Halifax mayor Mike Savage will give peace a chance. Soon after he was elected, Savage told The Coast that he was “open to” joining Mayors For Peace, the international movement that has mayors symbolically declare their cities nuclear-free zones. Now, says Savage, he’s ready to fulfill that pledge.
Mayors For Peace was started in 1982 by Takeshi Araki, then the mayor of Hiroshima, Japan, the first city to have a nuclear bomb dropped on it. The movement now joins nearly 6,000 cities around the world, including 91 Canadian cities, and holds official status at the United Nations.
Savage’s predecessor, Peter Kelly, refused to join Mayors For Peace, because he saw it as criticism of the large military presence in Halifax, even though Canada’s navy has no nuclear weapons. While joining Mayors For Peace will have no force of law, it will be a symbolic voice against the presence of nuclear-armed US warships that visit Halifax Harbour.
After telling The Coast he was exploring joining Mayors For Peace, Savage took no action to actually do so. He seems to have been prompted by a rally head at Grand Parade last month to see off local peace activist Tamara Lorincz, who has been awarded the Rotary international’s World Peace Fellowship, a one-year course of study at the University of Bradford in England.
Lorincz was the most vocal critic of the multi-billion dollar shipbuilding contract awarded to Halifax Shipyard, saying that preparation for war is an inducement for war. Savage, however, has celebrated that contract. But at the rally, peace activists pushed Savage to make good on his pledge to join Mayors For Peace, and now he says he will.
Savage has yet to say if he will simply join the organization on his own authority, or if he will bring the issue to city council.
This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2013.
Well done Mayor Savage, please bring your cabinet to Pugwash for a tour of the peace exhibit at Cyrus Eaton lodge. Remember your humanity.
We all support peace, but many of us loath meaningless gestures. Ms Lorincz can look forward to her year in Bradistan and teach peace to those who treat women as second or third class persons.
Does Savage have his eyes on the 2015 federal election ?
A symbolic slap in the face to every serving and retired member of the military and their families, who live in and contribute to the diversity of the Municipality, for Savage to ally himself with people like Lorincz. Thought Mike was less of an ideologue than his father. Thought wrong. Stuff him.
1) Preparation for defence is not an inducement for war. …Unless the Swiss military has been up to some stuff none of us have ever heard about.
2) Opposition to nuclear weapons is not opposition to our military or “alliance” with those who believe our military should be shuttered.
We’ve gotta stop interpreting everything that happens in this city as being loaded with huge amounts of subtext or hidden meaning. There’s such a thing as “overcomplicating an issue”.
Jeff, I agree with you. It is possible to be anti-war (and anti-nuclear)without being anti-military. Most soldiers that it’s been my privilege to know manage to handle that with ease. It is, however, a subtlety, that managed to elude Muriel Duckworth and her coven of followers. As the son of a career soldier who served for 37 years, I view people like Tamara Lorincz and groups like The Voice of (Some) Women in much the same way that a Jewish person would have looked at Ernst Zundel. No, they never did anything to me personally. But they most certainly propagated an atmosphere of contempt for my family, our experiences and achievements, based in fear, ignorance and flat-out falsehood. And that prejudice absolutely did have far-reaching effects upon real, flesh and blood, people. The fact that their bigotry found, and still finds, it’s most fallow ground amongst the educated and “progressive” is not an endorsement of their views; it’s a warning of the limitations of higher learning.
So, I’ll repeat myself. The symbolism of Mike Savage’s “gesture” is not lost on this particular voter. As for the nuclear armed and nuclear powered warships of our allies; they and their crews will always be welcome to this Haligonian.
So is Poor Mike going to stand in a dory with a sign or bullhorn and order a nuclear powered and/or armed allied ship out of the harbour? I didn’t think so. He knows he can say yes to no nukes and look good, knowing there is nothing he can do from stopping their visits. DND outranks the city on this one.
Savage is turning into the invisible man, who gives a rats arse about Mayors for Peace, other than the kooks.
Well be still my heart, Mayor Savage is making a mostly pointless empty gesture? Man oh man, if only we could have seen such a thing coming. He seemed so substantial, and….. gn… aggg… baaaahahahaha, I can’t even finish.