Spring 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 demonstration 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-megaton 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 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 halibut 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 students, 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 exploding nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, 10,000-ton French Navy ship Jeanne d’Arc visited Vancouver carrying six Exocet missile launchers and four 100-millimetre 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.”
Summer 1976: World opinion, inspired by the campaign launched from Vancouver, forced France to stop testing 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’ concerns 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 and End the Arms Race co-sponsor the Walk for Peace. 100,000 walked for peace making it the largest such event in Canada’s history.
November 17, 1984: The referendum proposed by Mayor Harcourt in 1982 is put to Vancouver voters: “Are you in favour of Vancouver City Council asking the federal government to exercise its option under the Bilateral Agreement with the United States government to cancel any further testing of the cruise missile in this country?” The referendum received an 80 percent yes vote .
April 27, 1985: The Vancouver City Council and Vancouver School Board again sponsor the Walk for Peace.
1986: Vancouver is designated by the United Nations as one of 92 Peace Messenger Cities, asked to help promote peace worldwide.
May 1986: Vancouver City Council co-sponsors the International Conference on Risks of Nuclear War at the Orpheum Theatre with the Vancouver chapters of Science for Peace and Physicians for Social Responsibility.
April 11, 1989: Vancouver City Council voted to ask the Canadian federal government to declare the Port of Vancouver a nuclear weapons free zone.
April 20, 1991: Walk for Peace and Planetary Survival is sponsored by the city council, Vancouver parks and school boards, and End the Arms Race.
May 5, 2000: The Japan Peace Boat entered Vancouver with 600 international delegates, welcomed to the city by Mayor Phillip Owen.
August 5, 2000: Mayor Phillip Owen issued a proclamation commemorating the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, and calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
January 28, 2003: Vancouver City Council passed a motion opposing the proposed US war on Iraq and endorsed the protest march sponsored by Stop War.
October 21, 2003: Vancouver City Council urged the prime minister of Canada to sign the Space Preservation Treaty and to convene a conference for the treaty signing.
December 14, 2004: Vancouver City Council urged the federal government to refrain from participation in the ballistic missile defence plan or any initiative that would lead to the weaponization of space. Canada later rejected participation in the US-missile defence system. The City Council established the annual Vancouver Citizen’s Peace Award.
March 31, 2005: Vancouver City Council agrees to host the 18th meeting of the UN designated Peace Messenger Cities approves a budget of $50,000 to host the visiting mayors, and approves up to $150,000 to support the independent World Peace Forum 2006. The motion passed unanimously.
June 23 – 28, 2006: Vancouver to host the World Peace Forum. For information www.worldpeaceforum.ca