Dedicated to the many who contributed to peace by resisting slavery and arguing for anti-slavery legislation.

Abolitionism soon made its way to British North America in the late 18th century, where a number of legal challenges were made against the institution of slavery. By the early 1800s, Lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia had attempted to abolish slavery but failed. Bills were introduced in Lower Canada in 1793 and in 1801, but neither bill was passed. During those same years, bills to legalize enslavement were presented in New Brunswick (1801) and Nova Scotia (1808), but they were met with opposition and were not passed. Many were involved in these legal battles and while we cannot mention them all here, here are a few notables:

Chloe Cooley, regularly struggled against her “owner,” Sergeant Adam Vrooman. She protested her enslavement by behaving in “an unruly manner,” stealing property entrusted to her on Sergeant Vrooman’s behalf, refusing to work and leaving the property without permission. As rumours of coming abolition reached Vrooman, he and many other slave owners tried to sell their slaves in New York state. On March 14, 1793 Chloe was bound and thrown in a boat to be taken across the river and sold in the United States. She resisted fiercely; Peter Martin, a free Black man, noticed her screams and struggles and brought a witness, William Grisley, to report the incident to Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe. The legal battles surrounding incidents like these precipitated the Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada in 1793.

Those who have been enslaved may henceforth look forward with certainty to the emancipation of their offspring.” – John Graves Simcoe

Simcoe is seen by many in Southern Ontario—as a founding figure in Canadian history for his role in the building of Upper Canada and in opposing slavery. In 1793, Simcoe and Attorney General John White introduced a bill to end slavery in that colony. However, it met strong opposition, since many of the members of both houses of the legislature enslaved Black people or were from slaveholding families. The amended compromise was the Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada, the first piece of legislation passed in the British colonies to limit slavery which did not abolish the practice nor emancipate a single enslaved person. Instead, importing enslaved people became illegal, and a time frame was set in place to gradually phase out slaveholding.

Between 1791 and 1808, enslavement was challenged by Nova Scotia’s Chief Justice Thomas Strange and his successor Sampson Blowers. When slave owners came before them seeking to reclaim enslaved people who had fled their bond, the judges put the burden of proof on the slave owners, asking them to prove ownership of the enslaved person and to prove that they had the legal right to purchase that person. Owners who appeared before these judges were usually unable to satisfy the court in that regard. Among other factors, the strong opposition of the courts, along with the slave owners’ inability to defend existing slavery laws, contributed to slavery gradually dying out.

Proper anti-slavery legislation, the Slavery Abolition Act, was passed by the British Parliament and received Royal Assent on Aug. 28, 1833, and came into effect throughout the British Empire on August 1st, 1834. The Act made enslavement officially illegal in every province and freed the last remaining enslaved people in Canada. August 1st is celebrated across many former British Colonies, and in Ontario, as Emancipation Day.

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Ernie Regehr contributed to peace by studying war and peace since the 1960s, and, in 1976, founding, with Murray Thompson, Project Ploughshares, which is based in Waterloo, Ontario. Regehr served as its Executive Director for thirty years.

Project Ploughshares is an operating division of the Canadian Council of Churches that works with churches, government and civil society to advance policies and actions to prevent war and armed violence. Regehr has been a Canadian NGO representative and expert advisor at numerous international disarmament forums including UN Conferences on Small Arms.

After receiving his Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Waterloo in 1968, Regehr worked in journalism and for a Member of Parliament, during which time he wrote his first book Making a Killing: Canada’s Arms Industry.

Regehr and his wife Nancy then served with the Mennonite Central Committee in South Africa, Zambia and Botswana from 1974-1976 before returning to Canada.

He has served as an NGO representative and expert advisor on a number of Government of Canada delegations to multilateral disarmament forums. He is a former Commissioner of the World Council of Churches Commission on International Affairs

Errnie’s peace and disarmament work, both written and spoken as well as action, has been honoured with many awards: He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2003, and in January 2011 he became the 26th laureate of the Pearson Peace Medal.   Regehr was also a recipient of the University of Waterloo 50th Anniversary Alumni Award and the Arthur Kroeger College Award for Ethics in Public Affairs in 2008.

On receiving a honourary Doctor of Laws degree from Sir Wilfrid Laurier University in 1990, Regehr said:

“One initiative that particularly pleases me is the work on international arms trade controls. When I began writing on the arms trade and trying to engage federal officials on the issue back in 1975, one kindly, senior gentleman in the Department of Foreign Affairs, suggested that I should stop bothering him and go and find something useful to do with my life. Canada has now signed the newly-minted Arms Trade Treaty – it took a long time and involved many people and organizations, and it was a privilege to be a part of it,”

Regehr is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College (Waterloo, Ontario) and The Simons Foundation (Vancouver, BC).   He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Africa Peace Forum in Kenya.

When asked to endorse the UN Secretary General’s call for a nuclear weapons convention, Ernie stated, “The world’s primary strategy for avoiding nuclear war has to date been to rely on luck.  These accomplished supporters (800 Order of Canada recipients) of nuclear abolition know that we desperately need a change in strategy.”

“Peace cannot be won on the battlefield.”

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Father Bob Ogle (1929 – 1998) contributed to peace by seeking to uncover the injustices of our world and doing something about them.

Father Bob Ogle was a prominent figure in Saskatchewan. He was born and raised in a devout Catholic family on a poor farm in Rosetown, SK during the Great Depression.  Bob was educated at St. Peter’s Seminary in Ontario, and ordained in 1953.

He served as an energetic parish priest in Saskatoon, SK until 1964, when he went on a mission to Brazil. There, Bob engaged in pastoral work, organized literary activities, farming cooperatives and health centres.  He wanted to make a difference.  In 1969 he coordinated a relief operation and housing building program following the disastrous floods in the area.

When he returned to Canada he was restless so he traveled the world investigating international development programs.  He wrote a book about it called When the Snake Bites the Sun.

Although he had never belonged to a political party in 1970 and in 1977 he was asked to run for Parliament for the New Democratic Party in Saskatoon East. He campaigned on his bicycle and was elected in 1979, and served until 1984 when he received notice from the Vatican that he could not run again.

In the ensuing  years in spite of ill health he wrote three books, initiated a project called Broadcasting for International Understanding, and hosted a retreat series on television. He always had at least one Project Roberto to keep him (and his friends) going, and he never completely lost his sense of humour. He held a doctorate in canon law and was awarded the Saskatchewan Award of merit. In 1989, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for “his tireless efforts to foster Canada’s understanding of her role in global progress”.

Ogle had wrestled with many issues and situations, from the decision to run for the party to the daily wrestling with suffering and inequality in the world. Like Jacob, of the Jewish Scriptures, Ogle carried the injury from the struggle for the rest of his life.

Former MP. Rev. Bill Blaikie told of his experiences with Ogle — both funny and poignant — to illustrate a larger point about morality and the need to connect the conflicts and inequalities they saw in the world to their Christian duty to do something about it. One particularly striking story was how, on Christmas Eve 1973, Rev. Ben Smillie, a United Church minister, entreated Ogle to speak in his Christmas Day homily about the bombing of Hanoi, which was ongoing. Ogle did so.  Imagine, on Christmas!  No day is too sacred for the truth.

Ogle passed away in 1998 after a long battle with cancer.

At his funeral, Saskatchewan Premier, Roy Romanow, said, “He was truly a citizen of the world.  He was a man who lived the word of God – a man of peace and caring and compassion.  I’ve tried to emulate him as much as I could.”

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Stephen Lewis contributes to peace by being an early climate change activist and with his advocacy for those affected by HIV/Aids. #Canada150

A politician, broadcaster and diplomat, he is best known for having served as Canada’s United Nations Ambassador and as the United Nations’ special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. He established The Stephen Lewis Foundation to help people affected and infected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and Aids-Free World, a non-profit organization the advocates for more effective global responses to HIV and AIDS.

He has consistently spoken out about the promises of western countries to address AIDS, poverty, and education in Africa which have not been kept. In 1988, Stephen Lewis chaired the first international conference on Climate Change, which drafted the first comprehensive policy on global warming.  Almost three decades have passed since the political leaders, ambassadors, scientists, and environmental activists joined Mr. Lewis in declaring what remains one of the best, though starkest, pronouncements about global warming:

“Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war.”

Since 2003, the foundation has funded over 1,400 initiatives, with the support of over 300 community-based organizations in the 15 African countries hardest hit by the global AIDS epidemic.

“These grassroots groups are the lifeline for their communities: they provide counselling and education about HIV prevention, care and treatment; distribute food, medication and other necessities; reach the sick and vulnerable through home-based health care; help orphans and vulnerable children access education and work through their grief; and support grandmothers caring for their orphaned grandchildren.”

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Historians like Margaret MacMillan, Desmond Morton, Arthur Manuel contributed to peace by making our shared histories more accessible. #Canada150

Margaret Olwen MacMillan (b. 23 December 1943) is a Canadian historian and professor at the University of Oxford, where she is Warden of St Antony’s College. A leading expert on history and international relations, MacMillan is a commentator in the media.  Desmond Dillon Paul Morton is a Canadian historian who specializes in the history of the Canadian military, as well as the history of Canadian political and industrial relations.  Peter Brock, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Toronto (d. May 28, 2006) was a Quaker and conscientious objector in Britain during World War II. He was fluent in many languages and the author of 30 books and numerous articles, several about Doukhobors

Her most successful work is Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War, also published as Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. Peacemakers won the Duff Cooper Prize for outstanding literary work in the field of history, biography or politics; the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History; the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize for the best work of non-fiction published in the United Kingdom and the 2003 Governor General’s Literary Award in Canada. MacMillan has served on the boards of the Canadian Institute for International Affairs, the Atlantic Council of Canada, the Ontario Heritage Foundation, Historica and the Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy (Canada). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford and a Senior Fellow of Massey College, University of Toronto. She has honorary degrees from the University of King’s College, the Royal Military College of Canada and Ryerson University, Toronto. She was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in February 2006 which was later upgraded to Companion of the Order of Canada on December 30, 2015.

Desmond Dillon Paul Morton is a Canadian historian who specializes in the history of the Canadian military, as well as the history of Canadian political and industrial relations. He is a graduate of the Collège militaire royal de St-Jean, the Royal Military College of Canada, a Rhodes Scholar, the University of Oxford (where he received his PhD), and the London School of Economics. He spent ten years in the Canadian Army (1954–1964 retiring as a Captain) prior to beginning his teaching career.[1] He was named Honorary Colonel of 8 Wing of the Canadian Air Force at CFB Trenton in 2002. He received the Canadian Forces Decoration in 2004 for 12 years total military service.[1]

He is the author of over thirty-five books on Canada, including the popular A Short History of Canada. Morton has addressed the issue of whether the First World War was indeed a war of independence of Canada. In 1996, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada since 1985. He once wrote:

“For Canadians, Vimy Ridge was a nation building experience. For some, then and later, it symbolized the fact that the Great War was also Canada’s war of independence”.

In 2008, however, he published the following remarks: “Canadians are now being told by their government and its friends that we achieved the same joyous state on a snowy April 9, 1917, when four Canadian divisions advanced to capture Vimy Ridge at a cost of about 10,000 dead and wounded – enough to bring on a nationally divisive crisis as the English-Canadian majority tried to conscript the French-speaking minority for a war Quebec had never embraced. This may be Stephen Harper’s version of history, learned in the schools of Ontario. But that would be selling ourselves short.” Morton states that the abandonment of Canada by British troops in 1871 was a much more important event in the emergence of Canada as a separate nationality.

Arthur Manuel (d. January 2017) was a historian who entered the field out of the necessity to better document Indigenous histories of the near past. He first entered the world of Indigenous politics in the 1970s, as president of the Native Youth Association. He went on to serve as chief of the Neskonlith Indian Band near Chase, B.C., and elected chair of the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council.

Manuel was the author of Unsettling Canada: A National Wake Up Call, Between the Lines which he co-wrote with Grand Chief Ron Derrickson and was also known internationally, having advocated for Indigenous rights and struggles at the United Nations, The Hague and the World Trade Organization.

Unsettling Canada tells a captivating narrative of activism, identity, and lived experience, tracing Indigenous rights and land claims struggles in this country between the 1960s and 2000s. The book makes an important contribution on this understudied period through everything from the internal debates within the grassroots movement for equity and sovereignty, to how leaders balance the pressures of activism and family life. The book is considered to be highly accessible, with a wide reach in scope as it demonstrates the impact of Indigenous people from Canada had on the global stage and in global activists’ strategies. The book is grounded in Indigenous intellectual traditions and perspectives, and carries the timely message about how bringing justice to Indigenous peoples will also create a more sustainable Canada.

For much of his life, he was active in the Assembly of First Nations and more recently was a spokesman for Defenders of the Land, an organization dedicated to environmental justice.

Douglas Roche contributed to peace by his articulate and consistent call for disarmament.#Canada150

Author, parliamentarian and diplomat, The Hon. Douglas Roche, O.C. was appointed to the Senate of Canada September 17, 1998. Senator Roche was Canada’s Ambassador for Disarmament from 1984 to 1989. He was elected Chairman of the United Nations Disarmament Committee in 1988.  Senator Roche is an Officer of the Order of Canada, Chairman of Canadian Pugwash and Chairman, Middle Powers Initiative, a network of nine international non-governmental organizations specializing in nuclear disarmament.

In 1992, he was given the Thakore Foundation Award “in recognition of his prolonged and distinguished work towards disarmament, global peace and peace education.”  He received in 1993 and again in 1997 the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation for World Peace Award.  In 1995, he received the United Nations Association’s Medal of Honour, and in 2000 the Pomerance Award for work at the United Nations on nuclear disarmament.

In 1995, Pope John Paul II presented him with the Papal Medal for his service as Special Adviser on disarmament and security matters.

His latest book, Peacemakers: How People Around the World Are Building a World Free of War, was released in 2014.

“Extending social and economic development throughout the world and eliminating nuclear weapons from military arsenals are two fundamental prerequisites to replacing the culture of war with a culture of peace, and building true security for all the world’s people.”

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The abolition of the Death Penalty recognized that execution is inappropriate, irrevocable, and often committed in error. #Canada150

Capital punishment existed in various forms in Canada until 1998, when the federal government completely abolished the death penalty.

One of the earliest recorded executions in Canada came in 1749 in newly-founded Halifax. A sailor named Peter Cartcel killed a man and was tried before a general court comprised of Halifax’s governor and six councillors. He was quickly found guilty and hanged two days later. The last Judicial hanging in Canada took place at Toronto’s Don Jail in 1962. 

In 1976, the House of Commons abolished the death penalty for civilian crimes by a majority of six votes. In 1998, Canada eliminated the death penalty for military offences as well.

One of the most infamous miscarriages of justice occurred in 1959 when 14 year old Steven Truscott was sentenced to hang for the murder of a school mate.  He was paroled in 1969.  In 2008 Truscott was found to be innocent and awarded $6.5 million in damages.

Since then several more Canadians have been wrongfully convicted of murder, including Donald Marshall Jr., David Milgaard, Guy Paul Morin, William Mullins-Johnson, Romeo Phillion, Thomas Sophonow and Erin Walsh.

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Rosemarie Kuptana contributed to peace by advocating for the recognition of Inuit self government. #Canada150

Ms. Kuptana has worked for the advancement of Inuit language and culture and has been a tireless leader in the area of human rights since 1975.  From 1983 to 1988, she served as the President of the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC).  During this time, Ms. Kuptana played a vital role in developing a communications system to express and reflect Inuit culture and society.

She has also represented Inuit in other forms, including serving as co-chair of the International Arctic Council and, from 1986 to 1989, as the Canadian vice-president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.

She also researched and published No More Secrets (full text PDF here), an examination of child sexual abuse in Inuit communities for Pautuutit, the national Inuit women’s association.  The work has helped Inuit across Canada better recognize and treat this extremely difficult problem.

In April 1991, Ms. Kuptana was elected to a three-year term as president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), the national voice of Canada’s 35,000 Inuit.  In addition to its self-government efforts, under the Ms. Kuptana’s leadership, the ITK has participated in research and represented Inuit on Arctic environmental issues, pursued acknowledgement of human rights abuses in the relocation of Inuit to the High Arctic during the 1950s, assisted in the settlement of Inuit land claims and developed educational and other programs for Inuit youth.

Alan Borovoy contributed to peace by advocating for human rights and against discrimination. #Canada150

In 1960, Alan Borovoy started working as secretary of the Jewish Labour Committee in Toronto fighting racism against minority groups in Toronto, particularly Black Canadians. He was also active with organizations such as the National Committee for Human Rights of the Canadian Labour Congress, the Ontario Labour Committee for Human Rights, and the Toronto & District Labour Committee for Human Rights.

In 1962, he had organized activists in Halifax and attracted a great deal of attention by taking up the cause of the residents of Africville, which led to the formation of the Halifax Advisory Committee on Human Rights. A year later, he was at the centre of a successful campaign to introduce legislation to ban racial discrimination in Ontario. When indigenous communities in Kenora approached Borovoy about discrimination and poor government services in the 1960s, he organized a large protest march to city hall bringing in hundreds from neighbouring reserves to demand everything from telephones to an alcohol treatment centre, which were eventually provided.

Mr. Borovoy was the founder and General Counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and worked with the Canadian Labour Congress Human Rights Committee and was one of the main contributors to the Canadian and Ontario Human Rights Commission.

 “I would renounce, therefore, the attempt to create heaven on earth, and focus instead on reducing the hell.”

Editor’s bonus material: Following Mr. Borovoy’s passing in 2015, longtime friend, author, and screenwriter George Jonas, offered this story in the National Post which recalls the time when, in 2008, Borovoy defended outspoken right-wing journalist Ezra Levant during the Human Rights Commission freedom of speech controversy.

Growing Pains – An Autobiography, (Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 1946), 231.

Emily Carr studied in San Francisco from 1889-95, travelled to England in 1899, then lived in France in 1910.  Discouraged by her lack of artistic success, she returned to Victoria where she came close to giving up art altogether.  However, her contact with the Group of Seven in 1930 resurrected her interest in art, and throughout the 1930s she specialized in scenes from the lives and rituals of the indigenous communities she became close with. She also showed her awareness of Canadian Indigenous culture through a number of works representing the British Columbian rainforest. She lived among British Columbia’s First Nations to research her subjects. Many of her Expressionistic paintings represent totem poles and other artifacts of Indigenous culture. She was one of the first artists to attempt to capture the spirit of Canada in a modern style.

She wrote of the importance of preserving indigenous culture and artifacts:

“These things should be to us Canadians what the ancient Briton’s relics are to the English. Only a few more years and they will be gone forever into silent nothingness and I would gather my collection together before they are forever past.”

The Nuu-chah-nulth of Vancouver Island’s west coast had nicknamed Carr Klee Wyck, “the laughing one.” She gave this name to a book about her experiences with the natives, published in 1941. The book won the Governor General’s Award that year. Her other titles were The Book of Small (1942),The House of All Sorts (1944) and Growing Pains (1946) Pause and The Heart of a Peacock (1953), and in 1966, Hundreds and Thousands. They reveal her to be an accomplished writer.

“Look at the earth crowded with growth, new and old bursting from their strong roots hidden in the silent, live ground, each seed according to its own kind…each one knowing what to do, each one demanding its own rights on the earth. So artist, you too from the depths of your soul…let your roots creep forth, gaining strength.”

Bonus Editor’s material: If you, as I, have some thorny questions about Emily’s unique and somewhat ambiguous role in colonization. Do know that our committee chose her (and others) with these ambiguities in full mind. For further readings on this delicate interplay, we suggest this Globe article written by Sarah Milroy, an art gallery curator who struggled with these same questions.