As the Soviet threat to North America evolved in the early Cold War, the world was watching. What was the view from Ottawa? The role that intelligence played in Canadian foreign policy and defence decisions has been largely ignored to date. Watching the Bear begins to tell that story. Alan Barnes, a twenty-five-year veteran of the Canadian intelligence community, draws on recently declassified archival sources to offer a wholly new perspective on Canada’s policies for the defence of North America from 1946 to 1964. After the Second World War, Canada created an independent capacity to produce strategic intelligence assessments, and Canadian analysts worked with their American counterparts to prepare joint appraisals of the looming Soviet menace to the continent. The fact that Canadian conclusions often differed in important ways from American views at times complicated relations with Washington. Canada’s success in negotiating these tensions was instrumental in ensuring that the two countries developed a common basis for defence planning. By bringing little-known intelligence documentation to light and assessing the accuracy of Western conclusions about Soviet capabilities, Watching the Bear makes a groundbreaking contribution to the history of Canadian intelligence, defence, and foreign relations.