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Greenpeace miscellany
Rex Weyler takes 600 pages to document the nine-year history of the Greenpeace Foundation. Along the way we learn:
• The Peace symbol first emerged as a logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament partially led by Bertrand Russell in England in 1958. The CND purposely didn't copyright the image.
• Long before Marie Bohlen suggested sending a protest vessel to Amchitka, a former U.S. Navy captain named Albert Bigalow sailed his 32-foot Golden Rule from California towards the Americans' Enewetak Island nuclear test site in 1958. He was intercepted and arrested in Honolulu, charged with criminal conspiracy.
• The Cecil Hotel Pub on Granville Street was the focal point for intelligentsia of the counter-culture movement but Bill Darnell coined the term Green Peace in the Fireside Room of the Vancouver Unitarian Church on Oak Street. As Irving Stowe was leaving a Don't Make A Wave Committee meeting, he flashed his customary V sign and said, "Peace."; Darnell offhandedly replied, "Make it a green peace.";
• In 1969 Ben Metcalfe paid for 12 billboards around Vancouver that declared: ECOLOGY? LOOK IT UP! YOU'RE INVOLVED.
• The first Greenpeace pamphlet was written by 71-year-old Lille d'Easum of the BC Voice of women in March of 1970. It was entitled Nuclear Testing in the Aleutians.
• When Irving Stowe suggested having a rock concert to raise money, he phoned Joan Baez. She gave him the phone numbers for Phil Ochs and Joni Mitchell. Mitchell asked if she could bring along a friend-James Taylor. In their Fifties, the Stowes were confused and wondered if she meant James Brown. The concert's mystery guest James Taylor was never mentioned in any advertising.
• In charge of Greenpeace worldwide in the late 1970s, Patrick Moore was making only $1,000 per month. Ultimately the Vancouver-run Greenpeace Foundation receded to become Greenpeace Canada.
• The Peace symbol first emerged as a logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament partially led by Bertrand Russell in England in 1958. The CND purposely didn't copyright the image.
• Long before Marie Bohlen suggested sending a protest vessel to Amchitka, a former U.S. Navy captain named Albert Bigalow sailed his 32-foot Golden Rule from California towards the Americans' Enewetak Island nuclear test site in 1958. He was intercepted and arrested in Honolulu, charged with criminal conspiracy.
• The Cecil Hotel Pub on Granville Street was the focal point for intelligentsia of the counter-culture movement but Bill Darnell coined the term Green Peace in the Fireside Room of the Vancouver Unitarian Church on Oak Street. As Irving Stowe was leaving a Don't Make A Wave Committee meeting, he flashed his customary V sign and said, "Peace."; Darnell offhandedly replied, "Make it a green peace.";
• In 1969 Ben Metcalfe paid for 12 billboards around Vancouver that declared: ECOLOGY? LOOK IT UP! YOU'RE INVOLVED.
• The first Greenpeace pamphlet was written by 71-year-old Lille d'Easum of the BC Voice of women in March of 1970. It was entitled Nuclear Testing in the Aleutians.
• When Irving Stowe suggested having a rock concert to raise money, he phoned Joan Baez. She gave him the phone numbers for Phil Ochs and Joni Mitchell. Mitchell asked if she could bring along a friend-James Taylor. In their Fifties, the Stowes were confused and wondered if she meant James Brown. The concert's mystery guest James Taylor was never mentioned in any advertising.
• In charge of Greenpeace worldwide in the late 1970s, Patrick Moore was making only $1,000 per month. Ultimately the Vancouver-run Greenpeace Foundation receded to become Greenpeace Canada.
Submitted on August 27, 2004 in By David.
