I had so looked forward to attending the demonstration and was disappointed when the date chosen for it coincided with a meeting of the International Congress of Genetics in Edinburgh, Scotland. I had agreed to be a vice president of the congress and to deliver a talk there, so I missed the gathering on Hokkaido. By all accounts it was a spectacular display as the First Nations from Canada danced and sang on the site of the dam. The event garnered a huge amount of media coverage. Unfortunately, it failed to move the Japanese government; the dam was built a few years later.
We were involved in other projects that became part of the foundation's early stable of accomplishments at little or no cost to the organization. Environmentalists and natives in western Colombia asked for help to protect the rich Choco rain forest, so Tara and I paddled a dugout up the Bora Bora River with a National Film Board crew from Canada to visit the people living in houses built on stilts and to produce a widely distributed program on the issues. In these ways, we demonstrated to our supporters that the foundation was actively engaged in significant projects, buying us time until the board could launch a well-thought-out slate of activities.
Tara had done a heroic job of getting the organization off the ground while learning everything from rules governing charities to board — staff relations, newsletter production, fund-raising techniques, and personnel issues. She had given up a prestigious teaching position at Harvard University to be a full-time volunteer for the foundation, but it took a huge toll. Whether at home or at play, she carried her work with her, an enormous weight of responsibility. I was still running around filming with The Nature of Things with David Suzuki, giving talks in different places, and raising money to support our foundation projects. Tara was stuck day in and day out with the nuts and bolts. She worked long hours, often seven days a week, coming home physically drained and psychologically burdened by worry.
Several times in those first twenty-four months, I told her, “Tara, let's drop it. You gave it a try, but it's just too much work. I can't do my share, and it's ruining your health.” But she stayed with it, something for which I have enormous admiration and gratitude. The foundation became her baby, and she was going to nurture it and see it grow into an effective organization.
Gradually we raised enough money to hire staff. Board members rolled up their sleeves. Soon we could bite the bullet and hire an executive director to give the foundation leadership and get the new, board-directed projects up and going.
We received a number of applications and winnowed them to a shortlist that included Jim Fulton, the Canadian member of Parliament who had tipped me off about the struggle over logging in Windy Bay in Haida Gwaii. Jim had been a probation officer and as a candidate for the New Democratic Party (NDP) had stunned political commentators by wresting the riding of Skeena away from the Liberal cabinet minister Iona Campagnolo.
Skeena is all of northwestern B.C., a vast area the size of France. It's exhausting just thinking about how a politician can work in Ottawa yet serve such a huge riding three thousand miles away. Jim says he missed every one of his kids' birthdays while he was in office. Jim is a larger-than-life character. He is well over six feet tall and has a powerful chest and arms and a belly that could absorb any frontal attack. With his hair and mustache now turned white, he reminds me of those mountain gorilla males called silverbacks; like them, he commands respect by sheer physical presence.
But Jim also has a mischievous air about him, and he has delighted in childlike play both as a politician and as executive director of our foundation. Perhaps his most famous stunt as an mp came when, in an attempt to stop the spread of a virus infecting the sockeye salmon, the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans had put a barricade in the Babine River, which drains into the Skeena, thus preventing the salmon from reaching their spawning grounds. Jim learned about it and drove to witness the fish smashing repeatedly into the barrier as they tried in vain to move upriver. He captured a large female sockeye, which was dying without reaching the spawning beds to complete her lifecycle. Jim put her in a bag and took her carcass to Ottawa.
There he donned baggy pants, slipped the bag down his pant leg, and smuggled it into the House of Commons. He rose during Question Period to query the minister of Fisheries and Oceans about the sockeye in the Babine, knowing the answers from Erik Nielsen would be bafflegab. As Nielsen waffled, Jim suddenly yanked the salmon out of his pants, splashing slime onto his NDP colleague Margaret Mitchell, who screamed and alarmed the parliamentarians. Jim strode across the floor and slammed the fish onto Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's desk.
All hell broke loose. Some thought Jim had pulled a weapon. In the pandemonium, Jim walked out to address the waiting media. It was a sensational stunt he claims spurred Nielsen to act and let the Babine sockeye through to spawn. But it also led to the passage of “the Fulton Rule,” which forbids a parliamentarian from carrying anything into the House that can be used as a weapon. Jim says he is proud of the fact that at the end of the species' next four-year cycle, the sockeye run in the Babine was one of the largest in recent history.
Jim was a serious politician and served his electorate well, as shown by his steadily increasing share of the vote through four elections. But it was on tough national issues — debates that lasted for years — that Jim really demonstrated his strength and vision of Canada.
In 1981, he successfully led the constitutional debate for the NDP in the House to secure the recognition and affirmation of aboriginal and treaty rights. For the next twelve years, Jim led the constitutional fight for the Nisga'a in Parliament, and today they have the first modern-day treaty in Canada.
Jim focused the battle on the floor of the House to save South Moresby, known to the Haida as Gwaii Haanas. It was his motion that was unanimously passed in Parliament and that triggered the release of $140 million to “seal the deal.”
For five years, Jim debated Prime Minister Trudeau's decision to allow Amax Corporation to dump 100 million tons of toxic waste into Canada's pristine Pacific fishing grounds. Jim won, the dumping was halted, and the House ruled that the authorization of the dumping was an abuse of power. It was a remarkable story of tenacity and courage.
During the Gulf War, Jim exposed Canada's illegal production and testing of nerve gas at Defence Research in Suffield, Alberta. And long before Kyoto, Jim's work with Paul Martin and David MacDonald on climate change led to an all-party report calling for 20 percent cuts from 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2005.
When Jim decided to end his political career after fifteen years, his departure was eloquently lamented by columnists and colleagues on both sides of the House.
I was incredulous but delighted when Jim applied to become executive director of our foundation. We had no track record as an organization, and we faced a huge challenge in raising the money to do our projects. I thought he was just checking around to see what possibilities were available, but he insisted he wanted the job. It was flattering that he would consider us, but I joked to him that if he had a gender change, the decision would be a slam dunk; I was committed to hiring a woman, and I told our board I favored a female candidate.