Ik for pea

ce on Ap

— editorial page 4

ril 23

Day of protest on rail

ways

— page 12

April 20, 1988
££ SUS

Vol. 51, No. 15

TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN KEETON

Curbing
chemical

weapons
— page 5 —

“Tf there is any further mining and log-
ging in Strathcona Park, it will be met by
civil disobedience for as long as there is one
body left to stand in front of that equip-
ment.”

So declared Des Kennedy of the Friends
of Strathcona Park to a cheering crowd of
demonstrators at the provincial legislature
April 14.

Some 350 demonstrators occupied the
lawn and steps of the building in Victoria to
back the call for continued action against
the government’s seizure of provincial park
lands on behalf of the mining and logging
interests.

Kennedy, one of more than 60 people
arrested for blocking earth moving equip-
ment owned by Cream Silver Mines Ltd.

. during demonstrations in February and

March, cited public opinion polls showing
clear majorities of British Columbians
oppose mining and logging in provincial
parks.

And he warned in an interview after-

Satiric sing-a-long conducted by members of Friends of Strathcona Park group who are charged for civil disobedience
activities closes demonstration outside provincial legislature April 14. Songs consisted of digs at Socred government’s
permitting mining in B.C.’s oldest provincial park. Group members vowed to keep up the protest and risk arrest again if

wards that far more than Strathcona, B.C.’s
oldest public park, is at stake.

the government allows mining and logging to proceed in the park.

Tory gov't tackled over shi

More than 50 unemployed shipyard
workers confronted Conservative MP
Chuck Cook in his North Vancouver con-
stituency office Friday, demanding that
the federal government live up to its com-
mitment to give half of the construction
work on the Polar 8 icebreaker to Versatile
Pacific’s North Vancouver yard and
ensure that the yard isn’t shut down when
the contract is finished.

But they got little more from the Tory
MP than expressions of his “greatest sym-
pathy” and a reminder that it is “a tough
world we’re living in.”

The shipyard workers, members of var-
ious shipbuilding unions, including the
Marine Workers and Boilermakers Indus-
trial Union and the Sheet Metal Workers,
marched up to Cook’s office from a rally

outside the Versatile yard at the foot of
Lonsdale on North Vancouver’s water-
front. —

Despite promises made by Prime Minis-
ter Brian Mulroney to the Conservative
Party’s Atlantic caucus to “make ship-
building a priority,” Versatile employees
face the prospect of permanent closure of
the 90-year-old yard under the recom-
mendations of a consultant’s report com-
missioned by the government. And a more
recent promise given by the federal cabinet
to divide the work on the Polar 8 ice-
breaker equally between Versatile’s North
Vancouver and Victoria yards has also
been pushed aside by government plans to
complete 80 per cent of the work in Vic-
toria.

see NORTH VANCOUVER page 12

Shipyard workers press

see PARK page 3

yard jobs

North Vancouver Conservative MP Chuck Cook on

shipyard closures and Tory commitments on jobs during meeting in his consti-

tuency office Friday.

TRIBUNE PHOTO — SEAN GRIFFIN