Browse Case Studies

At its height, Tools for Peace had 126 committees located throughout Canada, from St. John’s to Victoria. Its mobilization of $12 million in “people-to-people” aid effectively challenged the Canadian government to assume an independent foreign policy stance towards Nicaragua at a time when Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States, was applying pressure on all western nations to support its “war against Communism” in Nicaragua.

One of sixty thousand Canadians who did not return from the First World War, Bernard Trotter’s poignant poems were published after his death. His letters home reveal the idealism and spirit of dedication which led him to volunteer and they also show his family in Canada, deeply engaged, albeit from a distance, in the far away conflict.

A young man who had not yet found his artistic path, never gets that chance. Julian Gould’s great artistic ability was evident from his teenage years. He volunteered for service in the First World War and was killed before he had the chance to establish himself.

Through diaries and an “in house” farm newsletter, as well as extensive related correspondence, this archive provides an intimate and fascinating perspective on the Canadian “home front” for the entire period of the First World War.

Well into his eighties, Bertrand Russell lost none of his dedication to the cause of peace. Presiding first over the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and then the Committee of 100 (C100), he marched, mobilized and even sat down in London’s streets of power to protest the adoption of nuclear weapons.

The invitation to “join the Navy and see the world” certainly fulfilled its promise for young Englishman Charles Jones. Only sixteen when he joined the service, Jones was a Gunner’s Mate on the battleship Marlborough during one of the most dramatic and destructive sea battles of the First World War.

This album shows a lighter side of war; it meticulously documents the highly professional theatrical entertainments mounted by British soldiers in south-west Germany during the final months of the First World War.

A founding member of the Toronto Association for Peace, for 14 years Eva Sanderson led the group’s struggle for peace, primarily through its concerted efforts against nuclear weapons.

Wounded for the second time, Captain Siegfried Sassoon produced a caustic poem from his hospital bed in August 1918 to attack the British elite. It was these Great Men whom he held accountable for the perpetuation of the First World War, those who were heedlessly disregarding its massive human cost for the sake of their own personal interests.

The entry of Japan into the Second World War precipitated an immediate punitive reaction in North America which extended to Canadians of Japanese descent. The Cooperative Committee on Japanese Canadians tried to assist as the homes and businesses of Canadian citizens were confiscated and families torn apart.

Well into old age, Bertrand Russell remained deeply engaged in waging the fight for peace. At the height of the Cold War he was responsible for an initiative which would eventually draw scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain into the Pugwash Movement.

Widespread popular protest against war did not emerge for the first time in the 1960s. Active opposition to the First World War was mobilized in England by the No-Conscription Fellowship. Bertrand Russell’s involvement with the group cost him first his furniture and then his freedom.

Constance Malleson, in a series of letters to her former lover and lifelong friend Bertrand Russell, provides a vivid account of life during World War II. She writes first from her home in the English countryside, later from Finland, and then, following her escape from attack by the Soviet Union, from Sweden. Her letters provide valuable insights into the hardships of war, as seen from the civilian perspective.

Eric Grove was only nineteen years old when he joined the Royal Air Force and at the age of twenty-one he was flying Lancaster bombers across Germany. One year later, at just twenty-two, he became a prisoner of war.

This important collection of propaganda posters provides an official version of everyday life in German-occupied Belgium during the First World War. Related materials provide a very different picture.