Greenpeace Co-Founder Jim Bohlen Dies In Vancouver

by NowPublic Staff | July 8, 2010 at 12:00 pm

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Jim Bohlen Dies At 84, Helped Start Make A Wave Committe Precursor To Greenpeace International
A small unexpected decision started what became the international environmental organization that is Greenpeace - a decision made by Jim Bohlen and his fellow Greenpeace Co-founders in 1969.

Jim Bohlen was born in New York City in 1926 and trained as a Navy radio operator. A Unitarian, and anti-war activist, Jim Bohlen moved to Vancouver in 1967 with his wife Marie.

Jim Bohlen and Maire met fellow protesters, Paul Cote, Irving and Dorothy Stowe at an anti-nuclear demonstrations in Vancouver. The group got together to plan a strategy to protest U.S. nuclear weapons testing at Amchitka Island in Alaska, forming the Make A Wave Committee . The question is what would they do?

Jim was explaining his frustrations with this slow process to Marie one morning, when she casually asked why they didn’t simply sail a boat there. At the same time, they received a telephone call from the Vancouver Sun, asking what campaigns they might be planning. Caught off-guard, Jim said, "We hope to sail a boat to Amchitka to confront the bomb." The newspaper ran the story the following day.

The question now was finding a boat and the money. Fellow committee members the Stowes decided to raise money with a concert which happened to feature Joni Mitchell, James Taylor (see video), while JimBohlen found an old fishing boat the Phyllis McCormack
A protest boat and an international movement were launched from shores of Vancouver.
Jim Bohlen is remembered by Rex Weyley an early Greenpeace activist.

The generation of Jim and Marie Bohlen and (Irving and Dorothy) Stowe, and then the younger radical street guys. . . . 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."

Jim Bohlen died on July 5th. He is survived by wife Marie, a stepson, son, and daughter by is first wife, Anna.