Since the end of the second world war, origami cranes have been a symbol of the cost of military action and the world's desire for peace. The folded paper bird has become a tool to call for peaceful intervention. Specifically, it is a reminder of the cost to children because of a story that comes from Hiroshima.

We have been reminded of the danger to children and youth this week. In Manchester, children and youth targeted by a bomb. The increase in acts of violence that target civilians is frightening, though the question of how it can be curbed is more problematic. Killing some ISIS fighters with a huge bomb did not stop others, though the connection of this bomber to that group has not been established as yet.

This Saturday, I will be at the farmers market in Owen Sound with others talking about peace-making. We will engage in this question of how we can curb the various violent and military actions we are seeing around the world. Dropping bombs may stimulate more violence as we saw in Afghanistan in April. Instead, we can choose diplomacy, sanctions, conversation, negotiation as strategies to build change. This is what the origami crane calls for.

Saturday morning we will teach people to fold these birds and send them to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and others. By July 1, we hope that Canadian leaders will recieve a thousand each to remind them that we hope for peaceful tools to be used to build peace. Details about this campaign can be found on the Cranes 4 Peace Website.

Why origami cranes? Here is my version of the story behind this symbol:

Living two miles from the site where the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, two year old Sadako was not injured. She learned the story of the flash, the destruction, and the loss: six close relatives had been killed that day.

When Sadako was eleven, an eager student and a good runner, she started experiencing dizzy spells. A trip to the hospital revealed she had developed Leukemia from radiation poisoning. She was astounded that so many years later, when the blast had not touched her, she would get sick. Doctors told her that the radiation could build up and the damage appear years later.

A school friend came to visit her In hospital with a stack of paper. "We're going to fold cranes," she announced. When Sadako asked why, her friend explained that a person who folded a thousand origami cranes would be healed. They started right in.

In those early days, Sadako would fold every sheet of paper she could find into a colourful crane. Each day, Sadako's family would bring her paper. Soon, the little birds filled the dresser, the window ledge, every shelf of her room. Doctors and nurses heard of her goal and brought her paper. More than five hundred birds decorated her room, and still she kept count.

But Sadako was getting weaker. She would have to rest after each bird was made. Some days she only managed five or six. Still, the count reached six hundred and beyond.

The illness progressed, and Sadako died before she could reach her goal. The lasting effect of the bomb dropped eleven years earlier took her life.

Her friends finished the task. They collected the cranes she had made, created a garland of one thousand and took it to her funeral.

Sadako's teacher and classmates did not want people to forget the longterm cost of the atomic bomb. They raised money for a memorial to go in Hiroshima's peace park. After hard work, they paid for a statue of Sadako, hand out held, with a golden crane perched on her palm. People around the world will create garlands of cranes and send them to hang on her statue to remember her and all the children who died from radiation poison. And to press for peace.

A folded crane club continued to raise awareness about the terrible destruction caused by atomic weapons. They held memorial services for children lost to the disease. They carried the story, told and retold it, in hope that such a bomb would never be used again.

Sadako hoped this tradition would bring her healing. Though she lost that dream, others remember her, fold little paper cranes, remind us all to dream of peace.

Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister, and writer living near Walters Falls.