As in the United States, Canadians were divided over the presidential election in their largest ally, the United States of America. While official Ottawa leaned towards supporting Richard Nixon, the Canadian public was much more favourable to John F. Kennedy.
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While the government of John Diefenbaker took no official view, as is standard practice, they were considered to be hoping for a Republican victory. On the day before the election The Globe and Mail ran the headline, "Official Ottawa Likes Nixon." Cross border relations had been very good with the Dwight Eisenhower administration, under both the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties. Important agreements had been signed, such as that over the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Most important to Ottawa was the close relationship on continental security: agreements on the formation of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the purchase of the BOMARC missile defence system, and a trade of Canadian-built transport planes for fighter aircraft had been recently concluded. The Government of Canada would have preferred to continue to the successful working relationship with the members of the Eisenhower administration than risk a possible new approach by the Kennedy team. In policy, however, Kennedy and Nixon differed little on continental defence.
Personally, many Canadians like others in the democratic world were attracted to the youth and charisma and John F. Kennedy. On Kennedy's first official trip to Canada in May 1961, an unprecedented crowd of 50,000 turned out to see him. [1] [2] However, the issue of Kennedy's Catholicism, was an important one to a significant number of Canadians. English Canada in 1960 was still dominated by a staunchly Protestant elite, most obvious in the power the Orange Orders held in society. A considerable number of English-Canadians who shared the views of the Orange Order thus had a hatred of anything Roman Catholic, even foreign leaders like Kennedy himself. This had also manifested itself against Roman Catholic Prime Ministers of Canada as well, such as John Thompson, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier. French Canadians, in opposition to English Protestants, viewed Kennedy's candidacy with hope because of his shared religion and civil rights ideals.
Nonetheless, many Canadians looked at the religious division taking place among American voters as foreign to Canadian politics. Having first elected a Catholic to the office of Prime Minister in 1896, many outside Quebec were proud to claim a relative lack of religious bigotry in Canadian politics. In the Province of Quebec, several newspapers followed every aspect of the Kennedy campaign, pointing to his leadership as a Catholic role model.
There were few issues directly relating to Canadian-American relations in the 1960 election. One of the proposals that most concerned Canadians was Kennedy's plan to greatly increase agricultural subsidies. Canada could not hope to match these subsidies and they would serve to put Canadian farmers at a competitive imbalance in world markets. Canadian farmers were thus worried about a Kennedy victory.
Canada was only mentioned once in passing during the presidential debates. Kennedy listed the country, along with Western Europe and Japan, as nations that needed to join the embargo against Cuba in order for it to be effective.
Some Canadian concerns about a Kennedy victory did come about. American agricultural subsidies, that have been increased even further since then, are a continued irritant. The Diefenbaker government's concerns did come to pass and relations between them and the Kennedy’s administration were abysmal. U.S. historians tend to blame this on Diefenbaker, however. In 1962 he infuriated Kennedy when he refused to put Canadian forces on alert during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Canadian military, fulfilling their role in national defense, largely moved to an alert footing on their own accord during the crisis however. Diefenbaker was equally infuriated by Kennedy's decision not to consult with him ahead of time during the crisis. Diefenbaker worried Kennedy was grandstanding and could involve the world in a nuclear war. He was the only major U.S. ally to express these views, however. Later that year, he refused to accept nuclear warheads for the missiles based in Canada, rendering them all but useless. The Kennedy administration could barely contain its delight in Diefenbaker's replacement by Lester B. Pearson in 1963. Controversies also arose from Diefenbaker's decision not to join in the U.S. led embargo against Cuba after the expropriation of U.S. owned businesses making up over 70% of the Cuban economy.
Despite these problems, Canadians today widely venerate Kennedy as an American statesman. The anti-Catholic prejudices have largely disappeared, and in the years since 1960 Canada has also pursued a path more to the left of the United States, meaning the views of Canadian Prime Ministers are more in line with the views of the Democrats than the Republicans. Later events, such as Kennedy's assassination in 1963, have enhanced his image, while Watergate contributed to Nixon's continued unpopularity. A street in Montreal is named Avenue-du-President-Kennedy, and a bust of Kennedy stands on a traffic island there.
In the Canadian federal elections of 1962 and 1963, John Diefenbaker charged the U.S. government with somehow subverting his election campaign and aiding liberal Lester B. Pearson, who was later elected in 1963. Though this has never been proven, Pearson and the Liberal Party did hire American advisors who normally helped the Democratic Party in their country.