The Nova Scotia Voice of Women for Peace (NSVOW) is an active branch of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (VOW). Established in 1960, VOW is a local, national and international feminist Non Governmental Organization (NGO) composed of diverse women with consultative status at the United Nations Economic & Social Council (ECOSOC). For almost 50 years, VOW has advocated for a world without war. The organization's mandate is to "provide a means for women to promote world peace and justice, through education of themselves and others to take an equal part in the democratic process of decision making; and to cooperate with women throughout the world to create the mutual respect and understanding necessary for the peaceful resolution of international conflict." [1]
The Canadian Voice of Women began in 1960 as a social movement opposed to nuclear weapons. [2] Muriel Duckworth and Peggy Hope-Simpson were among the founding members of the Nova Scotia Chapter. [3] Because of concerns raised by the Cold War, the time was ripe for ordinary women to become politically active. As Duckworth explained it:
The Voice of Women grew out of fear of nuclear testing in the 1950s. Around the country, there were already women on the verge of organizing a women's peace group and when it happened, women poured into the membership, because it was such a dangerous time. The women who had come here as war brides were just beside themselves because they couldn't bear the thought of another war. [4]
Among other activities, NSVOW holds a monthly vigil in Halifax, Canada, and co-hosts an annual Peace Day at the World Peace Pavilion in Dartmouth, NS, Canada on August 6, to commemorate the Hiroshima tragedy. Their current campaign includes encouraging Nova Scotia municipalities to join Mayors For Peace.
The Mi'kmaq are an Indigenous group of people of the Northeastern Woodlands, native to the areas of Canada's Atlantic Provinces, primarily Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland, and the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec as well as Native Americans in the northeastern region of Maine. The traditional national territory of the Mi'kmaq is named Mi'kma'ki.
The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs is an international organization that brings together scholars and public figures to work toward reducing the danger of armed conflict and to seek solutions to global security threats. It was founded in 1957 by Joseph Rotblat and Bertrand Russell in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Canada, following the release of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto in 1955.
Muriel Helen Duckworth was a Canadian pacifist, feminist, and social and community activist. She was a practising Quaker, a religious denomination committed to non-violence. Duckworth maintained that war, with its systematic violence against women and children, is a major obstacle to social justice. She argued that money spent on armaments perpetuates poverty while reinforcing the power of privileged elites. She believed that "war is stupid" and she steadfastly refused to accept popular distinctions between "good" and "bad" wars.
The International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) is a non-governmental organization founded in 1914 in response to the horrors of war in Europe. Today IFOR counts 71 branches, groups and affiliates in 48 countries on all continents. IFOR members promote nonviolence, human rights and reconciliation through public education efforts, training programs and campaigns. The IFOR International Secretariat in Utrecht, Netherlands facilitates communication among IFOR members, links branches to capacity building resources, provides training in gender-sensitive nonviolence through the Women Peacemakers Program, and helps coordinate international campaigns, delegations and urgent actions. IFOR has ECOSOC status at the United Nations.
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.
Edith Jessie Archibald was a Canadian suffragist and writer who led the Maritime Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), National Council of Women of Canada and the Local Council of Women of Halifax. For her many forms of social activism, she was referred to as the "Lady of Grace" by King George V, and she was designated a Person of National Historic Significance by the Government of Canada in 1997.
Nevada Desert Experience is a name for the movement to stop U.S. nuclear weapons testing that came into use in the middle 1980s. It is also the name of an anti-nuclear organization which continues to create public events to question the morality and intelligence of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, with a main focus on the United States Department of Energy's (DOE) Nevada National Security Site.
The history of Nova Scotia covers a period from thousands of years ago to the present day. Prior to European colonization, the lands encompassing present-day Nova Scotia were inhabited by the Mi'kmaq people. During the first 150 years of European settlement, the region was claimed by France and a colony formed, primarily made up of Catholic Acadians and Mi'kmaq. This time period involved six wars in which the Mi'kmaq along with the French and some Acadians resisted British control of the region: the French and Indian Wars, Father Rale's War and Father Le Loutre's War. During Father Le Loutre's War, the capital was moved from Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, to the newly established Halifax, Nova Scotia (1749). The warfare ended with the Burying the Hatchet ceremony (1761). After the colonial wars, New England Planters and Foreign Protestants immigrated to Nova Scotia. After the American Revolution, Loyalists immigrated to the colony. During the nineteenth century, Nova Scotia became self-governing in 1848 and joined the Canadian Confederation in 1867.
Black Nova Scotians are Black Canadians whose ancestors primarily date back to the Colonial United States as slaves or freemen, later arriving in Nova Scotia, Canada, during the 18th and early 19th centuries. As of the 2021 Census of Canada, 28,220 Black people live in Nova Scotia, most in Halifax. Since the 1950s, numerous Black Nova Scotians have migrated to Toronto for its larger range of opportunities. The first recorded free African person in Nova Scotia, Mathieu da Costa, a Mikmaq interpreter, was recorded among the founders of Port Royal in 1604. West Africans escaped slavery by coming to Nova Scotia in early British and French Colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Many came as enslaved people, primarily from the French West Indies to Nova Scotia during the founding of Louisbourg. The second major migration of people to Nova Scotia happened following the American Revolution, when the British evacuated thousands of slaves who had fled to their lines during the war. They were given freedom by the Crown if they joined British lines, and some 3,000 African Americans were resettled in Nova Scotia after the war, where they were known as Black Loyalists. There was also the forced migration of the Jamaican Maroons in 1796, although the British supported the desire of a third of the Loyalists and nearly all of the Maroons to establish Freetown in Sierra Leone four years later, where they formed the Sierra Leone Creole ethnic identity.
Canada has an active anti-nuclear movement, which includes major campaigning organisations like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. Over 300 public interest groups across Canada have endorsed the mandate of the Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout (CNP). Some environmental organisations such as Energy Probe, the Pembina Institute and the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) are reported to have developed considerable expertise on nuclear power and energy issues. There is also a long-standing tradition of indigenous opposition to uranium mining.
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.
A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peace. Some of the methods used to achieve these goals include advocacy of pacifism, nonviolent resistance, diplomacy, boycotts, peace camps, ethical consumerism, supporting anti-war political candidates, supporting legislation to remove profits from government contracts to the military–industrial complex, banning guns, creating tools for open government and transparency, direct democracy, supporting whistleblowers who expose war crimes or conspiracies to create wars, demonstrations, and political lobbying. The political cooperative is an example of an organization which seeks to merge all peace-movement and green organizations; they may have diverse goals, but have the common ideal of peace and humane sustainability. A concern of some peace activists is the challenge of attaining peace when those against peace often use violence as their means of communication and empowerment.
During the Cold War (1947–1991), when the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in an arms race, the Soviet Union promoted its foreign policy through the World Peace Council and other front organizations. Some writers have claimed that it also influenced non-aligned peace groups in the West.
Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, also known as the Voice of Women or VOW, is a Canadian anti-nuclear pacifist organization that was formed in 1960. The organization was created in response to an article in which Lotta Dempsey, a journalist for the Toronto Star, called out for action against the threat of nuclear war and asked women to work together for peace. After the article was published, a group of women contacted Dempsey and formed a women's organization called the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. The organization's work has spanned multiple decades and is Canada's oldest feminist peace group.
The Local Council of Women of Halifax (LCWH) is an organization in Halifax, Nova Scotia devoted to improving the lives of women and children. One of the most significant achievements of the LCWH was its 24-year struggle for women's right to vote (1894-1918). The core of the well trained and progressive leadership was five women: Anna Leonowens, Edith Archibald, Eliza Ritchie, Agnes Dennis and May Sexton. Halifax business man George Henry Wright left his home in his will to the LCWH, which the organization received after he died in the Titanic (1912). Educator Alexander McKay also was a significant supporter of the Council.
Patricia Arab is a Canadian politician, who was elected to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly in the 2013 provincial election. A member of the Nova Scotia Liberal Party, she represents the electoral district of Fairview-Clayton Park.
William Pearly Oliver worked at the Cornwallis Street Baptist Church for twenty-five years (1937–1962) and was instrumental in developing the four leading organizations to support Black Nova Scotians in the 20th century: Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1945), the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission (1967), the Black United Front (1969) and the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia (1983). He was instrumental in supporting the case of Viola Desmond. Oliver was awarded the Order of Canada in 1984.