Peace Train Canada

On Nov. 20 in the House of Commons, MP Elizabeth May (Green Party, Saanich-Gulf Islands) raised concerns in about Canada’s declining role in international peacekeeping and nuclear disarmament.   She noted that Canada once led in these areas—especially through Lester B. Pearson’s historic work—but now ranks very low in peacekeeping contributions and has closed the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre.   May went on to criticize the Canadian government for refusing to participate in or observe meetings of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, arguing this contradicts the government’s stated belief in a world free of nuclear weapons.   She noted that there are grassroots efforts across Canada promoting peace, including the Peace Train.   In response, Robert Oliphant of the Liberal Party (Don Valley West), who is also the Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs, responded that Canada remains committed to nuclear non-proliferation through the long-standing ...

By Bernadette Wyton on behalf of Peace Train Canada. It is with deepest love for my country and all my relations around the globe that I contemplate Remembrance Day.   A legion of reveries flash across my mind. I can see my raven-haired, teenage mother driving her weapons carrier and so many other awesomely capable women working on the home front.   I see my beautiful, young uncle-in-law strapped into his leather helmet and his Sterling bomber and a photo of the beautiful German look-alike who struck him from the sky.   I see the great anguish of fighters and their families perpetually haunted by their own unbearable remembrance, day after day, of the disgusting indignities of humans violating each other in war.   The dissonant sound of sabres rattling around the world is a test of our memory. Have we forgotten our commitment to the first principles of universal peace and human rights as agreed to only 80 years ago in the United Nations Charter? Are we read...

Last November, 40 people rode VIA Rail from Vancouver to Ottawa on what they called The Peace Train to meet with Parliamentarians to  ask for the creation  of a Canadian centre for peace and a revival of Canada’s peacekeeping heritage.   In March of this year, about a dozen Peace Trainers, as they call themselves, rode Amtrak from Montreal to New York with Green Party MP Elizabeth May to  call on the Canadian government  to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.   This October, from Oct. 21 to 25, they were in Ottawa again to remind Parliamentarians of their request for an independent Canadian Centre for Peace.   Read the story in Canadian Affairs. Photo above: Peace Trainers listen as Senator Marilou McPhedran speaks at the Oct. 22 Parliamentary breakfast.