Waves of Compassion

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The next day, the Sun ran the story, but the Sierra Club had not officially ratified the action, so at the next Don't Make a Wave meeting, the ad hoc group adopted the plan. Typical of those days, the anti-war crowd parted with the V-sign, saying 'peace.' A quiet 23-year-old Canadian carpenter, union organizer, and ecologist, Bill Darnell, who rarely spoke at the meetings, added sheepishly 'Make it a green peace.'

'The term had a nice ring to it,' Hunter recalls. 'It worked better in a headline than The Don't Make a Wave Committee. We decided to find a boat and call it Greenpeace.'

Marie's son Paul Nonnast designed a button with the ecology symbol above, the peace symbol below, and the word GREENPEACE in the middle. The figures were in green (for ecology) on a background of yellow (for sunlight). The buttons sold for $2.00. Stowe managed the money, raising additional funds from U.S. Quaker groups and the Sierra Club. He organized a benefit concert with Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, anti-war folk singer Phil Ochs, and B.C. rock band Chilliwack. The event netted $17,000.

Bohlen and lawyer Paul Cote searched the Vancouver docks for almost a year until one day on a Fraser River wharf they met one of the more rugged fisherman on the west coast, Captain John C. Cormack. Other skippers had laughed them off, but Cormack was intrigued by the challenge. Don't Make a Wave chartered Cormack's 80-foot halibut seiner, the Phyllis Cormack, and on September 15, 1971 the Phyllis Cormack, renamed Greenpeace, set out from Vancouver. 'It was an all-male crew,' Hunter recalls, 'which would never happen in Greenpeace today, but Captain Cormack did not allow 'fraternizing' on board. Marie Bohlen could have gone because she was married to Jim but she declined. Irving Stowe also declined, which surprised me because he was supposedly our leader.' The crew vowed to make policy decisions by consensus although Bohlen was the purser and official representative of Don't Make a Wave.

Dr. Lyle Thurston was the crew medic. Thurston had met Hunter when they served together on the board of the Window Pane Society, providing medical services for Vancouver young people who had overdosed on drugs. Thurston lived in a North Vancouver commune with lawyer Davie Gibbons, Dr. Myron McDonald, and his wife Bobbie, all of whom supported the voyage and would play key roles in the evolution of Greenpeace.

Captain Cormack and engineer Dave Birmingham ran the ship. Hunter, Metcalfe, Cummings, and photographer Robert Keziere were the on-board media. Keziere, a chemistry student, wrote an exhaustive analysis of the reasons Canadians should be concerned about the bomb, covering the tidal wave threat, ecological impact in the Aleutians, and the problem of containing radioactivity. Terry Simmons and Bill Darnell represented the Sierra Club. Patrick Moore, graduate student at the University of British Columbia, was the ecologist. Richard Fineberg was a last minute addition, suspected by some of being from the CIA. 'He wasn't CIA,' says Metcalfe. 'He was just a weird academic who didn't quite fit in.'

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