First published in 1983, this book reports from the middle of the nuclear arms race, when the world's two superpowers, the US and the USSR, were adding increasingly sophisticated weapons to their arsenals, reaching a point where they could effectively wipe each other out many times over. Some of Canada's most distinguished critics of the nuclear arms race examine this drift to annihilation, show how Canada was contributing to it, and explain the policies that Canada could have adopted to encourage the reversal of the arms race.

Lester Pearson was Minister for External Affairs between 1948 and 1957. During this time Canada was a member of two successive United Nations commissions on eliminating or controlling nuclear arms with the United States and the Soviet Union as the main negotiators. The goal of these discussions was to reach an agreement on general principles that reflected the strategic needs of each side, rather than on the technical details necessary for a treaty. While the United States and the Soviet Union played the largest role in the negotiations, two other major powers, Britain and France, allies of the Americans, were also at the bargaining table. Canada was the only middle power to participate in all negotiations.

In this second volume of his nuclear weapon series, John Clearwater continues to investigate the presence of American nuclear weapons in Canada. In Canadian Nuclear Weapons, Clearwater told the story of nuclear weapons that were in the hands of Canadian forces during the Cold War. In U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Canada, he goes further, looking at nuclear weapons held by American forces on Canadian soil. His purpose is to bring together until-recently secret information about the nature of the nuclear weapons stored, stationed, or lost in Canada by the United States Air Force and the United States Navy, and combines it with known information about the systems in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The history of the atomic bomb in Canada goes back to the first years immediately after World War II when the U.S. government, under the prodding of the newly created Strategic Air command, began a slow and steady process of talks designed to allow Goose Bay to be groomed for the eventual acceptance of nuclear weapons. Crashes and nuclear accidents. Conspiracies and cover-ups. Clearwater examines them all in great detail. The reader will see for the first time the minutes of Cabinet and the Cabinet Defence Committee meetings in which the storage of nuclear weapons are discussed. Also printed here for the first time are the agreements between Canada and the U.S. for the storage of nuclear weapons. Many of the documents presented here were until recently classified as secret, and many were top secret.

In Learning to Love the Bomb, Sean M. Maloney explores the controversial subject of Canada's acquisition of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Based on newly declassified Canadian and U.S. documents, it examines policy, strategy, operational, and technical matters and weaves these seemingly disparate elements into a compelling story that finally unlocks several Cold War mysteries. For example, while U.S. military forces during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis were focused on the Caribbean Sea and the southeastern United States, Canadian forces assumed responsibility for defending the northern United States, with aircraft armed with nuclear depth charges flying patrols and guarding against missile attack by Soviet submarines. This defensive strategy was a closely guarded secret because it conflicted with Canada's image as a peacekeeper and therefore a more passive member of NATO than its ally to the south. It is revealed here for the first time. The place of nuclear weapons in Canadian history has, until now, been a highly secret and misunderstood field subject to rumor, rhetoric, half-truths, and propaganda. Learning to Love the Bomb reveals the truth about Canada's role as a nuclear power.