The Don't Make a Wave Committee was founded in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to protest and attempt to halt further underground nuclear testing by the United States in the National Wildlife Refuge at Amchitka in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.
A 1969 demonstration of 7,000 [5] people blocked a major U.S.-Canada border crossing in British Columbia, carrying signs reading "Don't Make A Wave.
[4] In October 1969, Bohlen and the Stowes started meeting at a church basement, calling themselves the Don't Make a Wave Committee and planning anti-nuclear protests.
[2] From Irving Stowe, Bohlen learned a form of passive resistance, "bearing witness", where objectionable activity is protested by mere presence.
Many Canadians protested the United States military underground nuclear bomb tests, codenamed Cannikin, beneath the island of Amchitka, Alaska in 1971.
[11] The Don't Make a Wave Committee first expedition hired the Phyllis Cormack, a halibut seiner available for charter, to take protestors to the testing zone on the island of Amchitka.
[4] On 4 May 1972, following Irving Stowe's departure from the chairmanship of the Don't Make A Wave Committee, the fledgling environmental group officially changed its name to the "Greenpeace Foundation".