“Under your inspired leadership”: Dwight Eisenhower,Canadians,and the Canada–United States consensus,1945–1961

In January 1946, in what was billed as an opportunity to “pay him heart-felt tributes,” Canadians welcomed General Dwight D. Eisenhower on a victory tour. ¹ Fresh off the successful Allied defeat of Nazi Germany, Eisenhower arrived in Ottawa like a rock star: despite wintry weather, large crowds greeted his train at Union Station and cheered him on as he visited the Parliament Buildings, the short route lined by uniformed servicemen. Spending several days in Canada’s capital, Ike dined privately with Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, laid a wreath at the National War Memorial, conferred with senior Canadian officers regarding future military cooperation, and attended a Rideau Hall ball. After leaving Ottawa—one reporter noted that the general could add the city to “his list of victories” ² —Eisenhower travelled to Toronto, where he received a “tumultuous welcome,” complete with a tickertape parade. ³ Perhaps the highlight of his Canadian visit came when Mackenzie King announced that Castle Mountain, near Banff, would be renamed Mount Eisenhower, a testament to the general’s “steadfastness and the security of his leadership.” Ike took it in stride, quipping that doubtless the mountain peak was as bald as his head. ⁴

More seriously, in remarks delivered in Ottawa Eisenhower paid “humble tribute” to the service and sacrifices of the hundreds of thousands of “my Canadians” who had fought under his command. Going on to praise the close wartime collaboration between Canada and the United States, the general emphasized that “the necessity for cooperation has not passed.” ⁵ These comments were widely reported in the Canadian press, and Ike’s call for continued peacetime collaboration was met with agreement. As the Montreal Gazette’s editors contended, in terms of Canadian–American relations, the general’s tour was an important step for helping to “bind still closer, on a more assuredly permanent basis, the integration of common purposes, of action and of resources achieved during the war.” ⁶

Dwight Eisenhower’s 1946 visit to Ottawa and Toronto is a minor footnote in the history of Canada–United States relations. And yet the reception he received from enthusiastic crowds, editorial writers, and government officials showcases important changes in Canadians’ attitudes toward the United States and that country’s role in the world, but also Canada’s own relationship with its southern neighbour. Drawing on research conducted for a joint Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-supported project on Canada–United States relations in the 1950s with the late Greg Donaghy, we trace Canadian views of Eisenhower between roughly 1945 and 1960, what the historian William Hitchcock has referred to as the “Age of Eisenhower.” ⁷ This period saw the United States emerge from the Second World War in a position of preponderant military, economic, and political power and, amid the Cold War and the collapse of formal European empire, work to expand its influence globally. These same years saw the Canada–United States relationship evolve in unprecedented ways. Furthermore, Canadian foreign policy underwent important changes, with Canada, like the United States, shouldering the burdens of collective responsibilities, international engagement, and maintaining a large peacetime military. As we show below, as Eisenhower embarked on a post-Second World War military career and then entered politics, Canadians saw him as embodying Canada–United States cooperation, American internationalism, and United States leadership of the so-called free world. In turn, his good reputation among Canadians reflected a wider softening of attitudes toward Canada’s southern neighbour, standing in contrast to periods of anti-Americanism.

In the literature on Canada–United States relations, the Eisenhower presidency is portrayed as an era of comity and consensus, and for that reason, it has generally been glossed over in favour of periods of strife. ⁸ Our wider project examines these years, exploring bilateral relations in the 1950s. Suffice to say here that the post-war consensus between Ottawa and Washington did not emerge fully formed. Rather, it was the product both of a shared desire to contain the international communist threat and of wartime cooperation that bled into joint efforts to tackle continental and international problems through collaborative and collective means. For Canadians, Eisenhower was emblematic of positive developments in Canada–United States relations and of American engagement in the world. Following a war in which one in ten Canadians had served in uniform, affection for and trust in Eisenhower—reflecting attitudes towards the United States—helped to create the permissive conditions in which government policy-makers in Ottawa were able to both widen and deepen economic and military ties with the Americans. Further, Eisenhower was a trusted figure—a celebrity even before he became president—who made the United States leadership palatable to many Canadians. However, once in the White House, Eisenhower’s reputation began to suffer. By the time he left office in January 1961, doubts were more fully emerging in Canada about economic and military integration, or, as opponents labelled it, dependence. Charting Canadian attitudes toward Eisenhower provides a lens through which to examine shifts in Canada–United States relations, the importance of presidential reputation as a factor in the bilateral relationship, and assumptions about American leadership of the Western alliance in the Cold War.

From war to peace

Eisenhower’s wartime reputation and successful command of a multinational coalition that included hundreds of thousands of Canadian servicepeople were key focal points for many Canadian observers. During his visit to Ottawa in January 1946, local businesses took out advertisements welcoming him to their city. In them, Eisenhower was praised as a “soldier of democracy” and a “beloved commander-in-chief,” but also as a “distinguished good neighbour.” “Your visit to Canada’s Capital,” affirmed Birks Jewellers, “is another gesture that is further evidence of the good-will existing between neighboring countries.” ⁹ Newspaper editorial boards likewise praised his leadership of the wartime alliance, which had showcased “his ready co-operativeness” and “his international spirit,” and there was hope that, as the world moved on from the war, Eisenhower would go on “to exercise a political influence no less valuable than his services in battle.” ¹⁰ It helped that in his public comments in Canada, Eisenhower was careful to downplay his own achievements and praise the Canadian military’s accomplishments. After several meetings with the general, including tea at Laurier House, Mackenzie King was impressed with Eisenhower’s “sincerity, the absence of affectation, and belief in his fellowmen.” In short, he was a “fine character representative of what is most manly in the character of the American citizen.” Privately, the prime minister mused that Eisenhower would make an excellent pick for the United Nations secretary-general. ¹¹ These warm feelings for the decorated commander, who embodied notions of steady leadership and international cooperation, reflected positive judgments about the United States. At a press conference with Eisenhower, King announced that he intended that the Permanent Joint Board on Defence—formed in 1940 to study joint continental defence efforts—would be permanent. ¹²

In January 1951, Eisenhower again visited Ottawa, this time as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), the military head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Taking part in brief ceremonial functions, his time in Canada focused on meetings with Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, senior Canadian officers, and other government officials at what was the conclusion of a consultation tour that had taken him to the capital of each NATO member, what one Canadian newspaper described as “the most significant military reconnaissance in history.” ¹³ The intervening five years since his previous trip to Ottawa had witnessed the hardening of international enmities in Europe and the spread of the Cold War to Asia. Canada and the United States had worked together to confront these challenges jointly or collectively with other states, including through military intervention in Korea and the founding of the NATO alliance and commitment of forces to western Europe. However, the Korean War had bogged down in stalemate, and the Americans had “lost” both China and their nuclear monopoly, raising doubts about United States leadership in the Cold War. Cognisant of this concern, as well as a Canadian belief that the United States was becoming preoccupied with events in Asia to the exclusion of the far more important effort to contain Soviet expansion in Europe, Eisenhower gave the Cabinet Defence Committee what one Canadian diplomat called a “pep talk.” With Ottawa considering the deployment of Canadian forces to western Europe, the general praised “the value of practical gestures” to demonstrate the North American commitment to NATO and emphasized “the essential importance of restoring the morale of Western European members of the Alliance.” Canadian officials were pleased with this reassurance and with the chance to consult with the general. ¹⁴

As the inaugural SACEUR, Eisenhower was a good choice to lead the fledgling alliance and to flesh out NATO’s evolving military program. Certainly, Canadians saw him as a known commodity, trusted to lead in a cooperative manner. As one journalist put it, his “unique status” as a successful commander and his nearly universal popularity in NATO countries made him one of the alliance’s “most valuable assets.” Eisenhower came to Ottawa, opined the Montreal Gazette’s editors, “as a very good friend.” Praising the general’s commitment to “the value of fellowship and of the co-operation that fellowship can produce,” the newspaper urged authorities in Ottawa and Washington to seize the “opportunity to advance still further beyond local action” into a wider partnership to advance mutual interests. ¹⁵ Canadian and American foreign and defence policies were in flux, as both countries took on new commitments connected to collective security and containment efforts alongside tentative steps toward continental air defence. In his NATO role, Eisenhower provided leadership of the centrepiece of both countries’ Cold War efforts, and his perceived steady hand was a necessity. As speculation mounted in late 1951 that the general could enter the political ring, Lester Pearson, Canada’s secretary of state for external affairs, remarked to a reporter that it would be terrible for Eisenhower to depart his SACEUR position “for any reason,” and there was praise for “the genius for harmony, the indomitable will to friendship and co-operation, which is Eisenhower’s great and unique quality.” Yet there was also recognition that it would benefit the Western alliance “to have someone at the head of affairs in Washington, the capital of the free world, who commands the confidence of all factions in all free countries.” ¹⁶

In May 1952, Eisenhower stepped down as SACEUR and entered the race for Republican presidential candidate. His main opponent was Robert Taft, the arch-conservative senator, who had opposed NATO’s creation and remained skeptical of American involvement in the United Nations. After a closely fought campaign, Eisenhower eked out a narrow win at the party’s July convention. His victory over Taft was widely praised in Canada, where it was viewed as a defeat for isolationists and a reaffirmation of American leadership. The Montreal Gazette observed that Republicans had been “picking a leader for the world” and had succeeded in doing so, for Eisenhower was “not only a citizen of the United States and a good one. He is a citizen of the world.” Likewise praising the Republicans’ “brilliant choice,” the Globe and Mail described Eisenhower’s selection as having sent a “thrill of hope round the democratic world.” To the editors of the Toronto Star, the “bewildered and unhappy free world,” battered by the Korean stalemate and other setbacks in the Cold War, saw Eisenhower as “someone in whom it can place confidence.” ¹⁷ The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix judged that, if faced with selecting Eisenhower, many Canadians would have nominated him, while the Calgary Herald, citing the general’s wartime leadership, speculated that he would become “the object of the same instinctive affection and trust which Canadians once felt towards Franklin Roosevelt,” the Democratic president from 1933–1945. ¹⁸ Canadian authorities also felt relief that Republicans had selected Eisenhower over Taft. Senior officials in Ottawa, one reporter wrote, “like Ike,” believing he would be friendly to Canada and supportive of internationalist principles, so that “whoever wins next November, Canada can’t lose.” ¹⁹ The belief that the 1952 election would see no fundamental alterations in American foreign policy was sound: Adlai Stevenson, Eisenhower’s Democratic challenger, was equally committed to engagement with the post-war collective security system.

Eisenhower’s first term

Bringing an end to 20 years of Democratic control of the White House, Eisenhower’s November win was received positively by Canadians, with the expectation that the former general would parlay his wartime experience into capable leadership of the Western side in the Cold War. Welcoming his victory, the Calgary Herald noted that “free men everywhere” would be praying for Eisenhower, a “great man,” who now bore “the burden of immense power and immense responsibility.” For the Globe and Mail, the election outcome was “immensely satisfactory and inspiring,” as the retired general was “an ideally suitable leader of his country, and of the Western alliance.” Positive assumptions about Eisenhower’s leadership were widespread: the Montreal Gazette commended him for having “expressed his belief in the need for America to give leadership in a grand alliance”; the Toronto Star took note that since Ike was “a genius in the promotion of team play,” he would do better at consulting with his country’s allies than the outgoing administration of Harry Truman; and although the retired general was an American first, Saturday Night’s Willson Woodside contended that “President Ike will still be NATO leader Ike,” cognisant of allied views and interests. ²⁰ Canadian diplomats shared this broad assessment. Hume Wrong, the outgoing ambassador in Washington, expected little change in the direction of foreign policy beyond some “alterations of pace and emphasis,” and unnamed officials confided to columnist Blair Fraser that any “gloom” they felt about the first Republican administration in two decades was outweighed by a faith that Eisenhower was “firmly committed to the ideal of international co-operation.” ²¹

These early assessments of Eisenhower reflected Canadian praise for a Republican at a time when the Grand Old Party’s standing among Canadians was poor (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose). The Republican Party of Eisenhower’s era included a sizable number of conservatives such as Taft, who were skeptical of international institutions and collective security, as well as protectionists and rabid anti-communists, most notably Senator Joseph McCarthy. Conversely, many Democrats stood for internationalism and the bilateral good feeling of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Canadians preferred the latter. “I have always believed,” one senior State Department official stated several years later, “that if they were allowed to register ninety per cent of all Canadians would be Democrats.” ²² The Canadian embrace of Eisenhower in spite of pro-Democratic support was a marker of his personal reputation. Canadians may be “unofficial Democrats,” observed Bruce Hutchinson, but Eisenhower was “an unofficial Canadian hero.” Another journalist added that, in contrast to the isolationists within his own party, “Eisenhower means world affairs.” As a result, “while Canadians have long been pro-Democratic they also ‘like Ike.’” ²³

Early, positive assessments of Eisenhower also showcased the sense among Canadians that he could be trusted with guiding not just the United States but also the Western coalition. This sense of the American president as leader of the free world signified Canadian acceptance—by no means universal given opposition from peace groups and the far left—of United States leadership in the post-war world. For instance, there was widespread approval of Eisenhower’s 1953 inaugural address reaffirming American engagement abroad. His comments, mused the Globe and Mail, were a sign that the Republican administration would provide “bold, constructive” leadership “not only for Americans but for every free nation.” In the opinion of the Ottawa Citizen’s editorial board, the new president’s address had provided a welcome “pledge of continued American leadership that will reassure the nations of the free world,” and the Vancouver Sun expected that “the whole free world” could breathe a sigh of relief that Eisenhower was president. He was, as one columnist put it, “the most important and influential man in the world, bearing a heavy burden and carrying the good will of all free men.” ²⁴ In short, there was enthusiasm that Ike was taking the mantle of American—and Western—leadership.

In official circles in Ottawa, too, there were high hopes for the new president, already well-known to policy-makers. Certainly, he had a good reputation with military authorities, particularly General Charles Foulkes, the chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, who had served under Eisenhower in Europe. (Before Foulkes’ retirement in 1960, Eisenhower invited him to the Oval Office for a farewell meeting during which they reminisced about their long association). ²⁵ The feeling was mutual, with Eisenhower telling Arnold Heeney, Canada’s ambassador in Washington, that he valued his prior contacts with Foulkes, Minister of Defence Brooke Claxton, and wartime comrades General Andrew McNaughton and General Guy Simonds. ²⁶ These military links were important in a period of rapidly increasing defence cooperation between the two countries. Similarly, Prime Minister St. Laurent and Eisenhower had met in Ottawa during the latter’s 1951 NATO fact-finding tour, and in a letter written to the new president as he took office, the Canadian leader emphasized that his officials “remember with great pleasure and satisfaction our associations with you” during the war and through NATO. Moreover, recalling the thousands of Canadians who served “with pride and, may I say, with affectionate devotion, under your inspired leadership,” St. Laurent expressed a sense of public “confidence that your guidance of the affairs of the US, which has assumed the important role of leader of the free world, will be such as to promote international peace and security.” ²⁷ These sentiments attested to Eisenhower’s good reputation and to the ease with which he was anointed leader of the so-called free world.

Eisenhower and St. Laurent’s first meeting as president and prime minister came in May 1953, when the Canadian leader travelled to Washington. During their talks, St. Laurent reiterated support for the president’s role, emphasizing to his American counterpart that “Canadians had gladly accepted the military leadership of the President in war and as Supreme Commander of the NATO forces in Europe, and were now looking to his political leadership of the free world.” ²⁸ Eisenhower’s reputation was an evident source of ongoing trust with foreign leaders and publics, an important element of American power in the 1950s. Chairing a meeting with senior United States officials in 1955, Canadian secretary of state for external affairs Lester Pearson used his opening remarks to heap praise on the president, then recovering from a heart attack. “As the leader of the Allied Forces during the war and during the early period of NATO’s history,” Pearson affirmed, “President Eisenhower had come to belong to Canada and the other North Atlantic countries as well as to the United States.” ²⁹ Having a foreign minister assert proprietary rights over the leader of another country at the outset of talks with representatives of that leader’s government is rare, a striking sign of Eisenhower’s standing in Canada.

However, in some official quarters there was discomfort over the deference that Canadians paid to Eisenhower as a result of his stature. In November 1953, the president took his first official presidential trip to Canada for a two-day state visit. Arriving in Ottawa by train as he had done in 1946, he and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower were greeted by a crowd of 50,000 onlookers, and his parade route to the National War Memorial was lined with a special guard of thousands of uniformed Canadian veterans who had served under his command. Newspapers praised him as “a very old friend and a very good one,” and as the embodiment of the “unshakable nature of the friendship between Canada and the United States.” ³⁰ The bonhomie of the visit alarmed Arnold Heeney, who was struck “by the reluctance of Canadian ministers to take issue with a celebrated guest or to raise embarrassing questions” about thorny issues around trade and continental defence. As a result, he judged, “I had no doubt that Eisenhower and his advisers left with the impression that Canada had no problems of any consequence with the United States; it was left to the officials on other occasions to say the unpleasant things.” ³¹ Whatever diplomatic wrangling may have taken place over details, the Eisenhower–St. Laurent years saw a flurry of bilateral activity: the formation of a joint, cabinet-level committee on trade and economic affairs; a series of agreements deepening defence efforts—establishing radar arrays, governing overflight rights, and delineating bombing test sites; and the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Eisenhower’s time as president was not without controversy, and cracks in his reputation and image emerged as Canadians witnessed his leadership in action. In 1954, with McCarthyism rampant, Bruce Hutchison decried Eisenhower’s silence on the anti-communist witch hunt, labelling him a “modest and puzzled soldier” who had yet “to grasp the political process on which the future of the free world will mainly hang.” ³² Happily, later that same year McCarthy strayed too far and was censured by the Senate, though the president had little to do with this turn of events. In the realm of foreign policy, there was anger in some quarters over the United States handling of the Suez crisis in November 1956, with the Globe and Mail blaming Washington for failing to confront Egyptian strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser earlier in the year and then refusing to back the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt. This sorry record, the newspaper’s editors contended, suggested that the United States “is not yet ready for the leadership of the free world.” However, the Globe and Mail pinned the mess on Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and, with the 1956 presidential election occurring amid the Suez crisis, the newspaper praised Eisenhower’s re-election, dubbing him “a rock-like leader in troubled times.” ³³ The Calgary Herald also focused its critique on Dulles—an implicit criticism of Eisenhower, who was seemingly aloof—while the Vancouver Sun urged the president to “reassert American leadership.” Canadians, the newspaper contended, continued to “‘like Ike’ even though their faith—not in his integrity but in his performance—may have been shaken” by the crisis in Egypt. ³⁴ Taking a cue from Hutchison and the notion that Eisenhower was, to an extent, out of his depth, at the outset of his second term, the Globe and Mail wished him well in his role as “leader of the United States, and thus of all free countries,” but it asked, “Will the leader lead?” ³⁵

A new partner in Ottawa

These concerns about Eisenhower’s ability to chart a strong and determined course continued throughout his second term in office, a period in which Washington confronted a new nationalist Progressive Conservative government in Canada under the leadership of John Diefenbaker, first with a minority mandate in 1957 and then a massive majority following the March 1958 election. Canadian press opinion increasingly emphasized the weak position of the Eisenhower administration due to the president’s poor health, his lame-duck political status, and his strong Democratic opposition in Congress. More interested “in his Gettysburg farm and his golf score than in the controversial issues of the day,” the Globe and Mail noted in the summer of 1957, that the president “has been defeated at every turn by opponents who cared more and fought harder.” ³⁶ Similarly, Elmore Philpott informed his Vancouver Sun readership that “it is a pathetic, even tragic, thing to see a good and great man like President Eisenhower visibly losing his grip in his own country and the world” because of his medical issues. ³⁷ Eisenhower did receive generally high marks from newspaper editors in Canada for his handling of the civil rights flashpoint in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Ottawa Citizen praised the president’s “great courage” in taking the “forceful, unprecedented action” ³⁸ to place the Arkansas National Guard under federal control to enforce integration measures, while the Ottawa Journal’s editors counselled that “no one can say that Eisenhower is in the role of a dictator; he has shown patience … and what he has done now is not above the law, but for it.” ³⁹ Nevertheless, concern continued to be expressed about Eisenhower’s capacity to lead the Western alliance, particularly following his stroke in November 1957. Facing three years of “a nominal or part-time presidency,” the Globe and Mail called for Eisenhower to relinquish the presidency to Vice-President Richard Nixon “in fairness to himself, to his country, and to his country’s allies.” ⁴⁰

Canadians received the opportunity to see the elderly Eisenhower personally during his visit to Ottawa in July 1958. The Eisenhower administration had become increasingly concerned with growing protests from the Diefenbaker government about bilateral trade irritants, including the application of extraterritorial laws prohibiting American subsidiaries operating in Canada from trading with Communist China. Washington officials hoped that the recent Progressive Conservative landslide election victory would allow Diefenbaker to “settle down to a responsible and more statesmanlike approach to the problems of government” and abandon much of his nationalist rhetoric. ⁴¹ It sought to encourage this movement by arranging a summit meeting between Eisenhower and his Canadian counterpart from 8–11 July. Briefing papers prepared for Eisenhower ahead of his trip noted the Diefenbaker government’s efforts to promote Canada’s sovereignty and arouse “latent uneasiness” in the minds of many Canadians about the influence of the United States in their affairs. The primary objectives of the visit, therefore, were to prove the American commitment to cross-border cooperation and “discourage any trend towards a narrow position of Canadian nationalism.” ⁴² On its side, the Diefenbaker government placed particular emphasis on lobbying President Eisenhower to allow unencumbered trade deals by any corporation operating in Canada and to establish a joint Cabinet-level defence committee to address emerging problems in continental air defence. Prime Minister Diefenbaker also sought to use the visit to develop a closer personal relationship with Eisenhower; to encourage this trend, meetings were private and informal, with ample opportunities for the president to engage in recreational activities that included a round of golf at the Ottawa Hunt Club.

Canadian commentators expressed disparate opinions about the utility of Eisenhower’s visit and the motivations behind it, but the growing nationalist tenor was clear. Charles Lynch of Southam News Services viewed the president’s impending journey to Ottawa as “the most important visit ever paid to Canada by an American head of state.” For the first time in the history of Canada–United States relations, Lynch noted, “this is a case of the squeaky wheel getting some grease.” ⁴³ The Vancouver Sun’s Ottawa correspondent, Tom Gould, dismissively observed that Eisenhower would adopt a new role when he visited Ottawa—“that of the neighbour who has kept the lawnmower too long.” ⁴⁴ Many newspaper outlets pronounced that Diefenbaker would hold the upper hand in the upcoming deliberations. The “crushing weight” of the unprecedented Conservative election win in 1958, I. Norman Smith proclaimed in the pages of the Ottawa Journal, would make Diefenbaker aware that Eisenhower—who faced a Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress—“is scarcely in power in his own land.” ⁴⁵

Eisenhower’s brief 1958 sojourn in Ottawa received mixed reviews, a striking contrast to the glowing coverage accorded his earlier visits to Canada’s capital. On 9 July, the president delivered a speech to a joint session of the House of Commons and Senate defending protectionist American trade policies described by the Globe and Mail as “a concise, forthright, and encouragingly candid discussion of Canada-U.S. problems” and by Vancouver Sun editors as “[m]ore placatory than stirring; bland rather than pungent.” ⁴⁶ The tangible results of the summit included the establishment of the Canada–United States Joint Ministerial Committee on Defence, a somewhat vague American promise to consult Ottawa on any decision regarding the application of extraterritorial laws to subsidiary corporations in Canada, and the cementing of the friendship between Eisenhower and Diefenbaker. Canadian authorities expressed satisfaction with these outcomes. The prime minister, for example, recalled in his memoirs that he was “generally pleased” with the visit during which “Canada was not treated as a forty-ninth state composed of Mounted Police, Eskimos, and summer vacationers” (Alaska and Hawaii had yet to receive statehood). ⁴⁷ Howard Green, the Conservative House leader and future secretary of state for external affairs, praised Eisenhower as “a very friendly, decent person with a genius for seeing the other fellow’s point of view—and with quite a sense of humour.” ⁴⁸ Charles Lynch emphasized the personal aspect of the visit in his post-mortem: “the sight of a healthy, buoyant Eisenhower in itself was a tonic to Canadians who had heard reports about a part-time president, and who had misgivings about the vacuum in [W]estern leadership.” ⁴⁹ But the Globe and Mail highlighted the limited practical economic results of the summit, particularly the confusion regarding the Diefenbaker government’s ability to apply Canadian law to foreign-owned companies. “Canada’s foreign trade,” the newspaper intoned, “cannot be regulated or restricted by any other nation.” ⁵⁰

Press opinions of Eisenhower’s leadership became increasingly harsh following the Republican Party’s setbacks in the 1958 off-year elections. “The Eisenhower Presidency may well go down in history as one of the saddest,” the Globe and Mail’s Philip Deane observed in May 1959, with the aging leader “clinging to his old dreams and associations, to yesterday rather than tomorrow.” ⁵¹ The Tory-leaning Ottawa Journal continued to proclaim that the president was “perhaps achieving some of the greatness in that office which his reputation promised but which has so long been elusive,” ⁵² but the diminished capacity of the Western alliance to respond effectively to the threat of international communism was tied directly to Eisenhower’s declining political fortunes in most newspaper outlets’ evaluations. The president’s public prestige continued to erode. For example, he beat what was described as an “ignominious retreat” from East Asia in June 1960 when his visit to Tokyo was cancelled in the face of left-wing opposition to Japan’s accession to a revised security treaty with the United States. ⁵³ The previous month, following the Soviet shootdown of an American surveillance plane, Washington suffered a public relations calamity with the cancelled East–West Summit meeting, causing the Vancouver Sun editors to question whether Eisenhower lived in an “unreal world” and relied too heavily on staff briefings that resulted in the president demonstrating a “surprising lack of knowledge” about critical global security matters. ⁵⁴ Gone were the days of the far-sighted coordinator of Allied victory in 1945.

One of President Eisenhower’s last acts in office was to hold a signing ceremony for the Columbia River Treaty, a transboundary water agreement with Canada. The ceremony was held at the White House, entailing a visit by Diefenbaker, Eisenhower’s last official guest. At the treaty signing, Canada’s prime minister regaled the audience with an anecdote about a Canadian child, who, when asked to name Canada’s governor-general, replied “General Eisenhower.” This confused comment, Diefenbaker mused, expressed something of the esteem in which Canadians held the president. ⁵⁵ Many Canadian newspaper editors did not share this sentiment. The Globe and Mail emphasized the “paradoxical” situation that, even as the former general was leaving office amid crises at home and abroad, he remained widely admired, no doubt because of his military record and genial personality. “The greatest indictment of the departed Administration,” the newspaper affirmed, “is the legacy of unsolved problems it left its successor.” ⁵⁶ In what was far from the truth, the Toronto Star’s editors contended that Canadians were “naturally less bemused than Americans by the Eisenhower legend,” and it lamented that this “amiable and well-intentioned military hero” had “failed to match the terrific demands of his job.” Eisenhower’s “administration ends in a saddening atmosphere of anti-climax and disappointment, even downright failure,” opined the same newspaper, which, referring to the widely held view that Ike golfed too much, contended that “he hasn’t worked very hard at his job.” ⁵⁷ History “may look on Mr. Eisenhower as a good man,” predicted one columnist, adding “it will not consider him a great president.” ⁵⁸ The Calgary Herald offered rare effusive praise for the retiring president, who was neither flashy nor particularly intelligent but “possessed the kind of extraordinary human qualities which were most required at his times of service.” Importantly, his dealings with Canada “were most cordial,” and so Canadians could “join with their good neighbors in extending to him a warm farewell.” ⁵⁹

Eisenhower’s legacy in Canada

The faint praise for Eisenhower as his administration ended in 1961 was not simply the result of the fickleness of public opinion. Rather, it stemmed from Canadian responses to the vagaries of Eisenhower’s presidency, to declining confidence in the United States as the leader of the so-called free world, and to growing doubts about Canadian–American interdependence. In the 1957 and 1958 elections, Diefenbaker had campaigned as an economic nationalist and, while his Tory government established close ties with the Eisenhower administration and continued continental defence integration, public attitudes were shifting. As the prime minister observed in autumn 1960, “anti-American sentiment was now worse than at any time in his lifetime.” ⁶⁰ In this context, Eisenhower was yesterday’s man, the personification of wartime cooperation that was fading from memory. In the glow of victory and amid the deepening Cold War, Canadians had looked to him for leadership, but as the 1960s dawned, views and priorities were changing. One of the best-selling books in Canada in 1960 was James Minifie’s Peacemaker Or Powder-Monkey: Canada's Role in a Revolutionary World, a controversial call for fundamental changes in Canadian foreign policy, including the abandonment of NATO and the North American Air Defense Command, and a neutral position in the Cold War. Events over the subsequent decade only cemented such views in many quarters in Canada.

The tumult of the 1960s aside, Eisenhower’s death in March 1969 was covered graciously by the Canadian press, a marker of the respect automatically accorded to a (now-deceased) former occupant of the White House. “The world owes Gen. Eisenhower an incalculable debt,” the Globe and Mail noted, for his role in freeing Europe from Nazi tyranny. Eisenhower “was no skilled player in the often dangerous game of international affairs,” the newspaper continued, but “there could never be doubt about the enormous appeal he had for his countrymen.” Although his two terms in office were “not memorably distinguished,” the Ottawa Journal similarly pointed out, “‘Good old Ike’ was a human figure always, though often bearing inhuman burdens; history will respect him and all of us whom he served will ever be grateful to him.” Among “the most outstanding men of his era in the entire world,” maintained the Windsor Star, nonetheless Eisenhower’s “very success” as a military commander “militated” against his successes as president for he had already achieved so much before entering elected office. Still nearly a decade after his presidency ended, Eisenhower’s time in the White House won him little admiration in Canada. Even so, as the Calgary Herald reminded readers, during the Second World War “Canadians grew to regard Dwight Eisenhower as one of their own,” “a great citizen of the world,” who had not been free of error but had nonetheless achieved “a secure place in history.” ⁶¹

As for Mount Eisenhower, Mackenzie King’s announcement that Castle Mountain would undergo a name change had been met by acclaim in central Canada. There was “no more appropriate recognition” of Eisenhower’s achievements affirmed the Ottawa Citizen, and that it should bear his “name for all time is a happy symbol” of Canadian–American amity. ⁶² However, there was discontent in Alberta, where locals preferred the original. In the mid-1970s, Banff residents petitioned to see the end of the “Ottawa-imposed name,” and in 1976, the Historical Society of Alberta announced that Mount Eisenhower would revert to Castle Mountain, the change to take effect after 1977 to avoid clashing with the United States bicentennial and therefore appearing “jingoistic and anti-American.” ⁶³ The change was made, although one of Castle Mountain’s many peaks was named for Eisenhower, an enduring tribute to a figure who embodied the Canada–United States consensus of the 1940s and 1950s.