Duncan Graham
In winter '93-'94 my wife Maggi and I had retired from Rock Island, Quebec after a career in teaching geography and art (Maggi). We came to Vancouver for four months in a housesitting arrangement to see the family and think about moving permanently to the city.
I had sat in on some world federalist meetings on previous visits with Brian Ruhe as president and been in touch with David Dyment the titular president. However in 1993 the branch was dormant with about 100 members. There had been additions from the merging with Operation Dismantle but the activists had moved on to other fields.
Background. I had been taken with the idea of world government and interplanetary travel since school like others so nothing new. However after emigrating to Toronto from Scotland in 1956 and dismayed by the operations of the United Nations in that year of Suez and the Hungarian uprising against the Soviets I got a few people together to talk about changing the UN. But it was in 1960 that I read in the Toronto paper that former British Prime Minister Clement Attlee had been speaking to a group called the World Federalists. Through the library I got the address and phone of the president, a Dorothy MacGregor, went to their next meeting and joined up. One remark I remember was a man calling the UN a crutch and we should push for world government and no less. This was considered the maximalist route and lost out to the minimalists in an internal debate I had missed.
Moving to Quebec to teach I promoted the idea and formed the Eastern Townships branch in 1960.
Back to Vancouver. I had the theory that the federal constituency should be a natural organizing unit since we were lobbying our MPs for the world political changes. I got a constituency map from the library and going over the membership list from national office I sent out an invitation to come to our temporary Point Grey residence in Vancouver South, I think, with Hedy Fry MP (invited) Two people came - Herb Gilbert, a previous president and with whom I had shared a room at a conference in Victoria and Geraldine Dobson, a long-time supporter. The discussion provided the energy to try another constituency - Vancouver Quadra - with a meeting at my son Malcolm's place on 17th Av. This was the crucial meeting from which all else flowed. Ted McWhinney MP came and spoke on his new experiences as MP in the new Liberal House. Dick Splane, Leonard Angel and Robert Pos came and gave weight to the idea of re-vitalising the branch. I remember more of Shahin Madani, a flashing-eyed Iranian woman who reminded us that meeting and talking like this in Iran (and many other countries) meant putting your life on the line. From this small beginning other meetings followed with Dick Splane, formerly with UBC dept of social work, taking the lead. Maggi and I returned to Quebec in May '94 to eventually sell our house and move to Vancouver.
Regular meetings once a month became the key (I think) and whether there were a dozen or three did not matter. Some meetings were held in my apartment as custodian at the Unitarian church and later the church allowed us the use of the Fireside lounge - an asset for any meetings. Leonard Angel took over as president at one point and opened the meetings with a summary of the WFC credo. A year was spent by a committee of three with Harry Fuller, Wally Cottle (treasurer) and I drafting a branch constitution to be registered in Victoria. In 2002 the first real branch elections were called for over a decade. Larry Kazdan took over from me as secretary and took the branch into the cyber age. Faxing our monthly meeting topic to the media through a fax agency had been our publicity limit up till then. In 2002 the branch had accumulated enough basket donations at meetings to pay my registration to the London, Britain World Federalist Congress in July 02.
