There's (presently) an undercurrent of anxiety in some quarters of the Canadian business community and in the corridors of political power. The worry stems from signals on Canada's southern horizon of a belligerence born of stress and fear. It's a prevalent mood in the US, the superneighbor and primary trading partner whose every move might well send the Canadian economy soaring, or into a tailspin.

America is at war. It is perceived as a war against a foe that not only operates in the outside world, but is likely also to be an enemy within. Each kind of opponent is felt to be ultimately intent on wrecking the American way of life itself.

Washington's response is, not surprisingly, the tried and tested American way of dealing with opponents: as in the Old West, or after Pearl Harbor, it's you hit me, I hit you twice as hard. Except now it is difficult to pinpoint precisely who and where the most active US enemies are, because the challenge begins in the minds of men and women, in their invisible beliefs.

As familiar as all that may seem today, it was much the same way half a century ago, in the 1950s. It is early in the Cold War against communism. Anti-Americanism openly emanates from "the evil empire" of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the mecca of anti-capitalism, Moscow.

As well, the alleged injustice of American capitalism is the topic of conspirators in New York City's Marxist salons, in Hollywood's socialist studios, even in whispered words on Capitol Hill:






Or so says Senator Joe McCarthy, the senior US witch-hunter of the time, who informs the world in February 1950, that 205 commies hold posts in the State Department (a figure he later revises to 57, still later changes to 81). In Canada, the Communist Party had been banned during the Second World War, their diminished ranks surviving as members of the Labour Progressive Party. But prominent Americans say External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson is also a pinko.

Abroad, a window of opportunity to take on the enemy overseas opens on June 25, 1950. North Korea, under Soviet occupation for three postwar years, invades South Korea, America's postwar bailiwick. The US gains UN authorization to lead 15 countries, including Canada, into what becomes a three-year war that closes in stalemate on the original North-South border.

As it happens, despite earlier Canadian nervousness about a pugnacious America, the Korean War throttles up Canada's economy to new heights. Bigger military budgets build up the aircraft, electronics and shipbuilding industries and their suppliers. Further, such industries are able to shift readily to peacetime projects, notably in electronics in the new TV and stereo age.

People in retrospect sometimes dismiss the decade with the term for a style of cigarette packaging at the time — "Flat Fifties." But surely that's refuted by a decade when Canada's GNP doubled, the value of manufacturing nearly did, petroleum production increased fivefold, as did iron ore output, while the Canadian dollar, still a paper bill, exchanged at a premium with the US greenback.

The 1950s also brought Canadian TV, produced the polio vaccine, the first jetliners and pioneer computers. Not to mention rock 'n' roll and Elvis.