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Vancouver loves peace

Vancouver loves peace S pring 1968: Anti-war demonstration on the lawn of the Provincial Court House organized by a coalition of church groups called End the Arms Race. Participants included the BC Voice of Women, the Internationalists, Quakers, the Vancouver Diggers, young radicals, American draft resisters, ecologists, and street theatre comic performances by town fool Joachim Foikis. Journalists Ben and Dorothy Metcalfe recorded speeches for his CBC broadcast. Bob Hunter interviewed participants for his Vancouver Sun column. Bob Cummings and Dan McLeod recorded events for the city’s new radical tabloid, the Georgia Straight. August 1969: the United States announced a one-megaton nuclear bomb test, Milrow, scheduled for October on Amchitka Island, in the Aleutian Islands. September 1969: At Simon Fraser University, 30 members of the Sierra Club meet and form the Sierra Club of British Columbia. Early organizers are Terry Simmons, American Quakers Jim and Marie Bohlen, Katy Madsen from the uranium mining campaign in the BC Interior, and first chairman, Ken Farquharson, from the Skagit River Valley campaign. The Sierra Club of BC adopts the uranium and nuclear weapons issues as ecological concerns. September 24, 1969: Bob Hunter wrote in the Vancouver Sun, warning about the U.S. nuclear tests in the Aleutian Islands. September 29, 1969: The Vancouver environmental group SPEC organized a demonstration at the US Consulate in downtown Vancouver to protest the nuclear bomb test, using “DON’T MAKE A WAVE,” placards. Members of End the Arms Race, BC Voice of Women, SPEC, CBC journalist Ben Metcalfe, Quaker pacifists Irving and Dorothy Stowe, nuclear researcher Lille d’Easum, activist Paul Watson, and others attended the demonstration. October 1, 1969: SPEC and the UBC Alma Mater Society organized a dem onstration that closed the US/Canadian border at Blaine while Greenpeace demos across the country closed all Windsor and Sarnia bridges and tunnels to the US. That night, the Milrow blast was detonated 4,000 feet below the surface of Amchitka Island. The blast registered a Richter 6.9 shockwave. November 1969: When a 5-mega ton US bomb test under Amchitka is announced for the fall of 1971, Irving Stowe and other activists formed the Don’t Make a Wave Committee, which included the BC Association of Social Workers, Deeno Birmingham and the BC Voice of Women, members of the Sierra Club group, and journalists Bob Hunter and Ben and Dorothy Metcalfe. Meetings are held at their home on Courtenay A SHORT HISTORY FROM 1969 TO 2006 Complied by Rex Wyler and edited by Arne Hansen

Street in Point Grey, which would become a hub of pacifist action and the first meeting place of Greenpeace. October 5, 1970: Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Phil Ochs, and BC band Chilliwack stage a benefit concert in Vancouver for the Amchitka campaign to stop nuclear bomb tests, raising $17,000. September 15, 1971: The Don’t Make a Wave Committee chartered the hali but boat Phyllis Cormack, rechristened Greenpeace, for a voyage to into the Amchitka nuclear test zone. The US Coast Guard arrested the boat, but the international protest swelled and in February 1972, the US Department of Defence closed its Alaska nuclear test site. The organization later changed its name to Greenpeace, and became a global force for peace and ecology. October 1971: BC labour leaders and unionists joined 12,000 Vancouver stu dents, teachers, and parents, marching in Vancouver streets to protest the testing of nuclear weapons. Summer 1972: Ben and Dorothy Metcalfe organized a campaign to halt French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. They recruited fellow Vancouver sailor, David McTaggart, to sail into the French nuclear test zone around Moruroa atoll. That summer, Ben and Dorothy Metcalfe led a delegation of Vancouver citizens to the first United Nations Environment Conference in Stockholm, and were instrumental in getting nuclear testing on the agenda and securing an overwhelming vote to ban atmospheric nuclear testing. February 1973: With France explod ing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, 10,000-ton French Navy ship Jeanne d’Arc visited Vancouver carrying six Exocet missile launchers and four 100-millime tre guns. A group of Vancouver pacifists unfurled a 30-foot banner from the Lions Gate bridge inscribed: MURUROA MON AMOUR. A flotilla of protest boats greeted the warship in Burrard Inlet, chanting, “La paix, la paix.”

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Summer 1976: World opinion, inspired by the campaign launched from Vancouver, forced France to stop test ing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. France moved nuclear tests underground on the South Pacific island of Fangataufa. February 23, 1982: Mayor Michael Harcourt proposed a city referendum on disarmament, to determine citizens’ con cerns about the Port of Vancouver being a potential wartime target. The referendum was put to voters in 1984. April 24, 1982: Initiated and named by Ric Testa and Joseph Roberts, the Walk for Peace, organized by End the Arms Race, attracted 35,000 citizens. April 23, 1983: Vancouver City Council, school and parks boards help organize the Walk for Peace. The mayor and council delivered to every household a leaflet stating “[We] strongly urge you to walk for peace from Kitsilano Park to Sunset Beach ... nuclear war is the greatest possible threat to life and health we face.” Vancouver City Council declares Vancouver a Nuclear free city, 65,000 people walked for peace, and the first Vancouver Peace Committee was founded. April 1984: Vancouver City Council

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