This paper compares the Canadian government’s response to Britain’s 1939 Palestine White Paper with Canada’s response to, and responsibility for, the 1947 UN Partition Plan. There is little evidence of Palestine factoring significantly into Canadian foreign policy (and vice versa) until the Second World War, when revelations of the Nazi death camps profoundly reshaped Canadian perspectives. To help us understand Canadian support for Britain’s 1939 White Paper, this paper draws on the thoughtfully articulated responses of Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s chief adviser on Middle East affairs, Elizabeth MacCallum. For MacCallum, Canadian backing for the White Paper - and the conditional steps it outlined for granting independence to a unified Palestine based on majority rule (including veto power over immigration) - was grounded in principles outlined by the League of Nations Covenant, as well as in powerful themes circulating at the time, such as democracy, decolonization and self-determination. Less than a decade after the 1939 White Paper confirmed majority rule in an independent Palestine, the idea of partitioning Palestine would, in November 1947, achieve a broad international consensus, with Canada now playing a leading role in such deliberations. While the post-WWII international order consistently maintained European-drawn colonial borders against both external and internal challenges, Palestine proved an exception. The profound reordering of international politics and the emergence of a bi-polar Cold War world all intervened in a unique and radical way to support Israel’s creation following the Holocaust. By examining Ottawa’s changing perspectives on the fate of mandate Palestine over this decade, and seeing Palestine’s post-war partition as uniquely contingent on forces crashing together in this transformative period, one can draw several broader implications. First, we can contrast the impact of Zionism during Palestine’s interwar mandate period (culminating in the 1939 White Paper) with earlier settler colonial projects elsewhere (including North America), and caution against drawing for Palestine too direct a line from 1917 to 1947. Second, we can assess the continuing significance of the international resolutions that lay behind the 1947 decision to partition mandate Palestine. In drawing such conclusions, this paper will attempt to engage with current debates over the role of “international consensus” or “legitimacy” in contemporary thinking about one-state and two-state solutions to the ongoing conflict, as well as Canada’s own responsibility for helping bring about a just resolution.