Apologies for the length of this, but I’m probably the only person from my “side” that will post a comment.

I met Mark in the mid-1980’s when I was the newly appointed Director of Greenpeace’s Ocean Ecology campaign, which included sealing. Our first interaction was at some meeting in Ottawa, where we had a short but civil conversation and I thought “I need to know this man”.

Over the years and despite our differences, which turned out to be few, I grew to respect his intelligence, decency, dedication, honesty, and transparency. He represented you all honourably in Canada and internationally. I am proud to say I knew him.

It was through long conversations with Mark that I learned about the importance of sealing, both culturally and economically, pride of work, sealers’ concerns over how to address humaneness of the hunt, and the issues that bonded us – DFO mismanagement of the fisheries and climate change.

Mark influenced my understanding of the hunt, which I shared with my organisation. My regret is that these conversations should have happened a decade earlier. But I can say that Mark’s input contributed to the Greenpeace decision to stop actively campaigning against the seal hunt.

We also had fun. We once met up in Oslo for a court case. Greenpeace was alleged to have faked footage of seal hunting and Mark was an expert witness. Both our lawyers forbid us from being in contact, so we snuck a few notes back and forth and I skulked down a dark alley to meet him in a pub. We had a wonderful grouse session about DFO, lawyers, and I offered to stich up his trousers, which split when he bent over in the courtroom while demonstrating how to use a hackapik! He declined, telling me that he’d sewn a lot of nets in his day, so trousers were not a problem .

At another meeting I was cornered by some very annoyed sealers. Mark calmly walked up and said “Boys, she’s OK”. Another time a colleague said he was meeting with Mark, and I reciprocated: “Boy, he’s OK – listen to him”.

We lost direct contact a few decades ago but stayed in indirect contact through periodic updates from Alan Herscovici, the former Director of the Fur Council of Canada, another fine man who continues to be a strong advocate for the fur industry, including our Canadian sealers.

My sincere condolences to Patricia (when he talked about her his voice would warm) and to his children and grandkids.