Undergraduate Research Leads to Groundbreaking Archival Discovery About Canada’s Postwar History

A team of undergraduate researchers working under the direction of Professor McBride has made a groundbreaking archival discovery that is helping to reshape national debate over Canada’s postwar history. In fall 2023, the so-called “Hunka Scandal”—in which an SS veteran was publicly honored in the Canadian parliament—reignited controversy over Canada’s postwar immigration policies and its failure to prosecute alleged Nazi war criminals. In response, Professor McBride’s research team—composed primarily of History majors and minors participating in UCLA’s Student Research Program—has spent the past year analyzing declassified archival records and publicly available sources concerning the presence of suspected war criminals in Canada after the Second World War.

While working through materials from Library and Archives Canada, the team identified an unlabeled document as the long-sought “Deschênes list”—a list of individuals that was produced as a part of the 1986 federal investigation into war criminals residing in Canada, known as the Deschênes Commission. The Canadian government had withheld this list from public release for nearly four decades, citing national security concerns. As a recent New York Times article observed, “For 37 years, Canada has kept close guard on an explosive roster of names.” Remarkably, neither the federal government nor the national archives realized that they had already released a significant portion of the list to the public. Despite intense efforts by journalists, historians, and legal advocates, the document had remained unidentified—until now.

This discovery has already drawn widespread attention and was the subject of a front-page feature by Marie Woolf in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s most prominent newspaper. It is poised to deepen national conversations about historical accountability, archival transparency, and the legacy of the Second World War in Canada.