Loading ...

Toronto Mayor John Tory presenting Setsuko Thurlow with the certificate at the city council meeting. Photo courtesy: Toronto City Council.

TORONTO — Toronto city council and Mayor John Tory recognized Setsuko Thurlow’s peace activism and honour of accepting the Nobel Peace Prize at a city council meeting on Nov. 7.

Thurlow will be accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). The Nobel Peace Prize recognizes the achievement of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, endorsed by 122 countries (but not Canada) at the United Nations in July.

Mayor Tory presented Thurlow with a framed scroll. It stated in part that “as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, you saw the devastating results of nuclear war firsthand, using this life-changing experience to become an ambassador for world peace.”

The scroll presented to Setsuko Thurlow during the city council meeting on Nov. 7. Photo courtesy: Richard Berthelsen.

Thurlow told Mayor Tory and the city councillors: “This accomplishment is just the beginning of our struggle. It’s just the prohibition of nuclear weapons. We want the elimination of all the nuclear weapons. Each one of us—you and I together—have to keep working to achieve that goal. It’s a question of life and death. It’s massive death we are potentially confronting.”

The day after the presentation, Coun. Chin Lee moved, seconded by Mayor Tory, to have city council reaffirm Toronto as a nuclear weapons-free zone and to request the Toronto Board of Health to hold public hearings on the dangers of nuclear weapons and radiation fallout.

The motion passed unanimously. It acknowledged that “the City of Toronto can play a key role in raising awareness of the devastating impact of nuclear weapons and promote the solidarity of cities toward abolition and prohibition of nuclear weapons.”

Thurlow accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway on Dec. 10 along with Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the ICAN.

ICAN has issued a call for celebrations to be held around the world to coincide with the acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize.

In Ottawa, the local chapter of the International Peace Bureau organized a celebration at the Speaker’s Salon in the House of Commons on Dec. 7.

Its goal is to keep the issue of nuclear disarmament and the treaty to ban nuclear weapons in the government’s view by having the celebration right outside the door to the House of Commons, inside the Center Block on Parliament Hill. Many MPs and senators attended.

For further information, contact Steven Staples at sstaples@publicresponse.ca.

***

You can see Mayor Tory’s introduction and Setsuko Thurlow’s remarks in the video below. Mayor Tory begins his remarks at the time code of 15:07 in the video below.