Daniel N. Clark was 38 years old when he took a bus with Henry Wiseman that departed from Ottawa for Grindstone Island about 120 kilometres south-west of the city in late-August 1981 for the founding meeting of Peace Brigades International.
Clark documented that meeting and the formative early years of PBI in his book: Peace Brigades International: Roots and Early Years.
PBI-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson interviewed Daniel Clark from his home in Washington state on August 31, 2026, the 45th anniversary of the first day of that founding meeting on Grindstone Island in 1981.
Clark recounted that on the Greyhound bus ride from Ottawa to Grindstone Island that Wiseman said: “I don’t expect much to come of this.” Clark then shared that at one of the sessions he read a quote from Leo Tolstoy and paraphrased: “You may wonder whether you have any authority to start a world organization without any resources at your disposal, given the overwhelming nature of the problem.”
Clark then noted that a couple sessions later Wiseman said we need to discuss: “Do we really have the resources to go ahead with this?” Clark continued: “The skeptic now converted answered strongly in the affirmative. We must!”
On the 45th anniversary
Clark shared: “I’m tremendously thrilled that PBI is still there with all of its vitality… It’s one of the joys of life is watching an idea be in my head and then weeks and months and sometimes years go by seeing it take form and often very important form.”
He added: “PBI is animating more and more continents, more communities involved in the work. It shows me how important the work of a few individuals can be.”
Clark also advised: “If your vision is clear and it seems practical, if it’s a good idea it is going to succeed at some level. Make it flexible so that if others really join, it can grow into something important.”
On the United States today
In response to being asked about PBI in the world today, Clark commented: “We certainly have a unique time in the United States that is affecting the whole world. …While re-reading Upton Sinclair’s eleven-part history of the United States, the Lanny Budd series, I’m thinking about all the parallels between Hitler’s way of doing things, complete exaggeration making it so unlikely that people will have to believe it because no one would make something like that up, now we have Trump.”
“This is a shameful, disturbing time for people in the US and all those affected by them, which is most everyone.”
Clark added: “We’ve got work to do.”
Clark stated: “We were very aware that the US role in Central America which was banana republics for us led by commercial interests, we had no faith in government. That’s why we didn’t want our funding to come from governments.”
But he added: “When we began our accompaniments in Central America, in our networks, we knew US Congressmen who were very sensitive to this and sympathetic to the justice needs. Governments are not monolithic. There are always friends within any hierarchy. We need to cultivate them, nourish them.”
On youth activism
Clark reflected: “Thinking back to when I was a student at Whitman College in Walla Walla, there is certainly much more activism now that there was then, in the early 1960s. Youth have definitely been very active, very aware, very willing to demonstrate, to stand up. There is a lot of variety of clothing and lifestyles and gender affiliations and all kinds of things are happening. Whether this results in more volunteers for international action I don’t know, but they are certainly active now as youth.”
On things getting worse in the world today
Clark commented: “I think real change, when you think of the Great Depression and what came out of it, the New Deal and FDR [US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt], sometimes it really has to be bad before it gets better. We have a whole society to rebuild after Trump. I am looking forward to this. He has dismantled so many social institutions that are very important to community, justice and peace. I am somewhat optimistic in terms of where we are going to go after this political depression.”
On the PBI volunteers in the field today
Clark stated: “Thank you, thank you, for your bravery, for your commitment to your fellow man and woman. You have all my admiration.”
–Remembering Peace Brigades International co-founder Narayan Desai on the 10th anniversary of his passing (PBI-Canada, March 26, 2025)
–A celebration of the life of PBI co-founder Hans Sinn (PBI-Canada, September 25, 2023)
–PBI-Canada, friends and family of Murray Thomson gather to remember and celebrate his life (PBI-Canada, October 25, 2019)
–PBI founder Daniel N. Clark: “We are like the street arm of Amnesty International” (PBI-Canada, September 3, 2021).
