The Cold War began with the defection of Igor Gouzenko in Ottawa in September 1945. His defection symbolized the crumbling of the wartime alliance and the emergence of a new era of global conflict.

In Canada, the defection had far more immediate consequences . The federal government invoked wartime powers to detain, interrogate and prosecute several suspected communist spies. Habeas corpus was suspended; people were arrested and interrogated by the police for weeks without access to legal counsel; suspects were trapped in tiny cells and held under suicide watch by an RCMP guard at all times; and reputations were sullied as a result of the stigma attached to being associated with an act of treason. The episode was one of the most (in)famous violations of civil liberties in Canadian history. The proceedings of the 1946 espionage commission rank alongside the October Crisis of 1970 as the most extensive abuse of individual rights in Canadian history in peacetime.

There are six key sections in this part of the site. The History will provide a brief narrative history of the defection, the espionage commission and the subsequent spy trials. Chronology is a list of the key events as they unfolded between 1945-1946. Sentences is a list of the results of the spy trials (prosecution of individuals accused by the espionage commission of providing the Russians with top-secret information). Key figures is a series of mini-biographies of the central figures in these events. Documents is a link to a rich collection of primary documents relating to Gouzenko and the commission. Finally, a list of historical studies on the Gouzenko affair are also available on this site.

The Gouzenko defection ultimately led to the formation of several civil liberties organizations.This site includes an entire section on the history of the human rights movement in Canada.

History: A Brief History of the Gouzenko Affair