Joseph-Napoléon-Henri Bourassa was a French Canadian political leader and publisher. In 1899, Bourassa was outspoken against the British government's request for Canada to send a militia to fight for Britain in the Second Boer War. Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier's compromise was to send a volunteer force, but the seeds were sown for future conscription protests during the World Wars of the next half-century. Bourassa unsuccessfully challenged the proposal to build warships to help protect the empire. He led the opposition to conscription during World War I and argued that Canada's interests were not at stake. He opposed Catholic bishops who defended military support of Britain and its allies. Bourassa was an ideological father of French-Canadian nationalism. Bourassa was also a defining force in forging French Canada's attitude to the Canadian Confederation of 1867.
Frédéric Passy was a French economist and pacifist who was a founding member of several peace societies and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. He was also an author and politician, sitting in the Chamber of Deputies from 1881 until 1889. He was a joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 for his work in the European peace movement.
The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization created in 1949 by the Cominform and propped up by the Soviet Union. Throughout the Cold War, WPC engaged in propaganda efforts on behalf of the Soviet Union, whereby it criticized the United States and its allies while defending the Soviet Union's involvement in numerous conflicts.
The Canadian Peace Congress is an anti-imperialist group founded in 1949 by Canadian minister James Gareth Endicott in response to the new dangers to peace posed because of the Cold War. It described itself as "a place where people of different views and faiths can meet and discuss world affairs... and work together as effectively as possible to improve international relations and step by step [move] towards the goal of universal disarmament and a lasting peace" The CPCon was the Canadian affiliate of the World Peace Council and a leading player in the peace movement in Canada, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. The CPCon was active in the nuclear disarmament and anti-imperialist movements such as the movement against the Vietnam War and promoted the concept of peaceful co-existence between the Communist bloc and the Western bloc.
The Young Communist League of Canada (YCL-LJC) is a Canadian Marxist–Leninist youth organization founded in 1922. The organization is ideologically aligned with, but organizationally independent from, the Communist Party of Canada. The organization's members played a leading role in the On-to-Ottawa Trek and made up a significant portion of the Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion, which fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
The Students Coalition Against War, or SCAW is a Canadian organization with members in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Edmonton, Alberta, Victoria, British Columbia, Ottawa, Ontario and Gatineau, Quebec. SCAW is a grassroots social movement dedicated to creating and fostering progressive social change. SCAW focuses on public education, non-violent activism, organizing, advocacy and reform. They aim to address and propose solutions – in a definitive and comprehensive manner – to the major social, economic and political issues, which induce, promote and sustain contemporary war, in all its forms worldwide.
The Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples is a French NGO which describes itself as anti-racist. It was founded in 1949.
The Ligue internationale de la paix was created after a public opinion campaign against a war between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia over Luxembourg. The Luxembourg crisis was peacefully resolved in 1867 by the Treaty of London but in 1870 the Franco-Prussian War could not be prevented so the league dissolved and refounded as the 'Société française pour l'arbitrage entre nations' in the same year.
Sylvain Simard is a politician and academic based in the Canadian province of Quebec. He represented Richelieu in the National Assembly of Quebec from 1994 to 2012, and was a cabinet minister in the governments of Lucien Bouchard and Bernard Landry. Simard is a member of the Parti Québécois (PQ).
The United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture is an international observance held annually on 26 June to speak out against the crime of torture and to honor and support victims and survivors throughout the world. The first 26 June events were launched in 1998.
Anti-nuclear organizations may oppose uranium mining, nuclear power, and/or nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear groups have undertaken public protests and acts of civil disobedience which have included occupations of nuclear plant sites. Some of the most influential groups in the anti-nuclear movement have had members who were elite scientists, including several Nobel Laureates and many nuclear physicists.
The Mouvement de la Paix is an organisation which promotes a culture of peace initiated by the United Nations. The movement was created in the aftermath of the Second World War by the large resistance movements, particularly those associated with communists, Christians and free-thinkers, and was linked directly to the Mouvement mondial des partisans de la paix whose aim was to struggle for peace.
NOWAR-PAIX is an anti-war and anti-racist organization based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The group's full name is "Network to Oppose War and Racism – Pacte contre l'Agression, l'Intolérance et la Xénophobie", which form the acronyms "no war" and "paix," which is French for "peace".
In political philosophy and international relations especially in peace and conflict studies the concept of a war against war also known as war on war refers to the reification of armed conflicts.
Gabrielle Duchêne was a French feminist and pacifist who was active in the French section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
The Peace Through Law Association was a French pacifist organization active in the years before World War I (1914–1918) that continued to promote its cause throughout the inter-war period leading up to World War II (1939–1945). For many years it was the leading organization of the fragmented French pacifist movement. The APD believed that peace could be maintained through an internationally agreed legal framework, with mediation to resolve disputes. It did not support individual conscientious objection, which it thought was ineffective. It would not align with the left-wing "peace at all costs" groups, or with the right-wing groups that thought the League of Nations was all that was needed.
The Congress of Canadian Women was a feminist organization created in March 1950 by the merger of several organizations, including the Housewives and Consumers Association. It was affiliated with the Women's International Democratic Federation. The Congress lobbied for women's equality including measures such as equal pay and public daycare. Rae Luckock was the organization's founding president. Former Labor-Progressive Party Member of Parliament Dorise Nielsen was also involved in founding the organization. The CCW was largely led by women associated with the communist Labor-Progressive Party and was also involved with the peace movement during the Cold War, facilitating meetings between people from the Soviet Union and Canadians, by inviting them to visit Canada.
The Women's Union for the League of Nations was a French women's organization which was founded in 1920 by the French Union for Women's Suffrage as a basis for ensuring representation of women's interests at the League of Nations. Key figures were Marie-Louise Puech, Marguerite de Witt-Schlumberger and Germaine Malaterre-Sellier.
Eugénie Hamer was a Belgian journalist, writer and activist. Her father and brother served in the Belgian military, but she was a committed pacifist. Involved in literary and women's social reform activities, she became one of the founders of the Alliance Belge pour la Paix par l'Éducation in 1906. The organization was founded in the belief that education, political neutrality, and women's suffrage were necessary components to peace. She was a participant in the 18th Universal Peace Congress held in Stockholm in 1910, the First National Peace Congress of Belgium held in 1913, and the Hague Conference of the International Congress of Women held in the Netherlands in 1915. This led to the creation of the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace, subsequently known as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Hamer co-founded the Belgian chapter of the WILPF that same year. During World War I, she volunteered as a nurse and raised funds to acquire medical supplies and create an ambulance service.
