“Voice of Women, like Janis Alton, guide peace movement, says John Stewart
Peacemaker Alton continues long Mississauga tradition
In recognition of Alton’s stalwart work, she was recently awarded the Ursula Franklin Award.
By: John Stewart of The Mississauga News
If Helen Tucker was Mississauga’s dynamo of peace, then Janis Alton is its soft-spoken sentinel.
Alton, 86, was first mesmerized by the “flamboyant’ Tucker in the 1970s when they were parishioners at the Unitarian Congregation.
Tucker inspired her protégé to take up peace studies at Erindale College (now UTM) and take on a lifelong pursuit of international disarmament.
“She was a woman really ahead of her time,” Alton said on Tucker’s death in 1998. “She used to leave us shaking our heads. Helen was talking about a people’s assembly at the UN when the rest of us were just talking about trying to get the UN doors open to Non-Government Organizations.”
Tucker co-founded the peace organization Voice of Women (VOW) in 1960, a group Alton has co-chaired for much of the past 30 years.”
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