We MAKE the Road by Walking

In September 2024, Dorothy Lander joined Walk4Peace (www.walk4peace.ca) and was joyfully reminded that change makers and radical adult educators cannot be stopped in their tracks. Cannot be silenced.

John Graham-Pole and Dorothy Lander joined the Walk For Peace in Antigonish from the Coady Institute, St. Francis Xavier University (StFX) to Bethany (Sisters of St. Martha) on Sept 7^th and then from Pugwash to Halifax (Sept. 8 to Sept. 21^st).  And who made up the small cadre of peace walkers? – MAdEd alumni, and former faculty and teachers from the StFX Department of Adult Education (Nancy Peters, Dorothy Lander) and the Coady Institute (Sue Adams, Anuj Jain, David Fletcher, Debbie Castle).  Jill Carr-Harris (MAdEd) was the organizer of the Pugwash to Halifax walk for peace and MAdEd alumni joining her at different points on the journey included Debbie Castle, Sue Adams, David Fletcher, and Dorothy Lander. Two former Chairs of Social Justice with the Coady International Institute – water protector and grassroots grandmother Dorene Bernard, and Gandhian activist P. V. Rajagopal— were core peace walkers throughout the 200+ km walk from Pugwash to Halifax. 

And leading the peace walkers were the water defenders and grassroots grandmothers  Dorene Bernard, Amy Maloney, and Marian Nicholas drumming the heartbeat of Mi’kmaki.  And yet another StFX connection that I learned only after the walk.  Amy Maloney is Vice-Principal of First Nations School in Atlantic Canada and she has a BEd and MEd from StFX.

Together, this radical group of activists represent StFX’s social justice roots embodied in the graduate program in adult education (MAdEd) (MEd) and the Coady International Institute. And greeting the peace walkers at the end of the 200 km walk at Dalhousie Students Union Building in Halifax were Yogesh Ghore and Jonathan Langdon, two more adult educators with Coady and StFX.

When Dorothy told her friend and faculty colleague Leona English, an internationally recognized adult education scholar and teacher—Professor Emerita, StFX Convocation May 2024­—about the phenomenal turnout of adult educators and change agents, she told us our walking together for peace reminded her of “someone who dedicated his life to social change.  Myles Horton said it all when he titled his book We Make the Road by Walking. Adult educators know this innately. They walk and talk, work and play, and accomplish magnificent acts of change. I remain in awe of these women and men who act and theorize on their practice, sometimes after the change and sometimes in the midst of the chaos and the planning. They are the change I want to see in the world.”

Myles Horton and Paulo Freire are familiar names to every student of adult education.  Another adult educator John Gaventa, who received an honorary degree from StFX in 2023, was one of the editors of the book of recorded conversations between Myles Horton and Paulo Freire entitled We Make the Road by Walking.

Dorothy and John, as co-publishers of the healing arts publishing house, HARP The People’s Press (www.tryhealingarts.ca), were quick to connect that powerful verb “make” with creative action.  We MAKE art. We MAKE friends. We MAKE love. We MAKE mistakes. We MAKE time. We MAKE a difference. We MAKE Peace.  We MAKE the road by walking.

Other MAdEd alumni and Coady program staff reflected on the connection between walking together for peace and MAKING CHANGE.

 David Fletcher M.Ad.Ed.; Ph.D. told us:

I am a transformative Adult Educator. My engagement is not only to learn and help others learn in the world, but it’s to MAKE CHANGES in the self, the system, and the structures of the world. One of the first tenets of this form of Adult Education is to respect the experience, values and lifeways of the group of adults I’m working with. I’ve been blessed to work in many different places with very diverse groups, and all of them hunger to live a life of harmony, peace and well-being. Learning with them has made me what I am today – I believe we MAKE PEACE inside, with others and with Mother Nature.

And Debbie Castle M. Ad.Ed.; Ed.D. had this to say:

Becoming qualified as an Adult Educator opened doorways to work with people of all ages and backgrounds, who for reasons often unknown to them were suffering in lives of distress and peaceless-ness. In studying Adult Ed, I learned about the power of reflection and going inside to find answers to external challenges. I learned about the power of groups and collectives to come together in facilitated spaces to understand the sources of their dissatisfaction. Together we could discern ways to MAKE CHANGE happen and create more peace and contentment for ourselves. Today, I continue to practice the basic principles of Adult Ed to enhance peace within myself and in communities through the practices of collective meditation and group facilitation.”

Dorothy and John were so inspired by their companion peace walkers in Antigonish that they committed to join the final stretch from the World Peace Pavilion in Dartmouth to Dalhousie University in Halifax on Sept. 21—INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PEACE.  Amy Maloney in the lead across the MacDonald Bridge from Dartmouth to Halifax.

We stopped for rest and refreshments at Ummah Mosque. A warm welcome including from MLA Ali Duale. And a feast of delicious dates from Jordan.

Dorothy committed to making a Peace Banner, featuring her botanical art created from the flora, fungi and seaweed of northern Nova Scotia.

Dorothy’s peace banner carries  a connection with yet another radical adult educator Olutoyin Mejiuni, retired Professor of Adult Education and Women’s Studies, Obafemi Awalowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. 

Dorothy first met Olutoyin in 2003 when she participated in the Coady Certificate Program in managing NGO Resource Centres.  They worked and played together that summer and Olutoyin gifted Dorothy with handmade African fabric.  It took 21 years for this gift to MOVE–a phenomenon that distinguishes the gift economy from the market economy.   Dorothy stitched the botanical letters MAKE PEACE onto Olutoyin’s African fabric to create a wearable banner for our walking companions. 

And then, BEYOND CHANCE, Dorothy found Olutoyin’s research chapter entitled Working-Walking Alone and With Others. She expands on the Botswana proverb:

“’If you want to walk fast, walk alone, if you want to walk far, walk with others.’ This proverb has become etched into my consciousness as I have reflected on it often in relation to my community development/ social change work, and my work as a teacher and researcher. For me, the proverb is profound. However, I have been thinking that it should be possible to walk with others, and yet walk fast, with a guarantee of walking far.”

Like Dorothy, Olutoyin’s scholarship includes a focus on university education and how inadequate funding creates tensions between stakeholders committed to the market economy and corporate big money, and those committed to community transformation and social change (the gift economy).  We both know it is possible to navigate these tensions and make the road by walking.

Dorothy and John were moved initially to join the Walk4Peace that began at the Thinkers Lodge in Pugwash because of our personal connections to the the Pugwash Peace Conferences on Science and World Affairs that began in 1957: John knew Sir Joseph Rotblat as his physics professor at St. Bartholomew’s medical school London University in 1960; Dorothy knew that philanthropist Cyrus Eaton funded and hosted these conferences at his Pugwash Estate because her husband, CBC Halifax broadcaster Patrick Napier, interviewed Cyrus Eaton about the Pugwash Conferences in the early 1960s. Read our blog here: https://tryhealingarts.ca/what-i-did-and-didnt-learn-from-sir-joseph-rotblat-nobel-laureate-for-peace/

On Day 1, Dorothy and John walked the 19 km from Pugwash to Wallace, cheered on our way from the students at Pugwash High School, the first high school to declare itself a nuclear weapons free zone. As we walked and talked with the core peace walkers committed to the 200 km to Halifax, we knew we would be returning for the last stretch of the walk4peace into Halifax. We were inspired by walkers like Yogesh Mathuria from India, whose lifework is now walking for peace. Right after this walk, he was off to another peace walk from Seattle to San Francisco, and then from Liverpool to London in the UK. This photo of Dorothy with Yogesh is at the World Peace Pavilion in Dartmouth, the departure point for the final 8 km of the walk across the MacDonald Bridge to Halifax and Dalhousie University.

Only by walking and talking together with peace activists with the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (Kathrin Winkler, Lyn Adamson) and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF, Co-President Ellen Woodsworth), one of the oldest women-led peace movement established 2019, did Dorothy recall that her most well-known relative Mina Benson Hubbard Ellis (author and cartographer A Woman’s Way Through Unknown Labrador) was an international peace activist in 1915. “Mrs Hubbard Ellis took on the responsibility of Hon. Treasurer of the International Women’s Congress in the Hague” The Congress of Women developed a road map for enduring peace. The women passed 20 resolutions including five resolutions which were “Principles of a Permanent Peace.” Theirs was a gendered response to a gendered war. The Women’s Congress was the forerunner to WILPF.

By chance?   Just when Dorothy needed a joyous reminder of the unstoppable social justice legacy of St. Francis Xavier University? A joyous reminder of Dr. Martin Luther King’s statement: “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Some of you will know that in July and August of 2024, Dorothy posted four blogs on the HARP website (www.tryhealingarts.ca) expressing alarm that StFX’s well-deserved reputation for truth and social justice embedded in the motto and crest — Whatsovever Things are True — was being sullied with the naming of a new campus building and the Institute for Health in Innovation in “honour” of Victor Dahdahleh, the corruption accomplice in Alcoa’s global bribery scheme.

You can expect more reflections and images on the walk4peace website (www.walk4peace.ca) and the walk4peace Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/walk4peace.ca