Contemplating Remembrance Day From Inside The Peace Train








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 ready to toss that jewel of meaning pulled from the ashes of more than 60 million lives lost during the last world war? 

Have we forgotten NATO’s first article committing us to settle international dispute by peaceful means and to refrain from the use of force? And, for heaven’s sake, let us not be the ones to forget the Canada Clause, NATO’s Article 2, pledging us to promote conditions of stability and well-being. 

Upon signing the North Atlantic Treaty, Lester B Pearson clarified its intention with words that still ring out: “This treaty is not a pact for war, but a pledge for peace and progress.” 

As we teeter on the fulcrum of multiple tipping points, it becomes increasingly evident that peace is a fundamental condition for our survival. It is a process of constant adjustment toward enduring balance, stability, and security. It is the domain of physical, social, mental, and spiritual well-being. 

Maintaining this domain of prosperity and resilience requires investment in a national hub or centre dedicated to shaping what the Global Peace Index refers to as “Positive Peace: the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies.” 

As the Index shows, peaceful societies are marked by wellbeing, happiness, higher GDP growth, lower interest rates, greater political stability, and more resilience to shocks. 

(In 2025, Canada was number 14 on the Index list, described as “the most peaceful country in North America” with a high state of peace overall. The U.S. was number 128 out of 163 countries on the list.) 

Although Canada is a peaceful country, it is being lured away onto the competitive, slippery slope of military expenditures that are already crowding out investment in many areas of what I call the Peaceful Industrial Complex (as opposed to the Military Industrial Complex) that underpins our social cohesion. 

In an effort to breathe new life into our identity as a culture of peace, I joined Peace Train Canada on three journeys within a year to meet with parliamentarians and encourage our government to establish and fund an independent, integrated Canadian Centre for Peace. 

Such a centre would serve as a hub for research, education, policy development, and training for civilians, police, military personnel, the government, and the international community. It would also serve to strengthen the first line of intelligent defense—illuminating and addressing the underlying causes, perpetrators, and profiteers of conflict while diffusing reactionary hatred, propaganda, polarization, and violence. 

Minister Anand recently assured the UN that “Canada does not walk away from building and strengthening peace.” However, this is not evident in the hundred-fold collapse of Canada’s contribution of personnel deployed to UN peace operations from well over 3,000 personnel to 30. 

Her words are not evident in the loss of our independent, national peace building and strengthening centres or in the weakening of Canada’s role and reputation as a peacemaker. 

It is time for our government to walk toward a more tangible commitment to peace and common security. It is time to back intention with investment in a Canadian Centre for Peace. That would be the highest tribute to all the hearts, minds, and lives sacrificed so that we could live in peace.

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