Canadian Union of Students

Formed in 1963, the Canadian Union of Students (CUS) was the successor organization of the National Federation of Canadian University Students (NFCUS) formed in 1926. CUS like NFCUS was essentially a binational coalition of student councils at Canadian universities.

Throughout the 1960s, CUS became increasing anti-war and Marxist-inspired, in part as a result of the influence of members of Student Union for Peace Action, which had ceased operating in 1966. CUS's increasing critique of capitalism and the US war against Vietnam led to a reaction by many CUS members who orchestrated a series of withdrawal referenda. CUS became non-viable by 1969 and ceased operating. Canadian students were then without a formal national student organization until the National Union of Students (Canada) was formed in 1972. NUS was the precursor of the Canadian Federation of Students. Thus the National Federation of Canadian University Students (NFCUS) and the left-wing Canadian Student Assembly (CSA) of the 1930s, to the reformed NFCUS after 1944, to CUS in the sixties, to NUS in the seventies, to CFS of 1981 on, represents a long tradition of national student organizing in Canada.

Quebec members of CUS did not support federal funding of a provincial jurisdiction that was inherent in the Canada Student Loan Program, established in 1964. CUS lost most Quebec members, who broke from CUS and formed Union général des étudiants du Québec.

Nigel Moses argues that CUS became highly vulnerable in the late 1960s because it had lost its traditional movement catalysts: by 1966, student loans and bursaries had never been so good, tuition fees were frozen and students were being taken seriously by politicians and given representation in university governance -- all of these things had been key demands of NFCUS and CUS. According to this interpretation, CUS had fallen victim to its own success. It had realized its policy raisons d'être at the same time it was radicalizing over the Vietnam war. As James Harding would put it, SUPA and de facto CUS, would become after 1967, "an ethical movement in search of an analysis".



Adapted from an article in Wikipedia with additional content by Connexions.

References

Axelrod, Paul (Spring 1995). “Spying on the Young in Depression and War: Students, Youth Groups and the RCMP, 1935-1942”. Labour/Le Travail. 35: 42-63.

“The Canadian Federation of Students – Fédération canadienne des étudiantes et étudiants” cfs–fcee.ca.

Graham, Peter; McKay, Ian. Radical Ambition: The New Left in Toronto

Harding, James (May 1966). “An Ethical Movement in Search of an Analysis: The Student Union for Peace Action in Canada”. Our Generation. 3 and 4 (1).

Kostash, Myrna. Long Way From Home: The story of the Sixties generation in Canada

Moses, Nigel Roy (1995). All that was left: student struggle for mass student aid and the abolition of tuition fees in Ontario, 1946 to 1975. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education: Unpublished PhD Dissertation. pp. 246-61.

Moses, Nigel Roy (2001). “Student Organizations as Historical Actors: The Case of Mass Student Aid” Canadian Journal of Higher Education. XXXI(1): 75-120.

Moses, Nigel (June 2004). “Forgotten Lessons: Student Movements Against Tuition Fee Hikes in Ontario in the 1960s and 1970s”. Trans/Forms, Insurgent Voices in Education.: 136.

Nesbitt, Douglas James. The ‘Radical trip’ of the the Canadian Union of Students, 1963-69

Palmer, Bryan D. Canada's 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era

Connexipedia. SUPA - Student Union for Peace Action



Subject headings

New Left – Sixties – Student Activism – Student Associations – Students – Youth Activism