Andrew Clarke

I joined the World Federalists of Canada on October 15, 1960, and have now been a member for over 43 years ago. At the time I joined the organization I was a young Royal Canadian Air Force officer stationed at Air Force headquarters in Ottawa and, as a military college graduate with early career success, I was assured of a promising career. A few years earlier I had reached the conclusion that international peace and security based upon nuclear deterrence, although considered essential at the time, was a short term expedient at best. A future for civilization on planet earth required no less than the abolition of war and its replacement by a system of enforceable world law. (My Air Force Staff College thesis was on this subject. It was published in booklet form by the World Federalist Foundation in 1965.) My chance discovery that an organization existed which supported the resolution of international differences through world law, supported by the institutions of government at the world level, produced an immediate response: I joined — and for the next 13 years my active support of the World Federalists of Canada became my chief preoccupation in life. Sixty and even 80 hour weeks were not uncommon.

Upon learning some of the particulars of WFC in the late fall of 1960 and early 1961 I at first became disheartened. The organization’s numbers were few and many of the members I met in Ottawa appeared well meaning but I judged lacked the necessary organizational skills essential for building an effective organization. It was only after I attended WFC’s first national conference, held in June 1961 in the village of St. Sauveur, Quebec, and meeting Bill Sheehan, Norman Alcock, Geoff Edge, Warren Allmand and others, that I decided to give WFC my active support.

During the summer of 1961 I became the leading branch activist in Ottawa (I was an Air Force Squadron Leader by day and an exceedingly active World Federalist by night), and during the next two years, with the help of Virginia McDonald, Eric Inch, Tom Hall, Ernie Nickel and others, we increased the 50 member Ottawa branch to over 300 members. Under Bill Sheehan’s leadership as National President, and later Geoff Edge, similar growth occurred in several other cities. With a national organization growth from about 400 members in June 1961 to some 1,500 members during early 1963, it was agreed that staff should be employed to help manage the rapidly growing organization. At the request of Bill Sheehan and the then National Executive in Montreal, I established WFC’s first National Office in Ottawa during the summer of 1963.

In the fall of 1965, WFC persuaded the Federal Government to grant me an early retirement from the RCAF to allow me to become WFC’s Executive Director. Leaving the Air Force and the security it provided my family was a high risk decision. Fortunately, success in this new venture was not long in coming and during the next three years we recruited close to 3,000 new members. Almost overnight, WFC became a “young” organization with active branches in about 20 cities across Canada. Although membership growth was given a high priority, the rapidly growing movement also developed a volunteer team of policy and political action leaders which, among other initiatives, was influential in increasing the Canadian World Federalist Parliamentary Association to over 100 Members of Parliament and Senators.

In April 1968 I was asked by Norman Cousins, then President of the World Association of World Federalists (now the World Federalist Movement), to become Secretary General of WAWF, and I served the organization in this capacity for over five years.