French actress-turned activist Brigitte Bardot returned to Canada yesterday to appeal for an end to the Canadian seal hunt.
Rex Weyler, in Greenpeace: The Inside Story, writes that in 1977, the Greenpeace Foundation in Vancouver turned its focus to the Canadian seal hunt. In the section “Vive Ecologie”, Weyler describes Brigitte Bardot’s arrival in Blanc Sablon.
Brigitte Bardot’s appearance in the normally quiet harbour town spun the Greenpeace media plan wildly out of control. Bob Cummings staged a press conference at the Alexander Dumas Hotel, but journalists no longer wanted to talk to him or [Paul] Watson; they wanted to talk to Ms. Bardot. Canadian journalists vilified the actress in beer parlours. “The idle rich,” they laughed. “Second-rate movie actress trying to revive a dead career.” Her opening news conference was as much a bloodbath as the scene on the ice floes.
Bardot had arrived with her boyfriend, Sygma photographer Miroslav Brozek, and Swiss conservationist Franz Weber. Weber had raised $240,000 by selling toy seals and used the money to fly journalists and Bardot to Canada. He met with Fisheries Minister Romeo LeBlanc and offered to build a $2.5 million fake fur plant in Newfoundland to offset the loss of income if Canada ended the seal hunt. The factory, he said, would employ 600 Newfoundlanders, year-round. “Blackmail,” scoffed LeBlanc. “Canada refuses to be intimidated by pressure from abroad.” In Newfoundland, Richard Cashin, the union leader who had cut a deal with [Bob] Hunter the year before, also dismissed Weber’s offer.
Weyler’s depictions of that time continue with the antics at the press conference, the details of the Seal Protection Act, the difficulties they faced getting out to the ice floes and the campaign itself.
Miroslav Brozek’s photographs of Bardot and the seals circled the globe. In Paris Giscard d’Estaing’s government announced that France would ban the importation of harp seal pelts. The ensuing European ban on harp seal pelts eventually led to the current moratorium on the killing of the infant whitecoats.
Yes apologies for any confusion. In 1977 when Bargot first visited Canada, Giscard d’Estaing was the head of the French government. At that time, his government announced that France would ban the importation of harp seal pelts.
I don’t think that Weber had raised $240,000 by selling toy seals and used the money to fly journalists and Bardot to Canada
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Giscard d’Estaing? I think he retired in the 80s, did he not? It’s Chirac now, I believe. Must have been the Bardot references that made you go back in time.