Oh no! Adele’s gone? How can we possibly manage without her?

When a truly important member of your community dies, that’s your reaction. There are at least twenty members of the Canadian Pugwash Group who felt that way about Adele. She was the stalwart who knew the most and was invariably kind and helpful. There’s insufficient room for the many tributes that Pugwashites have expressed, but here’s part of Robin Collins’s affectionate obituary of our dear friend.

Dr. Adele Buckley was a long-time member of the Canadian Pugwash Group, and over several decades she had been Chair and Treasurer, expert in CPG bylaws detail and obligations, minder of our investments, and also a member of the International Pugwash Council.

Adele was a physicist, engineer, and environmental scientist, a visionary leader and a true pioneer in disarmament and environmental sustainability. She was a founding partner of Sciex, the developer and manufacturer of mass spectrometry systems, which now has extensive worldwide installations. Formerly, she was V.P. of Solarchem Environmental Systems, (a developer of ultraviolet light [UVB] systems used to remove environmental contaminants in water), and formerly V.P. Technology and Research, Ontario Centre for Environmental Technology Advancement.

She is perhaps best known in Pugwash circles for her championing the campaign for a nuclear-weaponfree zone in the Arctic, part of CPG’s Arctic Security project. The Arctic is a region she was committed to protect, and she presented the ANWFZ proposal at numerous international conferences and in six countries since 2007.

The Canadian Pugwash Group is affiliated with the international Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. That organization, founded in 1957 in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, relies on scientists and other experts to work towards peace and global security through dialogue, and with a focus on nuclear disarmament and the responsible use of science and technology. The International movement and its founder Joseph Rotblat were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.

Adele’s leadership extended beyond Pugwash, serving on the advisory board of Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (recently renamed Canadian Leadership for Nuclear Disarmament), and the Global Issues Project, both of these efforts are now projects of the Canadian Pugwash Group. We all miss Adele every day!