Obituary: Muriel Duckworth, 100
Prominent member of Canada's peace movement never swayed from her belief that ‘war is stupid'
Oliver Moore
Halifax — Globe and Mail Update
Saturday, Aug. 22, 2009 04:03PM EDT
Muriel Duckworth, one of the most prominent members of Canada's peace movement and someone who never swayed from her belief that “war is stupid,” has died. She was 100.
Ms. Duckworth died early Saturday at a hospital in Magog, Queb, near a summer home she had been visiting for decades. Her family was with her and she was described as dying “with dignity and grace.”
The end came after a bad fall that put her in palliative care. She did not expect to recover and had begun to say farewell to those close to her.
Ms. Duckworth was born in Quebec but moved to Nova Scotia in the 1940s with her husband Jack, who predeceased her. They raised three children in the Maritimes, always staying true to their principles of social justice.
She believed that peace was not just the absence of fighting but also the absence of fear and that it required the presence of justice.
Although her pacifist principles at times raised hackles in Halifax, with its substantial military presence, friends said she was usually able to make her point without making enemies. And she was sensitive to those whose views differed.
Ursula Franklin, a friend and activist who is now a senior fellow at the University of Toronto's Massey College, remembers Ms. Duckworth convincing others not to protest at Remembrance Day ceremonies.
“We feel [war] is pointless but we will not use that to bludgeon people who are mourning,” Ms. Franklin, 87, remembers her friend arguing.
Ms. Duckworth, a practising Quaker, was a founding member of the provincial branch of Voice of Women and served as national president for four years. She helped establish the anti-poverty Canadian Council for International Co-operation, and was one of the first women in Nova Scotia to run for provincial office. With other elderly friends, in a group known as the Raging Grannies, she protested the 1995 G-7 meetings in Halifax.
She was awarded the Order of Canada in 1983 and received also the Governor-General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case and the Pearson Medal of Peace. She has been granted several honorary degrees.
Ms. Duckworth was always strongly opposed to war, a stand that went back more than half a century. She opposed the Second World War even before her brother died fighting in it and did not recognize popular distinctions between “good” and “bad” conflicts.
“Some things are not an option,” Ms. Franklin said in the final days of her friend's life. “And killing people is not an option. That's what people like Muriel and me believe.”
