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BRITISH COLUMBIA

Peace on

the ballot this fall

in 20 municipalities in B.C.

After more than a year of battling a
Tesistant city council, Surrey peace ac-
Uvists finally achieved their goal Oct. 3,
adding that municipality’s name to the
rowing list of B.C. centres holding

ament referendums during civic
elections this fall.

So far reports show that citizens of 20
B.C. municipalities will head to the
Polls with a special ballot on the ques-
tion of worldwide disarmament, a
testimony to the apparently limitless:
8towth of sentiment and effort for
Nuclear disarmament. Last year 18 B.C.
Centres voted an average 80 per cent in
favor of negotiated world disarma-
ment, while across Canada more than
a municipalities hosted the peace

ote,

The wording in most referendums
has followed that advanced by the
Originator of the idea, Operation

Smantle. Citizens are asked if they
favor “the balanced steps that lead to
World disarmament”’ with their federal
80vernment playing a leading role in
Pressing for world arms reduction talks.

Some centres have added teeth to
Ose votes. In Vancouver, and several
Spots on Vancouver Island, regional
“ltectors or city councilers have voted
ir respective jurisdictions “‘nuclear-

time earlier, the coalition itself inten-
sified that fight when the groups joined
forces following a special ‘‘Give Peacea
Chance”’ concert sponsored by the
Fraser Valley Peace Council and other

groups last spring.

The coalition forced council to vote
on the issue after packing the chambers
at the regular evening session Oct. 3,
after rejecting an offer to address coun-
cil during a preceding afternoon session
from disarmament opponent, Surrey
Mayor Don Ross. Few of the activists
could be available for the afternoon.

On the initiative of Ald. Bob Bose,
who pointed out the urgency of the vote
on the eve of the planned testing of
cruise missiles in Canada, council
agreed to hold the referendum in a 6-3
vote.

weapons-free zones,’’ in response to
another nation-wide campaign.

While Operation Dismantle initiated
the idea; several local peace groups,
and coalitions have approached coun-
cils — sometimes hostile councils
— to hold the referendums. In-
terference last year from provincial and
federal government representatives in-
timidated some councils into shifting
the referendum costs — which by any
measure are light — onto the peace ac-
tivists, and others into rejecting the
referendum idea. But most ignored the
warnings, subsequently proven
groundless by court decisions, that the.
referendums were illegal, and added the
slight cost to the election tab.

In other cases, local activists faced an
uphill battle to place the disarmament
question on the ballot.

Such was the case in Surrey, one of
the most recent municipalities to adopt
the referendum, which in a historic vote’
Oct. 3 capped a year of effort by local
peace forces.

It was a hard fight to the end, accor-
ding to Steve Gidora, spokesman for 13
groups joined into the Coalition for a
Disarmament Referendum ’83. While
efforts to put the peace question to Sur-
rey voters had been undertaken some

According to the reports, from
Operation Dismantle and other
sources, the following municipalities
will join Surrey in holding peace votes
this fall: Grand Forks, Salmon Arm,
Fernie, Coquitlam, Richmond, North
Vancouver city, Massett, Sidney, the
district of Chilliwack, the district of
North Saanich, Langley city,
Parksville, Qualicum Beach, Enderby,
New Westminster, Burnaby, Port Co-.
quitlam, Delta and Mission.

Peace ac

The next 3% weeks can aptly be
termed ‘peace weeks”’, as a series of
Marches, seminars and public
meetings — many with international
Speakers featured — take place
around the Lower Mainland and Vic-
toria,
- Chief among these is the march and
Tally to mark the beginning of the
United Nations’ International Disar-
Mament Week Oct. 22 in Vancouver.
AS with hundreds of other demonstra-
tons around the world that day, the
OCcus is the new offensive weaponry
the United States and NATO have
Planned for installation this fall.

While Europeans will focus on the
Cruise and Pershing II missiles slated
for deployment in their territory,

anadians will mark their protests
with a strong demand that the federal

-80vernment cancel the agreement

allowing the U.S. military to test the
ar-launched cruise missile over nor-
thern Canada, slated for early next
year,

Marchers will assemble at Jericho

ch park (at West Fourth Avenue,
hear the University of B.C.) at 11 a.m.
Tom there they’ll march to a rally at
ae Park, on the south shore of
poe Creek by the Burrard Bridge, to
es C.G. Gifford, head of the
€terans for Multilateral Nuclear
Disarmament, and others call for an
£nd to cruise testing and manufactur-
Ng. The event is sponsored by the
ass ent coalition, End the Arms

h Some of the other events are listed
€re in chronological order.

ednesday — Aggie Jakub-

‘ka from the Greenham Common

: Omen’s Peace Camp attends a

thepuon at the Nurses’ Residence of

© Vancouver General Hospital, 2851

a Cather St., at 8 p.m. More informa-

On is available by phoning 253-4802.

i Thursday — The Women’s Gather-

nefit and discussion on the

tion fills the month

professor Bryan Palmer on the SFU
campus, room to be announced at
2:30 p.m. It’s sponsored by the SFU
students for Peace and Mutual Disar-
mament.

Oct. 27 — Aggie Jakubska and
Monica Gunberg lead a discussion,
along with a film and slide show, on
the Greenham Common peace camp
in AQ 3005 on the SFU campus. Call
the SFU Women’s Centre, 291-3670.

Oct. 29 — Hiroshima bomb sur-
vivor Kinuko Laskey addresses an au-
dience at Victoria’s Metropolitan
United Church, at 7:30 p.m.

Oct. 29 and Oct. 30 — The Langara
Campus, 100 West 49th Ave., will be
the scene of a two-day discussion on
the connections between the disarma-

ne to Stop the Cruise sponsors a film _

C. G. ‘GIFF’ GIFFORD
veterans’ leader to address Oct. 22
rally.

Hastings streets, at 7:30 p.m. Phone

253-4802.
Friday — Former Netherlands

prime minister Joop den Uyl speaks —

on the question of the deployment of
Euromissiles at the T.B. Auditorium,
10th Avenue and Willow Street. Con-
tact the Physicians for Social Respon-
sibility, 733-3161.
Saturday — In Greater Victoria,
Disarmament Week begins with a
march from Saanich municipal hall,
beginning at noon, and ending at Vic-
toria city hall. Saat aan
Monday. — Guatemalan liberation
leader Enrique Torres speaks on
«disarmament and development at
the SFU Pub Seminar Room, at 12:30

se 25 — Faculty speakers Mat-
thew Speier, Stan Persky, Paul Mier
and Brett McGillivary will be featured
at a forum entitled, “The cruise
missile debate: what’s it all about? at
the North Cafeteria of Capilano Col-
lege in North Vancouver, beginning at
se 26 — ‘What about the Rus-

sians — and nuclear war?”’ is the ques-

ment and the labor, women’s and en-
vironmental movements. Phone
988-3649.

Also on Oct. 29 Headlines Theatre
performs Under the Gun. Admission
is pay-what-you-can at the Langara
Campus-main Auditorium at 8 p.m.

Those interested in the Bowen
Island Peace Festival Oct. 30 should
phone 947-2364 or 947-9745. It runs
from 1 to 5:30 p.m.

Also on Oct. 30, the Federation of
Russian-Canadians sponsors a talk on
Soviet-Canadian relations at the Rus-
sian People’s Home, 600 Campbell
Ave. in Vancouver, at 2 p.m. Speakers
to be announced.

Nov. 4 — The B.C. Peace Educa-
tion Coalition sponsors Norman
Alcock, a founder of the Canadian
Peace Research Institute, at the John
Oliver Secondary School auditorium,
530 E. 41st Ave. at 7:30 p.m.

Noy. 8 — Delegate Tom Harding
will report on the 1983 Prague Peace
Conference at the All Saints Anglican
Church, 7405 Royal Oak in Burnaby,

inning at 7 p.m.

Nov. 11 and Nov. 12 — The B.C.
Peace Council holds its conference on
action for disarmament, with
workshops and plenary discussions.
It’s at the Science of Mind Hall, 2915

FISH WORKERS . . . . hit Cassiar closure.

Protest cites
bank's ‘theft’

A mock vessel appropriately named the ‘‘Royal
Rogue,”’ and 75 angry fishermen and shoreworkers drew.
public attention to the Royal Bank’s shafting of fishermen
during a noon-hour demonstration at the bank’s regional
office at West Georgia and Burrard streets in Vancouver
Friday.

Later, representatives of the ‘‘Cassiar Committee’? —
fishermen who were cheated out of four months of
payments when the bank foreclosed on the Cassair Fishing
Co. Aug. 31 — filed into the office to deliver a letter
demanding full payment and a pledge to keep the com-
pany operating ‘‘in the 1984 season and beyond.”’

‘‘We stand by all the fishermen — union and non-
union,”’ Jim Rushton of the United Fishermen and Allied
Workers Union told the demonstrators and passers-by in a
bullhorn address during the demonstration.

Fishermen who sold to Cassiar lost a season’s worth of
benefits — totalling $2 million — when the Royal Bank
foreclosed on the company at the height of the fishing
season.

Due to the regulations of receivership, fishermen are last
on the list of creditors which includes three levels of
government, the bank and company shareholders, to be
paid their share of Cassiar’s $20-million debt.

“Your decision to force Cassiar into receivership after
fishermen had worked the season but before they were
paid is tantamount to theft,’’ the committee charged in its
open letter.

The group also pointed out that the bank’s ‘‘refusal to

inject capital needed to keep Cassiar operating will rein-
force B.C. Packer’s monopoly in the industry and take
away our jobs and our market fish.””
. Despite numerous meetings between Royal Bank of-
ficials and fishermen, the bank has stuck to its “‘repay-
ment”’ plan: 20 cents on the dollar, a paltry amount made
all the more galling by a condition that only fishermen who
continued to sell to Cassiar after the foreclosure were eligi-
ble. By press time, only 10 per cent of that amount had
been paid out.

Yet the bank’s profits are up 30 per cent, in the first three
quate of 1983, over that period last year, the committee
noted.

Kim Zander, a shoreworker and the coordinator of the
Vancouver and District Labor Council’s unemployed ac-
tion centre, also made the connection between the bank
and the draconian budget legislation of the provincial
Socred government.

Zander pointed out that Royal Bank directors sit on the
board of the Fraser Institute, the right-wing think-tank of
economists who advised the Bennett government prior to
the introduction of the budget.

She also noted that among the Socred’s threatened
Labor Code amendments is a provision that would void
cove agreements at companies which change owner-
ship.

Condemnation of the foreclosure has come from B.C.
NDP MPs Jim Fulton, Ray Skelly, Jim Manly, Pauline
Jewett, Ian Waddell, Margaret Mitchell, Svend Robinson
and NDP fisheries critic Ted Miller, who called the action
“outrageous.”

In a telegram to the bank Friday Mitchell, MP for Van-
couver East, deplored the action and pressed the bank to

Teenham Common camp at the She henter :
Camegie Centre, Main and. East tion posed by Simon Fraser University Commercial Dr. pay the full amount to the fishermen.

ee,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 19, 1983—Page <