Just Watch Us

RCMP Surveillance of the Women's Liberation Movement in Cold War Canada

in English, 304 pages,
McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, March 21, 2018
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A remarkable investigation of state spying on women’s liberation during the Cold War. The book includes much information about abortion in Canada, women’s liberation groups, and a chapter on the famous 1970 Abortion Caravan to Ottawa.

From the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, in the midst of the Cold War and second-wave feminism, the RCMP security service – prompted by fears of left-wing and communist subversion – monitored and infiltrated the women’s liberation movement in Canada and Quebec. Just Watch Us investigates why and how this movement was targeted, weighing carefully the presumed threat its left-wing ties presented to the Canadian government against the defiant challenge its campaign for gender equality posed to Canadian society.