The greatest generation's peacemaker: Murray T. Thomson

Catholic New Times, Sept 26, 2004 by Barry Blackburn

He is a member of what Tom Brokaw has described as "The Greatest Generation."

An officer pilot with the RCAF from 1943-1945. he has nonetheless trod the 'surly bonds of earth' in the work of nuclear disarmament and international peace.

He is Murray McCheyne Thomson, Quaker, Officer of the Order of Canada, and "mensch" behind a winning smile.

Throughout his life, Thomson has been able to cut through global peace paradoxes, "thinking globally, acting locally" by making peace matter on a personal level.

When I was twenty-one, he touched and changed my life. I was an ex-patriate in the Americanized Bangkok of the early 1970s. It was Murray Thomson who midwived me from a lout to an internationally minded citizen. The trust he comunicates in his vision is contagious.

Thomson was born in 1922 in Taokow, Hunan China. Following his RCAF war service, he took degrees in sociology at the Universities of Toronto and Michigan. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, during these university years, he was active in community development, public affairs, and adult education in Saskatchewan and in Maine.

These first initiatives in learning and teaching the art of peacemaking later led him to co-found the Grindstone Island Peace Centre in Portland, Ontario. Here he gave non-violence workshops to diplomats, and hosted French-English dialogues and conferences for journalists and interfaith personnel.

He was field staff officer with CUSO (Canada's Peace Corps) when I first met him in 1970 in Thailand. The country was Western-minded and militarily obsessed. Haltingly, I learned from Murray to think the best of people, to 'cut them some slack' and to trust their instincts. He was like this with everyone, welcoming and trusting. In 1973, he was promoted to being CUSO's Asia Regional Director.

Mild and gentle

Murray Thomson's career, on the surface, seems to depict a workaholic moving at breakneck pace. One might even see in him ambition out of control. But none of these descriptions fits the man when you get to know him. His peace work is reflected in a mild, even gentle, personal manner. He is fully focused on others, and has a ready smile, because he sees them as part of a world that is hopeful.

Dr. Mike Miles, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa, worked with Murray Thomson in Thailand. "Murray consistently believes that people have good intentions and the capability to enact them in appropriate ways."

Recently retired senator and Canada's former Ambassador for Disarmament, Douglas Roche knows Thomson well.

"I think Murray Thomson must have invented the word "indefatigable." I have seen him often over a 30-year-period and never once have I observed any flagging of energies and zest in his constant advancing of new ideas for the agenda for peace. Creative of mind, buoyant of personality, Murray has endurance plus. He supported nuclear disarmament back in the coldest days of the Cold War and he continues to warn that arms, big and small, are not the way to defeat terrorism in the post 9/11 world. I think the base of Murray's endurance is his deep spirituality and intuitive understanding of how violence in all its manifestations is an affront to God and the creative processes of planetary development. He does indeed take his work seriously--but not himself. He's a joy to be with because you know that in the middle of one of his jokes is a profound truth."

He has been active at the United Nations. As Co-Founder and Education Coordinator of Project Ploughshares, the Waterloo-based agency working for peace through the churches of Canada, he was an ideal candidate to join the Canadian delegation to the UN First and Second Special Sessions on Disarmament in 1978 and in 1982. In 1981 he served as a Member of the United Nations Group of Experts on a World Disarmament Campaign.

Thomson brought this global peace effort back home to Canada by co-founding and becoming Executive Secretary of Peace-Fund Canada from 1985-1987. His global peace voice was raised again to sound the alarm of crises in the early 1990's in Ethiopia and Burma.

Murray Thomson's passion for peace, and his personal style, make one think of Jimmy Carter: their obvious integrity and genuine humility infuse their unflagging peace efforts.

"I continue tilting at the nuclear weapon windmills without noticeable effect," he says. "Needless to say, we have a long way to go."

A war/peace museum

At 81, Murray Thomson is still active socially and politically as co-founder of a new peace project, an Ad Hoc Committee in Ottawa to expand the mandate of the new Canadian War Museum.

He hopes that with the petition to include Canada's peace work, the War Museum will be inspired to expand its present focus on military history.

"We must recognize and celebrate the major role Canadians have played and continue to play in war prevention, disarmament and the peaceful resolution of violent conflicts", he says.

His vision of a broader mandate for the War Museum is a do-able thing. It exists already in the magnificent War Memorial Museum in Caen, France on the Normandy coast.