Delineating the North Atlantic triangle: The Second World War and its aftermath

Abstract

For sixty years, the phrase ‘North Atlantic triangle’ has been employed by Canadian scholars to describe the relations of Canada, Britain and the USA. That image was a product of its time and its originator's perspective, with particular relevance to an understanding of Canada's international relations in the Second World War and its aftermath. This paper weighs the evidence for and against the existence of a triangular relationship in the 1940s and it concludes that the geometric form conveyed an incomplete understanding at the time and it has even less relevance since then.