All the way with...

Who pays the shot?

A pplied to the spate of “royal” commissions during re-
cent times, a parody onan old Churchillian cliche
certainly fits the case; “never has so many paid so much
for so little”. It also covers most all other items in the
steadily rising cost of living—and dying.

According toa recent tabulation by the Canadian
Tax Journal, the Canadian taxpayer will cough up be-
tween three and a half to four million dollars this year for
such commissions. Since 1962 down to the moment, the
cost of this “royal” commission binge has clipped the tax-
payer some $13-million or more.

‘New ‘Morning Star’

onday of this week, April 25, 1966, in London, Eng- .
land, a new Star was added to the galaxy of English-.,
language daily newspapers,—“The Morning Star’”—succes-

sor to the veteran British Communist “Daily Worker.”

In a front-page editorial in its final edition, the DW

says a fitting farewell:

“Our friends on the Left hope that we shall help
them still more effectively. Big Business and the Right
fear that we shall attack them still more vigorously. We
shall do our best not to disappoint any of them. For al-
though we ave bidding farewell to a name, we are not say-
ing goodby to a tradition”. ;

Anda very magnificent tradition it has been, with,
over 36-years championing the struggles of the British
people and upholding all that is best in British working-
class and Socialist journalism in pointing the road ahead.

In this great tradition “The Morning Star’, officially
launched by Dame Sybil Thorndyke, First Lady of the
British stage and theatre, begins its great career.

We salute “The Morning Star” on this eve of May
Day, confident that the cause of Peace, human progress,
and Socialism, will find new impetus and new hope in its

widened horizons, and the imperishable traditions which
gave it birth.

of the day (in its political “wisdom”) chooses to ignore its
own commission findings.

~~ ‘That $13-million applied to senior citizen well-being
or scaling down the price of pork chops would have stood
Canada in better stead than “royal” commissions (on a
fat salary and open-end “expense”’ accounts), designed pri-
marily to take the public “heat” off derelict partisan gov-
ernment.

Not a few of the most recent “royal’’ commissions
flow directly from the virus of coldwar and its resultant:
corruption in government. The ministerial “stock-broker”
who wants to make a fast “killing” in his stock deals; the
ministerial specie who dabbles in graft and corruption
with the underworld; the “virtuous” and ‘“glamor-boy”
specie who is not averse to sharing a bed with a West Ger-
man prostitute, just so long as their own political “secur-
ity” (and “virtue”) is not endangered. For this bundle of
coldwar governmental graft, corruption and “moral” filth,
the taxpayer has to foot the whitewash bill, running into
millions of dollars.

But the one commission he should benefit from, now
sitting on a price-fixing “deal” by some of Canada’s larg-
est food-distributing monopolies—he isn’t likely to. But he

he “mystery” of the Van-

couver Courthouse foun-
tain design remains a mystery.
No one as yet except the close
custodians of Socred “culture”
and the arts, know anything ofthe
design — or the designer. Mayor
Bill Rathie is reported to have
been permitted a peep at it, but
he isn’t “giving out” with any
previews,

_ That isn’t surprising since cul-
tural attainment is definitely not
one of our NPA mayor’s strong
points, As is very well known
NPA “culture” runs more to big
real estate deals, tax gouging, and
generally film-flaming the citi-
zenry.

However, jt must be conceded
that in the gestation stages for
_ the birth ofthis mystery fountain,
Mayor Rathie in a burst of rare
foresight, gave his approval for
- Vancouver artists to decorate the
high plywood fence around the
Courthouse fountain site, with

April-29, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4

soca

their creative artistic talents,

The results were immediately
astounding, The bare plywood
soon took on the spontaneous
aspect of agreat artgallery. This
civic unleashing of a vast store-
house of artistic talent, futuris-
tic, modernistic, abstract, or
what have you, and with a steadily
growing sidewalk audience,
opened out a new vista; a temp-
orary appeasement of the hunger
of opportunity for creative art
on the part of the artist, plus the
hunger of hundreds of citizens
to watch it unfolding; to see the
artist creatively project the
thoughts of the people on a 4x 8
foot slab of plywood.

Since it is said that all true
art must reflect the struggles,
hopes, ideals and aspirations of
the people, it was perhaps more
than a mere coincidence that many
of the sidewalk artists, quite un-
known to each other, chose as
-their artistic themes a subtle

will still have to foot the monopoly whitewash bill.

‘lampoon or satire of Socredia, ’
themes on which the sidewalk au-
dience invariably voiced its
hearty approval, A sort ofdelay-
ed “Ides of March” sidewalk sym-
phony, heralding the fall of a
latter-day Socred “Caesar.”

Be that as it may, the media
of the “sidewalk artist”, long a
vital avenue of artistic expres-
sion on the sidewalks of London,
Paris, Berlin, Vienna and other
great metropolitan world centers
of creative art, has at long last,
albeit belatedly and accidentally,
reached Vancouver, and given
a rousing welcome by talented
young artists and the public.

This fact, probably moreso
than Socredia’s “mystery” foun-
tain, should not be regarded as a
passing “fad”, but as the emer-
gence of a vast potential social
asset, in which the artistic talent
of Vancouver and B.C, will be
afforded the opportunity — and
the facilities, to enrich the esthe-
tic and cultural needs of the
people. And not the least, as
Margaret Apps so fittingly put
it, enable young talented artists
“to eat* — to live and grow
in their artistry.

Thus it really doesn’t matter
too much what the design of
WAC’s “mystery” fountain is,
After the first few days of “thrill”

or “shock” as the case may.be, —

Vancouverites will get used to
it, just as they got used to the
old “King Edward VII” fountain
monstrosity, which Nature’s
shrubbery happily helped to par-
tially obscure, Or that other
Courthouse “monument” to
Chamber-of-Commerce “cul-
ture” in the form of an A-Bomb
“fallout shelter”, which would
have probably been there yet had
not some enterprising Vancou-
verite not specified a better use
for it — with a sign above the
entrance bearing the simple
legend — “Gents,” .

The wide interest which has
emerged as a by-product of the
“mystery” fountain controversy,
indicates something of the mea-
sure of its potential, In city
parks, in areas where broad
sidewalks exist, in the numerous
nooks at street intersections,

Pacefic

Editor — TOM McEWEN
Associate Editor — MAURICE RUSH
Circulation Manager — JERRY SHACK
Published weekly at -
Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St
Vancouver 4, B.C.
Phone 685-5288

Subscription Rates:

Canada, $5.00 one yeat; $2.75 for six months. North and South America
and Commonwealth countries, $6.00 one year. All other countries, $7.00
one year. Authorized as second class mail by the Post Office Department, —
Ottawa, and for payment of postage in cash.

The more | look at this world, the
more it appears to me 8 a cockroach

-world in which the mean, petty

human insects run around frantically,

engaged in everlastingly building up

their yellow piles of glorified dung;
lying, stealing, preaching, and killing
in the process. They have dungified
their Gods, their thoughts, their
dreams, and their institutions—until it
all smells to high heaven.

—Chas Elstein in U.S. FARM NEWS,

March, '66.
*

It's a good time to tighten up the
union, to make sure to attend local
union meetings, and to keep abreast
of what is going on and what is plan-
ned for the future. If we all do just
this much, and if we all work and
stick together we will sure come out
of contract negotiations in better
shape than ever.

—ILWU President Harry Bridges in

Dispatcher, April 25/66.

It is time to change our emphasis
from fear to hope, from dwelling on
the dreadof destruction to calculating
how life can be enriched. After all,
the secrets are not going back into
the box. We have to live with nuc-
lear power; we might ts well learn to

live well.
—MACLEAN’S MAGAZINE, ~

May 2/66
*

From the office of Rev. A. J. Muste,
5 Beekman St., N.Y., has come an
extra-ordinary document. 360 per-
sons, professors, scientists, writers,
doctors, clergymen and entertainers
made public today their refusal to
pay any part or all of their 1965 Fed-
eral Income Taxes because the United
States Forces are ‘clearly being used
inviolationof the U.S. Constitution,
International Law, and the United Na-
tions Charter. Their statement ‘The
Time Has Come’ might well become
an historic document in American his-
tory.
—Canadian Peace Congress
PEACE LETTER, April/66.

new opportunities for the “side-
walk artist” should. be made
readily available, free from civic
restriction or official red-tape.
And with every encouragement
afforded the artist to pursue his
or her artistic talent, for the
public benefit, enlightment and
enjoyment,

That would indeed be one of
the artistic blessings the foun-
tain designers had not intended
to bestow upon Vancouver, but
did, despite all their “best laid
schemes” to keep the public
guessing, Let’s insist that it re-
mains as a living by-product of
a “mystery” fountain, which might
turn out to be a sorry substitute
for a glorious Magnolia tree, and
an even sorrier substitute for the
wealth of artistic talent its ex-
cavations uncovered.

“/1cbune

gg