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11/06/2009

Images of Dorothy Stowe at the Amchitka CD Release Party in Vancouver in 2009. Dorothy Stowe passed away on July 23, 2010 at the age of 89. In the 1950s, Dorothy and Irving Stowe began campaigning against nuclear weapons, adopting the Quaker ideas of “bearing witness” to wrong-doing and “speaking truth to power.” After moving to Vancouver in 1965, the Stowes met journalists Bob Hunter and Ben and Dorothy Metcalfe, who helped promote their campaigns. At a peace rally, they met fellow Quakers Jim and Marie Bohlen and Hunter's British wife Zoe. This group formed the core of a new peace and ecology organization. When the U.S. announced a series of nuclear tests in Alaska in 1968, the Stowes formed the “Don't Make a Wave Committee,” a name inspired by the fear of a tsunami caused by the blasts. When Jim and Marie Bohlen suggested sailing a boat into the test zone, Dorothy and Irving Stowe agreed. They chartered the halibut boat, the Phyllis Cormack, renamed “Greenpeace” to emphasize the merging of peace and ecology. The boat set sail in September 1971, was arrested by the U.S. Coast Guard, and never reached the island. Nevertheless, the voyage created a public uprising, and in February 1972, the U.S. announced an end to the nuclear tests. In May, 1972, the group changed its name to “Greenpeace.”