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Workers’

As citizens now can see for
themselves, transformation of the old
Vancouver Courthouse on Robson
Square into the new Vancouver Art
Gallery finally has provided the city
with a building worthy of its artists,
with pride of place given to Emily
Carr.

Conversion of the granite and sand-
stone courthouse, designed by Francis
Rattenbury and completed in 1911, in-
to the new gallery under direction of
architect Noel Best has taken five
years and cost $20 million. The
achievement, both in preservation ofa
fine historic building and skilful use of
space to produce four floors of
galleries, fully justifies a cost which is
modest indeed in comparison with
some other public structures. -

The new gallery’s first major ex-
hibition, Vancouver: Art and Artists
1931-1983, shows what curators can
do with their greatly expanded display
space. Two years in preparation, the
exhibition contains some 600 works by
150 Vancouver artists covered by the
period, 1931 having been chosen as the
year the first gallery opened on West

art graces gallery

sive way people can see what Van-
couver artists, and not just the few
who have won national and interna-
tional recognition, have been produc-
ing in the past half century.

A modest place is given, for in-
stance, to members of the Labor Arts
Guild which fourished briefly in the
mid-forties, notably to Fraser Wilson,
whose painting, Organizing Burrard
Shipyard, is a graphic reminder of the
struggle to organize shipyard workers
at the beginning of the Second World
War.

Other paintings that stand out for
their depiction of the world of work-
ing people include Frederick Varley’s
Night Ferry, Philip Surrey’s Going to
Work, Paul Rand’s The Coal Diggers,
and Nan Lawson Cheney’s Lumber
Mill in Nelson and Le Roi Mine, scene
of an historic hard rock miners’ strike
in 1901.

Representative as the exhibition is,
however, it is lacking in works by such
established artists as John Innis, the
historic painter, and John Radford,
the watercolorist and one of the city’s
early socialists, both of ‘whom were

ly to Emily Carr in her portrayal of
Native Indians, whose lifetime
covered much of the period and whose
collections, which she refused to break
up, constituted an historic record of
Indian life.

The exhibition embraces painting,
sculpture, photography, film and
video, highlighted by a display of carv-
ing and painting by the Haida artist
Robert Davidson, and among the
photographs are many _ illustrating
labor’s struggles during the past 50
years. It is an ironic touch, in fact, that
when the unemployed took over the
old Vancouver Post Office in 1938
they also occupied the art gallery and it
was only after they had been induced
by falsé promises to evacuate the
gallery that the RCMP launched the
attack on the Post, Office sitdowners
which precipitated Vancouver’s in-
famous ‘‘Bloody Sunday’’.

Vancouver: Art and Artists
1931-1983 is the kind of exhibition
which expands the concept of art as
part. of life — not apart from life. As
such, it should help to attract a wider
audience and support for the gallery.

FRASER WILSON’S Organizing
Burrard Shipyard, part of the first
major exhibition at the new
Vancouver Art Gallery. 7

Georgia Street.
For the first time in a comprehen-

still painting in the early thirties; and
Mildred Valley Thornton, second on-

—Hal Griffin

Guide to

world left

literature offered

TRACES OF MAGMA: an annotated
bibliography of left literature. By Rolf
Knight. Draegerman, 1983. Paper.
Available at People’s Co-op Bookstore,
1391 Commercial Dr., Vancouver.

from authors in Finland, Turkey, Latin
America, China and several other na-
tions.

Just as Knight’s book doesn’t confine
itself to renowned authors, neither does it
limit its scope to books strictly about class

It’s not likely to head any best-seller
list, but the latest work by author and
historian Rolf Knight may, withtime, be
recognized for its significant contribution
to progressive, working-class literature.

Knight, a Burnaby resident and former
University of Toronto professor, has ac-
complished what no one else — at least in
the capitalist world — has done, with his
recently released annotated bibliography
of left-wing literature, Traces of Magma.

In some 350 pages, Knight has compil-
ed a comprehensive, though by no means

from around the world that, loosely
defined, can be called class-struggle
literature.

“All of these works demand a basic
reordering of the power over people’s
lives. Essentially, the working class or the
peasantry are the chief subjects,”’ Knight,
who spent the last three years combing
library stacks and sending inquiries
abroad gathering information for the
book, told the Tribune.

It was a task for which Knight was em-
minently suited. An author himself of
several local histories, including Indians
at Work (detailing the contribution of
working class Native people to B.C.’s in-
dustries during several decades) and
Along the Number 20 Line (a history of
the industries and the people who worked
in them on Vancouver’s waterfront), as
well as biographies of working people,
Knight has demonstrated an interest in,
and intimate knowledge of, the struggles
of working people.

One can find more than a few traces of
the volcanic outpourings of progressive
authors in Magma, which lists upwards
of 3,000 titles by some 1,500 writers in
more than 90 countries. World renowned
novels such as Robert Tressell’s Ragged
Trousered Philanthropists are found
along with lesser known novels and plays
from the early decades of the century.
Less known to English language readers
are a host of titles, great and obscure,

complete, selection of novels and plays -

struggle. In brief but revealing notes that
accompany each title, the bibliographer
provides a critique outlining the political
plusses and minuses of various works.

For example, in listing British author
Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sun-
day Morning, Knight notes the central
character ‘‘at times shows perceptive in-

- sight into the malarkey they (the British
working class) are being fed,”’ but who is
also a stereotype ‘‘of the boozing, skirt-
chasing, lumpenized protaganist in vogue
among British ‘authors of working class
origin’ during the 1950s.”’

With works that don’t suffer such
drawbacks, Knight confines his commen-
tary to a basic description of the novel or
play’s contents. Since overtly ‘‘left’’
works are referenced along with less
ideologically directed, but realistic, ef-
forts such as Sillitoe’s, Knight’s
bibliography displays a broad interpreta-
tion of what constitutes working class
literature.

“Designations are important, but I
eschew them since they don’t always ade-
quately describe the content of a par-
ticular work,’’ Knight said.

“Basically, I chose novels and plays,
and some histories, with working-class or
peasant themes. The authors, whether
they called themselves communist,
populist, socialist, or whatever, do at-
tempt to be honest about their stories,
their characters and the situation they’re
in,’’ he explained.

Knight described Magma ‘‘as an at-
tempt to pay memorial tribute to the
writers and their times,’’ and to bring
home the point to today’s activists “that
the world didn’t just begin five or 10 years
ago.”” 1

As such, Magma isn’t a book for
“‘specialists,’’ Knight cautioned.

“It’s for those who, with little or no
concern for fine detail, can flip through it
for reference to the lives of working peo-
ple elsewhere in the world.”

—Dan Keeton

PACIFIC TRIBUNE— OCTOBER 26, 1983—Page 10

‘Nicaragua needs your
solidarity' — Cardenal

Nicaragua faces a great challenge in the
next few months from counterrevolutionary
forces and other agents of the Reagan ad-
ministration in its efforts to topple the
popular Sandinista government, a
Nicaraguan cabinet minister told an
overflow crowd in Vancouver Sunday.

“Tt want to tell you that the next days are
going to be the hardest for us,’’ Ernesto
Cardenal, a priest and Minister of Culture in
the revolutionary Central American nation,
advised some 600 people who jammed Rob-
son Square Media Centre.

But, he told the gathering sponsored by
the Coalition to Aid Nicaragua, ‘“We are
very sure of our victory — because of the
great international solidarity supporting us,
and because of the will of our people to de-
fend the revolution.”’

Thunderous, prolonged applause and
standing ovations punctuated Cardenal’s
remarks during his 45-minute speech, held to
promote the coalition’s efforts to gather
financial and material aid for the country,
left destitute after years of struggle against
the former U.S.-backed dictator, Anastasio
Somoza.

For the third year in a row, a province-
wide campaign is underway with the aim of
filling a visiting ship with goods for
Nicaragua, the target of raids by counter-
revolutionary ‘‘contras’’ aided by the CIA.

Lately those raids have been stepped up,
and two weeks ago succeeded in inflicting
severe damage to oil reserves in an air attack
on a Nicaraguan fuel depot. That, coupled
with a boycott on oil deliveries by the U.S.
based Exxon corporation, shows escalating
efforts by Reagan to destroy the democratic
revolution. ;

The CIA works chiefly among the con-
tras, composed mainly of former soldiers in
Somoza’s National Guard, from bases in

ERNESTO CARDENAL . . . priest in
Nicaragua’s cabinet.

4

neighboring Honduras. There is also the
threat of attack from the Honduran army
itself, yet Canada has funnelled 60 per cent
— about $40 million — of its aid to Latin
America during the last three years to Hon-
duras, while Nicaragua has received only
$200,000 from the Canadian government sO —
far this year, said coalition representative
Steve Gray. 7

The coalition is urging people to write Ot- |

tawa demanding that all aid to Honduras be
stopped until its military government ceases
supporting the CIA-backed rebels, said
Gray.

Speaking through a translator, Cardenal
made numerous references to the involve-
ment of church people like himself in the
Nicaraguan revolution. More than one-half

of the cabinet is composed of priests and lay
church people, he said, emphasizing the
spirit of Christian ‘‘forgiveness’’ the vic-
torious Sandinistas exhibited by not taking
reprisals against torturers and other agents
of the Somoza government after the 1979
revolution.

Nonetheless, he said, the Nicaraguat
church is divided, with about half the priests
strongly supporting the Sandinista goverl-
ment, and the other half remaining neutral,
or —in the case of many bishops and the Ar- —
chbishop — actively opposing the revolu-
tion.

Cardenal showed the popularity of the
revolution — which has seen intensive
literacy campaigns, redistribution of land in
favor of peasants, rents that have been halv-
ed, free medical services and education and
large subsidies to books and mass culture —
by noting that the vast majority of the at-
tacks against Nicaragua have been repelled;
not by the standing army, but by people’s
militias.

“This shows that the people support the —
revolution. If other regimes in Cen
America armed their people, they wouldn’t
last one day, and they knowit,”’ he declared.

Cardenal said the Nicaraguan people
“don’t know how much this craziness of
Reagan will cost us in blood and suffering.

‘But we know we need your solidarity
more than ever. The revolution won’t. be
defeated,’’ he asserted to strong applause.

Those wishing to volunteer their help OF
send aid to the Nicaraguan support effort
can write the coalition at 2524 Cypress St.»
Vancouver VOJ 3N2, or by phoning

733-1021.
——