Ben Metcalfe, 83; First Chairman of Greenpeace

Ben Metcalfe, 83, a founding member of Greenpeace whose media savvy helped heighten the profile of the international environmental group, died of a heart attack Tuesday on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

A World War II veteran who had served in the British foreign service, Metcalfe ran a public relations firm with his wife, Dorothy, that created a famous advertising campaign in 1969 for a Canadian ecology museum. The billboard campaign read, “Ecology? Look it up, you’re part of it.”

He became an activist in 1970 when he coordinated the publicity for the “Don’t Make a Wave” committee protesting nuclear testing by the United States at Amchitka in the Aleutian Islands. The committee later became Greenpeace, an international organization with more than 2 million members in 27 countries, and Metcalfe became its first chairman.

In 1972, he helped launch an international fight against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific when he orchestrated coverage by Australian and New Zealand media of the pending tests. The stories were picked up by the international press.