On this day in 1957, Canadian diplomat Lester B. Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for “saving the world” with a UN peacekeeping force, during the Suez Crisis in the Middle East.

Before he became Canada’s prime minister, Pearson founded the United Nations Emergency Force in 1956, to force Britain, France and Israel to withdraw from a military operation in Egypt. The UN peacekeepers went to Egypt as a neutral party in the conflict, while the UN, the U.S. and the Soviet Union sided with Egypt, and pressured the aggressors to withdraw. They eventually did so, ending a push to unseat Egypt’s president at the time.

“Never, since the end of the last war, has the world situation been darker than during the Suez crisis, and never has the United Nations had a more difficult case to deal with,” Nobel Committee Chairman Gunnar Jahn said at Pearson’s award ceremony. “However, what actually happened has shown that moral force can be a bulwark against aggression and that it is possible to make aggressive forces yield without resorting to power.”

“Therefore, it may well be said that the Suez crisis was a victory for the United Nations and for the man who contributed more than anyone else to save the world at that time. That man was Lester Pearson.”

At the time, Pearson was Canada’s foreign minister and representative with the UN, and it was he who proposed the idea of setting up a peacekeeping force. That peacekeeping force is still around today, due in part to the success it achieved in its first mission, on Pearson’s recommendation.

Following Jahn’s introduction at the award ceremony, Pearson began his acceptance speech with one of the most Canadian things he could possibly have said: he said he was sorry for not being able to understand Jahn’s Norwegian. He then spoke at length about Alfred Nobel’s desire to foster peace in the world, and of the need to put aside weapons to make that happen.

“Of all our dreams today there is none more important – or so hard to realize – than that of peace in the world,” Pearson said. “May we never lose our faith in it or our resolve to do everything that can be done to convert it one day into reality.”

Pearson’s Nobel Prize medal is on display at the Lester B. Pearson Building in Ottawa, where the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade is housed. He went on to become the Prime Minister of Canada from 1963 to 1968, and he remains the only Canadian ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize.