Jim Bohlen, who was one of the founders of the Greenpeace organisation has died. He was 84.
Mr. Bohlen, a Quaker from New Yorker, had moved to British Columbia in 1967 with his second wife, Marie, where they became active in anti-Vietnam war, anti-nuclear and environmental causes.
In 1969 he founded, along with friends Irving Stowe and Paul Cote, the Don’t Make A Wave Committee to oppose U.S. nuclear tests on Amchitka Island, Alaska.
The committee discussed plans to oppose a test which was planned for September 1971. However, Mr. Bohlen became frustrated at the slowness of the committee process.
One morning, as he discussed his frustrations, his wife offhandedly suggested that they should sail a boat to the test site. Moments later when a reporter from the Vancouver Sun telephoned to check on the committee’s progress Mr. Bohlen was caught off-guard and announced that they were planning to sail to the test site.
The story appeared in the newspaper and, luckily for Mr. Bohlen, the committee backed the idea. The money to lease a boat was raised at a concert in Vancouver which featured Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, James Taylor and Chilliwack.
The committee leased a halibut fishing vessel which was renamed Greenpeace. Although the boat was intercepted by the US Coast Guard, the protest encouraged a public outcry against the nuclear tests, this resulted in the test being delayed. The testing programme was eventually abandoned and Amchitka Island was turned into a bird sanctuary.
Greenpeace is now an international organisation which has over three million members.
Mr. Bohlen stepped away from the organisation for a number of years but returned in the 1980s to lead campaigns against the testing of cruise missiles and to take part in the Nuclear Free Seas initiative. He retired in 1987.
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