April 27, 1988
SOS

Vol. 51, No. 16

lOTO — SEAN GRIFFIN

SEAN GRIFFIN

JNE PHOTO

Charles Paris, chair of Vancouver city council’s committee on peace, (white shirt) and councillor
Libby Davies joined dozens of young people at head of peace walk in Vancouver April 23.

Cynics may have predicted a decline in peace sentiment. But
thousands of Vancouverites and area residents proved them
wrong as the country’s largest peace march turned out between

. 60,000 and 70,000 nuclear arms opponents Saturday.
Bloody Su nday: Starting promptly at its scheduled time of 12 noon, the huge ;
“ assembly of trade unionists, peace activists, community groups. 4
the 1 938 sitdown church goers, and almost every other representative of human-
; kind moved out in formation from the Kitsilano Park rallying
— pages 16-19 pant

This year’s theme was youth, and dozens of children and
adolescents carrying the street-wide End the Arms Race banner ‘
at the head of the march formed an often boisterous testimony to t
the role the world’s youngest residents are playing in nuclear
disarmament.

The seventh annual Walk for Peace in Vancouver also
adopted a theme of “celebration,” in recognition of the U.S.-
Soviet treaty limiting nuclear missiles in Europe and other peace
developments.

Banners throughout the march proclaimed the 230-group i.
member organization’s three current campaigns: making British t
Columbia a nuclear-weapons free zone, gathering signatures for
the Canadian Peace Pledge Campaign, and “stopping the pas-
sage” of the federal government’s white paper on defence.

Chanting the words to the now-classic John Lennon
song — “All we are saying is give peace a chance’ — the
marchers surged across the Burrard Street bridge and along the H
five-kilometre downtown route as the cloudy and rain-filled A
skies of the morning gave way to pale sunshine.

At the rally in Sunset Beach park EAR president Frank : |
Kennedy, said his status as a grandfather made him particularly '
sensitive to the presence of thousands of school-agers standing,
sitting or sprawled on the acres of grass surrounding the stage.

os ;
his la bou i law chan e With the emphasis on youth and celebration, the program
was heavy on entertainment and light on talk. Performing were

ote page 10 see INF page 7

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