Negotiating Peace One Bite At A Time

I read an article called Negotiating Peace One Bite At a Time on the NATO website and it talked about a study done by professors at Cornell University and the University of Chicago that shows sharing a meal can make people more cooperative and less competitive with each other. Sharing food encourages mutual understanding and empathy.  

When politicians are in the midst of negotiations over a tricky matter sharing a meal together can sometimes lead to a quicker and more equitable resolution.

Photo from The Guardian

We know for example that President Richard Nixon was able to end twenty-five years of no communication or diplomatic ties between the United States and China. Was that because during his seven-day official visit to three Chinese cities he shared food with both the Chinese premier and the leader of the Chinese communist party?   

In his article called Dining for Detente writer Joseph Temple says Nixon and his team received repeated briefings about meals with the Chinese. They practiced eating birds nest soup and Peking Duck so they would be able to remark in a complimentary fashion on their taste and aroma. Nixon and his wife rehearsed eating with chopsticks for months so they could use them properly at their dinners in China.

Former American President Barack Obama frequently negotiated with other political leaders over food.

Photo from The Guardian

Here he is having beer and pretzels with Angela Merkel the German Chancellor.

Photo from AFP News

Chowing down burgers with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev .

Photo by Adam Scotti from the Prime Minister’s Office

And hanging out in a restaurant called Liverpool House in Montreal with Justin Trudeau.

The practice of political figures negotiating with their international counterparts over food happens in Britain too.

Photo from Wikipedia

Here is American President Reagan breakfasting at 10 Downing Street with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1982.

Image from Buckingham Palace

I wonder if Queen Elizabeth requested any political advice from Paddington Bear when they had tea together in 2022?

Other posts……….

10 Photographs About Tea

Eating Around the World

In Obama’s Spot Again

Women Who Have Won the Nobel Peace Prize

I’m giving a talk next Sunday about female peacemakers and so I did a little research about the 19 women who have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I knew about Jane Addams, Mother Theresa and Malala Yousafzai but the other sixteen winners were new names to me.

Here are six of those sixteen.

Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan -Nobel Peace Prize 1976

Together Betsy Williams and Mairead Corrigan founded the organization Peace People in Ireland after Betty witnessed the tragic shooting of Mariead’s two nephews and her niece because of the violent conflict between Protestants and Catholic.

Betty and Mairead set up local peace groups across the country and for four months staged a series of rallies that mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to advocate for peace.

Maria Reesa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021.

Maria Ressa is a journalist from the Philippines who founded the Rappler online news site in 2012. She has been a fearless defender of freedom of expression exposing the abuse of power, use of violence and increasing authoritarianism of the regime of former President Rodrigo Duterte particularly his murderous anti-drug campaign.

Rappler has repeatedly documented how social media is being used to spread fake news in the Philippines.

Nadia Murad won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018

Nadia Murad is a member of Iraq’s Yazidis minority who was abducted by militants from the Islamic State in 2014 when she was 21 years old. She was held as a sex slave, raped and threatened with execution before she managed to escape to Germany.

She shared her story with the international community and in 2016 was appointed the United Nations’ first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. By recounting the atrocities she experienced, Nadia hopes to ensure that future generations of young women do not become victims of sexual violence in war.

Leymah Gbowee won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011

Leymah Gbowee a Liberian social worker, peace activist and women’s rights advocate led a nonviolent movement that brought together Christian and Muslim women.

This organized female campaign played a key role in bringing to an end a devastating fourteen-year civil war in Liberia in 2003 and paved the way for the election of Africa’s first female head of state in 2005, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004

Wangari Maathai a biologist played an active role in the struggle for democracy in Kenya. She started a grass-roots movement to counter the deforestation happening in Kenya which threatened many small farms.

Wangari intiated a campaign to encourage women to plant trees. This campaign spread to other African countries and resulted in the planting over 30 million trees. Wangari was an active spokeswomen for the causes of sustainable development, democracy, women’s rights and international solidarity.

Sadly while 92 men have won the Nobel Peace Prize only 19 women have been deemed worthy. Seems like there is something wrong with that.

Perhaps the Nobel Committee needs to open their eyes a little more widely to see all the good work women are doing around the world for the cause of peace.

Other posts………

Jocelyn Bell Burnell and the Matilda Effect

Hitting the Sweet Spot

Nelson Mandela- He’s Everywhere in Cape Town

Gertrude is An Inspiration

I have this sepia coloured photograph on my bedroom dresser.  It was taken in Moscow during World War I. The beautiful brown-eyed young woman in it with her fashionable dress and hair piled high is my husband’s maternal grandmother Gertrude Unruh.

She was married to Heinrich Enns who sits to her immediate right in his military medical uniform. You can see the Red Cross on his hat on the table.

The other two men are Gertrude’s brothers-in-law.  Peter Enns to her left was obviously in military service too and Cornelius Neufeld to her right with the accounting book ran the families vast land holdings in Siberia and other parts of Ukraine. 

My husband’s grandfather and his family on the lake in front of their estate in Ukraine.

Heinrich’s family owned a large estate in Kowalicha, Ukraine and while the men of the family were away serving in the Russian army’s medical corps Gertrude was left alone to run the family’s massive estate and deal with her irascible mother-in-law who objected to her son’s marriage to Gertrude because Gertrude’s family wasn’t rich enough.

Gertrude came from the small village of Rudneweide where her family had a modest farm. Her wealthy husband had met her while on a visit to the village with a friend.  

Gertrude with her four sons.

Gertrude had four little boys and with her husband far away working on the trains transporting the wounded from the battlefront to Moscow, Gertrude was single parenting and making all the decisions about the education and upbringing of her children.

There were labour shortages as estate servants left their jobs to join the army. The weather had damaged some crops, and roving bandits had been seen on the estates’ far-flung properties.

Gertrude decided she needed to go to Moscow and meet with her husband Heinrich and her brothers-in-law to get some advice about what to do. That’s when the photo of Gertrude at a family business meeting was taken.

I never met my husband’s grandmother Gertrude but whenever I begin to feel overwhelmed by my responsibilities I look at Gertrude’s photo.

I think about how a girl from a small village farm ran a huge business all on her own and cared for her children and mother-in-law while the men in her family were away at war and times were incredibly tough.

Gertrude inspires me!

Other posts………

Luxury Car- A Family Story

Remembering

Mothers in Our Family

On An Author High

I’m always on a high after I do a school visit. Yesterday I did a virtual one with a class of grade four and five students from Brownell School in Saskatoon. A student teacher had just completed a novel study of my book Lost on the Prairie with her class and invited me to Zoom in and talk to the children.

In the morning the teacher had taken her students to the Western Development Museum in Saskatoon where she had designed a scavenger hunt activity that had the children looking for all kinds of items related to the book.

How cool is that?

At the Western Development Museum with my infant son in 1979

I’ve been to the Western Development Museum in Saskatoon many times with my own children and grandchildren but had never thought of it as a place to set an enrichment activity for Lost on the Prairie.

The kids at Brownell School had lots of great questions for me and when the Zoom session was over I got a lovely message from the teacher telling me how much the kids had enjoyed reading the book and had been so excited to meet me.

They were all enthusiastic now about buying Sixties Girl and reading it too.

The student teacher said she would definitely use Lost on the Prairie with future classes she taught and that someday when her own teaching career was more established she hoped to write a novel too.

And as if that wasn’t enough to make my day………….. yesterday morning I woke up to a Facebook message from a former elementary school student of mine letting me know that she and her ten- year-old daughter were reading Sixties Girl together and loving it.

The girl with curly blonde hair second from the left in this photo taken in my classroom many decades ago is now a mom with a ten-year-old daughter. They are reading Sixties Girl together.

Writing novels and getting them published is certainly satisfying in itself but it’s the response from the people who read them and reach out to share their engagement with your books that is the real reward!

It’s what makes you want to keep writing.

Other posts……..

Stopping By Woods

Bennet Buggy Anyone?

Where Oh Where Have You Been?

7 Canadian National Historic Sites in Winnipeg

Did you know that Winnipeg is home to dozens of places that have been designated National Historic Sites of Canada? I have a personal connection with seven of them.

The Fort Garry Hotel was one of a series of château style hotels built by Canadian railway companies in the early 20th century to encourage travel across the country. It opened its doors in 1913 and was named a Canadian National Historic Site in 1981.

I attended the Manitoba Book Awards in the Fort Garry Hotel in 2017 with some of the members of my writers group who had been nominated for prizes.

A friend and I were honoured on the occasion of our 70th birthdays at the Fort Garry Hotel this past October.

Our family poses outside the Burton Cummings Theatre before a concert by our son’s band Royal Canoe in 2016.

The theatre formerly known as the Walker Theatre was built in 1907 and was the site for many political rallies in its early years particularly related to the labour and women’s suffrage movements. It became a National Historic Site in 1991.

This is the St. Boniface Museum but it first served as a convent for the Grey Nuns. Constructed in 1851 it is the oldest building in Winnipeg. It was named a National Historic Site in 1958.

Dad and his fellow interns at St. Boniface Hospital in the early 1960s

When my father was an intern at St. Boniface Hospital in the early 1960s many of the nurses he worked with were Grey Nuns.

I am sitting on Santa’s knee at a Christmas party hosted by the Grey Nuns. You can see them coming in through the door with gifts

At Christmas the Grey Nuns put on a Christmas party for the intern’s children which my siblings and I attended.

The Ralph Connor House was the home of the Reverend Charles Gordon who wrote adventure novels under the pen name of Ralph Connor. It was built in 1914 and named a National Historic Site in 2009.

Currently the house is the home of the University Women’s Club of Winnipeg and my aunt, a retired University of Manitoba professor and a member of the club had her 80th birthday celebration there.

Winnipeg’s downtown Exchange District was a warehouse and business centre at the turn of the century. It contains dozens of historically and architecturally significant buildings and became a National Historic Site in 1996.

I live in the Exchange District in the Ashdown Warehouse.

One of the settings for my best selling novel Lost on the Prairie is the old CPR Station on Higgins Avenue which was built in 1906.

This elaborate building is a symbol of the fact that Winnipeg was an important transportation hub in the early 20th century. It became a National Historic Site in 1982.

My Dad put himself through medical school by working as a porter out of the Winnipeg CPR station on the route that took passengers from Winnipeg through the Rocky Mountains to Vancouver.

Lower Fort Garry built in 1830 is a former Hudson’s Bay Company fort which served as a major supply centre for the fur trade in Western Canada and where Treaty One was signed with the Indigenous people of Manitoba in 1871. It became a National Historic Site in 1950.

My son dressing up in a Metis sash and beaver hat at Lower Fort Garry

My brother worked at Lower Fort Garry as a tour guide when he was attending university. When my children were small we visited the fort on many occasions.

You can find a list of the National Historic Sites in Winnipeg here. Do you have a personal connection with any of them?

Other posts……….

My Father Was a Train Porter

Living in a Piece of History

Partying in a Piece of History

10 World Heritage Sites

Tomorrow is the International Day for Monuments and Sites. It is a day to appreciate the monuments around the world that help us understand history, culture or the natural world. Here are ten such monuments and sites I’ve visited. They are all UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The 2,700 mile Great Wall of China is the longest human made structure in the world. Its construction began in 300 BC. and it was repeatedly rebuilt and modified over the years. Its purpose was to protect China from nomadic northern tribes. It became a World Heritage Site in 1987.

Masada is an ancient stone fortress built by King Herod between 37 and 31 BC and located on a very high rocky mesa in Israel, above the Dead Sea. It is a 840 acre complex with well preserved ruins that are evidence of the history of ancient Israel and the courage of its people during a Roman siege in 73 AD. It became a World Heritage Site in 1966.

Chichén Itzá on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula was a powerful centre of commerce and government for the Mayan people from 600 to 1200. Its most important role, however, was that of a sacred city, a place of worship and ritual. It became a World Heritage Site in 1988.

The Taj Mahal in Agra India was built by the emperor Shah Jahan in the mid 1600s as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. It is considered a jewel of India’s rich history and attracts some 8 million visitors a year. It became a World Heritage Site in 1983.

The Collosseum is an amphitheatre in Rome Italy and is one of the few mostly intact structures from the Roman Empire. It is a monument to the architectural and engineering prowess of ancient Rome. Construction of the Collosseum began in 70 AD. It could hold 50,000 spectators and was famously used for gladiator combat. It became a World Heritage Site in 1980.

The Serengeti National Park in Tanzania which encompasses some 1.5 million hectares of savannah, boasts one of the most impressive nature spectacles in the world, the annual migration of two million wildebeests plus hundreds of thousands of zebras to find pasture and water. The park is also home to many endangered animal species. It became a World Heritage Site in 1981.

The city of Dubrovnik in Croatia, often called The Pearl of the Adriatic, is known for its stunning architecture and was an important centre for Mediterranean sea power beginning in the 1300s. It suffered from a massive earthquake in 1667 but has still managed to preserve many of its Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance buildings. Much of the old city including the wall around it was declared a World Heritage Site in 1979.

The Genbaku Dome now known as The Hiroshima Peace Memorial was the only structure left standing in the area where the first atomic bomb exploded on 6 August 1945. It has been preserved in the same state as immediately after the bombing. It serves as a stark symbol of the most destructive force ever created and expresses the hope for world peace and the ultimate elimination of all nuclear weapons. It became a World Heritage Site in 1996.

Angkor Wat in Siem Reap Cambodia is a Hindu-Buddhist temple complex located on a four hundred acre site. The Guinness Book of World Records considers it as the largest religious structure in the world. Built between 1122 to 1150 it eventually became almost lost in the jungle until it was rediscovered by a French explorer named Henri Mouhot in 1860. It was designated a World Heritage Site in 1992.

Banff National Park is in Alberta Canada. It has unbelievable views of the Rocky Mountains and some of the world’s most beautiful lakes including Lake Louise a popular skiing destination. Established in 1885 it is Canada’s oldest national park. It became a World Heritage Site in 1984.

Other posts………

Visiting the Great Wall

Visiting the Taj Mahal at Dawn

Remembering Hiroshima

Three Winnipeg Buildings That Are Gone But Not Forgotten

Here are three Winnipeg buildings that have a connection to my family but are no longer part of the Winnipeg landscape.

This mansion used to stand at 515 Wellington Crescent. It’s where my parents met each other. In 1947 Canadian Mennonite Bible College began using the house as a residence for their students.

The house was surrounded by water during the 1950 flood

One day my Dad came down from his room on the second floor and saw my mother playing the piano in the foyer on the main floor. He stopped to listen. As he liked to put it, “The rest is history.”

My parents on their wedding day

The Old King George Hosptial

My aunt worked at the old King George Hospital when it was the treatment centre for Winnipeg’s polio patients.

In the early 1950s, my aunt was training to be a nurse at the Misericordia Hospital and trainees were encouraged to volunteer at St. George where polio patients in iron lungs needed to be under vigilant surveillance due to the need for frequent tracheostomy suctioning.

My aunt with my parents at her nursing school graduation from the Misericordia Hospital in 1953

The hospital has since been torn down and replaced by the Riverview Health Centre.

However, the old front archway of the St. George Hospital has been preserved on the site.

I attended Sir John Franklin School when I was in grade two in 1961. The school was named after the famous Arctic explorer.

My grade two class at Sir John Franklin School.

My grade two teacher was Miss Ushey and our principal was Miss Fisher.

My sister and I outside Sir John Franklin School

Sir John Franklin School was closed in 1987 and demolished in 1991.

Many buildings that played a role in my family’s life have been torn down and are no longer here. What are some buildings that played a role in your life but have since disappeared?

Other posts………..

Attending A School Named For An Explorer

My Aunt and Winnipeg’s Polio Hospital

A Romantic Site

The End of Time -Paintings Inspired by Music

French composer Olivier Messiaen wrote his famous Quartet For The End of Time while in a German prison camp during World War II. Messiaen, a pianist, was incarcerated with three other musicians- clarinettist Henri Akoka, cellist Etienne Pasquier and violinist Jean Boulaire. 

Photo of Messiaen and some of his fellow musicians in the prison camp

In her book For The End of Time, Rebecca Rischin tells the story of how Messiaen managed to write the quartet. A music-loving prison guard named Karl-Albert Brüll brought him paper and ink and excused Messiaen from work detail so he could hide out in a latrine and compose.

Poster announcing the concert

Quartet For the End of Time premiered on a bitterly cold night in the barracks theatre to three hundred or so prisoners and German officers.

Messiaen a devout Catholic based his quartet on a passage from the book of Revelation 10:6 which in the King James version ends with the words …..there should be time no longer.

Installation of Landscapes For the End of Time at the Winnipeg Art Gallery- photo by Ernest Mayer

In 2012 when I first began working at the Winnipeg Art Gallery we had an installation by artist Stephen Hutchings called Landscapes For the End of Time. Hutchings said the paintings in the installation had been inspired by Messiaen’s composition.

Tree by Stephen Hutchings photograph taken at the Winnipeg Art Gallery by Ernest Mayer

Quartet for the End of Time has eight movements and Hutchings did eight huge life-like paintings, one for each movement.

Hutchings said he hoped people would come away from looking at his Landscapes For the End of Time with a sense that life is a mystery and we are all a small part of the unknown.

Grove by Stephen Hutchings photographed at the Winnipeg Art Gallery by Ernest Mayer

His paintings certainly had an air of mystery about them for me. I found myself looking at each one and thinking ” I wonder…………….” and imagining what was under the water, behind the trees, down the road or over the hill in each gigantic landscape. 

Hill by Stephen Hutchings

Hutchings’ paintings have a sort of timeless quality. It is hard to determine if they were painted to depict an era in the distant past, the present day or some point in the future. Hutchings has said he wants his landscapes to show the continuity of life and time. 

Roads by Stephen Hutchings from the Winnipeg Art Gallery collection

In Rischin’s book, she quotes Messiaen as saying that whenever he hears music he sees colours. Two of the colours that came to mind when he wrote Quartet for the End of Time were gold and brown. Interestingly gold and brown are the main colors in Hutchings Landscapes for the End of Time as well. 

Sky by Stephen Hutchings- photograph from his website

Landscapes for the End of Time is an amazing collection of artwork based on its beauty, mystery and grandeur alone; but it is made all the more intriguing because of the story behind the music that inspired the paintings. 

Other posts………..

A Sense of Foreboding

Seeing the Earliest Art Created By Humans

I’m On Page 100

A Strong Will To Live

I was excited to learn that my friend and fellow Manitoba author Harriet Zaidman had been interviewed for an article in USA Today, even though it was for a very sad reason. The magazine was reporting on the death of Paul Alexander in Dallas Texas.

Photo of Paul from an ABC News interview with his brother

Paul who contracted polio when he was just five years old was one of the last polio survivors who still depended on an iron lung to breathe. Paul had such a strong will to live and achieved so much despite the impact of his polio.

He obtained a law degree, published his autobiography, and had a huge following on Tik Tok where he advocated for people to be vaccinated against polio so that the tragic epidemic in the 1950s which changed his life would not be repeated.

Sadly Paul, who had been in an iron lung for more than seventy years died while hospitalized for COVID on March 11, 2024.

Harriet with her novel Second Chances –Photo by Cody Sellar from an article in the Free Press Community Review

My friend Harriet’s novel Second Chances which won the 2022 Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People was all about the polio epidemic and the polio vaccine.

Harriet interviewed Paul while doing research for her novel and they struck up a friendship which continued even after Second Chances was published. The two of them chatted regularly about writing and politics. In the USA Today article Harriet talks about her admiration for Paul and how strong and determined he was.

The polio epidemic of the 1950s was devastating and only abated once Jonas Salk invented a vaccine to protect people from it.

Just like some people refused the COVID vaccine Harriet points out in her book that there were people who mistrusted the polio vaccine as well. In the USA Today article she said about Paul, “He was dismayed at the attitudes people had developed in opposition to vaccines and to science.”

People with polio in iron lungs in the 1950s- photo from Wikipedia

Paul Alexander has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the person who spent the longest amount of time living in an iron lung. Sadly, despite his strong will to live, that time has come to an end.

My friend Harriet said in the USA Today article that she felt lucky for having known Paul.

Thanks to her friendship with him I know about Paul too.

Other posts…………..

My Polio Vaccines

My Aunt Worked in a Polio Hospital

What’s More Important- Fact or Fiction?

West With Giraffes

This pair of giraffes my husband photographed in Tanzania reminded me very much of the two giraffes in the novel West with Giraffes

At the start of our safari in Tanzania last year our guide asked each of the six people in our group which African animal we were most interested in seeing. I said giraffes. I’ve long been enamoured with them.

So it isn’t surprising that I enjoyed the novel West With Giraffes by Linda Rutledge based on a true story about two giraffes who eventually made their home in the San Diego Zoo.

While being shipped to the United States from Africa in 1938 their vessel encountered a hurricane but the pair of giraffes survived.

Photo from the San Diego Zoo Library

The novel tells the story of the trek by truck the two giraffes make across the country from New York to San Diego and their new home. The tale is narrated by Woody Nickel, a fictional young man who drives the truck.

I enjoyed the book because I learned new things about giraffes and grew to love the pair in the story more than some of the human characters.

I am working on a novel set in the 1930s right now and so the West With Giraffes story which takes place in the same decade provided valuable background information, particularly about the way women and Black Americans were treated during that time.

The story of the travelling giraffes was widely covered in the media. There is a woman on the truck in this photo from the New York Sun. Did she inspire one of the characters in the novel?

I always enjoy a strong female character and I got that in a young woman nicknamed Red who is following the truck with the giraffes hell-bent on taking photos of their journey for Life Magazine.

How I came to read this novel is kind of interesting too. When we were in Palm Desert in January Dave and I toured Sunnylands an estate that has hosted some of the most well-known political figures of our time.

Ten women who were part of a Los Angeles book club also touring Sunnylands requested Dave take their photo. When I asked the women what was the best book they had read recently they said West With Giraffes. “It’s so good,” they told me.

That’s why I bought the book!

I’m glad I did!

Other posts……….

Giraffes For My Granddaughter

The Woman Who Loves Giraffes

The Girl Who Loved Giraffes