When Lee Zaslofsky joined the War Resisters Support Campaign (WRSC) in April 2004, the campaign was barely two months old, launched shortly after an American deserter from the Iraq War named Jeremy Hinzman arrived in Canada seeking asylum that January.
Toronto lawyer Jeffry House agreed to take Hinzman’s case, Zaslofsky said, but House also realized that a legal effort was not enough—there needed to be a political effort as well.
And he was right.
Zaslofsky and House were among the approximately 50,000 Americans who fled to Canada between 1965 and 1973, refusing to participate in the Vietnam War. They were welcomed by then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who declared his “complete sympathy” for their “conscientious judgment.”
“Indeed our political approach has been to give them access to Canada. Canada should be a refuge from militarism,” he said.
Jane Orion Smith, General Secretary of the Canadian Friends Service Committee (CFSC), which is a member of the WRSC, recalls that at that time resisters could apply for status from within Canada. “Often they were just processed right at the border.”
They were given a permit to stay, and after two years they could get permanent resident status. But nowadays, Smith notes that resistors must apply from outside Canada, despite that fact that they risk arrest if they remain in the U.S.
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