By DON COLLINS Colonist Reporter It was a beautiful postcard. Ablaze with the color of a Quebec sunset, it had an almost blinding effect on one who had spent the afternoon meditating in the darkness of a Montreal bar. I sent the postcard to Senator Joe McCarthy. It seemed like the thing to do. “Dear Joe,” I scribbled ‘‘you might want to in- vestigate this Canadian sunset. Note the color. Could it be un-American?” Before too long the same sun was to set on the questionable career of the senator. The witch-hunt was over. Or so it seemed. The postcard incident was blown loose from the cobwebs of my memory the other day by some pain- fully familiar signs. Angry people were following the drum beat to the distant right. And as I glanced through the papers, listened to the radio, watched television and answered the phone, I began to think that Joe McCarthy had been reincarnated and put through a fast copying machine. The people out there were stringing unrelated pearls of hatred into a necklace big enough to hang the world. The zanies were on the march, as evidenced by: e Sen. David Walker (Canadian, yet!) wondering how many postal workers are communists trained under Russians in England and Scotland. He is assured by fellow senator Ray Pearrault that an in- quiry is under way. ‘ e A letter to the editor blames communist spies in our unions for much of the country’s ills. e People who seem normal at other times want the army to move in during the mail strike. e An attack on the unemployed is intensified at a time of monumental unemployment. e People cotinue to call for the return of the strap, the rope, compulsory this, and compulsory that. Against this background you have the federal Liberals changing the rules of the game to send the postal workers back to the job, and the federal Tories going them one better by supporting the idea of stripping all public employees of the right to strike. Perhaps because of these things (and the fact I ate old cheese before going to bed) I found myself one recent night dreaming the kind of dream that seemed to be in keeping with the times. If one eliminates the unrelated sex scenes that kept creeping in, the dream went like this: There is a sound of marching feet. It is getting louder. The jackbooters on the the way. THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER : LS ETE EEE - The door flies open and in they march, all red- faced and twitchy. I am trapped there in my own bedroom, armed only with a peanut butter sandwich. “The food of the communists,” snarls the man who is obviously the leader of this group. His henchmen nod in agreement. Three of them take me by the hands and apply thumbscrews. The interrogation begins. “Are you now or have you ever been a postal . worker?’ demands the leader. “No.”’ “Can you give a satisfactory reason why you never were a postal worker?”’ “Licking postage stamps makes me sick to my stomach.” “Do you now or have you ever fraternized with a postal worker?”’ I hesitated to ponder the question. The leader tightened the thumbscrews. “Answer the question,” he growled. “Well, I talked to a postal worker once.”’ ‘“‘Aha,”’ beamed the leader triumphantly. .“Aha,”’ chorused his henchmen. “Where,” asked the leader bending toward me, _ “did this meeting take place?”’ “Over the counter in the post office.” “Very cunning — the place where you would arouse the least suspicion. Now, my friend, tell me this — and be very careful to tell it straight: What did _ you say to the postal worker?” “T said it was a nice day.” ‘“‘Aha — the old coded message trick. You were re- lating a warning about the Weathermen.” “No, actually, the sun was out and...” The leader slapped me with a glove. “Well done,’”’ bubbled a henchman. “Don’t give me smart answers, boy,” continued the leader. ‘‘Now tell me what the postal worker said to you. And don’t lie.”’ “He said he also though it was a nice day.” “There it is! There it is! Collusion! Write it down,”’ he snapped to henchman. ‘And now,” he said, turning to me and slowly > giving the thumbscrews one more twist, ‘‘What else © transpired between the two of you that day?”’ ‘Well, I bought a stamp, and I asked the postal worker if he would lick and put it on for me. He wanted to know why and I told him licking stamps made me sick. He winked and asked if I was pregnant.” - it’s time I sent him a FEBRUARY, 1979 “You know very well what he meant by that. He was asking if your mind was pregnant with the thoughts of Chairman Mao.” ; “Hey, that’s a good one,” I stammered, breaking into a nervous laugh. : He slapped me with his glove again. This time his fist was in it. “And now, the most important question of all — did this postal worker speak with an English or Scottish accent?” ‘ “Both.” “Both? What do you mean both?” I had become giddy. “One head spoke English, the other Scottish. He had two heads.” “The leader leaned forward, his upper lip curled back in the manner of a mad dog. “What do you mean, two heads?” “He was a double agent.” The last thing I remember was being placed on the rack. I woke up in a sweat with one hand trapped under the headboard. It felt good to be awake and aware that such strange people exist only in nightmares. But then I picked up the paper and read the letter to the editor from a prisoner who said he would like to correspond with people — as long as they were white. I turned on the radio in time to hear a woman add what she called “levity” to an open-line show with this joke: If Prime Minister Trudeau was run over by a bus the next prime minister would be the bus - driver. The thought of the prime minister’s demise brought a little chuckle from the host of the show. I picked up the phone at work to be told in hysterical tones: ‘‘Those guys in the post offices of this nation are Marxists. Y’ever take a good look at the long hair, and the way they look and all?” A couple of nights later I flipped on my TV set so.I could relax and forget the zanies. And there, staring out at me, is this big fat guy and his gang of vigilantes taking the law into their own hands in the city of Newark. And elsewhere people are feeding on the greed of Proposition 13, talking about tax cuts that will reduce those least important services — you know, the ser- vices that cater to the minorities and the poor. If there’s a clone of Joe McCarthy around, I- guess postcard to remind him that society is still blaming the victim and ignoring the culprit. CONFERENCE HITS OUT AT INADEQUATE PENSION PLANS We gets a government grant to open a loggin’ school . . then . . . bingo! we gets our students to log off our Too many of Canada’s re- tirees are living in poverty, government-funded pension plans are inadequate and almost two-thirds of the work- ing force are not covered by private pension plans. The sad plight of people on pensions was made abundantly clear to delegates to a confer- ence in October on pensions arranged by social, communi- ty and labour organizations ac- tive in Metro Toronto. One of the most forceful speakers was Ian Potter, of Saskatchewan’s social ser- vices department. Potter told the delegates that Canada ranks 14th among 17 nations studied on the basis of average old age pensions compared with the gross national product. He said that Canada can afford to guarantee every per- son 65 and over an income equal to half the national average wage, that is, $6,500 per person or $13,000 per couple. This would cost about 7.5 per cent. of the national income compared with just three per cent at present. The required percentage is just about what is already being spent on pen- sions in France and less than is spent in Austria and Germany and other countries. Social planning director Potter said that working people are not paying enough attention to their future pen- sion needs. Accordingly they may be facing poverty on re- tirement as many senior citi- zens now do. He attacked some myths about pensions, for example, that people should save for the future or that this country can- not afford higher pensions. This attitude is partly to blame for the plight of pensioners to- day. The Canada Pension Plan must be improved as one major step toward filling the income gap. Since it covers the entire working force, it ‘provides coverage where priv- ate pension plans do not. The CPP is supposed to pay a maximum of only 25% of the average industrial wage. But the $195 a month which is the present real maximum is only 17% of the average wage. The Canadian Council of Re- tirees (CLC) is planning to make the voice of organized labour more effective in prodding governments to do what must be done to make the lives of needy pensioners povauie instead of intoler-: able. The book value of foreign di- rect investment in the Canadian economy rose at a rate of 10% in 1975 and, in ab- solute terms, the $3.7 billion of foreign investment exceeded even the record of 1974 by $200 million, Statistics Canada says. _ American direct investment in Canada rose 11% to hit $32.2 billion — 81% of total foreign direct investment in Canada at the end of 1975, the government agency says. Growth in foreign invest- ment was spread over all in- dustrial categories, and was not confined to growth in U.S. investment alone.