Artists for Peace celebrated this year’s U.N. Peace Day by offering peace lilies to Mona Ghasemi, LM Beauchamp and Marcel Sévigny.
Invited by Sylvie Mérineau, Marie-Anne Alepin—who has led the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal for the past five years—championed our unique culture with a warm welcome speech at the Maison Ludger-Duvernay (dating back to 1834!).
1- The first “Lily for Peace” was awarded to Mona Ghasemi, the young president of the Iranian-Canadian Congress—a particularly poignant moment, as the very next day, Donald Trump threatened her country with total annihilation. Through this gesture, the APLP affirmed that ALL U.N. MEMBER STATES are our friends—especially those under attacks in callous disregard for civilian lives, such as Rima Hassan’s “genocided” Palestine (defended by Francesca Albanese’s UNRWA), as well as Venezuela, Sudan, Yemen, and the Lebanon of our members who inspired the film Incendies, photographer Josée Lambert (99) and playwright Wajdi Mouawad (2007).
Our action was also a tribute to the Canada-Wide Peace and Justice Network (CWJPN), with which we aligned ourselves on November 24, 2024, in opposition to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)—which had come to Montreal to demand that Canada continue its years of bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, while squandering 5% of Canada’s GDP on military spending! Prime Minister Carney agreed to this—committing to F-35s, offensive frigates and German submarines, not to mention billions diverted to gas pipelines and nuclear energy. The APLP were founded in 1983 when Gilles Vigneault, Raôul Duguay, Margie Gillis, Judi Richards and Jean-Louis Roux joined forces in Hamburg with Performing Artists for Nuclear Disarmament (Harry Belafonte, Liv Ullmann).
Pierre Jasmin highlighted the exceptional work of women such as Janine Solanki—who spent two weeks in Cuba last month—Tamara Lorincz (WILPF and Voice of Women, like our late Simonne Monet-Chartrand), and Bianca Mugyenyi (Canadian Foreign Policy Institute) who broadcasted our interview with European observer Benoît Paré; this hero risked his life between 2015 and 2022 in the Donbas—which was being bombarded by the Nazi Azov Battalion [[i]]—rendering senseless the billions of dollars and euros’ worth of weapons handed over to the corrupt Zelensky.
2- The 2025 Artist for Peace of the Year award was presented to artist LM Beauchamp—seen beaming in the center of the photo. Visible on the far left—his face partially obscured by a flower—is her pianist, Salvador Chavajay, with whom she is soon embarking on a tour of France largely subsidized by their hosts. Musician Olivier Brault spent twelve minutes highlighting the various facets of LM’s peace commitments: notably, her 2004 construction of a hotel in Guatemala (now under Mayan hands), where she developed partnerships between schools in the village of San Pedro and student groups in Quebec; her founding of the Jardins bio de Marie and the Beloeil Choir; and her extensive work supporting the production of feminist films such as Les Hommes de ma mère. The audience gave a standing ovation for her selection of beautiful Francophone songs—performed with cellist Julie Lavoie—which are available on her rich platform, Mon œuvre pour la Paix.
3- A posthumous 2025 award was presented to the writer-physician Serge Mongeau—explaining the presence, on the right in the photo, of Marcel Sévigny from ÉCOSOCIÉTÉ publishers. He had come to hear Claude St-Jarre outline Serge’s commitments to “ecosophy” (or the wisdom of nature) and to the cause of a “country without an army,” as well as to discuss the controversy sparked by a bank’s frontal attack on Noir Canada by our friend Alain Deneault—close to Nadia Alexan and Jocelyne Béïque who were present in attendance.
4- Finally, our honorary co-chair Antonine Maillet was warmly honored [[ii]] by our Vice-President for the Arts, Izabella Marengo, for her forty years of commitment to peace—an effort recognized by a rare flash of brilliance from Macron, who awarded her the Legion of Honour. Her fellow Acadian, singer-songwriter Édith Butler, shared a great video with us, and we thank her sincerely…
[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxzHYy4aU7U
Or https://www.artistespourlapaix.org/entrevue-avec-benoit-pare-et-autres-sujets-connexes/
[ii] https://www.artistespourlapaix.org/eloge-funerailles-antonine-maillet/