Has Canada been a “friend” to Cuba?
While Ottawa’s position towards Fidel Castro’s Cuba was far more progressive than our southern neighbour’s, the story is more complicated than liberals are likely to suggest in their commentary over Castro’s passing.
Canada did not play a central role in U.S. efforts to squash the social reforms and independence of the island nation. Rather than participate in hundreds of CIA assassination attempts on Castro’s life, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared “Viva Castro” during an official trip to Cuba in 1976. But there’s a little-known unsavory side to Canadian relations with Cuba.
“Business is business” seems to have been Canada’s slogan for relations with Cuba from the U.S. occupation in 1898 through the dictator Batista to Castro’s revolution in 1959. In 1900 the Canadian Journal of Commerce noted that “Canadian capital and clearer northern brains” were turning Cuba into a “modern hive …