Building Peace, One Circle at a Time

An event May 7th for a Charity you should know about.

There are organizations you admire from a distance, and then there are the ones that get under your skin in the best possible way. Peacebuilders Canada is the latter.

It started, as so many good things in my life do, with Geneviève Marentette. She introduced me to Eva Marszewski, the founder of Peacebuilders, and the rest, as they say, is history still being written. Eva is a Venezuelan-born lawyer of Polish-Ukrainian heritage who came to Toronto as a teenager not speaking a word of English, navigated the often-brutal social architecture of high school as an outsider, and emerged from that experience not bitter but enlightened. She went on to attend a Harvard mediation workshop in 1992, one of the first of its kind in North America, and something clicked. Years later, she founded Peacebuilders in 2003, transforming her insight into an organization committed to changing the youth justice system from one that punishes and harms young people to one that supports and empowers them.

Peacebuilders uses restorative practices to keep young people out of the criminal justice system, make schools safer for learning and development, and build stronger, healthier communities. Their programs provide alternatives to young people facing criminal charges, in conflict at school, or confronting issues in their community. The core tool is the Peacebuilding Circle, a restorative dialogue process that sounds deceptively simple and is, in practice, quietly revolutionary, and based on First Nations tradition.

The results speak for themselves. Peacebuilders has diverted over 1,200 youth from the courts and reduced school suspensions by up to 80%. Those are not statistics. Those are human lives, redirected.

Working with Eva is one of the genuine pleasures of my Toronto existence. She is organized, generous, direct, and unfailingly warm. Her husband Chris is cut from the same cloth. I was asked to help with a show at Koerner Hall that featured my dear friend David Clayton Thomas, and the whole experience confirmed something I already suspected: this is a charity that runs the way a good band plays. Everyone knows their part and they play it with conviction.

DCT is, of course, one of the greatest rock voices this country has ever produced. His legendary work with Blood Sweat and Tears recently inspired an incredible documentary. He won a Grammy over the Beatles once! He had his own encounters with the law when he was young, and he knows from the inside what it means to need a second chance and to actually get one. That is not a small thing. Throwing a young person into the machinery of the prison system is not rehabilitation; it is a near-guarantee of further trouble down the road. Traditional punitive approaches in the youth justice system often perpetuate cycles of negativity, failing to address the root causes of youth crime. David understands this in his bones, which is why his involvement with Peacebuilders feels not like celebrity philanthropy but like personal conviction.

I am happy to spread the word. Not only because I love Eva and Chris, but because this organization makes logical, moral, and practical sense in a world that is sometimes short on all three.

The 22nd Annual Spring for Peace Gala is coming up on May 7, 2026, at the Atrium at Ricarda’s, 134 Peter Street, Toronto, starting at 6:30 pm. There will be delectable cuisine, delightful wines, cocktails, thrilling auctions, and activations designed to showcase the profound impact of Peacebuilders’ community work and programming. It is not just a fundraiser. It is a good night out in support of something that genuinely matters.

Get your tickets at springforpeace.ca. Tell them Jaymz sent you

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