Bob Hunter

ENVIRONMENT

Visionary ecologist, prolific author, irreverent broadcaster, unconventional journalist. Many have suggested that Bob Hunter was the spiritual father of Greenpeace. Greenpeace International itself states, “Perhaps more than anyone else, Bob Hunter invented Greenpeace.” He was the first President of the Greenpeace Foundation and, among other things, he spearheaded a successful campaign to ban commercial whaling. He was a veteran advocacy columnist, scriptwriter, author, and lecturer. Bob began his communications career at the Winnipeg Tribune and later wrote a regular column for The Vancouver Sun, which was instrumental in promoting environmental awareness throughout British Columbia at the time. Bob served as both a crew member and a media-savvy activist on the original Greenpeace voyage to stop American nuclear testing in 1971 near the Aleutian Islands. It was his idea, after the first voyage, to transform the original organization, the “Don’t Make a Wave Committee” into an ongoing “non-violent ecological strikeforce” capable of traveling anywhere in the world. He renamed the organization the ‘Greenpeace Foundation’ in 1972 and guided it to become GreenpeaceInternational by 1979. Bob’s later years were spent in Toronto working for Citytv as their ecology specialist, raising ecological awareness by using the power of the media to take his message to people on a broader and more widespread scale. Much loved and admired around the world, since his passing, Hunter has been honoured by many. One notable honour of considerable significance was when the Ontario Liberal government, led by Premier Dalton McGuinty, dedicated a 550 acre park in Bob’s name. This park is called the Bob Hunter Memorial Park and is located in the Rouge Valley, not far from his Scarborough home. Before Bob passed away from his battle with prostate cancer on May 2, 2005, he was married for nearly 30 years to the love of his life, Bobbi Hunter, who was also a co-founder of Greenpeace. He has four children and five grandchildren.