Shadow Dancing with the Americans

A decade later, there are few vestiges of American cruise missile testing in Canada. Only 18 air-launched cruise missiles were ever tested in Canada, plus five advanced cruise missiles. The landing sites were swept and the missiles, intact or in fragments, were painstakingly returned to sender. No human was found underneath. Only the protestors have left their mark, including this book, John Murray Clearwater’s Just Dummies: Cruise Missile Testing in Canada. It is now much harder to view the original of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom because a cruise missile protestor felt entitled to splash it with red ink. A bomb exploded by other protestors at Litton Systems in Toronto left a pair of security guards terribly mangled. The “peace activists” have long since emerged from jail to resume their lives; their humble victims are far less fortunate.

Those unfortunate two guards are among the “dummies” of the title, since we learn that the “activists�...