Fonds F0348 - Consortium for Peace Studies fonds

In response to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, George Melnyk and a group of faculty members at the University of Calgary formed the ad hoc Committee to establish a Peace Centre in 2004. The original name for the body was the Canadian Centre for Peace and Human Security (CCPHS) but was later changed to the Consortium for Peace Studies (CPS). The Consortium was founded in May 2005 with the mission statement of a reduction of the human and environmental cost of violence "through outstanding scholarship, applied research and education in peace studies." The Consortium also sought to foster partnerships for a secure, healthy and creative global environment. Major goals of the Consortium were the establishment of a peace prize, an annual lecture, a visiting fellowship, publishing program, and the establishment of a Bachelor in Peace Studies program.

The Consortium moved to Mount Royal University in spring 2015. While the Consortium as such would no longer exist, the Peace Prize was retained, and a minor in Peace and Violence Studies was established. In 2017, Mount Royal University created the John de Chastelain Peace Studies Initiative.

George Melnyk is a western Canadian writer and historian. Raised and educated in Winnipeg in the 1950s, he has spent most of his life in Alberta. He holds a BA (Hons) History from the University of Manitoba, an MA History from the University of Chicago and an MA Philosophy from the University of Toronto. In the 1970s he served as editor of NeWest Review and publisher of NeWest Press in Edmonton. In the 1980s he served as the executive director of the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations and the Alberta Foundation for the Literary Arts. He was also involved with the co-op movement publishing several books on the movement plus two newsletters.

He began instructing in the Canadian Studies Program at the University of Calgary in 1993 and retired as a full professor of Film Studies in 2016. He has published books on Canadian cinema and is the author of the two-volume Literary History of Alberta and co-editor of several books on Alberta literature. In 2013 he was awarded THE GOLDEN PEN AWARD for lifetime achievement by the Writers Guild of Alberta. From 2013 to 2016 he served as the treasurer of the Writers Union of Canada. He has served on the Board of Directors of PEN CANADA and as Chair of the Writers Union of Canada’s Freedom and Rights Committee (2018).