Former Canadian senator and author Douglas Roche has been nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. Roche, who served as an Edmonton MP from 1972 to 1984, has written 20 books. His latest, How We Stopped Loving the Bomb: An Insider’s Account of the World on the Brink of Nuclear Disarmament, will be published by James Lorimer & Company in March.

The former politician also served as Canada’s UN Ambassador for Disarmament from 1984 to 1989, and in 2009, the city of Hiroshima named Roche an honorary citizen for his nuclear disarmament activism.

Roche was nominated for the Nobel Prize by the International Peace Bureau, which wrote in its nomination letter: “Aside from existing Nobel laureates, it is hard to think of a single individual who has worked as hard for disarmament as he, and with such persistence and determination, at the top levels of world politics.”

The award-presentation ceremony takes place on Dec. 10, 2011, in Oslo, Norway.