WASHINGTON—Canada provided both the setting and the secrecy, wielding a cone of silence through at least seven meetings in Toronto and Ottawa. Pope Francis provided the critical spiritual nudge.

But it was President Barack Obama ultimately who hit the momentous go button, announcing a blockbuster flurry of actions Wednesday aimed at ending America’s controversial 50-year embargo of Cuba.

Obama and his Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro, declared the historic turning point at noon in simultaneous live speeches to their respective nations, each thanking Canada and the Vatican for their top-secret roles as facilitators.

“Today, America choose to cut loose the shackles of the past, so as to reach for a better future,” Obama said, outlining prisoner swaps and other turning-point diplomatic measures intended to eventually erase the last glaring vestige of the Cold War era.

Senior White House officials spoke of Canada’s “indispensable” role in hosting at least seven clandestine meetings in Toronto and Ottawa. The timeline suggested a sustained feat of discretion, with the U.S., Cuba, Canada and the Vatican maintaining a cone of silence on dialogue that began in June, 2013 — no small achievement in the age of WikiLeaks.

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper welcomed the news as an “overdue development” but played down his government’s involvement, telling the CBC that Canada provided venues but did not mediate the talks.

“We facilitated places where the two counties could have a dialogue and explore ways of normalizing the friendship,” Harper said. “I personally believe changes are coming in Cuba, and this will facilitate those.”

South of the border, Obama’s announcement sparked instant political pushback, with a wide range of Republican hawks rounding on the administration for what they saw as a foreign-policy giveaway.

“The White House has conceded everything and gained little,” said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, whose supporters include a significant portion of the estimated 2 million Americans of Cuban ancestry.

With “no binding agreement” to ensure Cuba’s transition to democracy or outside monitoring by the United Nations or International Committee of the Red Cross, said Rubio, the agreement is hollow.

“This entire policy shift announced today is based on an illusion, a lie,” said Rubio. “All this is going to do is give the Castro regime . . . the opportunity to manipulate these changes to perpetuate itself in power.”

Fellow presidential aspirant Jeb Bush joined Rubio in opposition. The former Florida governor called the move a “foreign policy misstep” that “undermines America’s credibility and undermines the quest for a free and democratic Cuba.”

Republican opposition is expected to loom larger in January, when a new GOP-controlled Congress is sworn in with wide powers to block the diplomatic thaw, including funding for the re-establishment of a U.S. embassy in Havana.

Cuban leader Raul Castro acknowledged those roadblocks in his remarks Wednesday but urged Obama to work around Congress to “modify” the impact of the economic embargo on Cuba’s 11 million people.

“We have profound differences on sovereignty, nationhood and democracy,” Castro cautioned in his nationally televised broadcast. “But we reaffirm our will to dialogue about all of these matters.”

The day unfolded with an emotional wallop as American contractor Alan Gross, 65, was flown back to the U.S. after five years in a Cuban prison and promptly appeared before the media at his lawyer’s office in Washington, flashing a gap-toothed smile and announcing he would finally be able to get his “teeth fixed.”

Gross hailed the diplomatic thaw not just for saving his life but on behalf of the Cuban people, who he called a “kind, generous and talented” population that has been “treated so unjustly as a result of two governments’ mutually belligerent policies.”

Gross and his family then proceeded as guests of honour at a previously planned Hanukkah reception at the White House, where Obama spoke of the Jewish tradition of “pidyon shvuyim . . . the redemption, the freeing of captives.

“And that’s what we’re celebrating today, because after being unjustly held in Cuba for more than five years, American Alan Gross is free.”

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As part of the U.S. overture, Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed he would send a diplomatic delegation to Cuba in January to begin a round of U.S.-Cuba Migration Talks.

Kerry said he was a “17-year-old kid watching on a black-and-white television set” when he first heard a U.S. president speak of Cuba as an “imprisoned island.”

“For five and a half decades since, our policy toward Cuba has remained virtually frozen, and done little to promote a prosperous, democratic and stable Cuba,” Kerry said in a statement. “Not only has this policy failed to advance America’s goals, it has actually isolated the United States instead of isolating Cuba.”

Kerry cited the decades-long process of rebuilding relations with Vietnam as a blueprint for the new American approach to Cuba, saying, “It wasn’t easy. It still isn’t complete today. But it had to start somewhere, and it has worked.”

Obama, who was born in 1961 as Cuban-U.S. relations unravelled, laid out how and why his administration is moving to end the isolation imposed on Cuba.

The steps effectively end an embargo that has been one of the most durable elements of U.S. foreign policy. Travellers will be able to use credit cards in Cuba and Americans will be able to legally bring home up to $100 in previously illegal Cuban cigars treasured by aficionados.

“Though this policy has been rooted in the best of intentions, it has had little effect. Today, as in 1961, Cuba is governed by the Castros and the Communist party,” the White House said in a fact sheet released Wednesday morning.

“We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. It does not serve America’s interests, or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba toward collapse.”

Canadian author and pundit Keith Bolender has written two books about Cuba and Cuban-U.S. relations, one of them in collaboration with U.S. leftist gadfly Noam Chomsky. He talked to the Star’s Oakland Ross about Wednesday’s news of the breakthrough in U.S.-Cuban relations.

“It’s just incredible,” said Bolender, who cautioned that the true heft of the reforms depend upon how the incoming U.S. Congress addresses the legal aspects of the embargo and travel restrictions.

Bolender particularly welcomed Obama’s decision to stop branding Cuba as an exporter of state terrorism. “Taking Cuba off the list of states that sponsor terror — that would be a huge development,” he said.

In the past, the large Cuban American community concentrated in South Florida has opposed any hint of normalizing relations between Washington and Havana. No U.S. president until now has wanted to risk his standing among so large and focused a constituency, especially in a large swing state. But Florida’s Cuban American community is no longer the monolith it once was.

“You look at the demographic changes taking place in Florida, and they have shifted considerably,” said Bolender. “A majority of Cuban Americans are now in favour of normalization. The dynamics in Florida have changed dramatically.”

He admitted, however, that many Cuban Americans continue to oppose improved relations with Havana. “You always have the hard right who object to anything that would bring these two countries together.”

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