BOB HUNTER - GREENPEACE CO-FOUNDER

How far will you go for the things you believe?

Will you risk your comfort?
Your security?
Your life?

Bob Hunter was prepared to risk it all. But not in the impassioned mindlessness of some terrorists, nor in the errant windmill tilting of Don Quixote. He was a smart guy who knew how to get things done, had a mastery of the media, and loved ridiculous odds.

The brand he helped found remains the foremost name in the environmental movement 30 years after its humble beginning.

Greenpeace.

Bob was an ecology-aware columnist for the Vancouver Sun newspaper when he found himself one day in 1971 with a group of like-minded people discussing how to stop the American nuclear testing program off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

Many people had protested weapons programs and wars on the streets before. But the brilliance of Hunter’s group was their realizing that to mobilize public awareness and support, they had to capture imaginations. And the best way to do that was to go right to the site of the tests.

In September 1971, Bob and 11 other activists set off in a rusted old fishing boat they named the Greenpeace and stood up to the US navy in a peaceful protest at sea.

The calculated image of the little David against Goliath so captured people’s imaginations that a wave of media coverage and public protest was set off. It ultimately caused the U.S.- Canada border to be shut down for the first time since 1812. More important, it drove President Nixon to stop the weapons program, and, today, Amchitka Island where the testing took place is a wildlife preserve.

The name Greenpeace was given to the growing group of young people committed to saving the earth, and doing whatever it took to do it peacefully. Donations began to flow in, and the volunteer workforce grew.

Hunter did not found the group alone, but his storytelling skills and knowledge of how to capture the media’s attention made him the logical candidate to be Greenpeace’s first President. To describe this growing group of well-intentioned activists, he borrowed the words ‘Rainbow Warriors’ from a Cree myth. When they were able to purchase a more ocean ready ship, it became that vessel’s name.

The Rainbow Warrior took them literally around the world, confronting Presidents, navies, corporations and consortiums, whalers and poachers, whose practices were destroying the earth’s fragile ecology.

The epic proportion of their struggle was crystallized forever in 1985 when French agents sunk the Rainbow Warrior as Greenpeace protested against France’s nuclear testing in the South Pacific, tragically killing a member of the protest team.

In the 20 years since, Greenpeace has continued to galvanize the global fight against ecological self interest and greed. Today, Greenpeace boasts 2.5 million committed members in over 40 countries, and has become a byword for environmental activism.

Hunter moved on to a successful career in journalism, continuing to fight through that channel against those whose self interests damaged our fragile spaceship earth. He was named by Time magazine as one of the 10 most important eco-heroes of the 20th century.

He tragically lost his greatest battle recently to cancer. But as was no surprise to those who knew him, he fought that battle long and courageously.