Photo: The house on Grindstone Island where PBI was founded in 1981.
Forty-four years ago, on August 31, 1981, eleven people came together at a former Quaker centre 100 kilometres south-west of Ottawa to form Peace Brigades International, a global organization now present and active in multiple countries.
The founding meeting
In his overview of the founding meeting, Daniel N. Clark notes that Hans Sinn chaired the first session of the consultation on the evening of Monday August 31, 1981.
On the morning of Tuesday September 1, Charlie Walker began the session with a reading from Martin Luther King, Jr. The discussion turned to the possible deployment of peace brigades in Guatemala and Mexico.
On Wednesday September 2, the discussion moved to the mission, characteristics, size, leadership style, discipline, partisanship, and roles of the organization. Clark notes: “During a coffee break, ‘Peace Brigades International’ was first voiced by Narayan [Desai], seized on by Charlie [Walker], and on reconvening accepted by everyone.”
On the final day at Grindstone, the Founding Declaration was adopted.
That Declaration, which is dated Friday September 4, 1981, states: “We are forming an organization with the capability to mobilize and provide trained units of volunteers. These units may be assigned to areas of high tension to avert violent outbreaks.”
PBI on-the-ground
We also recall the contributions of Swiss activist Ueli Wildberger who in 1982 initiated the proposal to start a pilot project in Central America.
Photo: PBI opened its first Central America Project Office at 345 Adelaide Street West, Suite 606, in Toronto.
PBI’s first exploratory team arrived in Guatemala in March 1983.
By September 1983, PBI was in Jalapa, Nicaragua close to the Honduran border where US-backed Contra forces were launching attacks against the Sandinistas. A Quaker observer recalls that PBI was present at a vigil near the border “as tracer bullets lit up the sky and automatic rifles sounded off in the distance”.
45 years
In just over four months from now, it will be the 45th anniversary of the spark that initiated this founding meeting.
It was on January 12, 1981, that a letter was sent to several organizations inviting them to attend this meeting to explore the idea of an international organization committed to unarmed third party interventions in conflict situations.
The five signatories of that invitation letter included Narayan Desai (left) and K.S. Radhakrishana (right).
“A potential broadening area”
When we spoke with Dan Clark on the 40th anniversary, he shared: “I’m very impressed where PBI has gone over the years. PBI is quite amazing to me thinking about our original time when $5,000 was a lot and back when we didn’t even have internet or email. I’m very pleased and a little bit proud where this has all gone.”
And looking ahead to the coming years, Clark highlighted: “I would like us to see us move from adopting treaties on human rights and the environment to enforcing them. I would like to see if there is capacity for PBI to have a presence when there are governmental leaders violating international law. That is a potential broadening area.”
Photo: Dan Clark speaks with Brent Patterson, September 2021.
We are also deeply moved by the encouraging words from Hans Sinn just weeks before he passed away at 94 years of age on June 29, 2023.
Looking back, looking ahead: Tolstoy and Turtle Island
Clark has also noted about the founding meeting: “At the end of the morning [on Tuesday September 1], I was asked to give the reading at the next session to begin just after lunch and was at a loss as to what read. …A few minutes before the session was to begin, I went into the library and, not having found anything relevant, I finally just closed my eyes, put my hand out to a bookcase, and opened a book. What appeared was an amazingly appropriate passage by Tolstoy. Just as at that point we were all feeling inadequate for such a demanding task, Tolstoy was admonishing his readers that while many would say that we had no business launching a major enterprise for peace and justice given our poverty of resources and the formidable nature of the challenge, we had no choice but to do so, and that destiny demanded it.”
The Peace Brigades International-North America Project was established following the July-September 1990 armed confrontation (known as the Oka Crisis) between Mohawk of Kanesatake land defenders who opposed the expansion of a golf course onto Indigenous burial grounds and the Quebec police and Canadian army.
Photo: A Peace Brigades International-North America Project training in 1992 near the town of Hope in the Sunshine Valley on Stó:lō territory in British Columbia.
Photo: A PBI-Canada newsletter from April 1993 notes a PBI-North America Project accompaniment in Nitassinan, the Innu word for their ancestral territory, which covers the sub-arctic forest and barren lands of the Quebec-Labrador peninsula in Canada.
Thirty-five years after the formation of the PBI-North America Project, and keeping in mind the words of Tolstoy that were read at the founding meeting of PBI forty-four years ago, PBI-Canada is now in the process of mustering our modest resources to formulate and launch Peace Brigade International-Turtle Island.
Stay tuned for more about PBI-Turtle Island and for the ways in which PBI-Canada will mark the 45th anniversary of PBI starting in January 2026!
Photo: PBI-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson points toward Grindstone Island, a small 11-acre island on Big Rideau Lake about 500 metres from shore, where PBI was founded.
