A simple phone call about dead sea otters washing up on the shores of Alaska after US nuclear tests led to the birth of environmental organization Greenpeace four decades ago.
Irving Stowe and his wife, Dorothy, were so outraged by the news that they launched a petition from their home in Vancouver and set up a group called “Don’t Make A Wave.”
Their daughter, Barbara Stowe, recalled the early beginnings of the group that eventually blossomed and grew into the international environmental activist group, Greenpeace, which tomorrow marks its 40th anniversary.
Her father had been told of “sea otters washing up on the shore, dead, their eardrums split by the explosions” after US nuclear tests on Amchitka Island, Alaska, she said.
With a group of other activists, the Stowes, both Quakers and peace activists who moved from the US during the Vietnam War, launched the committee — named after concerns that the blasts would trigger a tsunami — and announced a plan to send a boat to Amchitka to witness the tests. Soon “people all around Canada and the world were sending money, C$2 [US$2] at a time,” Stowe said.
The boat, which they named Greenpeace, was launched from Vancouver in September 1971.
Although the US Coast Guard stopped Greenpeace before the boat reached Amchitka, it helped raise global awareness of the blasts, which the US canceled the following year.
The Don’t Make a Wave Committee changed its name to Greenpeace, and in a few years the organization had outgrown the city of its birth.
Today, its international headquarters is in Amsterdam, it has offices in dozens of countries, and even its Canadian headquarters is now in Toronto.
However, officials and the founders say Vancouver, with its picturesque setting amid ocean, mountains and forest, and a diverse population, was key to the organization’s start.
“Greenpeace was a product of the times, but also of the place,” Greenpeace Canada head Bruce Cox said.
“There is a much-heightened awareness of the natural environment,” he added.
Vancouver, historically a hub of the Canadian west coast’s rich First Nations culture, had been a commercial center for Western Canada’s resource economy since the 1800s.
However, by the 1960s, it had become known for its multicultural population — and as a refuge for US draft dodgers and counterculture hippies.
Anywhere else, Greenpeace might never have taken off, said author Rex Weyler, one of the founders who sailed on Greenpeace after moving here from the US in the 1960s as a young journalist.
“I remember Japanese and Chinese communities then,” Weyler said. “There was an international youth movement, there were Buddhist communities, Hindu communities, young hippies, back-to-the-landers and an ecology community.”
“We wanted to launch an ecology movement. There were civil rights, women’s and peace movements. What was lacking was a real sense of ecology,” he added.
This week, Greenpeace officials from around the world converge on Vancouver to commemorate the organization’s 40th anniversary.
“This place draws people who love nature,” said Tzeporah Berman, co-director of climate and energy campaigns for Greenpeace International, who recently moved back to Vancouver from Amsterdam.
“It’s a city committed to becoming the greenest city in the world,” Berman said.
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