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.
Daniel 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 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 shared 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: “It’s 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 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.”
On the complicity of governments
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 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.”
More to come…
Further reading
–PBI founder Daniel N. Clark: “We are like the street arm of Amnesty International” (PBI-Canada, September 3, 2021).
–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).
