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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. ==Kennedy vs. Nixon== 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.〔()〕〔()〕 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Canada and the 1960 United States presidential election」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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