Gatekeepers:
Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada
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by Franca Iacovetta
Between the Lines, Toronto, 2006
384 pp., illus., $34.95 paperback
Examining media reports, government policy documents, and personal accounts from both citizens and newcomers, Franca Iacovetta’s Gatekeepers explores issues stemming from immigration to Canada during the Cold War. In particular, Iacovetta investigates the role gatekeepers played in shaping new immigrants to “Canadian standards.”
These gatekeepers included social workers, citizenship officials, and community lobbyists, as well as church, political, and women’s groups. They pushed postwar immigrants into the Canadian mainstream via the press, political parties, sports, food, and family structures.
The richness of this book lies in its analysis of rarely documented details of Canadian life during the Cold War, particularly among displaced persons from Eastern Europe. Iacovetta’s accounts of how immigrants were steered toward more liberal Western notions of democracy, and away from the “threatening and undesirable ways” of Communism, reveal much about official discourse and policy during this period.
Gatekeepers is a valuable resource regarding the history of anti-communism in Canada, postwar ethnicity, the roots of state-sanctioned multiculturalism, and the effects of forced assimilation.
— Christopher Webb (Read bio)
Christopher Webb is a regular contributor to Canada's History.