Obituary: Jim Bohlen

Born: 4 July, 1926, in the Bronx, New York.

Died: 5 July, 2010, in Comox, British Columbia, aged 84.

It was Jim Bohlen's snap decision to sail to Amchitka Island, Alaska, to protest an underground nuclear test, that led to the creation of the environmental organisation Greenpeace. Bohlen was a founder of the Don't Make a Wave Committee, a group determined to oppose nuclear testing at Amchitka Island in the Aleutians, which had begun in 1969. With a test scheduled for autumn 1971, little more than a year away, Bohlen complained to his wife, Marie, that the committee was deliberating too slowly.

As she offhandedly suggested that they sail a boat to the test site, a reporter called to check on the committee's deliberations. Bohlen, caught off guard, said: "We hope to sail a boat to Amchitka to confront the bomb," a remark that appeared in the press the next day.

The committee made good on Bohlen's pledge. After Irving Stowe, a core member, organised a fund-raising concert in Vancouver with Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, the committee rented the fishing boat Phyllis Cormack, and, after renaming it Greenpeace, sailed to Alaska.

Although the boat was intercepted by the Coast Guard, public outcry caused a delay in the test. The programme was later abandoned, and Amchitka Island was turned into a bird sanctuary.

Today Greenpeace is an international organisation with more than three million members, and it carries out environmental campaigns through its offices in 40 countries.

James Calvin Bohlen came from the Bronx in New York. After getting a degree in mechanical engineering from New York University in 1949 he enlisted in the Navy and served as a radio operator during the Korean War. He later worked for a trucking company and an aerospace defence contractor.

In 1967 Bohlen moved his family to Vancouver to put his stepson out of reach of the military draft. He and his wife became active in anti-war, anti-nuclear and environmental causes. They set about creating a farming community with geodesic dome houses that would be self-sufficient in food and energy. The project inspired him to write The New Pioneer's Handbook: Getting Back to the Land in an Energy-Scarce World.

In the 1980s, when Greenpeace resumed its campaigns against nuclear weapons, Bohlen, who had left the group, returned to lead actions against testing of the cruise missile and took part in the Nuclear Free Seas campaign, which was intended to prevent nuclear weapons from being brought into port cities aboard the warships of nuclear navies.

As a candidate for the Green Party in Canada, he ran unsuccessfully for parliament twice. He was a director of Greenpeace until retiring in 1993. His memoir, Making Waves: The Origins and Future of Greenpeace, was published in 2000.

Bohlen died from complications of Parkinson's disease.

His first marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Marie; son, Lance; daughter Margot Bradley; and three grandchildren.