MomenTO: Toronto's Heritage of Innovation - International Service 2017 | Heritage Toronto | 16 October 2017 | Isabel Bader Theatre , 93 Charles Street West Toronto, ON, Canada

Sixty years ago, Lester B. Pearson became the first Canadian to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace, for his contributions to ending the 1952 Suez Crisis as Canada's foreign affairs minister and the President of the United Nations General Assembly. The Toronto-born Pearson won support for sending a United Nations Emergency Force to the Sinai peninsula in Egypt, the first armed, large-scale peacekeeping force. His achievements established peacekeeping as the centrepiece of Canadian international relations for decades to come.

A generation later, Stephen Lewis came to represent Canada's international leadership at the United Nations. Appointed Canada's ambassador to the United Nations in 1984, he later served as Deputy Director of UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) and then as the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa. He was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2003 and awarded the Pearson Peace Medal by the United Nations Association in Canada the following year.

Join Heritage Toronto and the City of Toronto for a conversation between Stephen Lewis and Professor John English, historian and official biographer of Lester Pearson, about the Pearsonian legacy of peacekeeping and the innovative contributions that Canadians have continued to made to diplomacy and humanitarianism. The discussion will be moderated by Nana aba Duncan, host of CBC Radio's Fresh Air.