Howard Margolian, author of Conduct Unbecoming, which told the story of the murder of Canadian prisoners of war in Normandy in 1944, turns his attention to refuting the common perception that Canada was a haven for Nazi war criminals in the years following the Second World War.

Unauthorized Entry weaves a complex thread through the sometimes Byzantine machinations of the agencies responsible for immigration to Canada in the decade after 1946. The government – from the prime minister to external affairs, immigration, and the RCMP – was involved, as were business and ethnic lobby groups, and powerful, politically motivated foreign interest groups. The immense refugee problem in post-war Europe and the growth of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War compounded the all but insurmountable problems in fact-checking refugee backgrounds. Given the difficulties, Canada seems to have handled the situation reasonably well.

Margolian postulates that approximately 2,000 war criminals made it into Canada. Given that this was a minute proportion of the total number of refugees admitted, that most were minor offenders, and that their pasts were unverifiable because of the unavailability of information from Eastern Europe, this is not a bad record. The few serious offenders Margolian mentions appear to have gained entry through sponsorship by the Vatican or through American spy networks. Occasional errors were made, but Margolian finds no evidence of Canadian government complicity.

Unauthorized Entry tackles a complex subject. There are more than 100 pages of detailed endnotes. Where Margolian deals with specifics and real people rather than scientifics, his story is riveting. In other places, the general reader may be bogged down by detail. Nonetheless, this is an important book which clarifies a controversial period in Canadian history.