the floods of that year as

Organize B.C. unemployed
for flood prevention work

TATISTICS, like promises, when handed out
by political pundits are invariably misleading,
ious, uncertain, mainly intended to hide the

real facts.

ee the last reckoning a few weeks ago poli-
ticians in Victoria and Ottawa estimated that un-

employment in British Columbia had decreased to

66,000. Before that they had been arguing that
there were not more than 50,000 jobless in B.C.

Assuming that the “decreasing” trend has con-
tinued since, it is‘a safe bet that in all of British
Columbia there are still 55,000 or more jobless
workers deprived of the right to earn a livelihood.

Statistics or no statistics, the point is that British
Columbia possesses a great reserve army of jobless
workers, capable of tremendous productive capacity.

British Columbia faces the possibility of an-
other flood within the next few weeks, perhaps as
devastating as the flood catastrophe that has con-
verted the great city of Winnipeg into a scene of
desolation, and transformed tens of thousands of
acres of the rich farm lands of Manitoba, with their
towns, communities and farm homes, into a vast in-

land sea.

The disaster that has overwhelmed ihe Red River
Valley is a grim warning to British Columbia that

-a@ like calamity is in store for the Fraser Valley and

other areas unless drastic and effective measures are

undertaken NOW.

In 1948, Coalition Finance Minister Herbert
Anscomb, speaking for the government, described
“an act of God.” The
lessons written in countless thousands of acres of
Manitoba farm lands and a stricken city, do not
permit that. philistine excuse to be used a second time

by the Coalition apologists of misgovernment.

Every farmer in the Fraser Valley and the
Lower Mainland knows that the green dykes, built
or repaired with much Coalition political fanfare,
will not hold back the anticipated run-off waters of
the North Thompson and Fraser rivers, fed as they
will be by the abnormal snows of last winter. That

is expressed in the hesitation of scores of
B.C. farmers in flood areas about proceeding with
their spring seeding operations. In Manitoba the flood
waters covering tens of thousands of acres have al-
ready settled the question of seeding. In B.C. the
Fraser Valley farmers and others have had the prob-
lem of flood emergency tossed back in the lap of
their municipalities by Victoria. Little wonder they

 Jook up at the mountain snow fields and the river with
- grave. perturbation.

In Manitoba, after the customary procrastin-
atory “wait and see”
ernment finally got around’to accepting the idea that
a “national emergency” existed. That accomplished,

the government proceeded to press into service all

available air transport—to fly sandbags into Win-

nipeg to bolster the sagging dykes that ‘stood be-
tween Winnipeg and disaster. Clearly the Red River

moved far, swifter than the government’s red tape!

The simple idea that thousands of Manitoba’s
jobless workers could have been put to useful and

_remunerative work prior to the flood crisis, does not
seem to have registered in government circles, either
in Ottawa or Winnipeg. This despite the fact that
the existence of a flood nolitl was well known
two months ago.

attitude, the St. Laurent gov--

In its April 14 issue, the Pacific Tribune brought
to the attention of its readers the danger of a devas-
tating flood threat in 1950, basing its opinions on
the April edition of the British Columbia Snow Sur-
vey, a bulletin with which the Coalition government
cannot be unacquainted.

“Tf,” said the bulletin, ‘‘the present unseason-
able weather with cool nights, cloudy days, and
above normal precipitation continues into April and
ewrly May, a definite flood potential will exist.”’

The steady rainfall and cool weather through-
out March, April, and so far in May, removes all
the hopeful “‘ifs’’ from the Coalition government’s
snow survey bulletin. The high-water content snows
in our vast snowfields have not melted. There has
been virtually no runoff to date, and rain precipita-
tion during April and May has been such that even
amateur “‘weather men”
tomorrow's forecast.

The dykes built after the 1948 floods lack the
solid strength of even the old ramparts washed te!
in 1948.

_ Our thousands of jobless workers are still ies
out a precarious livelihood on miserable unemploy-
ment insurance, relief handouts and worse. And in
the seats of the Coalition government and at Ottawa
there exists a sublime inactivity, broken only upon
occasion when the unemployed or other citizen groups
and representatives demanded that the needs, social
security, market problems, and general wellbeing of
the common people be given some little attention now
and again.

In short, the political Neros of the “‘cold war”
fiddle, while devastating floods decend upon or
threaten the people, sweeping away their lands, their
homes, their life-savings and their future.

The people of this province must organize their
protest and make it felt, demanding immediate action
io avert a possible disaster a few weeks from now.

e

Bnitish Columbia’s thousands of jobless workers
should be mobilized NOW (at trade union rates of

pay covering hazardous occupations) to patrol the
dykes; transport and place trainloads of sandbags
and gravel to consolidate the dykes—before the flood
waters strike.

The disbanded provincial Dyking Commission
must be reconstituted and given the fullest authority
(without political strings attached) to act. in the

capacity of averting disaster, rather than as sue ¥

gists for government negligence.

Farmers in all the potential flood areas must

demand of the Coalition that these preventive meas-

ures be taken immediately, and that al! available man-

power be mobilized, not only to head off an emer-
gency, but to reduce its potential threat to a minimum.

That is the lesson fhe disastrous Manitoba floods
hold for British Columbia. Those who describe the
flooded Manitoba plains as “‘an act of God” may
claim «an argument as Anscomb did two years ago,
but like Anscomb they have no excuse for their fail-
ure to take preventive action.

With prompt action now a major calamity can
be averted. For a central government to leave the
flood menace as a municipal responsibility, is a dere-
liction of duty and a crime against the people.

Demand action ‘cn the flood menace now!

. eae, erent Canadian Peace Congress, which
met in Toronto last weekend, will give the

| reply of hundreds of thousands of Canadians to

the stepped-up cold war offensive.

bury, who was prevented from taking his seat in
a Canadian Pacific Airways plane by the U.S.
~ state department and compelled to fly more than
half way around the world to circumvent the U.S. _
bei Curtain, has stimulated the growing peace
Opinion in our country. :

~ The peace delegation to the federal govern-

led by Dr. J. G. Endicott (which the
me Minister finally accepted after an earlier

Te seas tb Cine Shab sen we Cae

Canadians want peace

peace.

refusal) carried the names of thousands of Cana-
dians on the Ban the. Bomb petition.

If ever the necessity of this united peace
movement, embracing all Canadians of goodwill,
was proved, it has been in the past few days when
press and radio, government spokesmen and _ the
U.S. state department, Duplessis and Toronto
police, have combined to try to stop the advance
of this irresistible movement against a new world :
war.

They will fail! No more than King Canute
can they prevnt the tide of peace from washing
away the conspiracies and plots against world

SoS

.

had little difficulty with

TOM McEWEN :

As We See lt

AST week in an Ontario town which boasts of its Empire Loyalist
stock, a group of hoodlum offscourings from the community’s “best
families,” dressed up in the hooded regalia of the Ku Klux Klan,
burned a fiery cross. The intent of this mob ceremony was to strike
terror into the hearts of a young Canadian boy and girl, who, in the
weucee is Nis ann of these masked ruffians, had fallen in love with
: each other without due respect to race and class
distinctions.

. Fearful of adverse publicity’ to their town’s
“reputation” and tourist attractions, the local po-
liticos broke into print in an attempt to explain
away the ugly affair. Just a “youthful prank” they
said, and the fiery cross, “just a couple of two-by-
fours soaked in gasoline.” Really nothing to war-
rant public alarm or comment. The hurling of
obscene insults and violent threats at their victims
by the hooded riff-raff is all.nicely explained away
as “a joke of youthful sirname aL va will be
boys.”

That is how the Toronto Daily Star reported the disgraceful affair,
But it is not quite so simple or “innocent.” Organized gangsterism
in all its multifarious forms grows prolifically in a decadent social
system, and in the main is directed against those whose class, racial
origin, religious or political view are at variance with the status quo
of big business. The psychosis of the cold: war breeds ee pitas!
and violence against all progress.

Thus the incident of masked KKK hoodliims in an Ontario town
is not a “youthful prank,” but rather a direct product of the lynch
mob psychology, stemming from dollar imperialism, and expressing
itself in a Peekskill, the lynching of a Negro, or the terrorizing of
sweethearts whose ancestral trees are not approved by the Poureely
mob,

There were no arrests, just a “boys will be boys” apologia from the
politicos—-who need the votes of those who beget the hooligans.

Last week, in the old Canadian Province of Quebec, a minister
was warned by Herr Duplessis’ Gestapo that unless he closed his
church to Canadian Peace Congress activities, that church would. be
padlocked. 3

The same week a group of young French-Canadian men and
women, some of them veterans of the Second World War, were
prohibited by.massed cordons of Duplessis’ police from laying: a wreath
at the foot of a cenotaph—memorial to Canada’s war dead. Shoulder
to shoulder, two deep, the police encircled the cenotaph to protect it
from a wreath, and a pledge of the living to fight for what the dead

7

died for—peace, *

Consider these two incidents; in democratic Canada a minister of
the Gospel is told that if he uses his church to further the cause of
peace it will be padlocked under and by the authority of the infamous
Padlock Law. One can imagine Christ, just as He whipped the money-
changers out of the temple, momentarily forgetting His great humility,
taking a. sledge hammer and smashing in a million pieces that hated
symbol of Duplessis oppression—which excludes | the Dicer, of peace
from ‘His house.

Having found a new use for cenotaphs, dollar imperialism has
also found a ready Himmler in Duplessis—a Himmler who stands
ready to see to it that if young French-Canadians want to lay wreaths
and make pledges at the base of cenotaphs, such wreaths and such
pledges must follow the insane pattern of cold war. Peace is always
subversive in a fascist police state. Police-encircled cenotaphs in
Quebec illustrate the extent of the madness moving over Canada like
a creeping paralysis. : 3

But there is a bright side also. .Over three hundred. Freneh:Carla-

dian men and women broke through the Duplessis’ padlock-police cor-. -

don to attend the great Canadian Peace Congress convention in Toronto
this week. That is one mighty’ achievement which Duplessis with all
his padlocks and gestapo-rule will not be able to laugh off—nor head off.

Last week also, an ex-president of the U.S., Herbert Hoover, bluntly
proposed that the United Nations be scuttled forthwith, and that,a new
“UN” be created with ‘Russia and those countries who support her
excluded.” Haberdasher Truman promptly reached for the phone and
hurried to congratulate America’s greatest hunger engineer on “his
courageous stand.” An immediate public reaction to Wall Strect’s

latest move compelled America’s little man to retract his brash con+
gratulations and hand out a spate of tepid “explanations.” : 3

“Apple-a-day” Hoover, spokesman for Wall Street’s eeirccoora war
conspirators, wants a UN that will be totally amenable to dollar rule.
Such a “UN” would include pillars of dollar “democracy” like Franco
Spain, fascist Portugal, the Western Germany of the U.S.—rejuvenated

. Nazi Junkers, and all the puppet states set up by Anglo-American

imperialism in the scattered sections of the colonial world, A “UN”
with over oné-third of the world’s peoples and a like area excluded.

In “Hunger Herbie’s” impudent attack on the United Nations,
Wall Street “flew a kite,” a-kite intended to test political weather con-
ditions in the plan to scrap the UN which they now regard as an ob-
stacle to their atomic war plans of aggression. Truman’s hurried
“explanation” showed they don’t like what they saw. And what they
saw was a growing world peace movement, in the U.S. and elsewhere;
a peace movement embracing millions of common people, growing
stronger each day in a mighty resolve to impose peace upon the war-
mongers. Even Canada’s External Affairs Minister Pearson blinked
his eyes on the great Toronto Peace Congress convention—and sighed

. for the lost dream of “Hunger Herbie. wu

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sald eo
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’ PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 12, 1950—PAGE 8