International Day of UN Peacekeepers 2026

Opening Remarks by Dr. Karen Ewing on the Annual celebration of the UN Peacekeepers Service held at the Veteran's Memorial Park and Gardens on May 31, 2026.

Peacekeepers, Serving members, Veterans, Silver Cross Families, Speakers, Elected Officials, invited guests, ladies and gentleman... Thank you for being here and Welcome to the Veterans Memorial Park and Gardens in commemoration of The International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers. We begin this ceremony on the far side of the moon… Astronaut Christina Koch was given 10 minutes by the Captain of the Artemis II to compose a response when radio contact was reestablished with Turtle Island, the Blue Marble...with earth. Her response was eloquent and humble. Astronauts, most of them military, possess uncommon courage, vast intelligence, remarkable humility, and seemingly boundless hope. Astronaut Koch said, in part “...we will build, we will innovate, we will inspire, we will return... but we will always choose earth...and we will always choose each other.” I hope she's right. But truth is, we humans really don't care for each other.

As recently as COVID, North Americans, including Canadians, were receiving their 4th Covid shot before many nations could afford the first round. The world had an opportunity to show compassion. We didn’t. More recently, Foreign Aid has plummeted. In truth, up until the climate fuelled droughts, we did have the ability to “feed the world”. Greed and corruption never allowed that to happen and now, today, in Somalia, and Ethiopia, drought once again has the people walking for days to the camps where aid used to be available, but the tents are empty. Reduced international funding for Ebola monitoring is believed to have contributed to the late detection of the rare strain that is already affecting over 1000 people.

Many United Nations organizations, including the WHO and the World Food Program, had vastly improved access to medications and food for many of the world's most vulnerable but we could have done much more. In the years following WWII, with the rise of democracies and the dawn of the UN and Peacekeeping, large scale warfare has largely been avoided.

Since its inception, Canada's Peacekeepers have through the UN and since 2000 through UNNATO, assisted in over 50 missions. One hundred and twenty five thousand Canadians have participated in Peacekeeping. In total 4465 Peacekeepers from 135 nations have died in the service of Peacekeeping, 130 of them Canadian. We remember them all with honour.

These efforts have for the last 80 years, afforded much of the western world a relative calm. But memories fade. Many democracies have become corrupted and have failed. Witness our southern neighbour. According to “The Various Democracies Institute” at the University of Guttenburg in Sweden, quoted here last year... the United States has now lost its standing as a Liberal Democracy and is quickly moving with Serbia, Turkey and India toward Autocracy, and a dictatorship. Our Prime Minister has 'called out' this rupture in the global order, and the rise of unconstrained powers which had been obvious to all.

The very institutions we commemorate today... the United Nations,The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, The North American Aerospace Defence Command, NORAD... established for the protection of North America 70 years ago by Prime Minister Mackenzie King and President FDR, are all under threat, further disrupting rules based international order, not because of lack... but because of wanting more.

Years of global dis-integration, and dictatorships, instability, migration and unrest are upon us. We know these facts, but something I have learned lately and finally has been helpful to me … facts are facts but they are not permanent. As the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke states, “no feeling is final.”

We are living in a difficult and changing world. Martin Luther King said prophetically, “the arc of the universe is long but it bends slowly toward justice”. That may be true but only if we… we who know something of peace making and peacekeeping, bend it. Since WWII, we in the west, have lived in the lee winds. The gales are coming once again and in these times, the world is going to need voices … voices that remember integration, co-operation, stability and trust, integrity in diplomacy and work for the common good and Canadians can be those voices.

We remember Quebec's Julia Grace Wales, whose 1915 Canada Plan helped fashion the League of Nations, and New Brunswick's John Peter Humphries, principal author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We remember Barbara Winters, a lawyer and former Navy Medic and Reservist, who ran toward, 'shots fired' on the National War Memorial … who held Corporal Nathan Cirillo's wounds and told him as he died that he was a good man, a brave man and that he was loved. Louise Arbour, our next Governor General who Served as a Supreme Court Justice, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Chief Prosecutor of The International Criminal Tribunal and the first person ever to indict a sitting president for war crimes. Lester B Pearson who created the UN Peacekeeping forces; General Romeo Dalliare who risked his career and his life to change the rules of engagement for these forces and the Honourable Allan Rock and Lloyd Axworthy who created the R2P Responsibility to Protect movement, tasking nations to protect their own populations from genocide from within their borders and allowing international intervention when they do not.

Every one of these voices Canadian, and every one bending the arc of the universe towards justice. There is a need for change in this world, and when there is a need for change, there is a need for uncommon courage. For those who run toward, when others run away. For those who know the work of peace and the sacrifice peace exacts. Today we will hear from Veterans … Commodore retired Bruce Belliveau from the Persian Gulf War and Master Corporal retired Les Burns from the War in Afghanistan. We will hear from the spouse of an Afghan Veteran, Jessica Corbett, and Silver Cross Parent, Sandy Mellish. All fellow Canadians … every one of whom know of uncommon courage and of bending the arc of the universe. It is heartbreaking for us to see the world they helped bind together, unravelling. How much more so for them who sacrificed so much to secure it.

Peace making, Peacekeeping is at its essence, taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best of us have always done and it is a profoundly human endeavour. We live in a changing world, perhaps we always will. We have lived the lee winds, the gales are coming. We know this. There is a need for change and when there is a need for change, there is a call for uncommon courage. This call, some of us will fulfil in uniform, as CAF, as Peacekeepers, Reservists, Police, Diplomats and soon perhaps as citizen soldiers. As Canadians, we, more so than many in the world, still have freedom and agency.

The world needs our voice and we can help. Maimonides, a 12 century philosopher said “Be not a whisper, be a voice that can be heard above the fray”. Remember John McCrae's, Flanders Fields ...“the birds still bravely singing fly scarce heard”. Scarce heard, but heard. Canadians know something of peace and of uncommon courage and we are not alone. That courage surrounds us here at the Veterans Memorial Park, in the names on these stones and in the Peacekeepers who stand beside us today and we are grateful. We have an opportunity to build on their legacy, a legacy fought for and won that says this is what we want for the world. This is what we want for our children, for all children. Peace is a choice. And we will always choose peace, we will always choose earth and we will always choose each other. LEST WE FORGET