It was on this date in 1983 that Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau released an unprecedented open letter to Canadians explaining his government’s position on American cruise missile testing over Canada.  When US President Ronald Reagan asked Trudeau to permit these tests of the new and controversial nuclear weapons delivery system, Canadians rose up like they hadn’t since the 1960s to protest the tests. I was only a teenager then and I recall like yesterday the minister at my United Church in my hometown of Scarborough taking an anti-cruise missile testing position from the pulpit.  There were arguments at our dinner table, at school and seemingly everywhere else. An article from Maclean’s at the time described the opposition Prime Minister Trudeau faced in agreeing to the American request. “A total of about 85,000 turned out for anti-cruise rallies across Canada last month—65,000 in Vancouver alone. Gallup polls since December have shown 50 to 52 per cent of Canadians opposed to cruise testing, with 37 to 40 per cent in favour. British Columbia’s End the Arms Race Coalition is highly organized, with brochures and mail-in campaigns aimed at Ottawa.  Greenpeace President Patrick Moore says his organization plans major events both in Cold Lake and in Ottawa, where another group of about 2,000 people protested by joining hands in a ring around the Parliament Buildings on Mother’s Day, May 8 …” “Big-city rallies attract the most attention, but interest in the issue is also present in small towns.  Coffee night in the North Battleford, Sask., United Church, which draws 50 people on a good night, attracted 250 to see the National Film Board’s If You Love This Planet, the Oscar-winning antinuclear documentary labelled as foreign propaganda by the U.S. justice department,” the article continued.  “The Prime Minister’s Office has picked up yet another signal of opinion: as of last week, it had received 3,646 letters this year opposing the cruise tests (compared to 106 for) and 17,778 write-in campaign cards provided by a variety of groups opposing tests.  The cruise has been generating more mail to the PMO than any other issue, including the seal hunt and abortion.” Trudeau faced these protests head on in his open letter to all Canadians. “By way of a preamble,” he wrote, “let me point out that our freedom to discuss and argue issues is what gives to our democracy its greatness and its strength; but the same freedom can also make us appear vulnerable in the fact of Soviet totalitarianism … When the choice is between steadfastness or weakness in the face of totalitarianism, history should have taught us that to refuse to risk one’s life in defence of liberty is to risk losing liberty, without any guarantee of saving’s one’s life.” Eventually, arguing that approving the tests was Canada’s duty as a member of NATO, they went ahead. But the issue remained a hot one for years. caption id="attachment_10467" align="aligncenter" width="214" Pierre Trudeau/caption   Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.