How I happened to network with another amazing pacifist in Ottawa.
For years peace activists in Canada had planned a Vimy Ridge Anti-war Project, a simultaneous cross-Canada protest to educate the public that ‘the spectacle of war… where more than 10,000 were killed or wounded in 4 days’ in France in April 1919 is being glorified as the 'Birth of Our Nation'.
On November 11, 2016, I volunteered to assist an Anti-War Pop Up (#1) event about our national 100th Anniversary of the WWI Battle of Vimy Ridge, hosted by the War Resisters Support Campaign. This was an educational meeting at a bookstore to organize a larger event at the Ottawa Public Library on April 9, 2017: Anti-War Pop Up 2 : Public Readings of Plays by David Fennario.
Our library event strategically preceded the April 10, 2017, lecture in the same Auditorium about the Canadian National Vimy Memorial at the Vimy Visitor Education Centre 175 km north of Paris, France.
On April 9, I choose a good seat up front to take photos, and a late comer took an empty seat next to me. Four performers read from 2 recent plays by David Fennario: ‘Bolsheviki’ and ‘Motherhouse’. (See photo album.)
Afterward, during the question and answer session, the man next to me (photo right) stood up and made one of the most brilliant statements about pacifism I have ever heard. I really wanted to know who this man was, so before he departed I invited him for coffee. I immediately bonded with Henry Beissel as we shared our life stories, and exchanged emails.
Later by email I again thanked him, and he replied:
I agree that we are spending lots of time talking about promoting peace, but not actually doing it. How can it be done? Is peace possible to achieve?
I invited him to participate in our book project: 150 Canadian Stories of Peace. And he contributed 2 poems (below). I gave him a copy of the book, and asked him to send a comment in which he again raised the issue of human survival, analyzing arguments over emotion and instinct, cooperation vs. aggressiveness, concluding with the hope that the arts can save us from annihilation.
Henry Beissel is a retired professor of English literature, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and editor who lives in Ottawa. He was raised Catholic in Germany, and after WWII moved to Canada where he became a secular humanist. His wife Arlette Franciere is a translator of French and Russian and is an accomplished painter. We recently had dinner together so our wives could meet.
At one of our lunches together, Beissel told me about a book that inspired him and gave him the technology to recover from cancer some 20 years ago (Mike Samuels, M.D. and Nancy Samuels, Seeing with the Mind’s Eye. Random House, 1975). I got a copy and read it.
Beissel says that cancer is not a disease but a dysfunction of our immune system. He used visualization to shrink cancer to zero when he went through the treatment chamber and visualized the malignant cancer cells dying. He regularly uses visualization in his work.
We found that we share similar journeys:
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This article is republished in The Shift Catalyst, Issue 7: Peace, April 8, 2018, a bi-weekly e-zine with 420,000 subscribers.
For years peace activists in Canada had planned a Vimy Ridge Anti-war Project, a simultaneous cross-Canada protest to educate the public that ‘the spectacle of war… where more than 10,000 were killed or wounded in 4 days’ in France in April 1919 is being glorified as the 'Birth of Our Nation'.
On November 11, 2016, I volunteered to assist an Anti-War Pop Up (#1) event about our national 100th Anniversary of the WWI Battle of Vimy Ridge, hosted by the War Resisters Support Campaign. This was an educational meeting at a bookstore to organize a larger event at the Ottawa Public Library on April 9, 2017: Anti-War Pop Up 2 : Public Readings of Plays by David Fennario.
Our library event strategically preceded the April 10, 2017, lecture in the same Auditorium about the Canadian National Vimy Memorial at the Vimy Visitor Education Centre 175 km north of Paris, France.
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| Henry Beissel |
On April 9, I choose a good seat up front to take photos, and a late comer took an empty seat next to me. Four performers read from 2 recent plays by David Fennario: ‘Bolsheviki’ and ‘Motherhouse’. (See photo album.)
Afterward, during the question and answer session, the man next to me (photo right) stood up and made one of the most brilliant statements about pacifism I have ever heard. I really wanted to know who this man was, so before he departed I invited him for coffee. I immediately bonded with Henry Beissel as we shared our life stories, and exchanged emails.
Later by email I again thanked him, and he replied:
I don't wish to denigrate the presentation organized by the peace group, but I suspect what we heard was nothing new to any of us. The brutalities and idiocies of war have been written about, filmed and presented graphically time and time again, yet we're still carrying on with wars. What I want to know is what concretely can we do to end this vicious suicidal cycle.
That means trying to identify the root causes and proposing how to deal with them. I think I can make some contribution to research in this area, but I don't have the answers either. However, unless we zero in on an honest diagnosis we will never be able to find a cure. Of course, there may be no cure. In which case homo sapiens is doomed. I prefer to think that there is enough intelligence between the best humans to get us beyond aggression and violence.In short, Beissel is disappointed that no solutions for world peace were discussed, nor were presented at later ‘peace’ events to which I invited him. See his comments on November 13, 2017 (Remembrance Day), and September 2, 2017 (film at Ottawa Peace Festival).
I agree that we are spending lots of time talking about promoting peace, but not actually doing it. How can it be done? Is peace possible to achieve?
I invited him to participate in our book project: 150 Canadian Stories of Peace. And he contributed 2 poems (below). I gave him a copy of the book, and asked him to send a comment in which he again raised the issue of human survival, analyzing arguments over emotion and instinct, cooperation vs. aggressiveness, concluding with the hope that the arts can save us from annihilation.
Henry Beissel is a retired professor of English literature, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and editor who lives in Ottawa. He was raised Catholic in Germany, and after WWII moved to Canada where he became a secular humanist. His wife Arlette Franciere is a translator of French and Russian and is an accomplished painter. We recently had dinner together so our wives could meet.
At one of our lunches together, Beissel told me about a book that inspired him and gave him the technology to recover from cancer some 20 years ago (Mike Samuels, M.D. and Nancy Samuels, Seeing with the Mind’s Eye. Random House, 1975). I got a copy and read it.
Beissel says that cancer is not a disease but a dysfunction of our immune system. He used visualization to shrink cancer to zero when he went through the treatment chamber and visualized the malignant cancer cells dying. He regularly uses visualization in his work.
We found that we share similar journeys:
- In the 1950s I published The Inquirer in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with ‘an inquiring approach to social problems’. Then in the 1960s, for two years, Henry was professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where he published eight issues of Edge, an independent periodical that addressed controversial topics.
- Henry moved to Trinidad and Tobago for two years as a Canadian Aid Professor and returned to Concordia University in Montreal as a Distinguished Emeritus Professor. He and his wife settled in Glengarry County (a rural area between Ottawa and Montreal near Maxville) on 100 acres of undeveloped bush where they built their own house with a study for Henry and a studio for Arlette. They lived there for 35 years while Henry commuted to Montreal (150 km to office each way). Their neighbour Gary Geddes was editor/ publisher of Cormorant Press whom I visited to publish my books about Doukhobors.
- We both knew Canadian poet Al Purdy. I never met him personally, but corresponded with him in the 1950s and received his newsletter.
- We are close in age. Henry is 88 (turning 89 on April 12, 2018), while I am 86. Both of us strive to maintain our good health and fitness. We both have set the bar high, striving to reach at least 110. ‘Who will be first?’
More
- Beissel’s 2 poems in 150 Canadian Stories of Peace
— Peace has Broken Out
— Manifesto in Times of War - Henry Beissel, Wikipedia
- Henry Beissel, website and biography (Internet Archive)
- Beissel's comment about 150 Canadian Stories of Peace
- 150 Canadian Stories of Peace — the book, Spirit-Wrestlers Blog, 13 December 2017.
- Interview with Henry Beissel, (25 min.) Youtube, by Anna Schneider, Marburg University, 4 June 2013.
- Remember peace and nuclear disarmament on ‘Remembrance Day’, Spirit-Wrestlers Blog, 13 November 2017 — Beissel spoke.
- Critical comment by Beissel about ‘Origins — ‘Our Roots. Our Planet. Our Future’, Film Festival #1, Ottawa Peace Festival 2017, September 2, 2017.
- Congratulations to Doukhobors’ Heritage Day – 2017 Celebration, Veregin, Saskatchewan.
- Talking to Youth at Global Climate Strike, By Henry Beissel, October 3, 2019.
- Obituary: Poet Henry Beissel wrestled with his childhood in Nazi Germany. by Andrew Duffy, Ottawa Citizen, February 28, 2025.
- Peace Day 2025 — A Doukhobor Manifesto, By Koozma J. Tarasoff, and Dr. Henry Beissel. May 1, 2025.
This article is republished in The Shift Catalyst, Issue 7: Peace, April 8, 2018, a bi-weekly e-zine with 420,000 subscribers.
