McLeod Group blog by Rhonda Gossen, October 29, 2025
This book captures the very essence and soul of Canada World Youth (CWY). Author Mark Dickinson, himself a former participant, writes about how youth education, critical thinking and a global vision of development made up the experience of Canada World Youth and achieved something transformational. For many, CWY was “one of the central defining events of their lives” (p. 115). Countless CWY alumni moved into the former Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and made a whole career out of international development starting with CWY.
The book looks at CWY from top to bottom – the vision and thinking behind its creation by Jacques Hébert in 1971, its evolution as an organization and relationship with CIDA, its grassroots experiences and its demise in 2022. How did this flagship informal youth education program based on a spirit of community service, life skills, group dynamics and responsibility come to be, and ultimately not to be?
“It was like this magical organization”, the book quotes former CWY CEO Matthew Pearce on his discovery of CWY in the early ’80s. Pearce continues:
The idea of having young people from around the world come together in rural settings, living with families and working alongside people from their host communities was simultaneously so grounded and sensible, and, at the same time, totally unavailable outside of CWY. You’ll never experience anything like this again because it doesn’t exist. (p. 292)
In that sense, CWY was “radically different” (p. 9) from other volunteer-sending organizations, according to the author, as it was designed as a reciprocal exchange between Canadian youth and those from countries where Canada had development cooperation programs. It introduced participants to ideas about development early on: the realities of inequality, of poverty and differences, of intercultural understanding, including within Canada, all as a way of creating global citizens.
It also challenged Canadians to learn from and understand their own differences – along with those they encountered in people from exchange countries. This element seems even more crucial today, given the changing and fragmented international landscape affecting Canadian identity and cohesion. CWY grew against the backdrop of the dynamics at the time of Quebec within Canada, the Révolution tranquille, the creation of the Parti Québécois and the rise of Quebec nationalism.
Early on, the longstanding friendship between Hébert and Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau was key to getting government financing through CIDA. But this led to CWY’s long-term financial dependency on CIDA. By 2005, according to the book, “the fuse was finally lit… dependency on CIDA’s partnership branch – Canada World Youth’s most significant existential threat – had reached a historic low” (p. 294, italics in original).
There were long debates inside CIDA about whether CWY was really promoting development and therefore eligible for financing. CIDA funding requirements, including reducing CWY administrative footprint and the need to show development results, likely catalyzed change in the organization. The book narrates CWY’s internal governance twists and turns that played out over the decades of its existence, causing several critical upheavals. It describes the many petitions by thousands of alumni to save the organization in the lead-up to its closure in 2022.
At its official inauguration in 1974 at Maison Jeunesse Canada Monde, formerly the Labyrinth pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, CIDA’s then President, Paul Gérin-Lajoie, addressed the crowd:
Development is above all the crossroad of mankind’s needs and hopes, the new and growing capacity of individuals and communities to achieve together, in spite of their differences, a better quality of life and greater happiness… which cannot be assessed in terms of quantitative returns or on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis without distorting its real meaning. (p. 69)
Part 2 of the book covers the shift from the cultural exchanges within local communities to development education. From the outset of programming in 1975, the senior coordinators of the CWY Philippines program, including Diana Rivington (who later joined CIDA), insisted on “a protocol that cemented the focus on development including a continuous process of group study, real community involvement, intercultural learning and to prepare participants to take up active roles in the larger global community” (p. 84)
Dickinson interviewed many former CWY participants, leaders and staff in researching this book, mainly Canadians. Hébert’s own book on CWY adds to the thousands of testimonials on how these individuals’ lives had changed in ways that were frequently called magical and transformational, although also often challenging and turbulent. Reunions are celebrated among alumni even 30-50 years later. Dickinson refers to a First Nations team leader, Lorna Willliams, who used the Lil’wat term Kamuxw Kalha – achieving togetherness in community – to describe CWY.
Was CWY ahead of its time, as Canada often was in the golden years of development? The world’s current focus on youth’s role in global prosperity perhaps answers the question. CWY believed it had a crucial role to play in global affairs. In the words of the author, “Canada World Youth should be remembered as a spectacular humanitarian success. It counts among this country’s most significant contributions to global peace in the post-war era” (preface).
The Cascade Institute recently proposed a Youth Development Program within the context of a framework for defending Canada’s democracy and developing a national feeling of common interest. The proposal cites Katimavik, CWY’s Canadian equivalent (or sister organization), also founded by Jacques Hébert out of CWY’s experience, as “a program whose objectives and format could be built into a more integrated national youth development program”. They believe that “every Canadian should have a comparable opportunity as part of a national youth development scheme”.
In CWY, Jacques Hébert wanted to see youth come together across borders as part of their development, fostering pluralism as a contribution to world peace. Did CWY become irrelevant as the world and Canada moved on? Mark Dickinson’s book with its analysis of CWY and its ups and downs may provide the ultimate answer, that the example of Canada World Youth is still relevant today.
Rhonda Gossen is a former official at the Canadian International Development Agency and Global Affairs Canada, a past CWY participant, a consultant to UNDP and author of The Twelfth of February: Canadian aid for Gender Equality during the Rise of Violent Extremism in Pakistan. Image: Taken from the book cover.