OBITUARY

Peace advocate Edith Ballantyne had unwavering faith in humanity

SUE MONTGOMERY
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Appropriately, Edith Ballantyne, a staunch defender of social justice, peace and equality, was born on International Human Rights day.

She was a young Czech refugee in Canada during the Second World War when she first came into contact with members of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. They were helping vulnerable newcomers such as herself settle here and preventing their exploitation. They sparked in her a passion for rights and freedoms.

Ms. Ballantyne went on to devote much of her life to the organization, serving as its long-time secretary-general. She died March 25 in hospital in Geneva after a brief infection. She was 102.

“My mother was really extraordinary, incredibly humble and modest,” her daughter Morna Ballantyne said. “She was just as at ease giving a speech to the United Nations General Assembly as she was playing card games with her kids.”

Ms. Ballantyne was born Dec. 10, 1922, in Krnov, Czechoslovakia, to Rosa and Alois Müller, but the family, including her older brother, was forced to flee to England in 1938 after Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland.

In a 2021 interview by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), Ms. Ballantyne said her family was sure Britain and France would come to their rescue because they had guaranteed the safety of the new republic, which was made up of Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia and a small bit of Russia.

“We lost absolutely everything, except for what we had on our bodies,” she said in the interview, given when she was 99.

The family made their way to Canada in 1939 and were placed by the Canadian Pacific Railway Co. on a farm in British Columbia. After 2½ years of working for a pittance, they moved to Toronto in 1941 where Edith, then 19, worked 12- to 14-hour days as a maid – cooking, cleaning and caring for two children. That was when she met members of the WILPF, who invited her to their meetings and taught her English.

“I felt like a human being again, not just a broom,” Ms. Ballantyne said in the WILPF interview.

Encouraged by her best friend and roommate, she moved to Montreal in 1945, where she got a job with the CBC. She met Campbell Ballantyne at a Victoria Day picnic hosted by mutual friends and the two instantly fell in love and moved in together shortly afterward. Mr. Ballantyne, who was 14 years older than her and recently separated, was working in public affairs at the International Labour Organization, which was based in Montreal at the time.

After the war, when the United Nations was established in Geneva, the ILO relocated to Geneva. The couple married in July, 1948, and moved across the ocean later that year.

Ms. Ballantyne found work as a copy editor for the World Health Organization, then dedicated much of her time to raising four children (Morna, Derek, Linda and Aidan), who were born in the space of five years. She also had a stepdaughter, Tanya, from her husband’s first marriage, who died in 2015. Her husband predeceased her in 1998. Ms. Ballantyne leaves her four children, seven grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

“She was a devoted mother and incredibly supportive of us in our own decisions,” Morna Ballantyne said. “Sometimes she disagreed with the choices we made … but she accepted that and was always there if things didn’t turn out the way we had hoped.”

Well equipped by the principles instilled in them by their mother, all four children attended universities in Canada, where they eventually settled.

With her children well on their way, Ms. Ballantyne got involved with the WILPF again in 1968 as a volunteer and eventually as the organization’s backbone – serving as secretary-general for 25 years until 1992, and then as president for another six years. She built what was little more than a post office box into an influential international body, according to a 1989 history of the WILPF.

In 1983, in the midst of the nuclear arms race, Ms. Ballantyne was among 10,000 women who met with generals at NATO headquarters to protest new missile deployments in Europe.

Janis Alton, herself a long-time Canadian-based disarmament campaigner, recalled numerous occasions working closely with Ms. Ballantyne and relying on her leadership and connections, as did many other women from around the world. She fondly remembers the surprise they generated when they would show up at UN meetings, in rooms overwhelmingly full of men.

“They didn’t know what to make of us,” Ms. Alton recalled. “You could sense them wondering, ‘Who are these women, so knowledgeable and interested in disarmament issues?’

“The more we surprised them, the more determined we became.”

Davis Carr said her grandmother was a very warm and generous person with a sense of humour but also very practical, frank and unsentimental. When their summer visits in Geneva would come to a close and Ms. Carr got emotional saying goodbye, wondering if it would be the last time they’d see each other, Ms. Ballantyne would tell her to “buck up.”

Ms. Ballantyne loved reading mysteries, doing The Globe and Mail’s New Year’s giant crossword puzzle, and watching tennis and downhill skiing. She also liked serving meals around her dining room table, with lots of wine and cheese and discussions of world events.

“During our visits and FaceTime conversations we always talked about what was going on in the world and she was absolutely devastated,” Ms. Carr said. “She wanted to die with the world better than what it was and it’s just not and it really upset her.

“I feel a very deep responsibility and obligation to continue that work because of who she was and everything she’s done.”

Ms. Ballantyne has said that some of her friends thought she was an idealist for thinking humanity could live in peace, a moniker she disagreed with.

“I just think that’s what we’re capable of and life is so much better that way than to be fighting one another all the time or competing with one another or trying to be better than someone else,” she said in the WILPF interview.

She truly believed that the struggle for a better world was what kept her alive. But it was something, she said, that wasn’t going to just happen on its own.

“These things can be done and I think it’s up to the people to go out and demand it,” she said in the WILPF interview. “It’s not going to be given; we have to fight for it.”

Ms. Ballantyne inspired countless peace activists, and had a knack for listening calmly to those who disagreed with her.

At the world conference in Nairobi in 1985, which marked the end of the UN decade for women, Ms. Ballantyne was instrumental in the creation of a “peace tent” where daily sessions were held to discuss the effect of war on women and children.

“Even in her final years, her dedication to justice and peace never faltered,” Sylvie Ndongmo, president of WILPF, said in a statement. “We will carry her baton with pride, running with unwavering resolve along the trail she illuminated.”

Seeds for the WILPF were planted 100 years ago, in 1915, in the midst of war, by women in the suffrage movement. More than a thousand women from 12 countries gathered at The Hague to protest war – an incredible achievement given the difficulty of transportation and communication at the time. Three years later, when the war ended, they gathered in Zurich to establish the WILPF. They disagreed with the Versailles Treaty, which forced the losers of the war to pay reparations, arguing that this just laid the groundwork for yet more conflict.

Eighty years after the WILPF was founded in The Hague, Ms. Ballantyne was awarded the Gandhi Peace award in 1995 and the first International Peace Woman Award in 2003.

Despite having no formal education, she was an early adopter of technology and was able to send e-mails and use FaceTime until soon before her death.

She lived until recently in the modest apartment in Geneva where she raised her children. With her eyesight failing, she then moved into a retirement home, where she was still able to maintain her independence with help from an army of friends.

“One of the amazing things about my mother is she had friends from all generations,” Morna Ballantyne said. “She was always surrounded by people who, quite honestly, adored her and would do anything for her and not out of any sense of obligation or pity, but because they wanted to be part of her life.”

Right to the end, Edith Ballantyne’s belief in the ability for humans to achieve peace never faltered, even in the face of deteriorating democracy in the United States and elsewhere.

“She really loved life and I’m convinced that she lived as long as she did because she just had an incredible attitude,” Morna Ballantyne said.

“She believed really passionately and sincerely in humanity. She dedicated her life to making the world a better place and she never, ever gave up hope.”