The Rev. Peter Hamel honoured with posthumous King Charles III Coronation Medal
The late Rev. Peter Hamel, Anglican priest, environmental activist and former national affairs consultant for the Anglican Church of Canada, has been posthumously awarded the King Charles III Coronation Medal for a lifetime of outstanding service in environmentalism, Indigenous rights and social justice.
Those close to Hamel remember him as a tireless advocate for local, national and international causes. He fought for everything from Indigenous land rights to the abolishment of apartheid to natural conservation and the wildlife sanctuary he helped found near Masset, B.C.
“Really, he was a warrior against evil,” said a former colleague, retired dean Peter Elliott.
Hamel was born and raised in Hamilton, Ont., where he developed an avid interest in birding from a young age, a passion which would stay with him for the rest of his life. He earned two bachelor’s degrees—in arts from McMaster and theology from Wycliffe—and master’s degrees in arts from Trinity College, Cambridge and environmental studies from York University. He was ordained in 1964 and served as a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada for 60 years. His parishes included St. John’s Anglican Church and Grace Church on the Hill, both in Toronto, where he served as an assistant curate shortly after his ordination.
In 1970, Hamel accepted a position at Bishop Turker Theological College in Mukono, Uganda, shortly before dictator Idi Amin came to power. What followed were stressful years, says Hamel’s wife, Margo Hearne, during which he heard from friends in Uganda about their family members whom Amin had killed and thrown to crocodiles. Hamel even had his own car stolen at gunpoint by Amin’s men. On his return to Canada in 1973, he served as a lecturer and chaplain at Carleton University until 1977, when he was hired as a consultant on national affairs for Social Action Ministry at General Synod.
Elliott, who was Hamel’s manager during that time, says Hamel was fiercely dedicated and approached his work with an urgency that didn’t always suit the hierarchical structure of church management. “He regularly overspent his budget in travel. He was everywhere. He was just everywhere,” says Elliott. “He worked marathon hours. The guy was just hugely devoted to causes.”
Hamel worked especially closely with the Task Force on the Churches and Corporate Responsibility, an ethical investment partnership between Canadian churches. At the time, it was working on holding companies to account for their involvement in South African apartheid, which included sending church representatives to companies the church was invested in to demand answers from company officials.”
He also worked closely with the Aboriginal Rights Coalition, a partnership of Canadian churches formed in the 1980s to promote justice in Indigenous land rights. Elliott says one night Hamel came into his office saying he needed to book a last-minute flight to Alberta so he could be present for the trial of Milton Born With A Tooth, an Indigenous rights activist who had been arrested in protests against damming the province’s Oldman River. The flight would put him over budget for the year, he said, but he told Elliott, “They’re going to throw Milton in jail … If the church isn’t with people like him, what are we doing?”
Elliott approved the expense. “He kind of [lived] like everything’s an emergency, because in a lot of ways, once you begin looking at the world through the lens that he looked at, frankly, everything is an emergency. The earth is being violated, Indigenous rights are being trampled upon.”
He also travelled every year to B.C.’s Haida Gwaii to do the annual Christmas Bird Count for Audobon, for which General Synod paid his plane fare—despite grumblings from upper management at the time, says Elliott. When he asked Hamel about the trips, he says, Hamel told him, “You follow the birds and you learn about what’s happening to the land. You learn about where the environmental impacts are because the birds will move. They will no longer settle into place because of pollution or environmental practices. And also you learn about the Indigenous folks because the Indigenous people follow the birds as well.’”
In 1993, cuts to General Synod’s budget resulted in the elimination of Hamel’s position, says Elliott, and the church worked out a deal arranging for him to work in Masset, B.C., placing him in his beloved Haida Gwaii, where he served as rector at St. Paul’s Church. While there, says Hearne, he worked with her and others in the community to restore the Delkatla Wildlife Sanctuary, a local refuge centred on an estuary which had been blocked off and turned to fresh water by a causeway that blocked the tides. Hamel, Hearne and others raised $1 million to replace the causeway across the estuary with a small bridge, allowing the salt water back in and restoring the wildlife habitat to its original state. He and Hearne also built a nature centre on the land for visitors, which they operated for 25 years.
Hamel was a lifelong friend of the Haida community on Haida Gwaii, says Hearne, with whom he had stood in solidarity in the 1980s when together they protested an increase in logging on the islands. She says he stood on protest lines with them, advocated for those who were arrested as a witness in court and supported them in prayer.
Hamel’s life of constant volunteering and advocacy also put him in touch with several noteworthy historical figures, Hearne says. He met Archbishop Jakaliya Luwum of the Church of Uganda, who was killed by Idi Amin for standing up to his dictatorship; President John F. Kennedy of the United States (at an event dedicated to Operation Crossroads Africa, a nonprofit which sends volunteers to work on projects in Africa); and King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, with whom he discussed environmental issues on board the Royal Yacht Britannia. The passion Hamel and the King shared for environmental issues made it particularly appropriate to nominate him for the medal, which Hearne did herself, she says. She wanted to see him recognized for a life spent in fierce and constant advocacy of what he believed in.
“He stood his ground, he knew what was right, he kept his word, and he kept things honest,” she says.
