Читать книгу Storms of Controversy - Palmiro Campagna - Страница 7

FOREWORD

The Arrow controversy caused by the abrupt 1959 cancellation of the development of that years-ahead-of-its-time jet aircraft by the Diefenbaker government (followed immediately by the brutal destruction of all existing Arrows) has left a searing scar on the national psyche of Canada. The intimidating puzzle has been — why? Why the cancellation, why the destruction? In his work, Palmiro Campagna lays out hitherto unavailable evidence from Cabinet records. His precise, unemotional documentation gives a new and brilliantly clear picture of the American political influence that used the United States’ Bomarc system threat to cause the naive Canadian government to elect to invest in that worthless system and to cancel the Arrow.

The Canadian Cabinet argument was that Canada could not afford both programs. The United States, as Campagna tells us, forced the Diefenbaker decision in favour of the Americans’ nuclear-warheaded Bomarc system.

The explanation of the whys of the demise of the Arrow, as skill-fully developed by Campagna, will not bury the Arrow controversy. But it will serve to illuminate the dim-bulb rationale that pervaded the tempestuous, reactionary Diefenbaker years.

The administration of John George Diefenbaker left its indelible, depressing footprint on the ego of a Canadian people anxious and capable then to become one of the world’s leading high-tech nations. What a powerhouse of technology employment and high prosperity Canada would be enjoying today if the Arrow had survived and flown into our future.

Major-General (Retired) Richard Rohmer

Toronto

June 1992