Greenpeace Foundation : Greenpeace Canada is Canada's first and oldest organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of the earth's environment. Totally apolitical, it relies totally on direct public support and participation for its work and does not receive government funding. It has approximately 250,000 members in Canada and maintains offices in Vancouver and Montreal. It moved its headquarters from Vancouver to Toronto in 1984. Greenpeace was founded in Kitsalano, B.C., in 1969 as the Canadian branch of the American conservation group Sierra Club's "Don't Make a Wave Committee" by a small group of environmental and peace activists, Jim Bohlen, Paul Cote and Irving Stowe. The Committee which changed its name to the Greenpeace Foundation in 1971, focussed attention on US underground nuclear bomb testing off the Aleutian island of Amchitka south of Alaska. By 1976, the movement had quickly spread around the world. In 1979, Greenpeace Vancouver's dispute with its San Francisco counter-part over use of the name was settled out of court. Later that year Greenpeace offices in Australia, Canada, France, Holland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States joined to form Stichting Greenpeace Council, the international organization which initiates and coordinates international campaign activities and programmes. Since 1989, Greenpeace International's office has been located in Amsterdam.
Since its founding, Greenpeace has undertaken many campaigns of direct non-violent action in keeping with its philosophy of 'bearing witness', that is, by drawing attention to environmental abuse unsound practices which threaten the earth's ecology. The history of Greenpeace is the story of its campaigns, protest actions, lobbying and research activities, many of which have successfully brought about change in halting pollution of the environment. The purpose of Greenpeace Campaigns are "...to preserve or recreate an environment in which living things, including people, can survive without threat to their lives and health." Since its inception, Greenpeace Canada has conducted a variety of campaigns. Efforts and resources have been directed at protecting British Columbia's forests from clearcutting and encouraging ecologically sensitive forest practices as well as the protection of Canada's land and sea mammals. Other major campaigns are divided into four areas: atmosphere/energy, nuclear/disarmament, ocean ecology, and toxics.
Greenpeace Canada's atmosphere/energy campaign is directed at eliminating pollutants and noxious emissions and greenhouse gas emissions from Canada's oil and gas industry and works towards developing renewable energy sources. It seeks the elimination of acid rain and the burning of fossil fuels and other sources of manmade atmospheric pollution which contribute to global warming.
Among its nuclear/disarmament campaign achievements, Greenpeace Canada challenged French nuclear weapons testing off Mururoa Atoll. This ultimately led to the sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in 1985 by the French Secret Service in Auckland Harbour. It protested against low level military flights over Canadian territory. It has protested port calls of foreign nuclear warships to Canadian ports. It spoke out against the Persian Gulf War in 1991. It lobbied for a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. It has advocated a halt to and the dismantling of nuclear power plants in Ontario and called for a ban on uranium mining in Saskatchewan, the sale of uranium, nuclear-fuel rods and Candu reactors.
In its early years, Greenpeace Canada's ocean ecology campaign focussed on several well-known marine mammal initiatives including interfering with the East Coast Seal Hunt and getting white-coat baby seal pelts banned in Europe. It has also mounted campaigns to protect whales, dolphins, turtles and Canada's fisheries and to eliminate driftnets. It has protested offshore oil drilling and the movement of supertankers off the west coast of British Columbia.
Its Toxics campaign has opposed the incineration, transportation, and dumping of hazardous and toxic waste materials such as PVCs, PCPs, PCBs, dioxins and other chemicals, organochlorines used in the manufacture of pulp and paper as well as nuclear waste into the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes and off of the Canadian Atlantic and Pacific coasts and into the atmosphere. 1028
