by Jill Campbell-Miller
On June 1, 2026 the Canadian Network for Humanitarian History (CNHH) sponsored the panel “Tools for Peace, Solidary Movements, and Archives in Emergencies” at the Canadian Historical Association-Société historique du Canada (CHA-SHC) Annual Meeting. The CNHH is approaching ten years of being an affiliated committee of the CHA-SHC, bringing together scholars who examine themes related to Canada’s history in the humanitarian space.
This year’s panel included two presentations by founding members of the CNHH, Dominique Marshall and Kevin Brushett. A third planned presenter, David Webster, was in Timor-Leste in March and June to work with members of the new Department of History at their National University (UNTL). Supported by a UNESCO contract, Webster helped the Department draft a strategic plan and acquire resources, including books on History for the UNTL library. A new series of historical books by Timorese historians is also in the works after this project.
Dominique Marshall, “Stewardship, Preservation and Uses of Refugee Archives in a Time of Disappearance, Corruption and Technological Obsolescence: Strategic Work and Ideas at the Humanitarian Archive Emergency Project”
Dominique Marshall has been leading efforts within Canada to preserve and archive the records of organizations and people working within humanitarian organizations and government in Canada for many years. That work brought her to connect with the Humanitarian Archive Emergency (HAE) at Manchester University. Bringing together Information Technology specialists, development aid workers and volunteers, librarians, archivists, and historians linked to humanitarianism, this group is working to respond to the drastic cuts of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), United Nations High Commission of Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). As the many organizations impacted by these cuts refocused to “food and shelter” issues, the administrative and record-keeping aspects of their works has been put aside. Access to data sets maintained by organizations such as USAID were suddenly cut off, as was access to archives.
The HAE is stepping in where possible to save records at risk of disappearing. Though historians may immediately think about the practical consequences of this work, this group has consciously focused on the ethical implications of archival disappearance. Such mass disappearance is characterized by the HAE as a betrayal of trust, both to those that entrusted their information to such organizations while accessing any services they provide, and to the donors and public at large who contribute through taxes. From there, Dominique discussed individuals involved in the project who represent the various facets of the group’s expertise, and their individual areas of focus, which range from academics using large datasets for research to former practitioners with on-the-ground experience in the field. She also summarized the HAE’s future plans, which includes holding four workshops in the Global South to provide humanitarian workers with training around the tools and frameworks of maintaining depositories of information.
Kevin Brushett, “Tools for Peace: Canadian Solidarity Movements & the Wars for Central America, 1979-1991”
The second presentation by Kevin Brushett (whose book Mirrors of a Generation: The Company of Young Canadians, Youth Activism, and Community Development: 1965-1976 was recently released by McGill-Queen’s University Press) delved into the history of the “Tools for Peace” (T4P) movement, a Canadian effort to support the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua through the 1980s and early 1990s. Though the Sandinistas had overthrown the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua in the late 1970s, the Revolutionary government continued to face challenges in implementing their socialist policies of reform, not least due to the US-supported counter-revolutionary forces that worked against them as well as the cancellation of US aid to the country. Brushett argued that the Tools for Peace movement formed a broad-based coalition across political lines in Canada, partly attracted by a shared sentiment against US imperialism. At its height, T4P had 125 chapters across the country. Its origins are in the British Columbia Labour movement in Canada, whose members toured Nicaragua in 1981 and found a void that they thought could be filled with “people-to-people” solidarity. They founded the “Boat Project,” and filled a boat with goods that were delivered to Nicaragua, beginning an annual campaign collecting money and material goods. This initial effort brought in a broad-based coalition including organizations such as CUSO, women’s groups, churches, and labour. Working directly with the Sandinista government to determine which goods which be collected and how they would be distributed, T4P attracted interest from what might seem like unlikely parts of the country, including the union-centric Cape Breton coal miners. These miners found common cause with Nicaraguans from their own experiences, having experience with their lives being controlled by outside corporate interests. Official Canadian policy, meanwhile, tacitly supported the Revolution in the hopes of avoiding a “second Cuba.”
Though broadly-based, T4P was not without its challenges. One issue that Brushett found in the records was a mismatch between what the Sandinista government or Nicaraguans wanted, and what Canadians were willing to give. Medical supplies arrived expired, or equipment was unrepairable due to a lack of replacement parts. Another issue was a mismatch between the on-the-ground volunteers and the organizers. While there were plenty of volunteers, there were few willing to organize, and the “same twelve people” ended up carrying the load of the administrative and practical work of the shipments. The final blow came in 1990 election, when the Nicaraguan population voted against the Sandinistas. Brushett described how some Canadian organizers felt betrayed by this shocking election result, after giving much of their personal time and resources to the T4P Movement. Despite this, it was not until 1996 that the final T4P committees in Ontario folded.
Brushett’s work was made possible by the organizers of the T4P who donated their papers to the William Ready Archives at McMaster University Archives, and he’s recently learned of a second group of materials in British Columbia. His ability to write about this important, broad-based movement that reached across Canadian society and geography is a direct result of the donors who had the foresight to know that what they had was worth preserving, and the archivists who maintain the collection. In this way, the CNHH panel this year reached across the discipline by reminding us of what is lost when such records disappear, and what is richly gained when they are available.
CNHH members are already looking ahead to the next CHA-SCH Annual Meeting, which will be held in Winnipeg. If you are interested in contributing to a panel, please get in touch at aidhistory.canada@gmail.com
