Jim Cork, speaking at Vancouver city hall during the 1976 campaign to
press city council to grant funding to the Downtown Eastside Residents

Association.

Public pressure produced

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

It took three years of public
pressure and political arm twisting
but finally city council, with some
members still kicking and
screaming, by majority vote
decided to spend $860,000 to restore
and renovate Carnegie Library so
that it can be used as a community
facility by the residents of the
downtown eastside area. The
building, at the corner of Main and
Hastings, has been vacant for 10
years.

It was a victory for the people of
this area, for the Downtown
Eastside Residents Association
(DERA), for the Committee of
Progressive Electors (COPE) and
many other groups and citizens

Pioneer activist in progressive

civic affairs, Jim Cork,

The progressive movement this
week is mourning the death of
James T. Cork, long time com-
munity activist and a pioneer of
progressive civic politics in
Vancouver.

Cork was known to hundreds
throughout Vancouver and in the
Hastings Sunrise community that
he lived in and served for many
years. He was resident in the same
East Pender St. home that he built
in 1946, when he passed away in the
morning of April 10 after a two
year battle with cancer.

Only two weeks before his death
the Hastings Community
Association, of which Cork was a
past president, had petitioned the
city of Vancouver to have Cork’s
services to the city recognized in
the city’s Book of Merit. In
recommending honors to Cork, the
Community Association listed 16
organizations and campaigns in
the Hastings Sunrise community in
which he had played a major role.

In successive civic elections
Cork was an aldermanic candidate
for the Committee of Progressive
Electors (COPE)

and was en-

dorsed each time by numerous east
end organizations and community
papers. He helped to found the
community centre and ratepayer
movements of the 1950’s and 1960’s,

and in 1968 was a founder member

of COPE.

Cork’s association with the
progressive labor movement dates
to the depression years when he
arrived in British Columbia from
his birth place, Swan. Lake,
Manitoba.

Unemployed, Cork became an
activist in the Relief Project
Workers’ Union about 1935 and
assisted in the publication of its
paper. After a short period of
residency in the Okanagan, he
joined the Canadian army’s
‘princess Pats’ light infantry
division during World War II
where he served as an instructor
until 1942.

After the war, Cork settled in
Vancouver East and worked as a
purchasing agent for Grinnell Pipe
Co., a position he held until his
retirement in 1975.

Among his many ac-
li hments as a community

‘levels of

passes

worker in Vancouver East, he was :

founder and first president of the
Cassiar Ratepayers Association,
later to become the first secretary
— and then president — of the
Central Council of Ratepayers,
which united ratepayer groups
throughout the city.

In 1971, 22 organizations in
Hastings Sunrise came together to
form the Hastings Sunrise Action
Council, an outspoken community
association that has pressed
Vancouver city council and other
government over
numerous issues. The logical
leader of the Action Council was
Jim Cork, who remained its
president until two weeks ago.

A lasting legacy to the work of
Jim Cork is the innovative Adanac
Housing Co-op on Cassiar St. in
Vancouver, which Cork was in-
strumental in securing for low
income tenants in the city.

A private funeral was held April
12 with his wife Mary, and children
Sharon, Tom and Janice and close
friends in attendance.

PEOPLE AND ISSUES

who have vigorously campaigned
for the use of this building as a
social and cultural centre.

The residents of this area, which
includes our infamous skid road
district, are the most deprived
section of the citizens of Vgn-
couver. The renovated building
will provide a whole number of
much needed services including a
reading room, library, gym, film
showings, meeting rooms, display
areas, classrooms and workshops
and recreations rooms. The people
of this district will now have some
place to go and put in time con-
structively. It should be ready by
the summer of 1979 and will help
considerably to upgrade this
neglected area.

The recommendation — that
council undertake the renovation
of Carnegie library came from
council’s Standing Committee on
Community Services, of which I
am chairman, but even here we
had opposition in the form of
Alderwoman Ford.

The opposition to the project was
strong. It included the Vancouver
Library Board, the Parks Board
and four members of Council who
voted against it — mayor Jack
Volrich and alderpersons May
Brown, Warnett Kennedy and
Marguerite Ford.

The anti-social attitude of these

Carnegie Library victory —

people was illustrated by their
remarks.

The library board loftly declared
it had other and more important
priorities.

The chairman of the Parks
Board, Ian Bain, insulted the
residents of this area by declaring
that spending money on this
project was like “pouring money
down a rat hole.”’

Mayor Jack Volrich called the
renovation ‘‘totally unjustifiable.”
Yet this same mayor, and his NPA
and TEAM supporters, some two
months ago voted to give the B.C.
Jockey Club and_ Burrard
Amusements (both at the PNE) a
gift of $250,000 a year by exempting
them from the city’s business tax.
Three and a half years income
from business tax from these two
highly profitable~ private en-
terprises would have more than
paid for the whole renovation costs
of Carnegie Library.

The lesson of the battle of Car-
negie Library is that the citizens
can influence their city council if
they struggle long enough and hard
enough.

Our next job is to see that on
November 15, 1978, the date of the
next municipal elections, we get »
rid of some of our right wing
political dinosaurs and elect a
mayor and aldermen who have
some concern for people’s needs.

‘Mobilize’
obilize’,
Continued from pg. 1

workers’ living standards and
union security.

Hewison was_ particularly

critical of the CLC executive

council for not reflecting the pro-
posals advanced in resolutions by

scores of union locals which had

pressed the CLC for action to com-
bat unemployment and the com-
bined government-employer of-
fensive against organized labor.

That note was also struck by C.
S. Jackson, delegate from the
United Electrical Workers, who
scored the executive council for

ee

CLC urged

“Continually burying, expunging,
amending and emasculating . the
guts of resolutions’? which had
called for CLC initiative in de-
veloping an economic and political
program to fight back.

Noting that it was far from
sufficient to depend on the election
of an NDP government, he
stressed the need for the labor
movement to mobilize its own
ranks to defend its interests, add-
ing that past experience has shown
that such mobilization is necessary
“even after the election of an NDP »
government.”’

n the letter on which we reported last week Donna

Tyndall gave elegant voice to the question posed by
Native peoples in relation to the provincial governemnt’s
much-heralded Captain Cook bicentennial celebrations
when she asked: ‘‘What have we to celebrate in this unjust
and racist society?’’ Now we note that the Mowachat Band,
descendants of the indigenous peoples who greeted Captain
Cook in March of 1778, have spurned the provincial
government’s offers of money to ‘‘help”’ them celebrate the
anniversary and have also presented their version of the
original Cook landing — which differs significantly from
that being marketed by the advertising agencies of Grace
McCarthy’s ministry of tourism.

{n 1778, the Mowachats relate, the people of the village of
Yuquot (Friendly Cove) heard a strange noise coming
from the sea. The noise continued as they went out to in-
vestigate and the Mowachats found a large boat drifting
around, lost in the fog. The sound they had heard was the
ship’s bells.

The natives led the ship to Yuquot and welcomed and fed
the visitors, who were not in good health.

This is the Mowachats’ version of how Captain Cook
““discovered’’ Yuquot.

Impressed with the friendliness of Chief Maquinna and
his people, Cook named the place Friendly Cove. He and his
crew stayed for a short time to repair his ship and to do
some trading with the natives. Then he left but returned
twice to do more trading.

Again, he and his crew were welcomed, but this time, the
Mowachats caught some crew members stealing fish and
furs. Others were found to be treating Mowachat women
with disrespect and Chief Maquinna told Cook to leave.

The story has been passed down from generation to
generation, continuing until the present day, according to
the Mowachats. In fact, they say, songs that are still sung
by some of the elders tell of Cook’s visits. One of the songs
ome “Our rpeoply go to your homes; Cook go home.”

PACIFIC A SaIBENE-apea 15, 1978—Page 2

The attitude of the present provincial government in
seeking to alter history and to exploit it as a tourist gim-
mick, has obviously changed little since that day two
centuries ago.

The provincial government did offer the Mowachats
$200,000 to build a comemorative longhouse at the site but
then coupled it with the final insult by stating that ar-

chitects would be hired to design the longhouse — clearly ,

implying that the government and its architects knew more
about longhouses than the Indians.

And when the Mowachats pressed for the building of a
longhouse which would ‘‘do our culture justice in the eyes of
the world,” for Native control of the arts and crafts that
were to be sold to the public, for the upgrading of dock and
wharf facilities and for the supplying of five salmon
trollers, to enable the people to have a continuing
livelihood, the government dismissed their demands as
“outrageous” and ‘‘impossible.”’

For the Mowachats, who have been forced by lack of

‘employment out of their historic village of Yuquot, as for all

of this province’s Native peoples, Tyndall’s question to
Grace McCarthy remains: ‘‘What have we to celebrate?”
* * *
ne of the Last living links with the history of militant
farmers’ organizations of the Prairies was broken with
the passing of Florence Bowes who was mourned at a
memorial service in the Boal Chapel in North Vancouver
last Thursday. .

In 1931, she was one of the delegation of three, the first ©

from the then newly-formed Farmers Unity League, to tour
the Soviet Union to see the people of that country begin the
transformation of their agriculture from feudal back-
wardness to modern collectivization. Despite the repression
imposed by the R.B. Bennett government, under the
provisions of Section 98, she was able to tour throughout
Saskatchewan and Alberta to tell farmers in this country of
the achievements of the first socialist state.

Although stricken for many of her later years, Florence
was also a familiar figure to those active in the campaign to
end the Vietnam war and was an active supporter of the

Canadian-Cuban Roencsule ASN
*

|: our reporting last Care on the eyes of isavmanicnt
Day as proclaimed in the cities of Vancouver and
Victoria, we were remiss in not mentioning that other |
centres also marked the occasion and although they may
not have caught the public eye, were vital nevertheless.
Rita Tanche of the Fraser Valley Peace Committee tells us
that their committee marked a special action for the day
with a peitioning blitz in Delta, gathering more than 900
signatures on the Stockholm Appeal. A later event brought

in some $200 for the disarmament campaign.
* * *

fe were also remiss in not noting that international

baseball game between the members of the crews of two
Cuban ships in port and the Norburn Steelers of the Pacific
Coast Junior League held in Central Park April 2, was
organized by the Canadian-Cuban Friendship Association.
Fisherman John Person, who has become a familiar face to
the crews of the Cuban ships, Imias and La Plata, set up the
game on behalf of the committee with the willing assistance
of aie Steeler’ s coach.

: TRIBUNE |

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