Resources
Notes & Sources
From: Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists and Visionaries Changed the World
When the book is published in September, I will post additional Notes & Sources, expanded from the Chapter Notes in the book itself.
“No one lies like an eye witness.”
Peter Tabuns, former Greenpeace Canada Executive Director, divulged this morsel of Russian folk wisdom over a cup of coffee as we discussed Greenpeace history.
An eyewitness has the evidence: “I was there.” But memories are fallible; witnesses embellish their role, expunge what they abhor, and often believed their own remake of history. Much of the past written Greenpeace record is accurate, some dubious, and some outright fabrication.
Such is the nature of history from Gilgamesh to John Kennedy.
The historian or journalist’s job is like that of a detective, to vet through the sources, discover the consistencies, to sift the plausible story from the wishful thinking. It has been often said that journalists get the first draft of history, but journalists today live in a world of spin. We all live in a world of spin. The speech writers and spin doctors actual get the first draft of history, and the journalists, those who haven’t joined the spinners, must unravel the pretexts and subtexts.
My sources for the Greenpeace history fell into four categories:
- The Printed and Recorded Public Record: Books, dissertations, periodicals, transcripts, financial statements, public documents, tapes, film, photographs, and other archive materials;
- Internet Public Record: including some of the above items converted to electronic files;
- Primary Sources: Interviews, journals, notes, meeting minutes, private records; and
- My personal journals and reporter notebooks from 1973-1980, including thirty thousand photographs taken during these years.
Specific sources will be detailed by Chapter in September, when the book appears in bookstores. In the meantime, the following sources were used throughout the narrative:
General Sources in Print:
Warriors of the Rainbow, by Robert Hunter, (Hold, Rinehart and Winston, 1979). This book should not be confused with Warriors of the Rainbow: Strange and Prophetic Dreams of the Indian Peoples, by William Willoya and Vinson Brown (Naturegraph, 1962), from which Hunter borrowed the title, and which the author used a source in the present work.
Make it a Green Peace: The History of an International Environmental Organization,” by Frank Zelko (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Kansas, 2003).
Greenpeace III: Journey Into the Bomb, by David McTaggart with Robert Hunter (Collins, 1978).
Outrage!, by David McTaggart (J.J. Douglas, 1973, later Douglas & McIntyre)
McLuhan’s Children: The Greenpeace Message and the Media, by Stephen Dale (Between the Lines, 1996).
Sea Shepherd, by Paul Watson with Warren Rogers (W.W. Norton & Co., 1982)
The Greenpeace Story, by Michael Brown and John May (Dorling Kindersly Limited, 1989).
The Greenpeace Chronicles, ed. Watson, Garrick, Weyler, Hunter, Moore, et. al.; newspaper, issues 1-22 (Greenpeace Foundation, September 1975 – December 1979).
Greenpeace: Changing the World, ed. Conny Boettger, Fouad Hamdan (Rasch & Röhring, 2001).
The Greenpeace Book, Karl and Dona Sturmanis, (Orca Sound Publications, 1978).
“Mind Bombs and Whale Songs: Greenpeace and the News,” Sean Cassidy, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oregon, 1992;
Witness: Twenty-Five Years on the Environmental Front Line, by Kieran Mulvaney and Mark Warford (André Deutsch, 1996)
The Georgia Straight: What the Hell Happened?, ed. Naomi Pauls, Charles Campbell (Douglas & McIntyre, 1997); and The Georgia Straight, newspaper, pub., ed. Dan McLeod (Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp. Issue 1, May 1967 – Issue 600, May 1979).
The Vancouver Sun and The Province, daily newspapers (Pacific Press, 1967-1979).
The Last Great Sea, by Terry Glavin, (David Suzuki Foundation, Greystone Books, Douglas & McIntyre Publishing Group, 2000). An excellent history of the Pacific Ocean.
The Whale War, by David Day (Douglas and McIntyre, 1987).
Mind in the Waters, ed. Joan McIntyre, (Charles Scribner’s Sons, Sierra Club Books, 1974).
Killer Whales, by John Ford, Graeme Ellis, and Kenneth Balcomb, 2nd edition (UBC Press, 2000).
International Regulation of Whaling, by P.W. Bimie (Oceana Publications, 1985).
The Power of the People, ed. Robert Cooney and Helen Michalowski from original text by Marty Jezer, )New Society Publishers, 1987).
Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation, by Harvey Wasserman & Norman Solomon, (Delta, Dell Publishing, 1982).
General Sources, Internet:
Environmental History Timeline. An excellent on-line history summary, with good links and print resources, compiled by William Kovarik from the original print version in Mass Media and Environmental Conflict, by Kovarik and Mark Neuzil (Sage, 1996).
Environmental Ethics, developed by Marius Necsoiu and Eugene C. Hargrove, The Center for Environmental Philosophy, University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and University of North Texas.
Environment and History, compiled by Peter Coates University of Bristol, Rob Lambert University of Nottingham, John M. MacKenzie Lancaster University, et. al. Good European and global perspective.
H-net, Environmental History Journal, sponsored by the American Society for Environmental History and the European Society for Environmental History.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, general nuclear information, with National Resource Defence Council’s "Nuclear Notebook: Known Nuclear Tests Worldwide, 1945-98," compiled by Robert S. Norris and William M. Arkin; and "Poisoned Pacific: The legacy of French nuclear testing," by Bengt Danielsson.
Nuclearfiles.org: Thorough, accurate nuclear history, including a good Nuclear Timeline, with excellent links to additional details.
Atomic Archive, for information on nuclear history, the Manhatten Project, Trinity, hydrogen bomb developement, proliferation, and so forth. Excellent source for original papers, such as the 1939 "Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: A New Type of Nuclear Reaction," by Lise Meitner and O.R. Frisch and Hans Bethe’s "Comments on the History of the Hydrogen Bomb."
Nuclear explosions, with map and list of known events.
Whaling history, Claire Johnson, Janine Killough, and Claire Davidson, Julian Smith.
Captured Orcas, originally compiled data by Erich Hoyt in in Orca – the Whale Called Killer (Camden House, Firefly Books; revised May 1990).
Order Cetacea, by Eric J. Ellis, with links to other authors on various cetacean families.
Orcinus orca family structures, compiled by Dr. Paul Spong.
As I write these notes, March 2004, there is no thorough and accurate history of Greenpeace available on the Internet although some of the Greenpeace sites include accurate portions of the history. Meanwhile, several apocryphal accounts and considerable misinformation about Greenpeace history persist on the Internet. Over the next few years, the Zelko work and this present work, may help alleviate that deficiency. In the meantime, take heed.
General Sources, Interviews and Journals:
No one experienced all the events recounted in this history, but certain Greenpeace insiders did endure the first decade, and I draw on their interviews, in person and by correspondance: Bob Hunter, Ben Metcalfe (deceased, October 2003), Pat and Eileen Moore, Paul Watson, Rod Marining, Lyle Thurston, Davie Gibbons, Myron MacDonald, Paul Spong, Linda Spong, David McTaggart (deceased, March 2001), and John Cormack (deceased, November 1988), Bob Cummings (deceased, 1987). The journals, notes and records from David Garrick are also referenced throughout. Bill Gannon provided financial and corporation records of the organization from 1971 through 1979. Bob Hunter’s journals proved indispensable throughout.
Crucial to the early chapters, 1966-73, are my interviews and correspondence with Dorothy Stowe, Barbara Stowe, Robert Stowe, Bill Darnell, Dorothy Metcalfe, Zoe Hunter, Terry Simmons, Hamish Bruce, Jim and Marie Bohlen, Ken Farquarson, Tom Perry, Katerina Halm, Irene McAllister, and Gary Gallon (deceased July 2003).
Additional, helpful accounts of the years 1973-1979 include interviews and correspondence with Bill Gannon, Fred Easton, Ron Precious, Bree Marining (deceased 1997), George Korotva, Michael Bailey, Paul Hovan, Kaye Moss, Steve Sawyer, and Dick Dillman. For help with the European history, I conducted personal and/or email interviews with Pete Wilkinson, Rémi Parmentier, Susi Newborn, David Moodie, Martini Gotje, Geert Drieman, Henri van Bentum, Gijs Thieme, Peter Bouquet, Harald Zindler, Gerhard Wallmeyer, and Christian Krüger. From Greenpeace Interntaional, Brian Fitzgerald, Steve Erwood, Sara Holden, Steve Sawyer, Elaine Lawrence, Rémi Parmentier, and Peter Tabuns reviewed the manuscript.
Frank Zelko provided access to his interviews with McTaggart, Metcalfe, Hunter, David Tussman in San Francisco, and others. Zelko also contributed with long email discussions of historical points.
Finally, I referred to my own journals and reporter’s notebooks from 1973-1980.
Look back here in September for Extended Notes & Sources from the Book.