BRUNSWICK — PeaceWorks will host its final Peace Fair Saturday, Aug. 3, at the Town Mall, where the organization’s work toward peace and justice over its 15-year run will be highlighted.

PeaceWorks will host its 15th and final Peace Fair Aug. 3 in Brunswick.

“The committee is getting smaller and older, and we have decided that we will turn it over to somebody else,” event organizer Christine DeTroy said in a phone interview July 31. “This is the end of the run for us, and we will continue working with individuals to reach peace.”

DeTroy said the group started planning the fairs after seeing a similar model in Florida. The first fair was held in 2005 to call attention to the 60-year anniversary of the end of World War II.

“Specifically, we wanted to call attention to this year with a reading of a play to look at the first time that nuclear bombs were used in a war,” she said.

Saturday’s fair will begin at 10 a.m. with remarks and awards, and a reading of “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes,” a book about a girl who lived through the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, and later died of leukemia.

The keynote speaker will be artist Robert Shetterly, who will present portraits he has made as part of his “Americans Who Tell The Truth” series. PeaceWorks will also facilitate group discussions on health care, nuclear weapons and waste, New Mainers and immigration, and intergenerational activism.

Advertisement

The event, which is free and open to the public, is scheduled to end at 3 p.m. with music by DeTroy’s family.

DeTroy said no one has yet offered to take over the fair, but PeaceWorks will still host events to continue the discussions about peace and justice.

PeaceWorks sponsors many public events and we continue to look at our responsibility toward eliminating war and looking at the environment,” DeTroy said. “We continue discussing these issues. We’ve done this for 15 years and can acknowledge that we do not have peace and there is still war.”

Just because this the last fair hosted by PeaceWorks “does not mean that we stop working toward peace and justice and expressing our thoughts.”

“The fact that we have put it on for all of these years and that we’ve had enough people that are interested in working on it has been a great success to us,” DeTroy said. “Our main focus over the years is that it begins with all of us at home in our neighborhood community. I do this from a pacifist viewpoint so that we are respectful to one another and we can all learn.”


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.