The celebration of peace, life, creativity and the environment on Saturday, September 16 2000

Festival of Peace, a fantastic success!

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If you were with us on Saturday, you already know that the Festival of Peace was a fantastic success! Despite the rain, the lack of media coverage and the difficulty in getting to the Festival of peace, we had a great time!

Participants were inspired and moved by the incredible diversity of speakers who representing so many different organizations and movements. Their talks were filled with humor and spontaneity, as well as profound and deep-felt concerns about a wide range of inter-related issues and causes. We certainly have a wonderful community of progressive activists in Ottawa and it was great to see and hear so many of them in one place!

It was also great to be entertained by such talented poets and musicians. The creative spirit was alive and well at the Festival!

We also used dozens of banners and signs to expose our messages of peace to thousands of war show attendees as they came and went from the spectacle of war technology. This protest dimension of our presence outside the gates of the war show was very important.

We took a big step in the process of building Ottawa's progressive community.

There was a strong consensus amongst those who attended that this should be Ottawa's first annual Festival of Peace!

There was the very impressive line-up of speakers, poets and musicians who participated in the Festival of Peace.