http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Antiwar+activist+started+fight+planet/3249674/story.html
Greenpeace co-founder was part of the Amchitka protest
By John Mackie
July 8, 2010
In early 1970, antiwar activists Jim and Marie Bohlen used to sit
around the kitchen table brainstorming with their fellow Sierra Club
peaceniks Irving and Dorothy Stowe.
The American government had announced it was going to conduct a
nuclear test on Amchitka Island, off Alaska, and Marie Bohlen offered
a suggestion.
"I said casually, 'Well, why don't we take a boat up there?'" she
recalled. "Someone from The [ Vancouver] Sun had called and wanted to
know what we were doing. Jim on the spur of the moment said, 'Oh,
we're getting a boat and we're going up to protest the blast up
there.' Of course we had no boat, but that was incentive to get one."
This was the start of the Don't Make a Wave committee's decision to
send a protest ship, the first act of the environmental group that
became Greenpeace.
Jim Bohlen died Monday at the age of 84 after a long battle with
Parkinson's disease. He left the front lines of Greenpeace to become
an organic farmer on Denman Island in 1974, but his work in the early
days was instrumental in getting the world's leading environmental
organization off the ground.
"I think one of the strengths of the early Greenpeace was that there
were kind of two generations working," said another early
Greenpeacer, Rex Weyler.
"The generation of Jim and Marie Bohlen and the Stowes, and then the
younger radical street guys, like Bob Hunter and later Paul Watson
and myself. Jim was the smart, quiet older guy who was very serious.
As much as Greenpeace had a kind of radical image, Jim Bohlen was
almost the antithesis of that. He was very serious.
"He seemed like the element that wanted to be reasonable, rational,
logical, calm. I think the fact that element existed in the early
Greenpeace alongside the more radical element ... was the hybrid
quality that really made it more effective."
Bohlen was born in New York, and grew up in Bucks County, Pa., near
Philadelphia. He was in the American navy during the Second World
War, and following the war obtained an engineering degree from New
York University.
"We came to Canada in 1967," said Marie Bohlen. "We had two sons, and
one was eligible for the draft. My son wanted to come to Canada, and
my husband said, 'Not without us.' So we all came."
The Bohlens were Unitarians, but had Quaker friends in the U.S. from
the antiwar movement. The Stowes were American Quakers who had moved
to Vancouver, and they met at a peace rally.
"We were standing in one of those peace parades, way back when in
1967," said Dorothy Stowe. "They had just come up from Pennsylvania.
They were looking for Quakers and Irving and I were standing there
holding the Quaker banner, so we met."
After Marie suggested sending a ship to Amchitka, Irving Stowe
hatched the idea of a benefit concert to charter a boat. Joni
Mitchell, James Taylor, Phil Ochs and Chilliwack did a concert at the
Pacific Coliseum, and a ship, the Phyllis Cormack, was chartered. Jim
Bohlen sailed on the voyage to the Aleutian Islands.
"They got all the way up there, but then the U.S. Coast Guard kept
them from getting anywhere near the blast area," said Marie Bohlen.
"They were sitting there in the Aleutians and the Americans called
the whole thing off, after they blew one thing and killed a lot of otters."
The Bohlens moved to Denman Island and started an organic farm.
"We called it Greenpeace farm but we didn't do that formally," said
Marie Bohlen. "We were just living on a farm and trying to live close
to the land."
Stowe often visited the Bohlens on Denman. "He built up this
beautiful acreage, and they grew all their own vegetables and stuff.
They had fruit trees, an outdoor shower heated by the sun, all very,
very organic."
The Bohlens moved to Courtenay five years ago, when Jim's health
began to fail. He died in Comox Hospital.
"He was in there for about five weeks," said Stowe. "He had advanced
Parkinson's disease. He tried desperately to communicate, but the
muscles get restricted in your throat, and you can't talk, really, so
nobody could understand him. It was really devastating.
"Marie was there at the hospital every single day, all day, reading
the mail and so forth to him, talking to him. He tried to respond but
it was impossible."
"He made a great contribution to the world's environment," said
Stowe. "Who knew that four people at a kitchen table could give rise
to a movement that has offices in 40 countries?"
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