Editor's note: As B.C. this year

celebrates its 100th birthday,
the writings of labor historians
take on new importance. Such a
historian was William (Ol Bill}
Bennett, who in 1937 traced the
contributions of. working people
to the province since its
beginnings in his book, ‘Builders
of British Columbia’. The follow-
ing excerpts from that book
assume most timely relevance
today. .

“If only real estate sharks,
timber barons, mine specu-
lators, fishery pirates, oil
brokers, stock gamblers and
political heelers had come to
this Last Best West, the firs, the
hemlocks and the cedars would
still spread their cathedral calm
over the busy centres of indus-
try, trade and commerce that
lie between Burrard Inlet and
the Fraser River.

They did come, these
argonauts — not however, as
builders, but as birds of prey
scenting the feast from afar, to
batten like leeches on the
workers who were gathering to
hew down the forests, to rape the
earth of its mineral treasures
and to garner the harvest of its
rivers and seas.

They came to take part in a
game of “‘put and take’”’ in which
the workers put and they took.
Yet those argonauts are written
_in the annals of lectures on the
history of british Columbia as
“builders of Empire’. . .

The greed of these builders of
Empire knew no bounds. Since
1870 the B.C. miners have
donated to their slave-driving
overlords, alien capitalists
mostly, the tidy handout of one
and a half billion dollars, practi-
cally all of it with the exception
of the gold from the placer
deposits of the Fraser and the
Cariboo, in the period we are
now celebrating.

In 30 years, from 1901, the year
the lumbermen and loggers
associations were organized,
the coast loggers, without the
help of Paul Bunyan or the Big
Swede, cut over 42 billion feet of
logs which the mills and
factories converted into $1,348
million worth of forest products.

Alladin’s magic lamp is a play-
thing compared to the sturdy
backs, brawny arms and gener-
ous hearts of the workers of Van-

couver and its outlying terri
tories.

Into the maw of these
entrepreneurs-capitalist adven-
turers, today goes $300 million
dollars annually, created by B.C.
workers, less the scanty wages
that are given back to keer them
from dying of starvation.

In the past year coast loggers
cut two and one-half billion feet
of logs, 1000 feet per man per
day, which when milled and
manufactured into lumber,
doors, furniture, shingles and
plywood, realized 56 million fro
the members of the Lumber and
Millmen’s Associations, the
same who find it impossible to
pay the minimum wage and
have to employ 25 percent of
their workers at wages below the
limit of the Act.

In 1935 also, B.C. miners and
quarrymen dug out of the
bowels of the earth $47,807,157
worth of precious and base
metals; gold, silver, lead, zinc,
copper and industrial raw
materials; coal, asbestos,
cement and clay, providing the
mine owners with $10 million
dividend. Austin Taylor needed
the price to buy Indian Broom
for his racing stables, and
nobody is so generous as the
Bridge River miners!

Before going on the breadline

last winter, the 17,000 B.C. fisher-

men and cannery-workers,
whites, Indians, and Orientals,
had made their quota to help out
the hard-pressed cannery owners
by contributing $15,786,172
worth of salmon, halibut, cod,
pilchards, herrings, crabs,
shrimps and clams. The Bell
Irvings must shine socially!

And undoubtedly, if the long-
shoremen had not been engaged
in a long and bloody sturggle
with the Shipping Federation
they would have hand ed more
than 6,339,636 tons of cargo on
the Vancouver docks during the
year.

Eighteen hundred B.C.
factories produced 180 million
dollars worth of wealth, nearly
half in Vacouver, in 1935, and
the grand total could easily have
been much larger if almost
100,000 of the population had not
been shut out of industry and
compelled to exist on relief,
from six to 8 thousand of them
imprisoned in slave compounds,
working at forced, back-
breaking, useless labor for .20
cents a day.

These are the real builders of
Vancouver and of B.C.; the
loggers and sawmill workers;
the miners, — prospectors,
colliers, and hard-rock men; the
fishermen on the Fraser and the
halibut banks of the North
Pacific; the surveyors and
laborers who laid out and graded
the streets and the building
trades workers who erected the
buildings; transportation
workers, railroaders, sailors,
longshoremen, treamsters,
streetcarmen; the machinists;
boilermakers, engineers and the
other workers who contributed
to their comfort while they were
so engaged.”’

Ol Bill Bennett admits in his
introduction that he is not
‘‘impartial.”’

He wrote: ‘‘As between Frank
Rogers and the -thugs of the
CPR; between the miners
fighting for the enforcement of
the Mines Regulation Act and
the hirelings of Bowser
(Premier of B.C.); between the
jailed and murdered trekkers
and the R.B. Bennett-Gerry
McGeer-RCMP gunmen, the
writer is partial to the working
class, first, last and always and
forever, as is the Party of which
he is proud to be amember— the
Communist Party of Canada.”’

Air Canada
Strike

MONTREAL — More than
3,200 Air Canada ground and
maintenance workers walked
off the job on Tuesday, halting
air service all over the country.

The workers are members of
the International Association of
Machinists and Aerospace
Workers (IAM). They are
expected to hold secret ballots in
IAM local meetings on Tuesday
to pass judgment on latest
management offers. An IAM
spokesman in Montreal said the
rank-and-file are expected to
reject the offers, giving IAM the
go-ahead to call ‘‘rotating”’
strikes against the airline. IAM
is asking for a one-year contract
with an eight per cent wage
increase retroactive to March
1; IAM-management talks
broke down last Friday on the
issue of split-shifts, one of the
main complaints of the workers.

bicsaineet

The funeral procession with Urns containing the Ashes of the three deceased Soviet Cosmonauts; — Ship
Commander of the Spaceship, Hero of the Soviet Union Lt. Col. G.T. Dobrovolsky, Flight Engineer, Twice Hero
of the Soviet Union V.N. Volkov and Test Engineer, Hero of the Soviet Union V.I. Patsayev. Funeral procession
on way to Kremlin Wall where the Urns will rest.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JULY 16, 1971—PAGE 8

fon)
from Morning sire

“Don’t print it!”

OIL

Cont'd. from pg. 1

statement as a basis for their
okay.

Mayor Prittie in a statement
to council said it is time the oil
companies realize the time has
come for them and council to rec-
ognize that the pressure from
people for pollution control
make it mandatory that oil
refineries eventually be
removed from residential
areas.

George Gee, who resides
immediately across from the
Chevron refinery and is a spokes-
man for the Burnaby Pollution
Removal Association, said the
warning and the council motion
to change the ground rules for
refineries in Burnaby is a
progressive step, but it will be
pigeon-holed unless the people
keep up the pressure. ©

He pointed out that Burnaby
has long had a by-law which
states ‘‘nothing shall be done
which is or will become a nui-
sance to surrounding areas by
reason of the emission of odours,
dust, liquid effluent, fumes,
smoke, vibration, noise or glare,
and nothing be done which
creates or causes a health, fire
or explosion hazard. . .”’

Snow-Job

In his statement to council
Monday night, Gee said the B.C.
Research Council report was a
whitewash job on behalf of
Standard Oil. He took the report
apart, paragraph by paragraph,
and concluded by stating that
there had once been justi-
fication for oil companies
locating their plants on the water
front as all oil came in by boat.

‘‘However,”’ he said, ‘‘there
are few people now who don't
recognize that it was foolish to
allow them in. At the time the
people were ignorant of pollu-
tion and its effects. Today this
council has the knowledge. By
granting permits for further
expansion. they Stand
condemned in the eyes of the
people for failing to phase the oil
companies out...”

Gee told Council members the
Research Council report does
not say what will happen with
regard to pollution when
Standard Oil increases its
capacity three or four years
from now, as it predicts it likely
will. He pointed out that expan-
Sion has gone on unabated within
the confines of the plant for

many years, so now the Y
are but afew feet aparh igi
Gee scoffed at the } Cale
modernization wou 10s
decrease in emissions 1° a
phere. Living a few ¥’ ious
the plant, he found ridiCl’ opi
Research Council's st )
that ‘‘surveys carrie nd
others in 1961 and 1971 £00 id
emission of oderous ™ pl
was ‘below the level dete ‘fal
by the human nosé ah aly
below the level at wh
adverse effects occur -

Warning ve

Bob Smith, on behall wut
Burnaby North NDP ex¢ nbe®
told Burnaby Council mf the!
in his submission ee
ranted a permit 0
cama. it could be pres)
that Shell, Gulf, and 1 oq (0
would also feel the
expand in the near
"It will be nearly impoS;, je
stop the others laléh
warned. gard oi

“We are told that Sta? jatior®
meets all existing TC gilt
If this is so then the the, as
tions are not stiff eno ail

most efficient users ® of
Burnaby. Heavy industy eal
sort has no place in T a
areas and Standard
underutilized and gros
assessed.

More Tax Income bis
“The tax deal the
company enjoys 18 or
generous at an asses
only $13,000 per aerelite
replacement of this
with homes would be it
quadruple the tax reve re?
this land and remove jous
public nuisance and Sef |
hazard from Burnaby: oy ne
refineries are to stay ‘
be made to pay a fair
tion.” ‘@

He concluded “AS * yill &
know, no new jobs d!
created by this expan
the past ‘the oil refin
usually in fact. pre y orked
product with towel
He pledged the ND jection
in the next civic © for
defeat those who VOW —
expansion permit.

{he