The history of conflict and peace research in Canada has been a bumpy one, although Canada’s claims to have been in the forefront of the movement is certainly a justifiable one. There has always been a strong tradition of peace activism in the country, led by Mennonites and Quakers. The Pugwash series of conferences, initially involving natural scientists interested in issues of nuclear disarmament and arms control, takes its name from the Canadian town where the first such meeting was held. The Canadian Peace Research Institute (CPRI) was founded as early as 1961 and continued until 1975, while the journal, Peace Research, started publication seven years later and continues to this day.
However, as in many other countries, the first moves towards a scientific study of conflict and peace linked with peace education began through the efforts of individuals, and in the Canadian case three names stand out from the early years of the late 1950s and 1960s. All three of them were educated and had careers in the natural sciences but abandoned them for the even more challenging work in the field of conflict and peace studies. These three were Norman Alcock, Alan Newcombe and Hanna Newcombe, who had been born in Czechoslovakia but whose family, having watched the Nazis march into Prague in 1938, had managed to move to Canada in 1939.
Hanna and Alan met at McMaster University and formed a husband and wife team and were originally trained as chemists. They gave up this line of work (Hanna was writing scientific abstracts while bringing up three children) to join Norman and Pat Alcock in the early years at CPRI. They then co-founded their own Peace Research Institute in Dundas, Ontario (PRI-D) which they ran for years from the basement of their own home as the editorial office. From this frugal base they produced two regular publications that became widely known in the field and internationally. The first of these was Peace Research Reviews, which usually came out in six issues a year and contained short, readable review articles about a wide range of conflict and peace related subjects, for example, Theories of Deterrence: Economic Consequences of Disarmament and Decision Making in Foreign Policy. The other consisted of short abstracts of a huge number of peace and conflict related articles, under the title of Peace Research Abstracts. Both of these were produced until PRI-D finally closed in 2004.
After her husband’s untimely death in 1991, Hanna continued to work in the field becoming more involved in the world federalist movement and the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, as well as helping to found the Canadian Peace Research and Education Association. In 1997 she received the Pearson Peace Medal and ten years later she was elected a member of the Order of Canada, a distinction that had been awarded to Norman Alcock in 2004.
JB/CRM
