Peace Train Canada

  Peace Train Canada 2026 will be departing the station this fall—and you are invited to be onboard.   Travelling on VIA Rail’s The Canadian once again, it will leave Vancouver for Ottawa on October 23.     It arrives in Toronto on Tuesday, October 27 and Peace Trainers will depart for Ottawa the next morning, on Wednesday, October 28.   A parliamentary reception with MPs is on October 28, from 5 to 7 PM.   “This will be a journey across our great land to support peace,” says organizer Keith Wyton.   “With wars wreaking havoc, now is the time to tell our government that we must strengthen our diplomatic efforts to prevent conflict . . . if we want peace, we must train for peace.”   Along the way, Peace Trainers will meet supporters at train stations before ending up in Ottawa for a week of meetings and events with government representatives and officials.   The goal of the meetings is to call for the establishment of a Canadia...

The goal of Peace Train Canada is the establishment of a national peace centre that would, among other things, promote the Canadian heritage of peacekeeping. What do Canadians think about that?   A Nanos poll in 2025 sought to get some answers to that question. According to Jean-Christophe Boucher, who teaches political science at the University of Calgary and who helped create the poll, the older you are the more you support that idea of peacekeeping. The younger someone is, the less they do.   In that poll, respondents were asked to rank different national defence priorities from defending the homeland to contributing to international security through things like peacekeeping.   Overall, Boucher said in an e-mail to Peace Train Canada, contributing to international stability through activities like peacekeeping ranked lowest among the four “missions” the poll analyzed. Defending Canadian territory was number one at 91%, but 66% of Canadians still said contributing...