10 Things the Boomers got going
PHOTO: Greenpeace.org
Thank you sons and daughters for continuing the good fight.
Diet for a Small Planet the 1971 bestselling book by Frances Moore Lappé, was the first major book to note the environmental impact of meat production as wasteful and a contributor to global food scarcity.
Food Co-ops: Between 1969 and 1979, close to 10,000 food co-ops were established
Vancouver’s LifeStream, was co-founded in 1971 by Arran and Ratana Stephens and was Canada's first natural foods supermarket.
Make love, not war was an anti-war slogan commonly associated with the American counterculture of the 1960s.
In 1972 Glenn Anderson hit on the idea of colouring a black and white line drawing called "Ecology", and Doodleart was born
The Gastown riot, in which police attacked a peaceful protest ‘Smoke-in’, occurred in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on August 7, 1971, following weeks of arrests by undercover drug squad members in Vancouver as part of a special police operation directed by Mayor Tom Campbell.
The Naam Restaurant embodied Vancouver’s hippy culture of the 1960s and 70s and was counter-culture central, especially as hippies weren’t allowed in some restaurants. Spiritual seekers, politicos, hippies, anti-war activists, as well as vegetarians converged.
In 1971, a small group of activists set sail to the Amchitka island off Alaska to try and stop a US nuclear weapons test. The money for the mission was raised with a concert, their old fishing boat was called “The Greenpeace”. Today Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its diversity" and focuses its campaigning on worldwide issues such as climate change, deforestation, overfishing, commercial whaling, genetic engineering, and anti-nuclear issues. It uses direct action, lobbying, research, and ecotage to achieve its goals. (Wikipedia)
Tree planting got its start in the 1960s after large-scale logging practices in British Columbia were leaving vast swaths of sterile earth in their wake. Forestry companies began offering contracts to young hippies--who happily set up small communal campsites in the most rural of settings, bringing with them only their most essential supplies. Based on statistics for British Columbia, the average tree planter: lifts a cumulative weight of over 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb), bends more than 200 times per hour, drives the shovel into the ground more than 200 times per hour and travels over 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) with a heavy load, every day of the entire season.
The first Pride Week happened in August 1973 and was a national LGBT rights event in Canada, and included an art festival, a dance, picnic, a screening of a documentary and a rally for gay rights that occurred in all the participating cities.
Easter Be-in: On March 21, 1967, the Vancouver Park Board turned down a request to hold a “Human Be-In” on Easter Sunday at Stanley Park but masses of young people showed up for a “spontaneous celebration of Easter by the peoples of the rain forest.”
Vancouver Sun 1967: “They wore tattered evening gowns. Some were dressed as monks, others as clowns. Many of the girls wore mini-skirts. They had on multi-coloured stockings and wore necklaces of shells and beads.They flew kites, sniffed incense, munched little frozen apples, burned joss sticks and stood in groups talking about how they hate hate.”