Watching the Bear: Canadian Intelligence Assessments of the Soviet Threat to North America, 1946–64

CIA reference photograph of Soviet cruise missile in its air-launched configuration, 1962 (National Security Archive)

This briefing book is made up of key documents cited in Alan Barnes's Watching the Bear: Canadian Intelligence Assessments of the Soviet Threat to North America, 1946–64. The book is forthcoming from UBC Press.

The documents on the left hand side of this page correspond to the Canada Declassified identifiers in the book's notes.

"As the Soviet threat to North America evolved in the early Cold War, the world was watching. What was the view from Ottawa? The role that intelligence played in Canadian foreign policy and defence decisions has been largely ignored to date. Watching the Bear tells that story. After the Second World War, Canada created an independent capacity to produce strategic intelligence assessments, and Canadian analysts worked with their American counterparts to prepare joint appraisals of the looming Soviet menace to the continent. The fact that Canadian conclusions often differed in important ways from American views at times complicated relations with Washington. Canada’s success in negotiating these tensions was instrumental in ensuring that the two countries developed a common basis for defence planning."