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John Ralston Saul pays tribute to PEN Canada co-founder Eugene Benson and the epic 1989 PEN International Congress hosted in Toronto and Montreal.

Eugene Benson passed away earlier this year, but was everywhere in the creation and building of PEN Canada. In 1984 he became its first president – or rather co-president. With Graeme Gibson and Margaret Atwood he was a central figure in making our PEN Centre a leading player at the international level, working alongside dozens of other PEN Centres across the globe protecting writers.

In many ways it was Eugene who really helped me to understand how influential PEN could be. I went with him to the PEN Congress in Maastricht in 1989. He and I were both struck by how Eurocentric PEN International was in those days – and male dominated. Eugene was central to ensuring that PEN Canada would not be like that.

And in a moment of craziness, Graeme Gibson and a group of us convinced PEN International to hold the 1989 World Congress half in Toronto and half in Montreal. Graeme was then PEN Canada president. A little committee of four was charged with putting it together. The organization group was Graeme, of course, and Eugene playing a central role, Greg Gatenby who was then running the Author’s Festival, and myself. It was I think the biggest PEN Congress ever held and probably still is. And one of the most meaningful.

I’m not sure there is anything as complicated as a PEN Congress. Hundreds of writers from all over the world who agree about very little except freedom of expression. Even that becomes difficult when you sit down together and try to decide what we all mean when it comes to applying that freedom of expression.

Eugene was an ethically driven intellectual, but he also had a great skill for helping people to work together. Most writers are loners. And they rightly don’t want to become committee members. Eugene helped people to understand how our work was not about ourselves and our careers, but about writers elsewhere being tortured or imprisoned or murdered.

That clarity of PEN Canada gave it a great strength at the international level. Eugene was key to helping the Canadians play a leading role in helping to guide the worldwide organization in the right direction.

Most writers understand that outside of our books we need to be very conscious and very careful about how we advance our causes. I say that because PEN requires an enormous commitment. Each of us in PEN International have to carry with us thousands of writers in other countries. We have to build global coalitions.

I saw Eugene at the centre of that work. He made an enormous contribution to giving Canadian literature a practical and applied voice in the worldwide struggle for freedom of expression.

John Ralston Saul
PEN Canada President 1990-1992
PEN International President 2009-2015

This tribute was originally published on the PEN Canada Substack, A Good Think.