HALIFAX - A half century after American scientist Paul Doty joined colleagues from around the world in a small Nova Scotia village to discuss the threat of nuclear war, he makes a grim prediction that suggests the risk of such a menacing attack is still very real today.
Doty came to Pugwash in the summer of 1957, one of 22 scientists invited by a local-born philanthropist to discuss the dangers posed by nuclear weapons during the height of the Cold War.
While the number of nuclear warheads has been dropping over the past 20 years - the current figure still stands at roughly 27,000 worldwide -- Doty says the possibility of one being detonated is increasing as more countries develop them or modernize their stockpiles.
"I think we probably will lose a city or two in the next 10 or 20 years," says Doty, 87, in an interview from Boston.
"One cannot imagine the return of the kind of threat we had in the Cold War, which was the loss of civilization. What we do look forward to is a much lower-level possibility. The proliferation of terrorist groups and countries that have access to a couple of weapons is growing."
The Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs will return to the community this weekend to mark its anniversary, bringing together two dozen scientists, diplomats and former military personnel. Among them will be Senator Romeo Dallaire; former senator Douglas Roche; and Tadatoshi Akiba, the mayor of Hiroshima, Japan, where one of only two nuclear bombs was ever used as a weapon.
The movement has its roots in a manifesto penned in 1955 by Albert Einstein and British author Bertrand Russell, calling for scientists to examine the dangers of nuclear war and adopt a resolution urging governments to disarm.
After plans for such a meeting in India fell apart, Pugwash-born philanthropist Cyrus Eaton offered to fund a conference at his summer home in northern Nova Scotia, now known as the Thinkers' Lodge.
Doty recalls the first meeting was significant not just for what was discussed -- such as the cancer risks of nuclear fallout - but for the co-operation among the scientific community it represented and the hundreds of future meetings it spawned.
"The egg was laid - the demonstration that it was possible to have coherent, honest and non-politicized discussions about a common danger," he says. "And that gave rise to a whole subculture of East-West discussions outside of government meetings."
The Pugwash movement and Joseph Rotblat, a scientist who was instrumental in organizing the 1957 conference, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.
This weekend's conference in Pugwash will produce a letter to governments around the world, pressing the need to dismantle existing nuclear arsenals.
Many of the Canadian participants hope the event will serve as a wake-up call for Ottawa, which some have complained has failed to take a strong stand against nuclear arms.
Dallaire, the retired general who led a UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, says Canada must demand that its allies disarm. He says pressure needs to be particularly focused on the United States and NATO, which has strategic policies that involve nuclear weapons.
The reluctance of world powers to get rid of their nuclear arms only encourages countries such as North Korea and Iran to pursue their own, says Dallaire.
The Liberal senator, who passed a motion in the upper chamber earlier this year calling on Canada to take a "global leadership role" on the issue, will be watching a speech Saturday night by Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay for any sign that Ottawa is getting the message.
"I'm looking for him to say that we're going to talk with our big brother down south, and we're going to try and get him to focus not only on non-proliferation, but in the logic of looking at disarmament," says Dallaire.
He says politicians and the public need to realize the nuclear threat didn't die at the end of the Cold War.
"If I'm looking for a violation of my human rights -- particularly my right to security -- it's knowing that all these guys have kept all those (nuclear weapons) only because that's giving them a certain position of power," says Dallaire.
Douglas Roche, who was Canada ambassador for disarmament to the United Nations in the 1980s, says there are opportunities for Canada and the international community to make progress on nuclear disarmament through indirect political pressure and in more formal settings such as the 2010 review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"The dangers posed by nuclear weapons are worse today than they were during the Cold War," says Roche, a former Conservative MP and senator who also sits on the Pugwash Peace Exchange advisory council.
"It is this second nuclear age we've entered, in which all the nuclear states are modernizing their nuclear weapons instead of getting rid of them. This subject should be given a higher political priority today so that more of the world spotlight goes on it."
