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Ben Metcalfe: A Journalist Who Made A Difference
In 1969, the US Atomic Energy Commission was planning to explode its second atomic bomb in Alaska, this time on the tiny island of Amchitka, in one of the most earthquake-prone regions in the world. Some British Columbians feared a larger man-made blast in Alaska would trigger a devastating earthquake. That same year a headstrong journalist named Ben Metcalfe paid for 12 billboards that declared ECOLOGY? LOOK IT UP! YOU'RE INVOLVED.
In October of 1969, 10,000 protestors blocked the major US-Canadian border crossing, unfurling a banner that read: "Don't Make a Wave. It's Your Fault if Our Fault Goes". But the blast went ahead. As soon as the U.S. promptly announced plans for a follow-up test in 1971, some of the Peace Arch protestors reassembled at the Kitsilano home of transplanted American Quakers Irving and Dorothy Stowe in 1970 and loosely formed the Don't Make A Wave Committee. Its sole objective was to stop the next scheduled test. According to Greenpeace historian Rex Weyler, that mouthful of a moniker was suggested by the Vancouver Sun's newly hatched radical columnist Robert Hunter.
Along with the Stowes, other members of that Don't Make A Wave Committee included Paul Cote, a law student at the University of British Columbia, Jim Bohlen, a former deep-sea diver and radar operator in the US Navy, Marie Bohlen (who later suggested sending a protest vessel to Amchitka to serve as a floating picket line), Patrick Moore, a UBC ecology student and Bill Darnell, a social worker. It was Darnell came up with the dynamic combination of words to bind together the group's concern for the planet and opposition to nuclear arms. As the bushy-bearded Irving Stowe was leaving a meeting at the Fireside Room of the Vancouver Unitarian Church, Stowe made the peace sign and said "Peace" to everyone. That sort of thing was done earnestly in those days. Darnell quipped back, "Make it a green peace."
The Committee staged a major fundraising concert at the Pacific Coliseum featuring Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, Chilliwack and an unadvertised appearance by James Taylor. The gathering was widely publicized in Dan McLeod's increasingly influential Georgia Straight and oddly coincided with the implementation of the War Measures Act. Ecology was political, whether ecologists wanted it that way or not.
The DMAWC committee would later be reformed and renamed as Greenpeace, but it was the Don't Make A Wave Committee that chartered a boat, the Phyllis Cormack, and set sail to Amchitka to "bear witness" (a Quaker tradition of silent protest) to the nuclear test. This tactic was not original. A former U.S. Navy captain had sailed his 32-foot Golden Rule from California towards an American nuclear test site in 1958, only to be arrested in Honolulu and charged with criminal conspiracy.
On board the original Greenpeace protest vessel were Captain John Cormack (the boat's tempermental owner), Jim Bohlen, Bill Darnell, Patrick Moore, Dr Lyle Thurston (medical practitioner), Dave Birmingham (engineer), Terry Simmons (cultural geographer), Richard Fineberg (political science teacher), Robert Hunter (journalist, Vancouver Sun), Ben Metcalfe (journalist, CBC Radio), Bob Cummings (journalist, Georgia Straight) and Bob Keziere (photographer). The group was soon jokingly divided between the Mystics and the Mechanics. Yale-educated lawyer Irving Stowe, who suffered from sea-sickness, stayed on shore to coordinate political pressure. Paul Cote stayed behind too, because he was about to represent Canada in an Olympic sailing race.
Few recall a second boat was sent to Amchitka, with Paul Watson on board, after the Amchitka blast was postponed and the Phyllis Cormack sailed south. The converted 154-foot minesweeper Edgewater Fortune, renamed Greenpeace Too, tied up alongside the Phyllis Cormack at Comox. Original crewmembers Simmons, Cummings and Birmingham joined the larger ship; the others reached the Lions Gate Bridge on October 30, 1971. The 5.2 megaton hydrogen bomb was detonated on November 6, 1971, measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. But the Amchitka nuclear test program was cancelled five months later. It has been suggested that his marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War
Three decades later, Robert Hunter learned from Jim Bohlen that he had been giving the captain his orders all along, and that the semblance of democracy aboard the Phyllis Cormack was all a sham. Bohlen was chairman of the Don't Make a Wave Committee and he wrote the cheques, "but rather than say he was the boss, and that the Greenpeace and the protest action were therefore being run as an old-fashioned hierarchical power structure, he played games to keep us radical young crewmen under control.";
Two new books about this era have brought it all back into its original focus. Greenpeace to Amchitka: An Environmental Odyssey (Arsenal Pulp $24.95) consists of Robert Hunter's original record of the 1971 origins of Greenpeace, and Rex Weyler's much broader history entitled Greenpeace (Raincoast $39.95) chronicles the Greenpeace Foundation until its dissolution in 1979 in favour of more international control.
In 1972, with Robert Hunter as its first president, Greenpeace sent the Vega towards France's nuclear testing site at Moruroa Atoll in the south Pacific. The successful propagandist for the Amchitka protests, Ben Metcalfe, was now chair of the Greenpeace Foundation. He chose the following crew for the Vega: Nigel Ingram (ex-Royal Navy), Roger Haddleton (ex-Royal Navy) and Grant Davidson (cook). The Vega's owner David McTaggart vied with Metcalfe for command of the boat. A Canadian living in New Zealand, McTaggart at first knew nothing of the original voyage to Amchitka. However the successful businessman and champion athlete later become Greenpeace's leader after he sent Metcalfe packing. McTaggart was famously boarded by the French navy, beaten and had his vessel illegally seized.
Various attempts to make the movie have failed, but eventually it's gotta happen. Sean Penn can play the cosmic columnist Bob Hunter. Gene Hackman can grow a beard and play Irving Stowe. And perhaps Jack Nicholson can puff himself up and portray Ben Metcalfe...
[For more on the Greenpeace saga, see entries for Rex Weyler and Robert Hunter.]
by Alan Twigg
In October of 1969, 10,000 protestors blocked the major US-Canadian border crossing, unfurling a banner that read: "Don't Make a Wave. It's Your Fault if Our Fault Goes". But the blast went ahead. As soon as the U.S. promptly announced plans for a follow-up test in 1971, some of the Peace Arch protestors reassembled at the Kitsilano home of transplanted American Quakers Irving and Dorothy Stowe in 1970 and loosely formed the Don't Make A Wave Committee. Its sole objective was to stop the next scheduled test. According to Greenpeace historian Rex Weyler, that mouthful of a moniker was suggested by the Vancouver Sun's newly hatched radical columnist Robert Hunter.
Along with the Stowes, other members of that Don't Make A Wave Committee included Paul Cote, a law student at the University of British Columbia, Jim Bohlen, a former deep-sea diver and radar operator in the US Navy, Marie Bohlen (who later suggested sending a protest vessel to Amchitka to serve as a floating picket line), Patrick Moore, a UBC ecology student and Bill Darnell, a social worker. It was Darnell came up with the dynamic combination of words to bind together the group's concern for the planet and opposition to nuclear arms. As the bushy-bearded Irving Stowe was leaving a meeting at the Fireside Room of the Vancouver Unitarian Church, Stowe made the peace sign and said "Peace" to everyone. That sort of thing was done earnestly in those days. Darnell quipped back, "Make it a green peace."
The Committee staged a major fundraising concert at the Pacific Coliseum featuring Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, Chilliwack and an unadvertised appearance by James Taylor. The gathering was widely publicized in Dan McLeod's increasingly influential Georgia Straight and oddly coincided with the implementation of the War Measures Act. Ecology was political, whether ecologists wanted it that way or not.
The DMAWC committee would later be reformed and renamed as Greenpeace, but it was the Don't Make A Wave Committee that chartered a boat, the Phyllis Cormack, and set sail to Amchitka to "bear witness" (a Quaker tradition of silent protest) to the nuclear test. This tactic was not original. A former U.S. Navy captain had sailed his 32-foot Golden Rule from California towards an American nuclear test site in 1958, only to be arrested in Honolulu and charged with criminal conspiracy.
On board the original Greenpeace protest vessel were Captain John Cormack (the boat's tempermental owner), Jim Bohlen, Bill Darnell, Patrick Moore, Dr Lyle Thurston (medical practitioner), Dave Birmingham (engineer), Terry Simmons (cultural geographer), Richard Fineberg (political science teacher), Robert Hunter (journalist, Vancouver Sun), Ben Metcalfe (journalist, CBC Radio), Bob Cummings (journalist, Georgia Straight) and Bob Keziere (photographer). The group was soon jokingly divided between the Mystics and the Mechanics. Yale-educated lawyer Irving Stowe, who suffered from sea-sickness, stayed on shore to coordinate political pressure. Paul Cote stayed behind too, because he was about to represent Canada in an Olympic sailing race.
Few recall a second boat was sent to Amchitka, with Paul Watson on board, after the Amchitka blast was postponed and the Phyllis Cormack sailed south. The converted 154-foot minesweeper Edgewater Fortune, renamed Greenpeace Too, tied up alongside the Phyllis Cormack at Comox. Original crewmembers Simmons, Cummings and Birmingham joined the larger ship; the others reached the Lions Gate Bridge on October 30, 1971. The 5.2 megaton hydrogen bomb was detonated on November 6, 1971, measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. But the Amchitka nuclear test program was cancelled five months later. It has been suggested that his marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War
Three decades later, Robert Hunter learned from Jim Bohlen that he had been giving the captain his orders all along, and that the semblance of democracy aboard the Phyllis Cormack was all a sham. Bohlen was chairman of the Don't Make a Wave Committee and he wrote the cheques, "but rather than say he was the boss, and that the Greenpeace and the protest action were therefore being run as an old-fashioned hierarchical power structure, he played games to keep us radical young crewmen under control.";
Two new books about this era have brought it all back into its original focus. Greenpeace to Amchitka: An Environmental Odyssey (Arsenal Pulp $24.95) consists of Robert Hunter's original record of the 1971 origins of Greenpeace, and Rex Weyler's much broader history entitled Greenpeace (Raincoast $39.95) chronicles the Greenpeace Foundation until its dissolution in 1979 in favour of more international control.
In 1972, with Robert Hunter as its first president, Greenpeace sent the Vega towards France's nuclear testing site at Moruroa Atoll in the south Pacific. The successful propagandist for the Amchitka protests, Ben Metcalfe, was now chair of the Greenpeace Foundation. He chose the following crew for the Vega: Nigel Ingram (ex-Royal Navy), Roger Haddleton (ex-Royal Navy) and Grant Davidson (cook). The Vega's owner David McTaggart vied with Metcalfe for command of the boat. A Canadian living in New Zealand, McTaggart at first knew nothing of the original voyage to Amchitka. However the successful businessman and champion athlete later become Greenpeace's leader after he sent Metcalfe packing. McTaggart was famously boarded by the French navy, beaten and had his vessel illegally seized.
Various attempts to make the movie have failed, but eventually it's gotta happen. Sean Penn can play the cosmic columnist Bob Hunter. Gene Hackman can grow a beard and play Irving Stowe. And perhaps Jack Nicholson can puff himself up and portray Ben Metcalfe...
[For more on the Greenpeace saga, see entries for Rex Weyler and Robert Hunter.]
by Alan Twigg
Submitted on October 27, 2003 in By David.
