I remember thinking that I didn’t want to just sit and wait in fear, I’d rather be doing something to take my mind off my inevitable drowning.  So I decided to go and see a movie at the nearby theatre.  According to the scientists, the tidal wave would reach Vancouver at about 2:00 p.m.  At 1:30 p.m., I sat in the dark theatre, trembling, awaiting my demise, listening intently for the thundering sound of crashing water.  2:00 p.m. passed, 2:15, 2:30 and 3:00 p.m.  Nothing happened.  At 3:15 the movie ended, and I left the theatre and emerged into the daylight.

To my astonishment, the world was the same as it had been 2 hours earlier.  Perhaps the scientists had miscalculated, and the tidal wave was taking longer to reach us.

When I got home, I went into my room and turned on my radio to listen for any news of the bomb and the tidal wave.  But I heard nothing.

The next day at school, my grade 6 teacher told us about a group of people from Vancouver, who were so outraged by the bomb testing, that they had rented a small boat weeks earlier and traveled up the west coast to the bomb site to try to stop it.  They called themselves the ‘Don’t Make A Wave’ committee.  Others from this same group had been relentlessly calling the Whitehouse to get a meeting with U.S. President Nixon who had authorized this bomb test, to implore him to cancel the test.  Their requests for a meeting had been denied.

I was fascinated by this courageous group of people.  This was the first time I had any awareness that ordinary citizens had the power to stand up and say no to a government decision.  I was amazed that these people had the courage to stand up to the U.S. government, and actually come into close proximity and bear witness to a nuclear bomb blast.  And they were doing it not only for the protection of the people living on the west coast of Canada and Alaska, but for all of humanity as it endangered world peace and threatened the ecological balance of our environment.   

On Saturday morning, November 6, 1971, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission detonated a 5.2 megaton hydrogen bomb 5,875 feet below the surface of Amchitka Island, off the coast of Alaska.  ‘The blast created a molten cavern inside the rock, fissured the volcanic substrate, and blew a mile-wide crater on the surface that filled with water, later named Cannikin Lake.  Radioactive krypton gas leaked from the fissured rock.  Military buildings and trailers crumpled, roads collapsed, and the fault line lifted 3 feet across 14 acres of tundra.  Six natural lakes drained dry.  Forty thousand cubic metres of granite crumbled from shoreline cliffs.  The shock wave registered 7.2 on the Richter scale, the largest human-made earth tremor in history.  As with earlier blasts, the shock wave instantly killed seabirds on the rocks and split the skulls of thousands of sea otters.’ (Rex Weyler, Greenpeace, the Inside Story, 2004).

The tidal wave never came.  This small group of people from Vancouver later came to call themselves Greenpeace. My knowledge of this small group of concerned citizens and their determination had a life-changing affect on me.  At the age of 11, I learned many important lessons from this small group of courageous people:

• that we do not have to accept the threats of war and environmental degradation from anyone;

• that our world leaders can make asinine and dangerous decisions;

• that we all have a right to stand up and be heard and influence decisions that affect us all;

• that we all have a responsibility and a duty to protect our environment and all life within it;

• and we all have a right to live in peace.

I have immense gratitude to those who, in 1971, gave meaning to the word activism.  Again, this was my first introduction to a world of political decisions, civil protest, and human rights.  I was 11 years old and, today, over 50 years later, I remain a loyal member and supporter of the Greenpeace mission to protect the environment and all life upon Earth.  It began with a group of about 20 people, talking around a kitchen table, in a home in Vancouver, attempting to stop a nuclear bomb, and now has grown into an international organization that seeks to protect the whole world.  

I think the mission and activities of Greenpeace are remarkable.  The organization gives voice and action for the protection of the planet, and also protects us from our own self-destruction.  Greenpeace has heightened our awareness to the sacred balance of nature, and to the devastating impact that humans have upon it.  

Over 50 years later, my answer to the Call for Peace is coaching today’s courageous leaders who are determined to protect the sanctity of all life on Earth and fulfill humanity’s promise of world peace.

Lorraine Sims, December 31, 2024