The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 10

THE VANCOUVER SUN, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 20i WESTCOAST NEWS THE DAILY SPECIAL II r1- mm 1 Tworl me) we orib reifl Si sw rl sJ iW 9 IW lb 7 A (1 "I 4- J. MARK VAN MANENVANCOUVER SUN Jennifer Simons, an expert on global disarmament, has donated some $15 million to various peace and disarmament programs. She also supports the arts. USING WEALTH TO INFORM Anyway, she does enjoy other passions. Along with a rigorous schedule of kickboxing, WEEKEND EXTRA FROM B1 fiamencp.qaucing ana j-naies, sne is an apprer some downsides of the military mindset.

Even though Tom supports the goals of the Simons Foundation, Simons sniiles wryly when says: "I make the decisions." In some ways, what Simons does daily is stare boldly into the face of terror. Even though she has enough money to spend all of her life playing tennis and sipping mai tais in Hawaii, she instead has made it her goal to expertly raise warnings about humans' unimaginable capacity to destroy fellow humans. "I have a strong need to work for a better world and that, to me, means a world without war and increasingly cruel weapons; and to rid the world of the dangers which a small group of political and economic power-hungry individuals are subjecting us to," she says. "I just feel fortunate to have money so I can live out my ethical positions and work in ways that I feel strongly about. I am proactive.

I would be following the same path without money, but I have the opportunity to work at a different level with it." Simmering with energy and a self-confessed determination to complete whatever she starts, Simons cites reports, facts and statistics about global weaponry as if they were rhetorical machinegun bullets. officials in the Czech and Slovak republics. Over the years she has developed relationships with former Czech president Vaclav Havel, former Canadian foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy and celebrity anti-landmine activists such as actor Michael Douglas and Queen Noor, the widow of the late King Hussein of Jordan. Ernie Regehr, co-founder of Project Ploughshares, says Simons has been a big influence on international disarmament efforts because of her "deft capacity to focus in on issues and activities that have the potential to yield significant and lasting change." The Simons Foundation put up $450,000 for the 2006 Vancouver Peace Forum. That led Simons to break from her typical behind-the-scenes roles to publicly lambaste Vancouver's Non-Partisan Association councillors for withdrawing $50,000 in funding support At the peace forum, attended by thousands, the soft-spoken Blix received star treatment for having accurately reported that executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had not been hiding weapons of mass destruction, the rationale US.

President George W. Bush and then British prime minister Tony Blair cited for attacking. ncuui vif uic alia, auppuiia uauic lAnuof pfat nies, classical music and art galleries. Through the foundation, for instance, Simons donates to Vancouver's Holy Body Tattoo dance troupe and Flamenco Rosario studio. She is also self-revealing about how her life's work may, at least in part, be trying to heal her own Second World War cliildhood in Australia, -when she had nightmares about being chased; i0q by German and Japanese soldiers wielding guns.

When she was two years old, her father basically disappeared for more than five years to do his bit in the Second World War and its aftermath. It was a frightening time. "My father came back," she says, "but you do harbour those feelings of abandonment." Her own fears of the destruction that can be wrought by advanced weapons were revived when one of her daughters, seven at the time, had nightmares about nuclear war. She thought her child too young to have to fear nuclear Armageddon. As she fights against the expanding horror wielded by arms dealers, what sustains her inner spirit? She's not religious in any institutional sense.

She doesn't believe she'll go to heaven after she dies. 1 But, ever since she learned about Albert Schweitzer in the 1960s, she has been a great admirer of the German-French medical missionary and Lutheran theologian who won the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his philosophy of "reverence for life." As a liberal Christian, Schweitzer vigorously opposed European colonialism and, for the last part of his life, fought the buildup of nuclear weapons with Albert Einstein who helped invent them and the pacifist Welsh philosopher Bertrand RusselL "I'm a bit like Schweitzer, in that I think we have a responsibility to act" to protect human life, she says. The mission statement of the Simons Foundation is a call to arms, so to speak, from Alfred Lord Tennyson's Ulysses: "Come my friends. Tis not too late to seek a newer world." Given her crusade for wider disarmament, I just feel fortunate to have money so I can live out my ethical positions and work in ways that I feel strongly about I am proactive. 1 would be folloning the same path without money, but I have the opportunity to work at a different level with it "I'm so glad Canada didn't go to war in Iraq," Simons says, speaking of one of the few current conflicts involving foreign invasion.

And she doesn't take that position just because Blix, the former United Nations' weapons inspector, was right in 2002 in report-' ing Iraq was not weapons of mass destruction. Like most ethicists, she simply believes the attack on Iraq did not fit the crite-ria of a just war. "I also don't like Canadian troops in Afghanistan," she adds. "I think it's a hopeless situation." The only time a country's military should venture outside its own borders, Simons says, is to conduct internationally sanctioned peace operations. "I think if Canadian troops were in Afghanistan for peacemaking, or peace-building, it would be much better than the aggressive role they're playing now.

We were famous for our peacemaking, which was initiated by (former Liberal prime minister) Lester Pearson. But now Canada is following lockstep with US. policies." Key player internationally Even though Simons as a toddler had nightmares about military violence during the Second World War and marched in Vancouver's peace marches in the late 1980s, her geopolitical analysis goes far beyond a stereotypical peacenik's dislike of any kind of conflict Hers are die carefully considered judgments of a scholar with credentials in the sophisticated world of international law, diplomacy, disarmament and "human security," an emerging field of study distinct from "national security." With a doctorate from Simon Fraser University, Simons has received honorary degrees and been an adjunct professor in international studies at SFU, UBC, the Czech Republic's Charles University and early this September, the University of Queensland in her native Australia, where she's lecturing on prohibiting weaponry. Simons produced a four-part TV documentary for the Knowledge Network on nuclear bombs, landmines, small arms and the peace movement Through substantial donations, she has initiated and funded dozens of SFU and UBC programs, including the Simons Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Research, as well as professorships, lectureships and essay contests centring on ethics, cit-ize iship, international law, development and peace. Despite her self-effacing demeanour, she has also become in the last seven years a key player on the international diplomatic and United Nations scene.

She's expert at funding projects and twisting arms to raise pressure to develop programs to limit all kinds of death-dealing weapons. For instance, Simons used her expertise and money to almost single-handedly persuade the governments of Canada, China, Russia and other nations to take part in continuing conferences to stop the so-called "weaponization of space." She worries about a universe in which satellites are turned into lethal weapons. The US, she says with a resigned shake of the head, was notable for its refusal to attend the conferences. In addition, Simons has developed a special relationship with educational and government might she be one of those people who could be tagged "a patron saint of lost causes?" She goes quiet She's not going to go there. Her answer is simple: "I'm genetically optimistic." She picked up the trait, including boundless energy, she says, from her grandfather and father.

She acknowledges she's been extremely fortunate in her unconventional life. Almost apologetically, she says, Tve never really had a proper job." But she's clearly chosen to go beyond the call of duty. "You have to work on keeping these issues alive; people's attention spans are so short" she says. For what it's worth, neither her four adult children, nor four grandchildren, seem to hold her unusual lifestyle against her. "I think," she says, "they like that I'm not at JENNIFER SIMONS On her need to work for a better world.

Introduced by Simons at last year's conference, Blix released his first Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission report with 60 recommendations, including the outlawing of new nuclear weapons. Via the commission, Blix also warned this summer that the US. and Britain, -by repeatedly threatening to attack Iran, are increasing the chances the Muslim-run country will develop nuclear weapons. For her part, Simons said she agrees former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, who recently said the world is "sleepwalking" toward nuclear proliferation. Even though the number of nuclear weapons has been cut almost in half to 26,000, there are still enough, she says, "to obliterate the world." The U.S.

and Russia's arsenals of nuclear weapons, she says, remain on high alert Family money How does Simons 'do it? In addition to tenacity, expertise and behind-the-scenes cajoling, part of the answer, of course, is money. The crucial wealth that flows out of the Simons Foundation was created in part through. Simons's Australian family of origin. She says her grandfather, a doctor, and her father, a diplomat, were "good investors." However, Simons' family contributions are also matched by her husband, Tom Simons, retired president of HA. Simons Ltd, which was one of the world's largest forestry engineering firms before it was sold in 1998 to Agra Inc.

Tom's a pacifist by nature," says Simons. He served in the US. army in the 1950s and saw 4 She's an expert on nuclear weapons buildup, the whereabouts of millions of unexploded landmines, the spread of small arms such as AK-47s, the horrors of napalm and especially the long-term suffering caused by cluster bombs, which she says are preferred by most militaries to landmines because they drop from the sky, radiating farther than the size of a soccer field. With such weapons, more than 90 per cent of the victims of most modern conflicts are civilians. "Did you know that the US.

dropped 52.8 million cluster bombs on or near villages in Laos during the Vietnam War? Many of them are still tying there, blowing up innocent citizens," she says. Twenty-eight other countries, she says, remain contaminated with unexploded cluster bombs. A few minutes later, she comes out with another grisly fact. "Do you know there is a man who has made a gun that will shoot one million rounds a second? It's an discriminate weapon. I would like to meet that man.

I cannot understand the mindset; does he refuse to acknowledge the outcome of what he's inventing?" Aits patron How does she stand swimming in an ocean of weaponry? She's not exactly sure. "It's absolutely horrible when you think about it" she says. However, Simons refuses to succumb, as most have, to what psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton famously called "psychic numbing," the human capacity to ignore evil that is too much to contemplate. 30U home baking cookies." $01 dtoddpng.canwestjCom 02 e'onsl I6bu3 You can now listen to every Vancouver Son story on our new digital edition.

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