Celebrating Hamilton's Peace Garden
United Nations Association in Canada, Hamilton Branch - Anne M. Pearson, Gail Rappolt
Hamilton has a Peace Garden? Where is it? What is it? How did it come about? These are questions you may well ask if someone told you there was one in our city (as there are in a number of cities around the world).
Before answering these questions, we want to let you know that our very own Peace Garden will again be the site of a ceremony on the International Day of Peace, this time to unveil a commemorative plaque, with the Mayor and Councillors in attendance. Mayor Andrea Horwath will be signing the Covenant of the Mayors for Peace and the public is invited to attend the ceremony on Thursday, September 21 from noon to 1:00pm at the Peace Garden behind City Hall.
So, that’s its location, on the corner of Bay Street South and Hunter Street West. As to what it is, it’s essentially a little park, a green space, but one with a special history, design, and purpose.
Years ago, this space was a largely neglected bit of land on the corner of the City Hall property, next to the lower and upper parking lots. That’s all changed now, and it was thanks to the sustained efforts of local citizens, City staff and elected officials.
Hamilton has a long history of its citizens being engaged in peace and social justice issues. It has been, after all, a union city - a place where its industrial economic base gave rise to some of Canada’s earliest and most active trade unions. By their nature, trade unions have always been interested in a broad range of equity issues and equity is a key ingredient to creating a culture of peace.
Hamiltonians have also looked outward, to the broader world, not only to the interconnected trade union movement, but also to institutions and agencies that promote peace and equity. In fact, Hamilton established one of the first League of Nations chapters, and then, after WWII, this chapter turned into one of the first local branches of the United Nations Associations in Canada - a branch still going strong today and whose activities focus on promoting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. These and many other initiatives are chronicled in Waging Peace in Hamilton, which was published in 2018 to commemorate peace work in our city.
Between 1968 and 1993, Hamilton became a mundialized global city and twinned with nine cities around the world, fostering goodwill relationships between the citizens of these cities. In the 1970s and 80s, Hamiltonians organized an annual Mother’s Day peace walk, and in the 1980s the city was declared a nuclear-weapons free zone. From 1994 to the present, Hamilton has organized an annual Gandhi Peace Festival in October in the forecourt of City Hall.
Significantly, in 2013, City Council declared Hamilton a “City of Peace”. This declaration followed the efforts of local folks who had formed a Culture of Peace chapter after the UN had declared a decade for “a culture of peace for the children and youth of the world”. In 2011 a “peace pole” was installed in what all hoped was the beginning of a “peace garden” behind city hall. The pole was dedicated on the International Day of Peace September 21, 2011.
Finally, in 2020, new flowers, shrubs, and trees were planted, and a new path was added to the garden. As well, a granite stone inscribed with a dove encircled by symbols of different faiths was put in place as a gift from the Hamilton Interfaith Peace Group, which had its own beginnings in 1994 following an event at City Hall hosted by Mayor Bob Morrow. The granite boulder is offered to commemorate the respect members of the Hamilton community have for one another.
The path through the Peace Garden allows visitors to move through the space, feeling the serenity and appreciating all the aspects of the park that have been assembled over several years to make this truly a place of quiet contemplation.
The Mayors for Peace initiative began in 1982 at the behest of Mayor Takesi Araki of Hiroshima who called for cities throughout the world to transcend national borders and join in solidarity to work together to press for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Since then, some 8,271 cities in 166 countries have signed on, including Hamilton in 2005. Since then, the purpose of Mayors for Peace has expanded to include mayors “striving to solve vital problems for the human race” such as poverty, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation in their own cities.
This year’s International Day of Peace, September 21, at noon in the Hamilton Peace Garden has special significance: Mayor Horwath will sign the Covenant of the Mayors for Peace and a plaque explaining the background and purpose of the Peace Garden will be dedicated.
The day not only marks the completion of the Peace Garden but links the work of Culture of Peace to the Hamilton for All project and ties the work to the Belonging Pledge and the Anti-Hate Toolkit. UNAC Hamilton Branch is very grateful for the work of all the groups that have come together to develop these programs and resources.