Waves of Compassion

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The defining characteristic of Greenpeace in the 1970s was that underneath the radicalism and wild street theater, each member contributed an essential skill or experience. Bohlen and Stowe were accomplished political organizers. John Cormack and David McTaggart were consummate sea captains, and McTaggart was a tenacious political advocate. Hamish had the lawyer's grasp of the big picture, and could express it in few words. Patrick Moore understood ecology and could debate anyone the governments or companies threw at us. The lawyers and the medics were all professionals. Hunter, Metcalfe, and Cummings were inspired journalists. 'Simply speaking,' says Metcalfe, 'We knew how to give a story pizzazz and keep it alive in the media. We were the media!'

Bobbie Innes, who later married Bob Hunter and who ran the Greenpeace office after 1974, was a Project Manager for Rogers Cable television company. 'Every day I was directing hundreds of people in their job flow,' she says now, 'so organizing a bunch of hippies was no big deal.'

Bill Gannon, chief accountant for Daon Development Corporation, the largest developer in Vancouver, was consulting with the North Shore News, when I met him. In addition to being an expert accountant, Gannon was an accomplished bass player. We had formed a band that rehearsed once a week. When I explained to Gannon the financial problems that Greenpeace faced, he began advising us. Gannon later fashioned a credible financial plan and reporting system for the fledgling organization.

And there were stalwart soldiers willing to risk it all, Bill Darnell, Terry Simmons, Bree Drummond, Rod Marining, Carlie Trueman, Paul Watson, and Walrus Oakenbough. 'Today we would say it was right-brain/left-brain balanced,' says Marining. 'In those days we referred to the Mystics and the Mechanics. But in fact, there was a little of the mystic and mechanic in everyone.'

Spong was a serious scientist and with all his quixotic ideas and mystic communications with whales, he was rigorous and observant. His mind had simply been opened by Skana to accept a much bigger picture of consciousness. 'Change,' Spong says, and this from experience, 'can happen at the speed of thought.'

Spong inspired us to put our ecology on the line. Did we believe in the rights of a whale to live in peace? Then we would risk our lives for them. Spong was cautious with his language, but his enthusiasm was contagious. He implied that Skana had imparted to him a message for us. There were doubters, but we all listened, and the message was this: Consciousness is bigger than you, bigger than the human race. Consciousness is a quality of nature. Spong inspired us to look beyond the purely human realm, to see ecology from a new perspective.

Spong's plan for finding the whalers was to visit the International Whaling Commission records office in Sandefjord, Norway, to pose as himself, a respected research scientist looking for data on whale populations. That data, he correctly surmised would be collected by whaling boats. In January Spong, his wife Linda, and their son Yashi, departed for Iceland and Norway to find records of previous whaling routes. The IWC at that time was controlled by the whaling nations of Japan, Soviet Union, Norway, and Iceland, and backed by Canada and the U.S. Spong was entering the lair of our adversary to steal the map that would spell their downfall.

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