About the
Toronto Peace Academy

The Toronto Peace Academy is an initiative of the Toronto Chinese Mennonite Church (TCMC). Founded by Rev. Winfred Soong and Jean Soong in 1980, TCMC has been a place of peace from the beginning. In a 1996 interview with the Toronto Star newspaper, Rev. Soong explained that “because Mennonites emphasize peace, it’s especially attractive to Chinese who have suffered a great deal as a result of war.” Today, TCMC continues to be a place where people who desire peace can find community and belonging.

Mennonites are a part of the Anabaptist tradition of Christianity, which emerged in 16th century Europe and is now practiced across the world. Anabaptism is a movement rooted in obedience to the nonviolent teachings of Jesus and the conviction that the decision to follow in his path must be free of coercion.¹ We believe reconciliation sits at the heart of the message of Jesus and that we have been given a responsibility to pursue reconciliation, or “deep peacemaking”, in our world.² Our aim is that the Toronto Peace Academy can be a place where people of faith and people of good will can learn about, practice, and promote peace together.³

The Toronto Peace Academy was created in 2025 by Joshua Lash-Ballew, after joining pastoral staff at TCMC in 2024. Joshua is a conflict resolution practitioner and peace educator from Macau, China who recently settled in Canada. We welcome opportunities to collaborate and do the work of peace together. Please reach out through the Contact page if you would like to get in touch.

Territorial Acknowledgement

We acknowledge this land we inhabit is the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We honour their history, the treaties that guide us, and the Sewatokwa’tshera’t (Dish With One Spoon) covenant, which teaches us to share resources and care for the earth and one another.

We acknowledge that the land we are on today was purportedly sold by the Mississaugas of the Credit to the British Crown in 1787, that a deed documenting the sale was found years later without description of the land “purchased”, and that the deed did not have the marks of the chiefs who had supposedly agreed to the sale, rather, their marks had been written on separate pieces of paper and then affixed to the blank deed.¹ We acknowledge the efforts of our neighbours, the Mississaugas of the Credit, over the centuries to right this territorial wrong and those subjects of the Crown and others who recognized this wrong and themselves worked toward its righting in their own ways. We acknowledge the Toronto Purchase Claim, which was filed by our neighbours, the Mississaugas of the Credit, and eventually settled by the Government of Canada in the year 2010.

We commit to remembering history: the history of our heritage and the history we inherit when in a new land. We commit to remembering the deeper truth of good relations before war, before treachery, deceit, and selfishness. We commit to remembering the deeper truth of good relations that persist and are possible during war, during times of treachery, deceit, and selfishness. We commit to remembering the deeper truth of good relations after war, when repair, restoration, and reconciliation are the duties of us all. We commit, at all times, to being in good relation with each other, with our neighbors, and with our supposed enemies, such that peace may be our guide and justice our companion.

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1. Although Anabaptists have been characterized by a rejection of violence from the beginning, a diversity of views has always existed in the movement. For an example of violent Anabaptists see, McDaniel Jr, C. A. (2007). Violent yearnings for the Kingdom of God: Münster’s militant anabaptism. Belief and bloodshed: Religion and violence across time and tradition (pp. 63-79). Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. For an understanding of how Mennonite approaches to peace have changed in recent history, see Driedger, L., & Kraybill, D. B. (1994). Mennonite peacemaking: From quietism to activism. Herald Press. and Stutzman, E. R. (2011). From Nonresistance to Justice: The Transformation of Mennonite Church Peace Rhetoric, 1908-2008. MennoMedia, Inc.

2. In Christian scriptures, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 identifies the primary message and ministry of Christians as that of reconciliation. A distillation of Anabaptism, in which reconciliation is identified as the "center of our work", can be found in Becker, P. (2017). Anabaptist essentials: Ten signs of a unique Christian faith. MennoMedia, Inc. A description of reconciliation as “deep peacemaking” is found in Ramsbotham, O., Miall, H., & Woodhouse, T. (2011). Contemporary conflict resolution. (p. 286). Polity.

3. The Mennonite peace theorist and peacebuilder, John Paul Lederach has advocated for a dual view of reconciliation as focus and locus, that is, a way of seeing the world and as a place of encounter. See Lederach, J. P. (1997). Sustainable reconciliation in divided societies. Washington, DC: USIP.

4. “The Toronto Purchase Treaty, No. 13 (1805) – Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation,” Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, November 3, 2020, https://mncfn.ca/the-toronto-purchase-treaty-no-13-1805/.