Once again the world’s attention is centred on this cross-borders peace event at the Brilliant Cultural Centre in the community of Brilliant, part of the city of Castlegar. We invite you to participate in the second annual Our Way Home Peace Event and Reunion weekend, which honours the courage and contribution of US war resisters who came to Canada during the Vietnam War as well as the courageous US war resisters who sought safe haven in Canada after resisting the war in Iraq. The event also honours the thousands of Canadians who helped them resettle in this country, both then and now. US war resisters who came to Canada during the Vietnam War offer our world an important model of non-violence, as do those US war resisters arriving in Canada today during the US War in Iraq.
Our Way Home Reunion events
• Workshops, panel discussions, theatre performances, films and keynote presentations that will contribute to the knowledge and understanding of previous war resistance and connect that understanding to action in today’s world.
• A public music concert for peace.
• Workshops promoting healing and reconciliation for both war resisters and veterans. Through voluntary participation, some will join in a facilitated process that creates a safe space to hear each others’ stories.

Inauguration of international war resisters organization
Join us this summer for the inaugural address for the War Resisters of Foreign Wars, an international war resisters organization. With speeches by former Israeli Air Force captain, Yonantan Shapira, also war resister from the US military’s war on Iraq, Kyle Snyder and Our Way Home event director, Isaac Romano.

Our mission
The Our Way Home Peace Event and Reunion was created to:
• Honour US war resisters from the Vietnam and Indochina war era and their significant contribution to Canada.
• Honour those who assisted the US war resisters who came to Canada – groups such as the Quakers, Mennonites, Unitarians, Doukhabours and the thousands of individual Canadians who provided assistance and support.
• Conduct a public education campaign in order to prepare Canadians to support war resisters now and in the future.
• Conduct an educational campaign to provide healing for both veterans and civilians and to reveal the human cost of military conflict on combatants and civilians.

History
The Vietnam War, and the widespread war resistance it spurred, proved a turning point in Canada’s development as a nation. In an assertion of sovereignty in its post-WWII relationship with the US, Canada opened its border and provided Americans with an opportunity to oppose the Vietnam War by moving to a new country and starting new lives.
From 1965 to 1973, more than 100,000 draft-age Americans who refused to participate in the Vietnam War made their way to Canada. More than half of those still remain in the country. Many of them settled in rural areas, becoming part of the “back to the land” movement of the late sixties and seventies. Others gravitated to Canada’s urban centres and continue to work promoting and maintaining the kind of social justice they experienced upon arrival to this country.

Why Castlegar?
The Brilliant Cultural Centre was founded by the Doukhobor population of the region, whose ancestors fled Russia in 1899 after destroying their weapons as a demonstration of their refusal to fight in the Tsarist Army. Russian author Leo Tolstoy was responsible for helping pay for the Doukhobors’ travel as new immigrants to Canada.
The towns of Castlegar and nearby Nelson and the surrounding region of the West Kootenays were a leading terminus in what was known as the “Underground Railroad.” It is estimated that as many as 14,000 US war resisters came to the area at the height of US immigration to Canada during the Vietnam War. New arrivals were frequently welcomed and assisted by members of two resident pacifist groups, the Doukhobors and the Quakers, the latter having earlier settled in the area after fleeing the US during the McCarthy period.
The community of Brilliant is located on the confluence of the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers, and surrounded by mountains. The present day West Kootenay Region, with an estimated population of 40,000, consists of many communities that are rich in arts and culture with a strong sense of activism rooted in the contributions of the numerous US expatriates who have made the area their home. Large numbers of Vietnam-era US expatriates continue to live in Castlegar, the neighbouring town of Nelson and throughout the smaller rural communities of the West Kootenays.

Keynote speaker:

Daniel Ellsberg was born in Detroit in 1931. After graduating from Harvard in 1952 with a BA summa cum laude in economics, he studied for a year at King’s College, Cambridge University, on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship.
Between 1954 and 1957, Ellsberg spent three years in the US Marine Corps, serving as rifle platoon leader, operations officer and rifle company commander. From 1957 to 1959, he was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard in 1962 with his thesis, Risk, Ambiguity and Decision. In 1959, he became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation, and consultant to the Department of Defense and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans and crisis decision-making. He joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) John McNaughton, working on Vietnam. He transferred to the State Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, evaluating pacification on the front lines.
On return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, he worked on the Top Secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, (1945-68), which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. His trial, on 12 felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against former President Nixon.
Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era and unlawful interventions. Ellsberg is the recipient of the Inaugural Ron Ridenhour Courage Award, a prize established by The Nation Institute and The Fertel Foundation. On September 28, 2006, he was awarded the Sweden’s Right Livelihood Award, also know as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.”

Special guest presenters:

Peggy Mason’s distinguished career highlights diplomatic and specialist expertise in the field of international peace and security, with a particular emphasis on the United Nations, where she served as Canada’s Ambassador for Disarmament from 1989 through 1994. During this period she headed the Canadian delegation to numerous diplomatic conferences including the 1990 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference and the 1991 Biological and Toxin Weapons Review Conference. In 1994-1995 she chaired a UN Expert Study that examined the work of the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in relation to disarmament in Iraq and she served on the UN Secretary-General’s Disarmament Advisory Board from 1993 to 1997.
Peggy Mason has been a faculty member of the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre since 1996 and has developed and delivered course material ranging from the role of the Political/Diplomatic Partner in Peace Operations, and the Legal Framework for Peace Operations to the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration of Ex-combatants. As a trainer and role player, she brings the UN perspective to a range of NATO peacekeeping training exercises.
She has been an Advisor to the Canadian Foreign Ministry on the control of small arms and light weapons, chaired the UN 2001 Group of Governmental Experts study on small arms regulation and has been a member of the Canadian delegation to UN conferences and meetings seeking to develop and implement a comprehensive plan of action to address the proliferation and misuse of small arms and light weapons, the most recent of which was held in New York in January 2006.
A Senior Fellow at The Norman Paterson School of International Relations (NPSIA) since November 2002, Peggy Mason has taught a graduate seminar on International Organizations, helped train young Kuwaiti diplomats and, most recently, become a member and chair of the Advisory Board to the new Canadian Centre for Treaty Compliance at NPSIA.
Ms. Mason is active with a number of non-governmental organizations including chairing the Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee (CPCC) and the Ottawa-based foreign policy NGO, the Group of 78. She is a Senior Advisor to the Ottawa-based Rideau Institute Project on Space Security, a member of the Council of the World Federalist Movement-Canada and a member of the Canadian Pugwash Group.

Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, is president and co-founder of M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Memphis, Tennessee. Born in 1934 in Durban, South Africa, Arun is the fifth grandson of India’s legendary leader, Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi. Growing up under the discriminatory apartheid laws of South Africa, he was beaten by “white” South Africans for being too black and “black” South Africans for being too white, so Arun sought an eye-for-an-eye justice. He learned from his parents and grandparents, however, that justice does not mean revenge; it means transforming the opponent through love and suffering.
Grandfather taught Arun to understand nonviolence through understanding violence. “If we know how much passive violence we perpetrate against one another, we will understand why there is so much physical violence plaguing societies and the world.” Gandhi said. Through daily lessons, Arun says, he learned about violence and about anger.
Arun shares these lessons all around the world. For the past five years, he has participated in the Renaissance Weekend deliberations with President Clinton and other well-respected Rhodes Scholars. This year, some of his engagements included speaking at the Chicago Children’s Museum and the Women’s Justice Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He also delivered talks at the Young President’s Organization in Mexico, the Trade Union Leaders meeting in Milan, Italy, as well as the Peace and Justice Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Sometimes, his journeys take him even further. Arun has spoken in Croatia, France, Ireland, Holland, Lithuania, Nicaragua, China and Japan. He is also a very popular speaker on college campuses. In the past year, he has spoken at the University of Rochester, North Dakota State University, Concordia College, Baker University, Morehouse College, Marquette University and the University of San Diego.
Arun is also very involved in social programs and writing. Shortly after he married his wife Sunanda, they were informed that the South African government would not allow her to accompany him there. Sunanda and Arun decided to live in India, and Arun worked for 30 years as a journalist for The Times of India. Together, Arun and Sunanda started projects for the social and economic uplifting of the oppressed using constructive programs, the backbone of Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence. The programs changed the lives of more than half a million people in over 300 villages and they still continue to grow. Arun is the author of several books, including A Patch of White (1949) about life in prejudiced South Africa and The Forgotten Woman: the Untold Story of Kastur, the wife of Mahatma Gandhi, co-authored with Sunanda.

Leonard I. Weinglass has been defending political cases arising out of the movements for peace and civil rights in the US for more than 30 years and has served as trial counsel in such well known cases as: the Chicago Seven; the Pentagon Papers trial; the trial of Jane Fonda in her suit against Richard Nixon; African-American radical Angela Davis; Bill and Emily Harris, charged with kidnapping Patty Hearst; Amy Carter, the daughter of the former president Jimmy Carter, charged with the seizure of a building at the University of Massachusetts; Mumia Abu Jamal, death row inmate; Kathy Boudin, former Weatherman; and the five Cubans charged with espionage in Miami. He also defended a series of death penalty cases in Georgia, Alabama and Washington State. Over the years, he has served as an official observer in trials in Asia, Europe and South America. In 1974, he became the first recipient of the Clarence Darrow Award. Currently he practices law solo out of his office in New York City.

Tom Hayden,’60s icon – leader of the student movement, leader of the anti-war movement (one of the famous “Chicago Seven”) and a leading activist in the civil rights movement. Hayden was among the most progressive senators in California, initiating far reaching environmental and worker-rights legislation. He has spoken in opposition to the US occupation of Iraq and has recently joined a group of US notables calling for Canadians to send a letter directly to Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, urging him to allow US soldiers to enter Canada if they request permission to do so during the US War in Iraq.

Alan Canfora was a student at Kent State University, Ohio, when he was shot and wounded in by Ohio National Guardsmen in the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970 while protesting the invasion of Cambodia. Canfora was one of nine students injured in the shootings at Kent State that day. Of these, Canfora has been the most outspoken about the shootings and the US government’s role in the event and in what he calls the cover-up of the incident in the decades since. He has been involved in public speaking and maintains a website where he has published excerpts of his forthcoming book on the events at Kent State from 1967 to 1970.
An audiocassette that has sat in a Yale library for nearly two decades may hold the evidence explaining why Ohio National Guard troops shot into the crowd of protesters. The recording, recently made public by Canfora seems to capture the sound of someone ordering the guardsmen to fire. Canfora is still very active in politics and has been the chairperson of the Barberton Democratic Party since 1992. He is also the director of the Kent May 4 Center, a non-profit, tax-exempt educational charity.
Cherie R. Brown is the founder and executive director of the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI), an internationally recognized nonprofit leadership training organization. In 18 years, Brown has built NCBI into one of the leading diversity training and grassroots leadership organizations with chapters in 50 cities worldwide. NCBI has trained over 10,000 men, women and young people in cities, corporations and on college campuses around the world. These NCBI-trained leaders work together in teams to provide a powerful resource for their communities, combating prejudice, resolving inter-group conflict and launching activist-based coalitions.
Brown’s work has been featured on ABC evening news, National Public Radio (NPR), Christian Science Monitor World News; and in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Time’s Sunday Magazine, New York Times, Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune. In 1999, the work of NCBI was designated a “best practice for racial reconciliation” by then President Clinton’s Initiative on Race. The U.S. Department of Education chose NCBI’s work on race and gender issues on college campuses as one of only five organizations to receive a designation of “best practice.”

Yonatan Shapira, aged 34, was a Captain in the Israeli Air Force reserves. He is also a military refuser. Yonatan joined the Israeli Defense Force in 1991 and graduated from the Israel Air Force flight course in 1993. He served as a regular in the Air Force until 1999. While a regular, he flew primarily as a rescue helicopter pilot, completing well over 100 missions, including missions in Lebanon.
In 2001, while a civilian pilot and member of the Reserves, Yonatan was called back to service to become one of the founding members of the Israel Air Force’s new Black Hawk squadron, for which he received specialized training in the US Army. Following initiation of the squadron, he resumed his status in the reserves. As a reservist, he served as a pilot, operations leader and instructor.
In September 2003, Yonatan, along with 26 other Air Force pilots, signed a declaration refusing to participate in attacks on populated areas in the Occupied Palestinian Territories because of the belief that these attacks are illegal, immoral and do not serve the security of Israel. After authoring and issuing the “Pilot’s Letter,” he was dismissed from the Israeli Air Force by the Air Force commander, General Dan Halutz.
Since then Yonatan has been active in several anti-occupation groups, including Yesh-Gvul. He is one of the founding members of Combatants for Peace, an Israeli-Palestinian organization of former combatants from both sides who are now committed to the non violent struggle to end the occupation and the cycle of violence.
Yonatan lives in Tel Aviv and New York. In addition to his work as a pilot, he volunteers for “SELA,” the Israeli Crisis Management Center, an organization dedicated to aiding new immigrants and victims of terror and he also volunteers for “Etgarim - Challenges” as a sailing instructor for people with disabilities. Yonatan is also a musician and recently has released his first recording. Yonatan is currently working to complete a Masters’ Degree under the auspices of the European Center for Peace and Conflict Studies (EPU).

David Cline is the US national president of Veterans for Peace. He is a disabled combat veteran who served with the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam during 1967. Upon his return he joined the GI antiwar movement and helped publish the underground Fatigue Press at Fort Hood, Texas. In 1970 he joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War and has been a member ever since. He has worked with homeless veterans, in PTSD rap groups and co-founded the Jersey City Vietnam Veterans Memorial Committee. He has also been involved in the labor movement as a shop steward in the American Postal Workers Union and as local vice-president in the Transport Workers Union.

Mark C. Johnson, Ph.D., became the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation/USA on March 1, 2007. A 1969 graduate of The College of Wooster in Ohio, and with a 1981 doctorate in sociology from Columbia University in the City of New York, Mark has spent most of his professional career in the YMCA and as a volunteer in environmental, arts, and peace and social justice organizations.
His longest tenure was as the executive director of the Silver Bay Association, a YMCA conference and training center on Lake George in the Adirondacks. He was president of the Lake George Land Conservancy for eight years and a trustee with the Adirondack Nature Conservancy and Adirondack Land Trust for nine years. Mark did his alternative service as a conscientious objector in Lebanon, living and teaching in Beirut for six years. Over the past six years he has been active with the emergent Alliance for Middle East Peace and has supported the development of leadership and training programs for young adults at the Jerusalem International YMCA as a member of the staff of the YMCA of the USA. He is married and has three adult children. He lives in New City, New York near the Nyack, New York headquarters of FOR. www.forusa.org.

Mark Nykanen, is a four time Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist for NBC TV. Nykanen is war resister who has moved with his family to Nelson, BC and is working as a fiction writer.

Jeffrey House is legal counsel representing Jeremy Hinzman and other US military deserters who are applying for refugee status in Canada. Jeffrey House was called to the Bar in Ontario and practices law in Toronto. Mr. House came to Canada as a US draft resister during the Vietnam War.
Dr. Susan Hardwick is a Professor of Geography at the University of Oregon who specializes in the cultural geography of Canada and the U.S. She is an internationally known consultant and expert on the migration of various immigrant and refugee groups in western Canada and the U.S. Most recently Prof. Hardwick has been directing a grant funded long-term project that is documenting and mapping the migration, settlement and political and socio-cultural identities of U.S.-born immigrants in British Columbia. She is also the senior author of a university-level Prentice Hall textbook on North American regional geography (2007), a co-editor of a forthcoming Brookings Institution book on immigration issues in North American metropolitan areas, an has published five other books and a long list of journal articles on issues related to the ever-changing patterns and cultures of America’s and Canada’s diverse populations.
Dr. Hardwick was named “Statewide Outstanding Professor” for the entire California State University System in 1995 and is the past president of the National Council for Geographic Education. She also holds numerous awards for excellence in teaching and research, and is widely traveled in North America, Greenland, the former Soviet Union and Southeast Asia.

Steve Morse of Oakland, CA. has been active with the GI Rights hotline where he’s been a counselor for eight years and was a coordinator for two years. He’s an active member of Veterans for Peace, Chapter 69. In the mid and late 60’s, he was active with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and did alternative service as a conscientious objector that included draft resistance work and anti-war outreach to GI’s. In 1969, he joined the Army to be part of GI resistance, which included in four months in Vietnam and six months of stockade confinement for distributing dissident literature. He was a sheet metal worker and shop steward and has also taught mathematics.

John Hagan, PhD, professor Emeritus, Sociology Department, University of Toronto and John D. Macarthur, professor of Sociology, Northwestern University. Author of “Northwest Passage: American Vietnam Era War Resisters in Canada”.

Michelle Mason, award-winning filmmaker, regionally premiers her new feature-length documentary film, Breaking Ranks, which features current US military deserters who have recently come to Canada. Michelle Mason’s award-winning documentary film The Friendship Village will also be shown at the Our Way Home Reunion. The film has won six international awards, including best documentary film at film festivals in New York, Chicago and Boulder. Michelle Mason is married to historian Dr. Jeff Schutts, formerly a platoon-leader and conscientious objector from the US military. Dr. Schutts co-produced the Friendship Village and will also be a presenter at the event.

David Zeiger is director, writer, producer of the multi-award winning documentary film, Sir! No Sir! which accomplishes four things: 1) It brings to life the history of the US military GI movement during the Vietnam War through the stories of those who were part of it; 2) It reveals the explosion of defiance that the movement gave birth to with never-before-seen archival material; 3) It explores the profound impact that movement had on the military and the war itself; and 4) It tells the story of how and why the GI Movement has been replaced with the myth of the spat-upon veteran.
Zeiger’s Sir! No Sir! challenges deeply-held beliefs not just about the Vietnam War and those who fought it, but about the world we live in today. It is a vivid portrayal of William Faulkner’s famous observation that, “The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.” Zeiger’s previous film, A Night of Ferocious Joy, premiered at the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam. The festival, which featured it as part of its USA Today section, described the film as “… not an ordinary concert film... because it will go down in history as the first anti-war concert of the new millennium.” Its US festival premiere was at South by Southwest in 2004.
The Band, Mr. Zeiger’s tribute to his son, aired to critical acclaim on the PBS series P.O.V. in 1998. It has screened at the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam and AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles, and was awarded Best Documentary and Best of Show at the Central Florida Film Festival. The Band was broadcast in 2000 on the French/German network ARTE.

Jack Silberman has been producing, writing and directing documentary films for 25 years. His films have won more than 60 international awards and have been broadcast on television networks around the world. His film Bombies was about the problem of unexploded cluster bombs in Laos, the deadly legacy of a secret US air war. It won first place at 10 film festivals, was broadcast on PBS and international television networks and is widely used by peace activists. His most recent film, Raised to be Heroes, which he directed and wrote for the National Film Board of Canada, is about refuseniks – Israelis who refuse to fight in the Occupied Territories. Set against the conflict in the Middle East, it explores issues of peace, conscience and personal responsibility.

Mike Wong was born and raised in San Francisco. As an American soldier during the Vietnam War, he was very influenced by the anti-war movement, the pictures of other GIs murdering Vietnamese civilians at My Lai and reports from fellow soldiers returning from Vietnam. When he received Vietnam orders, he went AWOL for two weeks, then turned himself in to the Presidio stockade with his lawyer, pleaded guilty to AWOL, refused orders to Viet Nam and attempted to press a limited conscientious objector (objection to a particular war, not legitimate national defense) case. The army turned him down, dropped three felony charges worth a total of 15 years in prison, released him from the stockade and put him back on Vietnam orders. He escaped to Canada and lived in exile for five years. He returned after the war, pleaded guilty to long-term AWOL and received an “Undesirable Discharge.” He later earned a Masters degree in Social Work, and has been a social worker for 30 years. Since the first Gulf War he has been a member of Veterans for Peace and the Veterans Writers Group. He is featured in the film about the Vietnam era GI anti-war movement, Sir! No Sir! and the anthology edited by Maxine Hong, Kingston Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace.

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and the Middle East editor for foreign policy in Focus. He serves on the advisory board for the Tikkun Community, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and other peace and human rights organizations He is a foreign affairs columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, an associate editor of Peace Review and a regular contributor to the Common Dreams News Center. His commentaries have appeared in major daily newspapers throughout the US, Canada and Europe and he has frequently provided analysis on radio news programs for BBC, CBC, NPR and Pacifica, among others. Professor Zunes is the author of scores of articles for scholarly and general readership on Middle Eastern politics, US foreign policy, international terrorism, social movements and human rights. He is the principal editor of Nonviolent Social Movements and the author of the highly-acclaimed Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism. He won recognition in 2002 from the Peace and Justice Studies Association as Peace Scholar of the Year.

Bill Blaikie was born and raised in Transcona, Manitoba. He received a BA in philosophy and religious studies from the University of Winnipeg in 1973 and a master of divinity degree from the Toronto School of Theology in 1977. From 1977 to 1979, he worked as director of a special outreach ministry of the United Church in the north end of of Winnipeg. Blaikie was ordained to the ministry of the United Church of Canada in 1978.
He was first elected to the House of Commons in 1979 as a New Democrat and has been re-elected eight times, most recently on January 23, 2006. He is Dean of the House of Commons. Blaikie’s interest in issues pertaining to the Vietnam War has its origins in the way the anti-Vietnam War movement helped him and other young people of that era discover the prophetic tradition within the larger biblical tradition that calls on citizens to challenge the self-righteous assumptions and hidden corporate interests of their own “side” in conflicts like the Vietnam War.

Bill Siksay was elected Member of Parliament for Burnaby-Douglas (in BC) in 2004 and re-elected in January 2006 and is a member of the NDP shadow cabinet, serving as critic for citizenship and immigration. He is a member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, and a leading political spokesperson calling for the Canadian government to assist current US Military Deserters arriving in Canada. Bill Siksy is also caucus critic on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered issues.

Keith Mather is a member of Veterans for Peace. For 13 years Keith Mather has been a member of Veterans Writers Workshop, led by internationally-renowned US author Maxine Hong Kingston. Keith Mather is the author of Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, edited by Maxine Hong Kingston. Mather was drafted right out of high school in September of 1967. He was opposed to the Vietnam War when he was drafted. Keith trained as an Infantryman at Fort Lewis, Washington. While in the military he became increasingly opposed to the war. Mather’s first AWOL was in 1967, followed by a second in 1968. He took part in the Nine for Peace demonstration in San Francisco in July of that year. For his anti-war activities, Mather was put into the stockade at the Presidio of San Francisco.
While awaiting his first court-martial, a fellow prisoner was shot and killed by a guard while on a work detail. Mather and 26 other prisoners staged a non-violent sit-down demonstration inside the stockade grounds, for which they were charged with mutiny. Prior to this second court martial, Mather along with another prisoner, escaped from the Presidio stockade, travelled to Canada and arrived in Vancouver on January 1, 1969. Mather lived in Canada for 12 years, married a French Canadian woman and settled first in Quebec and eventually in BC. Upon returning to California in 1980, Mather was arrested four years later and put back into the army where he spent five months at Fort Ord and Fort Riley in Kansas. Mather was discharged on May 10, 1985.
Mather now lives and works in the San Francisco Area and travels to Canada often, maintaining his many friendships. These days you can find Mather speaking in schools as he continues to support resistance to war. Mather is featured in the anti-war documentary film, Sir! No! Sir! Mather indicates his thanks to Canada for its welcome and warmth.

Tom Bernard is a labor representative for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Healthcare NW in Portland Oregon and a member of Veterans for Peace. Bernard is also a Vietnam veteran, who trained as a Vietnamese linguist in the Hanoi dialect by the US Air Force. During his military assignments in SE Asia, Bernard became a member of Vietnam Veterans against the War/Winter Soldier Organization (VVAW/WSO) and first active in the GI Movement.
After being discharged from the US military, Tom worked as a field organizer for Pacific Counseling Service/Military Law Office (PCS/MLO) at GI Movement organizing projects in Yokosuka, Japan and Koza City, Okinawa. He later served as the executive director for the Colorado Peace Network. Bernard has also authored several articles which have been widely published on his experiences in the military. In 2005, he and several rank and file members of his old military unit, collectively known as the “WORMS” were featured in the David Zeiger, Vietnam War GI Resistance documentary film, Sir! No Sir! Raised in Detroit, MI, Bernard now lives with his wife, Helen Lee and two dogs in North Portland. Tom and Helen have five adult children and two grandchildren.

Alex Atamanenko, newly elected MP, is the son of refugees from the Russian Revolution, who was born and raised in New Westminster, BC. He earned a BA in recreation administration from UBC and a master’s degree in Russian literature from the University of Toronto. He served as an interpreter during the prime minister’s visit to the Soviet Union in 1989 and for the Canadian Navy trip to Vladivostok in 1990. As a devoted advocate for peace, he has been very active in the Kootenay Regional United Nations Association. He lives in the West Kootenays whenever his duties as Member of Parliament and NDP Agriculture Critic do not require him to be in Ottawa.

Francisco Juarez joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 2002 and worked in the regular Navy before transferring to the Army Reserve as an infantry officer. He hoped to secure a place on a rotation to Afghanistan by 2009. In the middle of officer training he decided he could no longer support Canada’s mission or be a part of a military whose focus had been lost. He continues to speak to issues related to international peace and security.

Kyle Snyder, U.S. soldier, thought he was going to the Middle East to build roads; instead, Snyder, who served almost four months in Iraq, was a gunner on a Humvee military vehicle. Snyder deserted and fled to Canada and now lives in Alberta. Kyle has been a leading spokesperson among current war resisters who have recently fled to Canada. He is among the growing list of current US war resisters from the US War in Iraq who have come to Canada and are filing refugee claims here in Canada.

Mark Kurlansky, New York Times bestselling author, was a draft resister who refused to serve in the Vietnam War. As a newspaper correspondent, he worked in Western and Eastern Europe, Mexico, Central America, South America, the Caribbean and other parts of the world. His latest book, Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea, is one of 15 books he has written including 1968: the Year that Rocked the World; Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World; The Basque History of the World; two works of fiction and three children’s books. He always looks for opportunities to campaign for peace.

Ryan Johnson is a US military deserter from the US War in Iraq. Ryan is from a small agricultural town in the central valley of California who joined the military because he otherwise couldn’t afforded to go to college and didn’t have any kind of health coverage for himself and his wife. Johnson told the recruiters that he didn’t want to fight in the US War in Iraq. The recruiter told him that wouldn’t be a problem and that he would be sent to Fort Irwin to a “non-deployable unit.” But after three weeks, he was told he was deploying to Iraq. Johnson began asking questions of the soldiers in his unit who had been to Iraq and the stories he heard shocked him. Johnson was then to be deployed, even while in the hospital for pneumonia. X-rays showed that he had two fractured vertebrae from an injury sustained during his military training. Though he assumed he would receive treatment for the fractures, he was told there was no time for therapy because he was being sent to Iraq.
On January 15, Johnson and his wife packed their car and left Fort Irwin in California. Some months later, Ryan and his wife made the decision to come to Canada, where they are going through the refugee process. Before leaving the US, they were interviewed by Amy Goodman for Democracy Now, which aired on their arrival to Canada.

Peter Laufer, winner of major awards for excellence in reporting, is an independent journalist, broadcaster and documentary filmmaker working in traditional and new media. While a globe-trotting correspondent for NBC, he also reported, wrote and produced several documentaries and special event broadcasts for the network that dealt with crucial social issues, including the first nationwide live radio discussion of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Healing the Wounds was an analysis of ongoing problems afflicting Vietnam War veterans.
Laufer is currently the anchor of the radio program National Geographic World Talk and co-anchor of the radio program Washington Monthly on the Radio. His most recent book, Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq (2006) describes how disillusioned, outraged, and betrayed American soldiers are taking a stand against the war in Iraq. The book includes individual chapters on US war resisters in Canada, including a chapter on Ryan and Jen Johnson who will be attending the Our Way Home Peace Event and Reunion.

Lee Zaslofsky was born in Brooklyn, NY, and was educated at the State University of New York and at the University of Toronto. He was drafted into the US Army in early 1969. Though opposed to the Vietnam War, he decided to report for duty. He was sent to Fort Jackson, SC, and trained as an infantryman. During his time in the army he applied for CO Status, but was refused. He took part in antiwar activities on the base. In December of 1969, he received orders to go to Vietnam. He deserted and crossed the Canadian border in January of 1970. He has since lived in Toronto. In 1975, Zaslofsky returned briefly to the US and was processed out of the Army at Ft. Dix, NJ. He did not apply for an amnesty. Later that year he became a Canadian citizen.
In Canada, Zaslofsky has been a political and community activist, at various times holding positions as executive assistant to city councillor Jack Layton; constituency assistant to Dan Heap, MP; health advocate at a community health centre and media and advocacy coordinator at the AIDS Committee of Toronto. He has served as a citizen member of the Toronto Board of Health, Chair of the Community Advisory Committees at Doctors Hospital and Toronto Western Hospital; and Chair of the Board of Scadding Court Community Centre. Since 2004, Zaslofsky has been coordinator of the War Resisters Support Campaign, based at the National Office in Toronto.

Sol Guy is one of Canada’s leading music executives in the urban music sector, with 17 years of experience in the music industry, entertainment and media. He is listed by Diversity Watch as one of Canada’s most prominent black figures. Guy has been an influential contributor to the rise of global hip-hop culture and one of the top marketing experts in the world for youth culture. He is credited with developing the urban music market in Canada, including organizing “The Hip Hop Explosion Tour” the first national hip-hop tour. He has served as urban product manager at BMG Canada as well as international director for Arista Records in New York City where he led the development of the urban music market internationally.
Sol has helped develop and market top artists, such as Lauryn Hill, P Diddy, India Arie, k-os, Rascalz, The Roots, Outkast, Kardinal Offishall, Dead Prez, B.I.G. and The Wu-Tang Clan. Over the years, he has worked for BMG Canada, Arista Records, Motown, LaFace, Bad Boy, Columbia Records, Universal Music, BMG Global, RCA Records, J Records, Interscope, MCA, Geffen Records, Loud Records, SRC and Sony/Columbia. Using his expertise in marketing, Sol Guy started the first National Street Team in Canada, combining innovative marketing and promotion strategies to bring hip-hop into the mainstream of Canadian culture. He also started the International Street Team to market hip-hop globally. Guy is the co-founder of Direct Current Media and host of the TV series 4REAL. His mission is to use music, film, television and hip-hop culture as a vehicle for change, promoting empowerment for global youth.

Peace concert performers

The producer for the concert is Gary Cristall, co-founder and for many years director of the Vancouver Folk Festival.

Holly Near is a unique combination of entertainer, teacher and activist. She was a major figure speaking out in opposition to the Vietnam War and supporting the GI Movement opposing the Vietnam War. An immense vocal talent, Near’s career as a singer has been profoundly defined by an unwillingness to separate her passion for music from her passion for human dignity. She is a skilled performer and an outspoken ambassador for peace who brings to the stage an integration of world consciousness, spiritual discovery and theatricality. Near’s strength and versatility as a performer has led to creative collaborations with such artists as Ronnie Gilbert, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Mercedes Sosa, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Inti-Illimani, Bonnie Raitt, Cris Williamson and Linda Tillery. Near’s portrait hangs at the Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, along with those of other social-change artists, including Paul Robeson, Marion Anderson, Pete Seeger, Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte and Woody Guthrie.

“Country” Joe McDonald was the leader and lead singer of the 1960s rock & roll group Country Joe and the Fish. He started his career busking on Berkeley, California’s, famous Telegraph Avenue in the early ‘60s.
Country Joe has recorded 33 albums and has written hundreds of songs over a career spanning 40 years. He and Barry Melton co-founded Country Joe and The Fish, which became a pioneer psychedelic band with their eclectic performances at The Avalon, Fillmore, Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock. Their best-known song is I Feel Like I’m Fixin to Die Rag, a black comedy novelty song about the Vietnam War, whose familiar chorus – “One, two, three, what are we fighting for?” – is well known to the Woodstock generation and Vietnam vets of the 1960s and 1970s.
In 2004, Country Joe reformed some original members of Country Joe and The Fish to the Country Joe Band, comprised of Bruce Barthol, David Bennett Cohen and Gary “Chicken” Hirsh. The band toured Los Angeles, Berkeley, Bolinas, Sebastopol, Grants Pass, Eugene, Portland and Seattle. They then made a 10-stop tour of the United Kingdom and played at the Isle of Wight and London. A New York tour followed, which included a Woodstock reunion performance followed by an appearance at the New York State Museum in Albany. Returning to the West Coast, the band played in Marin and Mendocino Counties, the World Peace Music Awards in San Francisco and at the Oakland Museum as part of an exhibit on the Vietnam War.
In the spring of 2005, McDonald joined a larger protest against California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget cuts at the California state capital. In the fall of 2005, political commentator Bill O’Reilly compared McDonald, a Navy veteran, to Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro, remarking on McDonald’s involvement in Cindy Sheehan’s protests against the Iraq War.

Rosalie Sorrels’ singing voice has been described by one critic as one of the most wonderful voices in American music, an instrument as mellow and finely-aged as an antique viola. Sorrels was at the Newport Folk Festival in 1966. In recognition of her role as a creator of and collaborator in the American culture of the second half of the twentieth century, the University of California at Santa Cruz has set up a Rosalie Sorrels Archive as part of its Beat Generation Archives. The University of Idaho awarded Sorrels an honorary doctorate of fine arts in 2000. In 2001 the Boise Peace Quilt Project presented her with a peace quilt, adding her name to the distinguished list of workers for peace and justice who have been presented with quilts. Sorrel has recorded more than 20 albums and written three books, including Way Out in Idaho, published in honor of the Idaho centenary, a monumental collection of songs, stories, pictures and recipes gathered over the course of three years spent travelling around her home state and listening to its people.

Utah Phillips is a labour organizer, folk singer, storyteller, poet and self-described “Golden Voice” of the Great Southwest He describes the struggles of labour unions and the power of direct action. He often promotes the industrial workers of the world in his music, actions and words. Phillips served the United States army for three years beginning in 1956. Witnessing the devastating effects of the post Korean War in Korea greatly influenced his social and political thinking. Phillips ran for the U.S. senate as a candidate of Utah’s Peace and Freedom Party in 1968. After leaving Utah in the late ‘60s, he came to Saratoga Springs, NY, where he was befriended by the folk community at the Caffe Lena coffee house, where he became a staple performer throughout that decade.
In 1991 Phillips recorded an album of song, poetry and short stories entitled I’ve Got to Know in one take, inspired by his anger at the first Gulf war. The album includes his first composition Enola Gay, written about the US’s atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was nominated for a Grammy Award for his work with Ani DiFranco. Phillips has become an elder statesman for the folk music community and a keeper of stories and songs that might otherwise have passed into obscurity. He is also a member of the great “Traveling Nation,” the community of hobos and railroad bums that populates the midwest US along the rail lines, and he is an important keeper of their history and culture. Phillips hosted his own weekly radio show, Loafer’s Glory: The Hobo Jungle of the Mind.

Maryem Tollar is a splendidly-versatile artist with an impressive resume that spans world, pop and classical music. Possessed with a voice that has been hailed as one of the wonders of the modern world, she performs regularly as part of Jesse Cook’s ensemble. She is a featured vocalist in Christos Hatzis’ operas and was nominated for a Dora Award for her role in Constantinople. She is also the co-founder of the Juno-nominated world music ensemble, Maza Meze and the Arabic vocal duo Doula. Tollar will be performing along with her peace activist uncle and poet Ehab Lotayef. They recently collaborated on an ambitious concert at Glenn Gould studio, featuring contemporary music, poetry and images inspired by events in the Middle East.

Ehab Lotayef, writer, photographer, activist and engineer was born in Egypt and grew up moving between countries and cultures to finally settle in Montreal in 1989. Ehab writes poetry in both Arabic and English. He is also a songwriter collaborating frequently with Toronto’s composer/performer Maryem Toller. Ehab is also a playwright; his play Crossing Gibraltar was produced by the CBC in 2005.
Ehab travelled to Iraq in 2003 after the war and spent three weeks in the “liberated” country, talking to people, taking photos and writing about what he saw to convey the reality to the Canadian people without distortion or manipulation. In January of 2005, Ehab travelled to occupied Palestine where he lived the occupation, sieges, road blocks and the check points with the indigenous population and monitored (in no official way) the presidential elections. In December of 2005, he travelled to Iraq again to speak out in the name of Canadian Muslims and Arabs for the CPT hostages.

Ember Swift has been performing since she was ten years old. She started writing songs when she was nine and performed her original work for the first time in grade eight (at age 13).
Throughout high school, she was also heavily involved in both school-based and community-based environmental activism. After high school, Ember moved to Ottawa, Ontario, and pursued her university education. She also lived on the Quebec side in Hull for a year, which solidified her bilingualism.
Ember continued to perform live in the Ottawa region for two years before transferring to the University of Toronto in 1995. She immersed herself in the open stages and small cafes and was very quick to generate interest and an audience, all the while maintaining her schooling as a self-described “side project.” During this time, she met several fellow artists, including her now integral bandmate Lyndell Motngomery.
In 1997, after having developed a four-piece band, Ember and crew headed on their first tour to the East Coast of Canada. In 1998, Ember graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in East Asian Studies. The formation of her independent record label, Few’ll Ignite Sound, in 1997 highlighted an entirely different side of Ember’s personality: the geek. Throughout the six years of operating this business, Ember became a self-described “business head” who found a love for accounting, business and computing. In 2003, Ember started working with Fleming & Associates, a booking agency out of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Finally, in 2004, she began working with RAM Management, a management company out of Montreal, Canada.

Alan Rinehart has made many contributions to the guitar world as a performer, teacher and music editor. He is a co-founder of the Vancouver Guitar Quartet which became a regular part of the Vancouver and Western Canadian music scene in the late 1980’s with many concert and radio appearances including a broadcast concert on CBC’s Arts National and enthusiastically acclaimed performances as featured artists in the host pavilion at Expo 86. After a hiatus of a number of years, the Quartet reformed in 1996 and has recently released its debut recording Estampas. Rinehart was a faculty member of the music schools at UBC and Vancouver Community College from 1983 to 2003. He currently lives in the West Kootenays.

Bessie Wapp is a theatre maker, musician and educator raised in the Kootenays and based in Vancouver. Since 1993, Wapp has been an associate artist/artistic director with the stilt dance theatre company Mortal Coil, creating and performing original works for all ages across North America and in Europe, and directing the annual “Ghost Train” Halloween performances in Stanley Park. Since 1995, Bessie has been a singer/percussionist with Eastern European music ensemble Zeellia.
Wapp is in Nelson this summer premiering Hello, I Must Be Going at the Nelson Fine Arts Centre. Bessie created the new one-woman-show with her mother, writer/visual artist Judy Wapp and writer/director Nicola Harwood. Through the women’s voices of her Jewish ancestry, Bessie portrays four generations driven to flee wherever they were because of war.

Ticket Outlets

Castlegar
Brilliant Cultural Centre

Grand Forks
USCC Doukhobor
Community Centre

Kaslo
Sunnyside Cafe

Nelson
Gold Yogi Imports
Spirit Quest, Still Eagle

Trail
L & J Books

Vancouver
People’s Coop Bookstore
1391 Commercial Drive
1-888-511-5556 or 604-253-6442

Pulpfiction Books
2422 Main Street
604-876-4311

Pulpfiction Books
3133 West Broadway
604-873-4311

Winlaw
Earth Spirit Books

Complete details and tickets on sale online:
www.ourwayhomereunion.com
info@ourwayhomereunion.com
(250) 352-1187
P.O. Box 113, Nelson, British Columbia, V1L 5P7, Canada