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A Message of Thanks from the Children’s Peace Theatre

Posted on February 1, 2017, by Loretto Community

By Marcella Hannon Shields

In the spring of 1997, my husband, Eldon Shields, and I were notified that we needed to move the Centre for Creative Ministries, which we had founded in 1984 in Toronto at the invitation of the Passionist Community of Canada. We searched for a new space where we could continue the Compassionate Leadership Program and our other programs dedicated “to promoting compassion and peace for persons, communities and the earth.” It was a very difficult time through which our Loretto Community Group 21 supported us with their incredible kindness and prayers. After we found an old abandoned home in Taylor Creek Park, Loretto Community 21 members traveled all the way to Toronto to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. Ann Patrick Ware led us in a song of blessing through the house which was still in the process of being renovated. The house and the surrounding property belonged to the City of Toronto and had been used as a juvenile detention and treatment center. After the center was closed, the building was boarded up and had been vacant for years. The local children, most of whom were from recent immigrant poor families, thought the house was haunted. We invited them in and gave them a tour of the house, and they in turn became “tour guides” for other local children.

Then one night, I had a startling dream. In it I was in the area we called the lower great hall of the house. There were children there; several of them looked like our former “tour guides.” The hall was flooded with light, and the children were all in costumes. I asked them who they were and what they were doing. They told me proudly, with some amazement that I didn’t know, “We are the Children’s Peace Theatre.” That morning at our weekly Centre team meeting, I told the others my dream. All of them said, “Let’s do it!” As our financial resources were minimal, I knew we would need to find support before this amazing dream could become a reality. So I turned to the Loretto Community, which generously contributed $10,000 from the Mission Fund to initiate the project. I found an artistic director, Robert Morgan, who had experience in children’s theater, who agreed to work with us. I then approached the principals of three local schools and asked if they would be open to having a group of children (ages 10-12) participate. All of them agreed to sending 10 children to our first Children’s Peace Camp in the summer of 2000. Most of the children did not have English as their first language and had experienced conflict and war in their early years before immigrating to Canada. The first performance in July 2000, held outdoors in the restored gardens (to which we had added benches), was a huge success.

Just before the first performance, Betty Obal, then our Loretto UN NGO Office representative, told me that the United Nations had declared the first decade of the new millenium as “The Decade of Peace for Children of the World.” (I was amazed as I did not know this at the time of my dream.) She invited us to consider having the children come to the U.N. to perform at the opening celebration of the U.N. Decade of Peace for the Children of the World set for Sept. 12, 2001. We agreed. The children and their guides were on the train to New York City when they were stopped at the border with the news of the tragedy of the Twin Towers. One of the young Muslim girls, holding back tears, said, “If only they had waited and listened to the children, maybe they would not have done this!” When the children returned to our Centre in Toronto, they worked to prepare a message they could bring to the local Toronto communities.

When Eldon and I retired from our work in Toronto in 2004, the Centre was renamed “The Hannon Shields Centre for Leadership and Peace.” The Children’s Peace Theatre continues to grow and thrive under its new artistic director, Karen Emerson. Now, 17 years after my dream, its mission continues to be “using the arts and artistic creativity as critical tools for personal and social transformation,” with a commitment to be “courageous, compassionate, creative, authentic and very, very humble.” The Conflict Transformation Program we began 16 years ago also continues to be offered by the Peace Theatre staff for school faculties and other interested organizations. The program is based on the belief that “conflict is inevitable and an opportunity for meaningful change.” It is designed to enable participants to experience “conflict as a creative force and peace as a choice.”

This past July, the Children’s Peace Theatre held its 16th Peace Camp experience for 60 children with 10 Peace Theatre staff. The theme of their presentation was titled “I,” raising awareness for the children and their audience of the importance of honoring one another’s identity as sacred regardless of race, ethnicity or origin. The area around the Centre continues to have a large, new immigrant community (more than 64 percent), many of whom come from countries where war and exposure to violence was an everyday experience. The quote on the mission page of the Children’s Peace Theatre website says it clearly: “The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak.” (Cornel West).

In the name of the hundreds of children, many now young adults, and their families who now dare to believe that “peace is possible,” we thank the Loretto Community for its generosity in bringing the dream to a reality! (For further information see www.childrenspeacetheatre.org.)

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