| This thesis analyses Canadian newspaper images of Americans during the 1960s. The content of the study is derived from twenty newspapers drawn from four Canadian cities---Halifax, Quebec City, Ottawa, and Vancouver---and covers five specific events during the 1960s which each prompted a flurry of commentary on Americans, American motives, and the Canadian-American relationship. These events are: the election and inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1960, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the Watts Riot of Los Angeles in 1965, an anti-Vietnam War speech made by Privy Councillor Walter Gordon in 1967, and the voyage of an American oil tanker, the Manhattan, into the Canadian arctic in April of 1970. This work seeks to advance the study of Canadian-American relations by questioning the range and methodological treatment of evidence currently used to evaluate Canadian perceptions of the United States. In its place, this study presents a systematic examination of Canadian attitudes and popular opinions in the 1960s.; Combining the investigation of editorial cartoons and the use of the social psychological method of the Linguistic Intergroup Bias as a form of content analysis, this thesis finds that newspaper coverage from 1960 through 1970 was a complex blend of various streams of opinion which fell into three major categories: positive orientations towards Americans, negative orientations towards Americans, and apathy towards the Canadian-American relationship. This range of opinion did not provide substantial evidence of correlated predictors in terms of ideology, geography, or language, and thus suggests the possible need for a revision of previously held conclusions. In particular, this study challenges the notion that most Canadians in the 1960s had negative impressions and opinions of the United States.; The study's final assessment presents three overlapping conclusions. First, the findings suggest that Canadian newspapers were much more willing to express negative opinions concerning the United States at the end of the decade than at the beginning. However, the evidence shows that Canadian newspapers in the 1960s were not "anti-American". Third, the findings suggest that there was no single or dominant "Canadian" perception of the United States. Therefore, this study finds that Canadian newspaper discussion of Americans in the 1960's contained a versatile and diverse range of opinion, much of which was absent of substantial negative sentiment directed towards the United States. |
