In November 2024, a group of West Coast residents boarded a “Peace Train” from Vancouver to Ottawa to deliver a message to Parliament: a petition calling on Canada to establish a Center for Excellence in Peace and Justice.
When the Via Rail train pulled into Ottawa, the group was greeted by a welcoming party and a reception with a dozen Members of Parliament from all four parties. Courtenay-Alberni MP Gord Johns organized the reception and presented the petition in the House of Commons.
Sally Gellard, a Watershed Sentinel director, was among the 40 Peace Trainers. She reports, “One MP told us, ‘You have put peace back on the agenda. Thank you for coming to Ottawa.’”
Groups that supported the tour included the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, World Beyond War, and the interfaith human rights organization KAIROS. Gellard says organizers rallied people across the country. “If we stopped at a little town like Sioux Lookout at 8 am, there would be people there with signs that said, ‘Go Peace Train!’”
Canada is morally obligated to advocate for peace.
Official discussion about the Peace Centre was suspended when Parliament was prorogued in January. Bernadette Wyton, a member of the organizing committee, says, “A government response is required when the House reconvenes again.”
If approved, the new Peace Center would carry on the mission of the Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Centre, a non-profit institution that opened in 1994. The focus would be “research, education and training in conflict resolution, diplomacy, and peace operations for Canadian civilians, police, military personnel, and the international community,” the petition says.
Losing the centre
The gutting of Canada’s peacekeeping mission and the closure of the Pearson Centre in 2011 were a great loss to the world. The centre was named for the prime minister who won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping establish a UN peacekeeping force during the Suez Crisis of the 1950s. Trainees came from around the world to learn de-escalation strategies. It supported over 100,000 Canadian peacekeepers who monitored conflict zones and maintained ceasefire agreements in a dozen countries.
But in the mid-1990s, news of the extreme brutality Canadian officers inflicted on Somali civilians, including children, tainted the peacekeeping program and undermined its mission. The program has since been reduced to only a few dozen peacekeepers.
Still, Canada is morally obligated to advocate for peace. The Trudeau government is calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid to Gaza, but it has also supplied military goods to the region, like parts used in the Lockheed Martin F-35 jets currently deployed in Gaza, according to international humanitarian organization Oxfam.
Cultural obstacles
The grim truth is that violence works – at least in the short term. Wars of aggression are shockingly effective at seizing land, controlling resources, and silencing ideological enemies. In the long run, though, the backlash always comes: retaliatory violence, a radicalized populace, and more wars.
People can be deeply divided along the lines of class, race, religion, and nationality. Observers recognize the precursors of war and genocide: dehumanizing enemies, labeling and monstering human beings. It’s not a lack of knowledge that prevents countries from pursuing a peaceful world; it’s a lack of political will.
Consider the times peaceful action defeated tyranny
Leaders whip up nationalistic war rhetoric when they need a boost in popularity, a diversion, or a scapegoat. Those in power are invested in war, with governments and leaders propped up by military force and profits from the arms trade.
In the face of these obstacles, brokering peace between nations seems like an impossible dream. But it’s more urgent every day. We can start by defining the first steps that eventually will make it possible to wage peace instead of war.
Waging peace
We can study societies and eras that were relatively peaceful and stable, like the 250-year-long Tokugawa period in Japan. There are lessons to be learned from the Iroquois Confederacy in eastern North America; a social order based on principles that the US Constitution later adopted. The natural world shows us hundreds of examples of cooperation and symbiosis between species.
Consider the times peaceful action defeated tyranny, like the first People Power Revolution in the Philippines. Hundreds of thousands of civilians surrounded the palace for days. The army refused orders to open fire on them, instead abandoning their tanks and machine guns. President Marcos and his family were forced to flee by helicopter.
Closer to home, we have the examples of peaceful civil disobedience, pipeline blockades, and mass arrests to protect ancient forests. People who refused to stand aside and allow ecosystems to be destroyed, even when ordered at gunpoint. They were arrested, beaten, pepper-sprayed, and worse, while protecting the network of life.
In his latest book, The Peace: A Warrior’s Journey, Canadian humanitarian Roméo Dallaire writes, “I have spent years of my life reaching for something more – a way to bring true and lasting peace. A revolutionary strategy for conflict prevention. A covenant of respect for the individual human being, instead of the nation-state. A shared understanding that engages all parties, from community groups to international bodies, from pulpits to command posts. An ensemble solution that reflects our increasingly borderless existence on this planet, where we are all equally vulnerable to climate change at the largest scale and a virus at the smallest.
“We need strategic local and global leadership to actively predict and prevent problems before they become catastrophes,” Dallaire said. “Only in this way can we prevent suffering and insecurity and look toward a state I call The Peace.
“Peux ce que veux.” (Where there’s a will, there’s a way.)