13 From Nuclear Disarmament to Raging Granny

Growing up in Rossland, British Columbia, in the 1930s and 1940s, I was no stranger to activism. Rossland was a beautiful mountainous place fuelled by a mining economy but far from quiet and apolitical. My father was a staunch supporter of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, was a strong union member, and became involved in the local Co-operative Transportation Society (CTS). The CTS provided transportation for anyone in Rossland employed by the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company (now known as Teck Resources) in neighbouring Trail. In 1947, some of the local teenagers, myself included, looked to our parents’ example and went on strike at our high school. Although I cannot recall all of the details about the strike now, I remember it as an exciting event in which we missed about a week of school.⁴ That strike was only the beginning of my activism, and in 1960, as I packed my bags and moved to the big city, I knew there would be much more excitement to come. I moved to Edmonton, where I was married, had children, and still live with my children and grandchildren.

In the early 1960s, with my new journey as a parent came a growing concern about the future of our world. I remember thinking, “How can a person of good conscience bring children into a world that might not last very long? And what if I bring a child into a life of poor health and/or serious sickness caused by pollution?” I was not the only one who felt this way. Of particular concern at the time was above-ground nuclear weapons testing, which was recognized as a danger even by the president of the United States, John Kennedy, who expressed concern for the future of his own children. Most of my Edmonton friends were also young mothers, and many of us belonged to the same anti-nuclear and anti-war groups that sprang up during those years.

These popular fears led, in the early 1960s, to the creation of anti-nuclear organizations in Edmonton and, more broadly, Canada. The year 1960 saw the formation of the Edmonton Committee for the Control of Radiation Hazards and of the Combined Universities Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CUCND) active among students at the University of Alberta. Other groups, like the Voice of Women (VOW) and the Canadian Committee for Control of Radiation Hazards (CCCRH), emerged to promote nuclear disarmament and peace.

It is important to remember that the Cold War years were scary times for me and many others. At the time, nuclear war felt like a real possibility.⁵ These feelings were intensified by events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the ongoing US war on Vietnam. Being in the activist community made us all feel as though we were doing something useful or productive in the face of something so terrible. We had a strong community in Edmonton, and many other activist communities existed all over Canada and the United States.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Canadians were shocked into a new awareness of the possibility of nuclear war, and nuclear disarmament became one of the hot issues during the next year’s federal election. Anti-nuclear sentiment arose in the federal cabinet, with Defence Minister Douglas Harkness resigning in February 1963 when Prime Minister John Diefenbaker refused to place US nuclear warheads in Canada. In the April 1963 federal election, Lester Pearson’s Liberals won a minority government partly on the strength of their promise that, if elected, they would not accept nuclear warheads from the United States.

After the election, many anti-nuclear and peace activist groups kept a close eye on the Liberal government. One prominent peace activist group, VOW (formed in 1960), was convinced that Pearson would keep his word, because his wife, Maryon Pearson, was a VOW member. When, just five months later, Pearson and the Liberals went back on their word, anti-nuclear and peace activist groups were appalled and felt that they had been betrayed. However, VOW, the Edmonton Peace Council, CCCRH, and CUCND continued to protest Canada’s acquisition of nuclear warheads, and Edmonton remained a significant place of anti-nuclear organizing in Canada.

Thinking back to activism in Edmonton during the 1960s and 1970s, one name stands out: Mary Van Stolk. Van Stolk and her husband started the CCCRH in Edmonton in 1958 to inform the public about the dangers of nuclear fallout from the above-ground testing of nuclear devices.⁶ Fashioned after Bertrand Russell’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the United Kingdom, CCCRH played a huge role in organizing anti-nuclear protests and campaigns in Edmonton and indeed across Canada. Previously Mary Brown, she met her husband, Jan Van Stolk, while she was modelling in the United States. After their wedding, the couple moved to Edmonton, where they started their lives together as an activist power couple. She was a very beautiful woman and had a fascinating personality. She threw many parties and loved to cook and entertain. She also loved to learn. When she was interested in any subject she would read everything she could get her hands on in order to educate herself. So, when she started the anti-nuclear movement in the late 1950s, she was convinced that above-ground nuclear testing was wrong and dangerous to the continuation of life on earth. She worked tirelessly on that campaign.

When the head office of CCCRH moved from Edmonton to Toronto in 1961, Mary Van Stolk was excited and willing to travel between the two cities in order to keep her role as executive director. However, shortly after the move, she was replaced by F. C. Hunnius as executive director and the CCCRH became the Canadian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CCND). She was devastated. Hunnius and his backers were excellent organizers and had simply sold memberships to people who would swing the vote his way in the election. This did not deter Van Stolk’s activism, though; she continued to urge people across Canada to sign a national petition against nuclear weapons. She worked with church groups, teachers, politicians, and many other Canadians. During those years, she even set up a booth at the very popular Strathcona farmers’ market every Saturday so people could sign copies of her petition. Normally, to get a booth at the farmers’ market, one had to be a vendor with a product to sell. But Van Stolk was able to bypass the rule by convincing the market’s organizers of the importance of activism against above-ground nuclear testing. She was never alone at the booth, because she was always joined by like-minded volunteers.

The Edmonton chapter of CCND allied itself with other peace and nuclear disarmament groups, like VOW, during the early 1960s. VOW was a national peace group that advocated for peace and protested against nuclear weapons and testing as well as the Vietnam War. CCND partnered with VOW to bring attention to the possibility of nuclear war and the health hazards of nuclear testing in the atmosphere and underwater. We saw it as a victory when, in August 1963, the governments of the Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain agreed to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that put all nuclear tests underground.

However, our activism did not end with the 1963 treaty. There was still much work to do on exposing the lasting effects of nuclear testing. So, following the lead of the national VOW, our local VOW chapter joined women from many countries in collecting baby teeth for testing of strontium-90, a cancer-causing element that was one of the airborne elements distributed by above-ground nuclear testing. VOW and CCND worked together with researchers at U of A, and we depended heavily on the advice of the researchers there to teach us how strontium-90 was produced and its potential effects on the body. Strontium-90 has a similar makeup to calcium, and bones and teeth absorb it easily. So, baby teeth were ideal for testing for traces of the element. The campaign culminated in 1965 when the renowned peace activist and scientist Dr. Ursula Franklin received over forty-five thousand Canadian baby teeth for testing at her University of Toronto lab. The effort alerted tens of thousands of Canadian women to an international hazard.

The Edmonton chapters of VOW and CCND continued to work together in their peace and nuclear disarmament goals, and from 1965 to 1970 they organized Mother’s Day marches along with the Edmonton Peace Council. We used these marches to bring awareness to important peace issues, particularly opposition to the Vietnam War and nuclear weapons. Each year, the Mother’s Day March brought between a hundred and three hundred people together, with women pushing strollers full of young children marching twenty-seven blocks along Jasper Avenue.

As the 1960s came to an end and the 1970s began, my children grew, and so did my concern about the world around me. Pollution became a significant anxiety for me and others in Edmonton and across Canada. In May of 1970, Save Tomorrow, Oppose Pollution (STOP) was born, and it burst into the activist circles of Edmonton with a bang. Van Stolk, one of its founding members, was adamant that members of the group should not have to pay a fee to join the group; instead, they should pay with time and commitment to the causes STOP took up. In the first year, hundreds of volunteers appeared out of the woodwork to join the organization. The first campaign we organized through STOP was a door-knocking and on-the-street initiative in which we asked citizens of Edmonton to sign four postcards—one to their MLA, one to their MP, one to the premier of the province, and one to the prime minister of Canada. The postcards said, “I demand strict enforcement of existing pollution controls and immediate legislation to stop further pollution.” At the bottom, it read, “Please Reply.”

There was free parking on Jasper Avenue after 6:00 p.m., so every night about twenty-five teams of STOP members, armed with postcards and maps, would park their cars and talk to passersby, asking them to sign the postcards. Many people signed, and some even joined the ranks. They would come back the next night to help us get more and more Edmontonians to sign. In what seemed like no time at all, we had sent 150,000 postcards signed by citizens of Edmonton to the Alberta legislature and federal representatives.

The provincial and federal representatives did respond, but their replies soon became quite controversial. Some of the signatures were illegible; one MLA assumed that a particular signer was a young schoolboy, and, astonishingly, in his response, the MLA advised the citizen to improve his writing and discuss the issue with his parents. In fact, the signer was a professor at U of A, who then contacted the media. The next day, the story was on the front page of the Edmonton Journal, which began a very fruitful relationship between STOP and the media in Edmonton.

STOP was not the only environmentally conscious activist group in Edmonton at the time. The city was abuzz with anti-pollution activism; in the spring of 1970, the Edmonton Anti-Pollution Group and the Interdisciplinary Committee for Environmental Quality (ICEQ) joined STOP in its battles. The three groups worked together to distribute activist tasks and responsibilities so that they would not step on one another’s toes. In the end, the three groups agreed that the Edmonton Anti-Pollution Group would write and distribute environmental reports based on the scientific research produced by ICEQ and that STOP would continue with its more radical and outreach-based activities. Inadvertently, these activities grew as we sought to solve the problem of office space.

For a year, STOP had space in the offices of the Anglican Diocese. After that, we were able to get into the Students’ Union Building on the U of A campus. Many students volunteered to work for STOP, so the move proved to be doubly advantageous. Active young university students could hardly wait to finish a class or their assignments so they could go to the STOP office, talk to Mary Van Stolk, and volunteer for the organization.

One campaign the U of A students were particularly excited about was STOP’s Dirty Pictures campaign. Launched as a photo contest in the fall of 1970, the Dirty Pictures campaign asked citizens to provide us with pictorial evidence of pollution in Alberta. Hundreds upon hundreds of photos were sent to us, and a panel of judges chose the best evidence of the worst pollution. Our goal was to embarrass the person or company producing the pollution, in hopes that they would think twice about their practices. The Dirty Pictures campaign continued for four years.

In the early 1970s, STOP was especially involved in consciousness raising and outreach education. For example, we established a speakers bureau, through which we gathered volunteers to travel to schools and community groups and teach about pollution. Eventually we had over thirty volunteer speakers. Indeed, in 1973 alone, twenty-eight speakers reached 121 classrooms, 21 radio shows, 2 television programs, and 78 other community groups. We also developed a puppet theatre program for younger children. We held puppet shows at playgrounds, schools, and children’s theatres, performing for over twenty thousand children in the first three years. The puppet shows were such a success that in 1973 STOP produced two ten-minute puppet films, titled “The Saga of Smokestack Charlie” and “Les Adventures de Jean Boucane.” The films, both about why we should recycle, were shared across the country, reaching nearly forty-six thousand children by the end of 1974.

The outreach education initiatives by STOP did not end with the speakers bureau and puppet shows; we continued to produce and distribute information pamphlets and reports. In the organization’s first five years, STOP produced and distributed 46,800 copies of twenty-three different pamphlets and reports. These publications addressed a variety of environmental topics, including the dangers of asbestos, the environmental impact of a new car, what was really in your cosmetics, and the environmental impact of the province selling water to the United States. We also produced a monthly newsletter, which was not always easy without today’s computers and copiers. We cranked out reports and newsletters by hand on a Gestetner mimeograph, and we used to say, “If we had one cent for every turn of this Gestetner, we’d be rich!” But all the hard work was worth it because our pamphlets and newsletters drew attention to important environmental issues, often inspiring change in Edmonton and Alberta. Through our work in raising awareness about asbestos, we were able to stop asbestos-laced playdough from making its way into our city kindergartens and preschools. Also, our report The University of Alberta as a Polluter directly influenced the university’s decision to institute controls on electricity and incineration, develop a paper and newspaper recycling program on campus, and establish a pollution-control committee.

When pamphlets were not enough, we took on provincial and federal policy and legislation. For example, during the summer of 1970, STOP initiated a city-wide collection of the carcinogenic insecticide DDT. During the process, we discovered that the City of Edmonton was trying to destroy the DDT by burning it in its incinerator, right in the middle of the city; however, the incinerator did not have the capacity to destroy the DDT because it did not burn at a high enough temperature. Unbelievably, this meant that chemicals from the DDT were being spread all over the city. One of the city employees who had been told to burn the DDT came to STOP and informed us of the blunder. Once STOP got involved, the city halted the incineration and sought a better way to destroy the remaining DDT.

The employee who came to STOP about the DDT issue told us about other inner workings of the regulation of his job. He explained that workers who reported safety issues could be fired for doing so, because the supervisors thought it made them look bad. So, STOP not only took on the issue of DDT but also began a new campaign geared toward provincial worker protection legislation. In 1973, STOP convinced an opposition member of the legislature to introduce a bill that would protect workers who reported pollution by their employers. Even though the bill was defeated, it brought attention to the unfair labour practice.

Many other STOP campaigns for political change had positive results, however. One of our most exciting political victories was the creation of a provincial environment department. STOP was one of the activist groups that influenced the province to create the department. Prior to 1971, the responsibility of environmental protection came under the jurisdiction of the Alberta Department of Health. But, in 1971, the provincial government was persuaded to create a specific department, which in turn made our goal of influencing legislative change much more attainable. For example, our 1971 bottle recycling campaign was a prime force in the enactment of Alberta’s Beverage Container Act.

Similarly, after we discovered that the paint used in the production of pencils contained lead, we lobbied the federal government to regulate what chemicals and substances could be used in the production of such materials. Our lobbying influenced federal legislation that protects children by regulating these chemicals and substances.

STOP campaigned locally to raise awareness about the damaging amount of phosphates in washing detergents in an effort to change legislation at the federal level. After a company distributed free samples of phosphorus detergent in Edmonton through the mail, we used the opportunity to highlight the issue of phosphates in Canadian waterways. We collected hundreds of the free samples with the plan to mail each MP a sample with a letter explaining how phosphates in the detergent promoted weed growth and spoiled Canadian waterways. Unfortunately, the sample boxes were a few ounces over the limit for free postage to MPs, so we had to open each box, empty some detergent out, seal the boxes back up, readdress them, and send them off. The extra amount we salvaged from each box we amalgamated into a huge container and deposited it on the steps of the Alberta legislature. Even though the legislation governing the detergent was a federal responsibility, we asked the provincial government to use its influence with the federal government to change the law governing the amount of phosphates in detergents. Over time the law was changed.

STOP eventually moved its office from the Students’ Union Building to my basement and continued operating from there until about 1976, when the group moved to the Environmental Resource Centre on Saskatchewan Drive. The Environmental Resource Centre soon took on the job of advocating for the environment, mainly because the people who had been active for so many years had moved on to better-paying jobs or other parts of the country.

By 1976, the activities of STOP had slowed down; the Environmental Resource Centre took over the lobbying and advocacy initiatives, and activists moved on. But the spirit of our activism and our devotion to environmental issues continued to circulate in various forms. One was a song composed by STOP’s water pollution team and sung to the tune of “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean”:

The Codfish lie dead in the ocean,

The Bluefish lie dead in the sea,

They all died from water pollution,

Caused by the oil company.

Don’t swim, don’t swim,

Remember the bluefish and cod, and cod,

It’s not our sea and—

Texaco leased it from God!!!

The song was taken up in 1992 by the Edmonton Raging Grannies, a group of women over the age of sixty who voice their political messages through songs. I’m one of them, and we are still singing. Some things continue to thrive, in spite of all odds.