Norway, Let the Last Whales Live!

My First Greenpeace Action

It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing-Duke Ellington

15 minutes

Suddenly, there was a great tearing sound and I was swinging wildly through the air. I looked up the single strand of 11mm (less than half an inch) climbing rope that connected me to the Cambie street bridge, to see if it was still attached. I swung out twenty feet over the water, then swooped back towards the bridge support. Looking down I could see the concrete bridge footing about 40 feet below me. If the rope broke now, I’d plummet onto the concrete and get badly hurt. Instead, I swung back out towards the water. Looking up again I realised that the banner strung between my rope and Brian’s had torn where it connected to my rope. Due to the strong wind on the banner, we had been pushed at an angle under the bridge. When the banner tore away, I had swung back in a great arc, and carried on swinging. I was worried about the effect of the swinging on my rope as it went over the edge of the bridge above me. Climbing rope is very good at protecting a climber taking a fall. Because the rope stretches, it absorbs most of the energy of the fall and puts far less shock onto the climber. It can also quickly wear through if it is weighted and rubs over a sharp edge: and we were putting massive extra stresses on the rope. Climbing rope is very strong, and has a two ton breaking strength. But it is in not designed for the forces operating on a 750 square foot banner in a strong wind. As I swung, my life was in the hands of the rope gods.

The banner tore from my rope. Eventually, I stopped swinging wildly

I was hanging off the Cambie street bridge in down-town Vancouver, British Columbia, to bring a message to the Crown Prince of Norway, who was coincidentally the President of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The banner read “Norway, Let the Last Whales Live. Greenpeace.” Norway was about to restart killing minke whales and we wanted our message to get to the prince personally, to embarrass Norway into stopping the planned hunt. It was May 1986, and the prince was in Vancouver to open the Norwegian pavilion at Expo 86.

I had been working for Greenpeace in their Vancouver office for just six months. Less than a year earlier, Fernando Periera had been murdered by the French Secret Service when they blew up the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour. This added another level of seriousness to the work, and reminded us all of the risks we took. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior

Luanne Roth, the Vancouver Greenpeace director, knew that I spent most weekends at Squamish, Canada’s top rock-climbing area, just an hour north of Vancouver. She asked me if I could hang a banner to protest Norway’s plan to resume killing minke whales. The Norwegian princely personage was going to be taken on a tour of the Expo site by boat. He would pass under the Cambie street bridge, and we would be there to greet him. I agreed and started preparing.

It didn’t occur to me to contact the climbers who carried out the Greenpeace actions from Toronto, and I set about working out how to hang a banner from scratch. The first thing I did was look for a climbing partner and posted a hand written sign on the notice board in the Mountain Equipment Coop (MEC), Vancouver’s vast outdoor equipment store.

“Greenpeace is planning a summer of actions and looking for volunteers. We are particularly looking for climbers to help hang banners and support actions to protect the environment. Please contact Simon Waters at…”

The big task was to work out how to safely hang a banner suspended 40 feet above the water. I practised in a local park, by tying a rope to a tree and slowly walking backwards. The next day, a volunteer played ‘gravity’, holding the rope off the ground and applying a bit of a pull as I slowly backed away from the tree. Over several days, and with the help of several patient volunteers, we practised attaching a banner to my rope, then backing up further to attach the bottom. Then we did the same thing with two ropes, getting another volunteer to play my partner. This was a laborious learning process, but I absolutely didn’t want to cock up my first Greenpeace action.

Kevin McKeown, the canvass coordinator was in overall charge of the action. He had worked on a number of actions already and had managed the deployment of the brilliant Cruise Catcher the previous winter. Kevin took on ordering the banner, getting the slogan written on it, and organising the volunteer helpers on the bridge. Both Kevin and I were working full time as fundraisers, and doing the action preparation in our spare time. We went together to scout the bridge. The plan was we would walk up the bridge pavement, looking like innocuous backpackers, and tie our anchors onto the balustrade. We selected the spot where we would go over the edge, and I took out a measuring tape. We chose where one end of the banner would go, and measured and remeasured the distance to the other end. I marked up our two anchors, the places where we’d attach ourselves to the bridge. It was an act of faith that the bridge balustrade would support the forces working on a 25 by 30 foot banner. There was another problem too. The rope needed to be protected from rubbing against the bridge under the potentially high stress of a large banner as it ran over the edge of the bridge. The sawing back and forth under pressure could quickly cut the rope. We came up with a method of protecting the rope, but this was the one part of our plan that was rather make do. Though I was a climber and protecting the rope over an edge is a climbing problem, the extra stresses on the rope when you added a large banner was of an entirely different order of magnitude. Musing on this, I bought the climbing equipment for the action, including two new ropes. Later, hanging on the rope in a strong wind, I hoped my preparations had been adequate.

Greenpeace is full of stories of semi-magical happenings, and I was very lucky to have one on this first action. I got an answer to my note at the MEC from a brilliant and imperturbable climber, Brian Beard. Over the years, this was the only time I got a response to my notices on the MEC noticeboard, and just when I needed it most. Brian was an excellent climber and far more experienced than me, so I was happy that he agreed that my laboriously thought out plan would work.

On the day of the action, we were parked near the bridge in the Greenpeace canvas car. Brian and I were wearing our harnesses, and all kitted up, with the banner in a backpack. Kevin was coordinating with the media team by radio, and we were waiting to hear that the princely chappie had set out on his boat tour. Somehow, through the radio crackle we heard the police talking about Cambie street bridge on their radios. This caused a bit of a panic. “We have to go NOW” said Kevin. So, instead of walking nonchalantly onto the bridge, we drove, made an illegal stop with a squeal of tires, and jumped out. The support team were inconspicuously lingering on the wide bridge pavement, and did a great job helping us set up. Everything worked out as planned. Brian and I connected our anchors to the marked spots, a support person ran a rope between us, we did a final check and abseiled off the bridge. It is a tricky operation going over the edge and this was the first time I’d abseiled off a structure, as opposed to a cliff edge. I was very lucky to have a solid, experienced, confident companion for my first action. All went smoothly, and twenty feet below the road bed, we pulled the banner across and attached the top, went down another thirty feet and attached the bottom. The wind was strong enough to push us quite a way under the bridge, but we were feeling great…until the banner tore.

As my swinging reduced, I was now over water again. I calculated what I would need to do if the rope broke, and felt fairly confident I could swim to safety, especially with a team of supporters nearby. I just hoped the banner didn’t land on top of me. Now torn, the banner turned into a great flapping sail and Brian detached himself too. Half an hour later, the media underneath the bridge left and I shouted down “Have they gone home yet? Can we come up now?”

We prussiked up the rope and we were greeted by police, who were more bemused than upset. The camera crews hadn’t gone, they’d moved onto the bridge deck to catch our arrival on top. I did a few media pieces, my first for Greenpeace, both in English and appalling French. This was my first time as spokesperson for Greenpeace. Curiously, later that day I was interviewed for TV again about the Greenpeace fundraising bingo! So I was on the news twice that night for two entirely different topics. And, as I had been interviewed in French as well as English, the action was featured on CBC Francais, the beginning of my role as Greenpeace’s west coast francophone spokesperson.

That night, the news reported that the Norwegian Crown Prince’s boat tour of the Expo site was cut short, due to our emergency banner deployment, so he wasn’t taken under the bridge. Non-the-less, the media connected the two events, and the Prince was faced with questions at his press conference that afternoon about how he resolved the conflict of being head of the WWF and the crown prince of a nation about to restart whaling. In fact the main questions were about Norway and whaling, and we were top, or near top of the news on every channel. They used the banner, the banner tearing, and my sound-bites when back on the bridge. We also made the front page of the Vancouver Sun the next day.

We were lucky. Everything worked out, apart from the banner tearing: we got great coverage, there were no arrests and we were both safe and well. I also learned several important lessons. A practical point: make sure the banner will survive the stresses of a strong wind. From then on I managed the purchase of the banners and had them made by a sail-maker. This cost a lot more, but I wasn’t prepared to accept the risk of another near disaster. A tactical point: stick to the topic and get the message out, when you are in front of a camera. You go to a lot of trouble, and at least some risk, to pull off an action. But the action is not what you want to talk about; it is an opportunity to highlight an issue. The banner slogan, displayed in a dramatic situation, is visible for enough time to get your message across, unfiltered by the media. When the climbers talk to the media, they are more likely to make the news than the campaigner standing by with the media. You need to use this opportunity to explain the issue. This was about stopping Norway from killing an endangered whale species.

I also observed from the inside, how an action can highlight an issue, and force the other protagonist to respond to questioning by the media. The crown prince was in Vancouver to do PR work for Norway. Greenpeace changed the topic, and instead used his visit to build resistance to Norway’s whaling plans.

I also learned from watching Kevin’s in his role as overall coordinator- as I just organised the banner hang aspect. Kevin is quick witted and decisive. We worked together many times after this, me generally managing any climbing actions with his help, and Kevin managing water actions with mine. I also learned something from Beverly our media person. She politely told me not to vocalise that we will wrap up once the media have gone!

Due to what I learned on this action I decided the following year not to hang a banner off Vancouver’s Liions Gate bridge, as it is a very windy spot, and the climbers would be a hundred, not forty feet off the water. Instead, we climbed the cable supports. When trying to explain to the judge the safety concerns that led me to do this, he cut me off, called me a liar, and gave me two weeks in jail!