Gary Gallon has cancer. There. I've said it. Gary wouldn't have wanted me to -- he's not one to complain and he doesn't want pity. He prefers to be known for his life's work as an environmentalist drawing attention to the sickness of the planet -- a much bigger disease that he has struggled to diagnose and cure for most of his adult life.But I have to mention it, because it's important for this article. At age 56 Gallon has more fast-talking vitality than many people I know half his age. He was a founder of the modern environmental movement in Canada and remains a major behind-the-scenes figure in national and international ecological policymaking. Yet few Canadians know about him compared to, say, David Suzuki or Paul Watson. I've known Gary for years but it was only when I found out about his condition that I decided to write about him. Hopefully Gallon will live for many years but whatever happens, I want to tell his story while he is still here to enjoy it! And to help him move forward in his life's work, which is still very much in progress.
Ironically Gallon's illness could have an environmental origin, from the pollution he's fought for more than 30 years. The initial colon cancer was detected and successfully removed, but not before it had spread to his lungs and liver. Normally this would be (as he himself says) an "automatic death sentence" but an experimental treatment program in Bakersfield, California has recently halted the progress of the disease. It's too soon to call it a cure, but at least it has bought that most precious of all commodities: time. Time for him to continue writing and publishing his Internet-based newsletter The Gallon Report. And time to perhaps write a book based on his extraordinary career.
So this is not an epitaph, but rather a tribute to Gary Gallon the living and vital man. And you can even help him continue his journey by contributing to a special fund set up by friends to raise money for his treatment in the United States that isn't covered by Canadian health plans. (See the end of this article for details.)
The Man from SPEC
Gary T. Gallon was born in Whittier, California (the home of Richard Nixon) in 1945. He immediately moved to Bakersfield -- open farm country, at the time free of smog from nearby Los Angeles. Gallon became a champion swimmer in highschool -- a sport that he excels in to this day. The son of a police officer, Gallon was initially destined for a military career, but after working with L.A. street kids considered becoming a child-care councilor. He obtained a degree in sociology. But then he was drafted for the Vietnam war. After much soul-searching and with the FBI at his heels, in September 1968 the officer's son headed for the U.S.-Canada border and became an unlikely draft dodger. He ended up in Vancouver, British Columbia.
No one could have anticipated Gallon's future as an environmentalist from the jobs that followed which included janitor, part-time pool shark and eventually a two-year stint as a floor trader for Wolverton Securities at the Vancouver Stock Exchange. There he specialized in the junior mining companies and this provided Gallon with his first exposure to serious environmental issues. In 1970, after he learned about the potential impacts from proposed coal strip-mine projects in B.C., he quit the stock exchange and volunteered full-time for Society Promoting Environmental Conservation (SPEC), the prominent and long-standing Vancouver-based conservation group.
Gallon went on to become the executive director of SPEC and in 1972 helped in the establishment of Greenpeace by providing the new group space in SPEC's offices and offering other administrative assistance.
"Greenpeace would let thousands of letters filled with donations pile up in the middle of the floor," says Gallon. "They were completely disorganized. It was still the hippy days and everything was 'non-hierarchical.' Whenever money was needed for diesel for the ship they'd just open up some envelopes, fill the boat and send it out again."
In 1976 Vancouver hosted "Habitat," a landmark U.N. conference on human settlements. Gallon was a co-host of a parallel activist conference from which he assisted legendary Greenpeace activists such as Paul Watson and Bob Hunter launch their campaign to pursue Russian whaling ships from Jericho Beach. (Gallon recalls the little-known fact that tracking the Russian ships was only possible because sympathetic American naval officers fed the group secret locational data.) Habitat was a seminal event at which Gallon met and befriended environmental guru David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth. Gallon later helped Brower start Friends of the Earth Canada by bringing in support from "Stop Montreal" and Pollution Probe. He also befriended Pollution Probe founder Donald Chant and the World Wildlife Fund's Monte Hummel around this time.
Gallon soon became one of the West Coast's most prominent environmentalists and launched a major campaign against the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. Pressure from SPEC on the public inquiry into the project gave birth to Canada's first programs for environmental assessment and intervenor funding. Gallon joined David Anderson (now the federal environment minister) in a campaign to oppose unsafe Alaska oil tanker routes off the B.C. coastline. The so-called "Cherry Point" campaign became a huge rallying point for the nascent environmental movement in Canada. In 1977 Gallon was presented with Canada's National "Environmentalist of the Year" award for his opposition to the Alaskan oil tankers and a campaign to save the Fraser River estuary.
At the time, of course, activists like Gallon were considered by some as communists, or at least subversive anti-free-marketers. He says they were neither.
"We were against subsidies and were actually pro 'let's-save-the-resources-for-free-enterprise'," Gallon says. "We wanted regeneration. Our opponents thought the first Earth Day in April 1970 represented a fad that would just pass away. They just didn't get it."
Out of Africa
Gallon would likely have joined Greenpeace International had he not been selected for another high-profile position: executive director of the new United Nations International Environment Liaison Centre based in Nairobi, Kenya. The post offered Gallon the chance to act as a watchdog for four years over the new UN Environment Program (UNEP) that continues to this day.
UNEP assisted developing countries such as Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, Malaysia and others write their first environmental laws and set up their environment ministries. Gallon remains proud of these achievements but is disillusioned with UNEP today.
"UNEP did not fulfill its mandate," says Gallon, "and now we know why. Based on papers released early this year through freedom of information applications, it's clear that 30 years ago a "Brussels group" that included France, England, Germany and the United States made sure that UNEP was under-funded, understaffed and unable to function as effectively as other longstanding UN agencies like UNICEF. They cut the legs out from under it even as they established it."
Something lasting did, however, come out of Africa for Gallon. It was in Nairobi that he met his future wife Janine Ferretti who also worked at the Liaison Centre. Gallon and Ferretti would eventually become Canada's environmental "power couple." When they returned to Canada in 1982 Gallon went to work for the public interest group Energy Probe and Ferretti volunteered at Pollution Probe where she eventually became executive director after the departure of Colin Isaacs. While at Pollution Probe, Ferretti (who speaks four languages) lobbied for the establishment of the NAFTA Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) where she later worked and rose to become executive director. (Her term ended on June 22, 2002.)
An inside job
Over time Gallon grew restless working for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and decided it was time to work on the inside for environmental change. Throughout the constant career changes Gallon's compass has been forever fixed on a personal environmental North Star.
"I was tired of being on the outside throwing stones," Gallon says. "NGOs don't wield direct power; governments do."
In February 1983 Gallon went to work as a researcher for the Ontario Liberal Party, which was then the official opposition to the government of Bill Davis that had introduced the Environmental Protection Act and other ground-breaking environmental legislation. When the Liberals were elected under David Peterson in 1985, Gallon was senior policy advisor for Environment Minister Jim Bradley and worked alongside other staff who shared his activist vision. These included Chief of Staff Sarah Rang and Communications Director David Oved -- friends with whom Gallon would later form consulting firm Environmental Economics International after the Liberals fell from power.
During their tenure in Bradley's department Gallon and crew turned the environment ministry upside down and inside out, making it an instrument for their aggressive agenda. The team was responsible for (or had a guiding hand in) the introduction of an almost unimaginable slew of precedent-setting environmental laws and programs. These included: the Countdown Acid Rain program that required a 66 per cent reduction in sulphur dioxide emissions, the widely-copied Blue Box curbside recycling program (a North American first), and the goal of reducing 50 per cent of waste sent to landfill by 2000 that was later adopted by the federal government and other provinces.
Ontario became the first jurisdiction to ban ozone-depleting CFCs -- a politically difficult move as a new CFC plant had recently been constructed in Durham Region in Ontario. According to Gallon, the political staff motivated the bureaucrats to crack down, press charges and stop turning a blind eye to polluters.
"We were able to change the culture within the bureaucracy," Gallon says, "because we understood environmental science and technology. When they said 'we can't do that, it's never been done before' we were able to argue why they could and explain how."
Little Big Man
Gallon's government experience and the consulting work that followed confirmed new ideas in his mind.
"You don't change the world just through laws and politics," states Gallon. "I grew to realize that the next stage in the environmental evolution is economics."
In 1993 Gallon went to work as executive director of the Ontario Chapter of the newly-formed Canadian Environment Industry Association (CEIA) -- a trade group established to give the highly-fragmented environmental service, equipment and technology companies a single voice. Gallon understood that oil and gas, forest products, chemicals and other industries had focused representation and lobbying power with governments. The environment industry, which lacked coherence and direction, was routinely losing out in policymaking and multistakeholder negotiations.
Gallon has many fond memories of his days at CEIA but ultimately felt frustrated. In Gallon, CEIA had a tiger by the tail. Intent (as ever) on pressuring government for real change, his tactics generated tensions with other CEIA directors at the provincial and national level who took a more cautious and diplomatic approach. It was always a high-wire act representing the different and often conflicting interests of environmental companies, some of whom, for instance, wanted to simply haul and landfill waste, while others wanted a landfill ban so they could treat waste with more sophisticated technologies. When wife Janine was offered the NAFTA CEC job, Gallon followed her and the family to Montreal and left both Ontario and his CEIA position behind.
Subsequently, Gallon started his savvy Internet-based newsletter and also formed the Canadian Institute for Business and the Environment (CIBE) -- an entity that affords Gallon and some of his McGill University interns NGO status at government and industry forums.
"We've solved, addressed and improved a lot of environmental problems that had not been tackled 30 years ago," Gallon says. "We've reduced, for instance, the toxic effluent that used to be dumped directly in the Great Lakes or into unlined landfills like the Pauze dump that we shut down. And we've improved urban air quality significantly from what it was when I started."
"But as quickly as we solve certain problems," he adds, "others pop up."
"We weren't expecting climate change. We didn't understand ozone depletion, which continues because of the illegal production and use in India, Russia and China. And the complete denuding of the marine environment - this is a precursor of a complete collapse of the natural systems that ultimately support human life."
"We had to throw stones to get attention in 1968," says Gallon. "But my advice to the next generation is to become economists and businesspeople, and to implement the new economics in which 'externalized costs' are internalized. When full environmental costs and benefits are incorporated, better decisions will be made."
Only time will tell if the next generation takes Gallon's advice. In any case his considerable contribution to the earth in general, and to the environment in particular, will live on.
Guy Crittenden is editor-in-chief of this magazine.
HOW PEOPLE CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THE SPECIAL FUND FOR GARY'S CANCER TREATMENT.
Make Cheques Payable To:
"Moons in Motion"
Send To:
3340 Jenkins Road
Bakersfield, California
93312 USA
E-mail amgallon@atg1.com