign wars. Decades before this became a common political sentiment, thousands of young Americans migrated to Canada to avoid being part of such mistakes.