Robert “Bob” Hunter
In the early seventies Bob Hunter was a columnist for the Vancouver Sun newspaper. He was also one of the founding members of Greenpeace.
It seemed strange at the time to have a hippie/political/social/environmental activist at such a conservative newspaper but they knew what they were doing as he was widely read. The only reason we stole the paper from the “honour boxes” was to read his column and well, maybe check out the weekend movie listings.
In 1971 the Don’t Make a Wave Committee chartered a fishing boat named Phyllis Cormack, soon to be nicknamed Greenpeace 1, to travel to Amchitka Island off the coast of Alaska in an attempt to disrupt a planned underground nuclear test. At the time Bob was the committees “media guru”. This photograph was taken at the press conference just prior to their departure.
At the time I was involved in film and television workshops at Simon Fraser University and on night of the boats return I was there armed with a Sony Port-a-Pack video camera that wasn’t equipped with its own light. I had to follow the CBC and BCTV crews around utilizing their lighting much to their chagrin to capture anything on tape. Unfortunately that tape has long since disappeared.
The person to the right of Bob is Gerry Deiter. He was a big time photographer from New York with clients the likes of Life Magazine. In fact it was Life Magazine that commissioned him to photograph John Lennon and Yoko Ono during the famous “Bed-In” at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal in 1969. He was there for the entire eight days photographically chronicling all the events culminating with the recording of the song “Give Peace a Chance”.
For a complete chronicle of the Amchitka journey check out the excellent book by Robert Hunter with photographs by Robert Keziere just reprinted in 2005 “The Greenpeace to Amchitka: An Environmental Odyssey”, Arsenal Pulp Press.
