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.”

Got a name in mind? Contribute to the list! Send us your suggested names on the Contact Us page.

Want to get 150+ Canadians straight to your inbox? Subscribe here.

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.

Got a name in mind? Contribute to the list! Send us your suggested names on the Contact Us page.

Want to get 150+ Canadians straight to your inbox? Subscribe here.

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.

Pierre Allard contributed to peace by building capacity for victims and offenders heal through restorative justice.#Canada150

Pierre Allard has had a long career in chaplaincy with Correctional Services of Canada. For over a quarter of a century, Rev. Allard has been engaged in the spiritual sustenance of prisoners. His work has placed him at the forefront of the new restorative justice movement, which brings together communities, offenders, and victims of crime to discuss the effects of criminal acts on the community.

A favourite Allard story flows from the birth of their first daughter, Sophia. Shortly after she was born, he and Judith took her to the prison one Sunday for a chapel service. At the service, 50 inmates gathered in a circle, where Judith handed off Sophia to the inmate standing beside her. Then, slowly, the baby was passed from hand to hand, around the dewy-eyed circle. When she was returned to her parents, the chaplain talked to the men about new life and a new start, suggesting that it was available to everyone, even those who are incarcerated.

That event, and the 1980 murder of his brother, Andre, helped to shape his strong belief in restorative justice — the concept that stresses restoration of relationships between offender and victim. He is also a strong supporter of “circles of support and accountability.” This is a program especially applicable to sexual offenders who have completed their sentences. Circles of volunteers, often church-based, figuratively surround the offender, providing social and physical blockages to re-offending. Dr. Allard says the program, about a decade old, is over 90 per cent successful so far.

Pierre is the president of Just Equipping. Just Equipping is a Canadian Registered Charity committed to equipping people in the area of restorative justice. Since 2006, a number of training missions have taken place in Africa: Rwanda, Burundi, RD Congo and Cameroon. Just Equipping can play a crucial role in the reintegration of offenders, the rebuilding of communities, the comfort of victims and the future of corrections and chaplaincy in these countries.

Pierre is also an ambassador for Centre de Services de Justice Réparatrice, or Centre for Services in Restorative Justice. You can learn more about their work on their website.

Bonus Video: Here is Pierre, in his own words, telling the story of his path towards restorative justice.

After receiving a few requests to this end, we have opted to add an e-mail component to our 150+ Canadians Who Contributed to Peace project. Fill out the form below to subscribe.

Please note! This is a different list from our monthly e-mail newsletter – so just keep that in mind. If you would ALSO like to subscribe to our monthly newsletter, you can subscribe here.

Buffy Sainte-Marie contributes to peace through her artistic and educational activities, advocating for human rights and against war.#Canada150

In 1997 she founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding Native Americans. She has won recognition and many awards and honours for both her music and her work in education and social activism.

Sainte-Marie has claimed that at one time she had been blacklisted by American radio stations and that she, along with Native Americans and other native people in the Red Power movements, were put out of business in the 1970s.

In a 1999 interview, Sainte-Marie said, “I found out 10 years later, in the 1980s, that President Lyndon B. Johnson had been writing letters on White House stationery praising radio stations for suppressing my music. … In the 1970s, not only was the protest movement put out of business, but the Native American movement was attacked.”  In 2015, Sainte-Marie released the album Power in the Blood on True North Records. She had a television appearance on May 22, 2015 with Democracy Now! to discuss the record and her musical and activist career. On September 21, 2015, Power in the Blood was named the winner of the 2015 Polaris Music Prize

Most recently, Buffy Sainte-Marie took to the studio with Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq for a Polaris Collaboration Session. A studio performance video of “You Got To Run (Spirit Of The Wind)” is available for viewing on the Polaris Music Prize YouTube channel. An interview with Buffy and Tanya discussing the collaboration on the latest episode of the Polaris Podcast.

Innocence Canada contributes to peace by working to exonerate those convicted of crimes they did not commit. #Canada150

The Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted, now known as Innocence Canada, was founded in 1993 as a successor organization of the Justice for Guy Paul Morin Committee.  The group has secured the exoneration of twenty wrongfully convicted persons.

The organization works to identify and advocate for the wrongfully convicted and to prevent wrongful convictions through legal education and reform. The majority of  legal work is done by lawyers for free. The organization estimates that, annually, lawyers across the country donate $3.5 million in pro-bono work.

2016 was a challenging year and, for the first time, they were temporarily unable to accept new cases for a few months. We are happy to hear they are now back on track accepting new applicants! You can view a full list of those who have been exonerated as a result of Innocence Canada’s work on their website.

“Without Innocence Canada, I would not have had my name cleared.  Innocence Canada is an essential organization that not only provided hope, freedom and emotional support to me and my family but to countless other people convicted of crimes they did not commit.   As long as Innocence Canada exists, there is reassurance that the Charter Rights of Canadian people will not be overlooked.”

Maria Shepherd, who was acquitted on February 29, 2016

Deborah Ellis contributed to peace as an author, peace activist, advocate and supporter of the disenfranchised. #Canada150

Deborah Ellis is an award-winning author, a feminist and a peace activist. Deborah penned the international bestseller The Breadwinner, as well as many challenging and beautiful works of fiction and non-fiction about children all over the world. Her most recent book is The Cat At The Wall, the story of a little cat who sneaks into a small Palestinian house on the West Bank. The house seems empty, until the cat realizes that a little boy is hiding beneath the floorboards.

Deb has more than twenty books to her credit. She has won the Governor General’s Award, the Ruth Schwartz Award, the University of California’s Middle East Book Award, Sweden’s Peter Pan Prize, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, and the Vicky Metcalf Award for a Body of Work. She has received the Ontario Library Association’s President’s Award for Exceptional Achievement, and she has been named to the Order of Ontario. Deborah is a passionate advocate for the disenfranchised. She donates much of her royalty income to worthy causes — Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, Street Kids International, the Children in Crisis Fund of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) and UNICEF. She has donated more than one million dollars in royalties from her Breadwinner books alone.

You can take a look at all of Deb’s published titles on her website.

“We create the world we want to see.”