Greenpeace: From hippies to lobbyists

Where did it all begin?

In 1971, it took just a handful of individuals who were strongly opposed to nuclear testing to give birth to this worldwide organisation.
The Greenpeace story started in late 1960s Vancouver, where - as in many other North American cities at the time - a protest movement was in full bloom. With the US embroiled in the Vietnam war, many deserters and conscientious objectors had sought refuge in neighbouring Canada.
And it was against this backdrop that a new idea began to win adherents.  "Stopping the war in Vietnam was important to me and we wanted to ... we were peace activists," explains author and photographer Rex Weyler. "But we knew that there was something else brewing and this was the environmental movement, this was ecology; we kept saying ecology is the next big thing."