Story By ROTARY INTERNATIONAL

Attending the Rotary International Convention in Calgary next June is a way to ​support peace.

When you walk the House of Friendship, meeting fellow members and learning ​about clubs’ concerns, you add to international understanding. Members spread ​peace when they write their hopes on paper cranes that they suspend from the ​peace tree in the Peace Park exhibit.

Rotary has promoted peace since its early days: At the fifth convention, in ​Houston in 1914 a month before World War One, members voted to back an ​international peace movement.

In Singapore in May, Rotary International marked 25 years since it announced ​the Rotary Peace Centres programme. “To believe in peace is to have hope, and ​to do so, one must be both stubborn and optimistic and be eager to persist and ​make a difference,” Rotary Peace Fellow María Antonia Pérez said.

Conventions inspire action with prominent speakers that have included United ​Nations peace messenger and conservationist Jane Goodall in 2009. Archbishop ​Desmond Tutu, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for opposing apartheid, spoke ​that year at a preconvention peace symposium.

While Rotary has its convention as a peacebuilding symbol, Calgary has its Peace ​Bridge of red metal where thousands of Canadians and visitors walk, bike, and ​stop for selfies each day. Its name memorialises fallen military members’ ​sacrifices.

Inside the convention, the Peace Park by the Rotary Action Group for Peace has ​provided an oasis of contemplation. Plus, in Singapore it had a top snapshot spot ​among a garden of peace poles and paper flowers.

Choose Calgary from June 21st-25th to contribute to a more peaceful world.

The Calgary convention ends on June 25th; stick around for the world famous ​Calgary Stampede, which begins July 4th. Those intervening days are the perfect ​opportunity to take advantage of the unparalleled opportunity to visit a few of ​Alberta’s six UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

• Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks consists of seven contiguous national and ​provincial parks. One of them, Banff, is justly celebrated, but with their ​waterfalls and lakes, their snowcapped mountains and starlit nights, the ​other parks warrant a visit — and perhaps an extended stay.
  
• Over the years, Alberta’s boundless Badlands have yielded a treasure trove of ​Cretaceous jewels. See for yourself at Dinosaur Provincial Park, followed by ​a swing up to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller.
  
• A vivid insight into Plains culture, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is more ​than just the 33-foot-high cliff where, beginning more than 5,500 years ago, ​Indigenous people on the hunt drove bison to their deaths.
  
• Straddling the border between Alberta and Montana and comprising ​Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park and the U.S. Glacier National Park, ​Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park is both a monument to global ​amity and a breathtakingly beautiful natural wonderland.
  
• A sacred Blackfoot site, Áísíai'pi (meaning “it is written” or “it is pictured”), ​also known as Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, is one of the largest ​aggregations of petroglyphs in North America, carved either by the ​Indigenous people who once lived here or by the spirits said to dwell among ​the adjacent hills.
  
• A 14-hour drive from Calgary, the vast Wood Buffalo National Park is home ​to about 3,000 free-range bison, in addition to bears, moose, wolves, owls, ​and whooping cranes. Stargazers take note: It’s also the world’s largest dark ​sky preserve.
  

The 2025 Rotary International Convention in Calgary, from June 21st-25th, is not ​to be missed. Register now at convention.rotary.org. Register by December 15 ​to receive a discount.