Bob Hunter (left) with
Ben Metcalfe, aboard the first Greenpeace
voyage to oppose nuclear weapons testing in
Amchitka.
02/05/2005 — Perhaps more than anyone else,
Bob Hunter invented Greenpeace. His death
on May 2nd 2005, of cancer, marks the passing
of a true original, one of the heroes of the
environmental movement.
In 1971, the word "Greenpeace" hadn't
yet been coined. Bob was a hippy journalist
in Vancouver, a town which he described as
having "the biggest concentration of
tree-huggers, radicalized students, garbage-dump
stoppers, shit-disturbing unionists, freeway
fighters, pot smokers and growers, aging Trotskyites,
condo killers, farmland savers, fish preservationists,
animal rights activists, back-to-the-landers,
vegetarians, nudists, Buddhists, and anti-spraying,
anti-pollution marchers and picketers in the
country, per capita, in the world."
Mind bombs
A student of Marshall McLuhan, he was bent
on changing the world with what he termed
"media mindbombs" -- consciousness-changing
sounds and images to blast around the world
in the guise of news. He got involved with
a few folks in a church basement who wanted
to stop a US nuclear weapons test off Amchitka,
which he called the "Don't Make a Wave
Committee".
Sailing into the bomb
But their plans were going nowhere until
Marie Bohlen suggested that the group simply
sail a ship into the test site. Bob thought
it was a perfect "mindbomb," and
on September 15, 1971, he and 11 other rag-tag
activists would sail out to challenge the
greatest military force on Earth in a rusting
fishing boat they called "The Greenpeace."
In doing so, they set off a wave of public
support and protest which closed the US-Canadian
border for the first time since 1812, ultimately
shut the testing programme down, and created
a new force for environmental and peace activism
which continues to this day.
Greenpeace bears his mark
Over the next decade, Bob's madcap creativity,
strategic smarts, and hard-nosed journalistic
sense of story would indelibly mark the Greenpeace
brand of action. From the pack ice of Newfoundland,
where he dyed the whitecoats of Harp Seal
pups to make them commercially worthless,
to the Pacific Ocean where he stood between
Russian harpoons and the whales they were
hunting, he inspired a new brand of personal
environmental activism.
Shaman, mystic
"Bob was a storyteller, a shaman, a
word-magician, a Machiavellian mystic, and
he dared to inject a sense of humour into
the often shrill and sanctimonious job of
changing the world," says Greenpeace
Executive Director Gerd Leipold. "He
was funny and brave and audacious, inspiring
in his refusal to accept the limits of the
practical or the probable. He revelled in
life's ability to deliver little miracles
in the form of impossibilities achieved, and
Greenpeace will forever bear the mark of his
crazy, super-optimistic faith in the wisdom
of tilting at windmills."
Warriors of the Rainbow
In 1978, Hunter chronicled the birth of Greenpeace
in his book "Warriors of the Rainbow."
It was a masterful feat of storytelling, one
which attracted a further generation of young
people into the ranks of the organisation.
In its introduction he wrote:
"We fought... an unequal battle against
American and French nuclear weapons makers;
Russian, Japanese, and Australian whalers;
Norwegian and Canadian seal hunters; multinational
oil consortiums and pesticide manufactures;
cynical politicians; angry workers; and, again
and again, ourselves. The people involved
were men and women, young and old, not all
of them brave or wise, who found themselves
face-to-face with the fullest ecological horrors
of the century..."
Storymaster
Among Hunter's stock stories was the tale
of how he'd stumbled on to the Cree Indian
myth of the "Warriors of the Rainbow"
-- a legendary tribe of spirits who would
rescue nature when the Earth became sick.
The story involved a gypsy dulcimer maker,
an old set of fenceposts, and the gift of
a book which Hunter claimed leapt into his
hands -- quite literally -- when The Greenpeace
dropped down a steep swell on its way to Amchitka.
The story itself was magical and mythological,
and over the years Hunter would embellish
and polish it into a hilarious and inspirational
piece of campfire folklore.
Awful child
Hunter was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in
1941. In his own words "I was an awful,
rebellious, early attention-defficient kid
who was loved by my art and English teachers,
but hated by the rest. I cheated by scribbling
novels when I was supposed to be doing schoolwork."
He became a journalist for the Winnipeg Tribune
and later wrote a column for the Vancouver
Sun in which he featured environmental subjects.
He quit writing the column when he joined
the first Greenpeace voyage to save the whales,
becoming a reporter explicitly to ensure his
somewhat less than objective "message"
would reach a global audience, because "the
subjective stuff written by columnists [was]
never picked up by the wire services."
Journalism as opinion
He readily confessed that this made him "a
traitor to my profession," but believed
he had a higher calling: "If we ignore
[the] laws of ecology we will continue to
be guilty of crimes against the earth. We
will not be judged by men for these crimes,
but with a justice meeted out by the earth
itself. The destruction of the earth will
lead, inevitably, to the destruction of ourselves."
Hunter became president of the Greenpeace
Foundation in 1973, and served in that post
until 1977.
He joined Toronto's City TV as an ecology
specialist in 1988, and for years hosted a
highly successful morning TV spot for Breakfast
TV in his bathrobe, in which he read the day's
newspaper headlines and sputtered scandalously
witty commentaries in a form of rapid-fire
stand-up journalism.
Advisor, speaker, comedian-in-chief
Over the years he continued to contribute
to Greenpeace as an advisor and occasional
speaker, and kept up good relations with the
organisation's original luminaries, including
many who were no longer on speaking terms
with one other. He authored several books
and founded a tongue-in-cheek religion, the
Whole Earth Church.
In a recent book, Rex Weyler writes about
reflecting with Hunter on their experiences
in the early days of Greenpeace:
"The ironies and tension of history
simultaneously provided the gift of history:
that we got to live, to see the flourishing
Earth, the flying fish, dolphins, caribou,
seal pups, the raging sea, the blue light
of morning, the miracle and terror of survival
all rolled into one; and that we were blessed
with an opportunity to serve it."
Bob Hunter made much of his opportunity to
serve the Earth, and Greenpeace will always
be blessed with his spirit.
