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 organisation Greenpeace four decades ago.
Irving Stowe and his wife, Dor-othy, were so outraged by the news that they launched a petition from their home in Vancouver, on the Canadian west coast, 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 en-vironmental activist group, Greenpeace, which on Thursday 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 to the tests. Soon “people all around Canada and the world were sending money, $2 at a time,” said Ms Stowe.
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 cancelled the following year.
The Don’t Make a Wave Committee changed its name to Greenpeace, and in a few years the organisation 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.
But officials and the founders say Vancouver, with its picturesque setting amid ocean, mountains and forest, and a diverse population, was key to the organisation’s start.
“Greenpeace was a product of the times, but also of the place,” Bruce Cox, Greenpeace Canada head, said. “There’s a much-heightened awareness of the natural environment.”
Vancouver, historically a hub of the West Coast’s rich aboriginal cultural, had been a commercial centre for Western Canada’s res-ource economy since the 1800s.
But by the 1960s, it had become known for its multicultural population – and as a refuge for American draft dodgers and counter-culture 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,” Mr Weyler said. “There was an international youth movement, there were Buddhist communities, Hin-du 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.
“That’s what we set out to do, not to create an international organisation and make Greenpeace famous,” Mr Weyler lau-ghed. “We were going to transform world... it sort of worked, didn’t it?”
Greenpeace has had a tumultuous path, and been sharply criticised in past years for some of its more provocative tactics in its early campaign to stop seal hunting and high-seas confrontations with Japanese whaling boats.
But it has retained its fierce sense of independence, relying solely on personal donations in-stead of government, corporate and organisational funding. And it is strongly committed to rigorous science, which has earned it kudos.