Monument to Pauline Johnson in Stanley Park.

The last
best West

DOWN from Dawson Creek
you come, into the land of
Alexander. Henry’s ‘“‘Shining
ountain,” along the muddy
Fraser and the dark blue Thomp-
son, across the dry valley that
once was the ocean floor,
. through the lovely towns and
villages each with a story to tell
of adventure, of heroism, of
HONE gs

You have reached “The Last
Best West,” so named by one of
its great sons, William (OV Bill)

nnett.

British Columbia is fabulous; it
is like the end of the rainbow:
beautiful beyond compare, rich in
resources beyond the ken of ac-
countants, the struggle of her peo-
ple indelibly printed and insepar-
ably bound in the immense story
of Canada’s peoples and their
achievements.

Her people? They were drawn
there by the magnetic power of
freedom, of security, of adventure,
from the British Isles and Europe,
from India and China and Japan
-.. from the south and the plains
Of the midwest . .

They came and today they are
the loggers and sawmill workers;
the miners — prospectors, colliers
‘and hard-rock men; the fishermen
On the Fraser and the North Paci-
fic, the surveyors, laborers and cat-
Men who built the roads and rail-

roads under, over, around and-

through the impossible mountains;
‘Ne seamen, the railroaders, the

Shipyard workers and boiler mak-
ers .

_And as you stand and watch a
train scoot along the sheer moun-
tainside or the mines on the cliffs
of Copper Mountain, or the swirl-

Mg swift waters of the Fraser —
You wonder how many of these
Workers have paid: with their lives
to compel this land to yield her

treasures for man’s living?

Grave of Ginger Goodwin

By JOHN
STEWART

But before them were the Indi-
ans, a proud people with a culture
as rich or richer than can be found
anywhere else in the Americas,
that was strangled by the greed
of the white man’s capitalism, (It
was the explorer David Thompson

‘who wrote: “They never attempt

war themselvés, and have the char-
acter of a brave and virtuous peo-
ple, not in the least addicted to
those vices so common ‘among
savages who have had long inter-
ourse with the Europeans . . .”)

r} .
B.C. is the story of discovery,

adventure, legend and labor; - of
Alexander Mackenzie who found
Canada’s greatest river and the
jllusive Northwest Passage; of
Simon Fraser, whom the Indians
called “the pure white child of the
sun,” who explored the mighty

and terrible river that bears his
name and that contributes its
teeming salmon to the wealth of
the province—and brings needless
destruction in its floods; of David
Thompson, the first white man to
find a passage through the tower-
ing peaks from Alberta south
through the awe-inspiring Koote-
nays, and Jasper, who protested
the policies of the Hudson’s Bay
Company and the Yankee traders
who bribed anl corrupted the In-
dians with whiskey; of the CPR
and Hudson’s Bay and H. R. Mac-
Millan, the despoilers and ex-
ploiters ... ‘

It is the land of the early Span-
ish explorers who had settled on
Vancouver Island before the Brit-
ish conquest of the ‘Coast...

It is the land of the Chinese
slaves brought in crowded ships to
build the CPR... who, when they
voiced protest were sent off into
the bush foodless to die .. . and
where the first germ war was used
against the Indians at Kamloops
back in the eighties when smallpox
germs were planted in HBC blan-
kets to demoralize a people threat-
ening to rise up against their op-
pressors...

It is the land of the legendary
Sasquatch, the mysterious hairy

‘giants who, say the Indians, live .

in the high mountains around Har-
rison Lake, and have been known
to kidnap Indian girls .. .

It is Pauline Johnson—Tekahi-
onwake — the great Indian poet
who lies buried beneath the tower-
ing Douglas fir of Stanley Park,
her image carved on a_ great
BLONG a

It is Amor De Cosmos who led
the struggle for democratic’ gov-
ernment against the tyranny of
James Douglas...

It is Vancouver Island unparal-
leled in beauty, blessed with a
climate and a wealth of resources
that could provide abundance of
food, clothing and shelter for a
million people...

It is Arthur “Ginger”. Goodwin
who lies buried beneath a rough-
hewn rock near Cumberland on
the Island — symbol of labor’s
heroic struggle to organize, for he
led the early struggle of the Trail
smeltermen; symbol of peace, for
he fought against the imperialist
war of 1914; symbol of the ruth-
less savage violence of the ruling
class, for he was murdered, shot
in the back with a soft-nosed bul-
let from a policeman’s revolver.
And when they buried him on Au-
gust 2, 1918, not a worker touch-
ed a tool in British Columbia for
24 hours ... (Reverently you lay
flowers beneath that rough stone
‘carved by the Cumberland coal
miners .. .) i

e

But today, British Columbia is
also. something else, something
strange, ominous, unwelcome . . .

We stopped at a little restaurant
on the way down the old ‘Cariboo
Trail where once the men of the
gold rush days washed gold from‘
the rivers. The waitress received
us coldly — until we made it clear
we were Canadians.

“Oh,” she said, and smiling, “I
thought you were Americans. I
get so sick and tired of them.
They’re so rude!” And she con-
tinued relating her experiences
with the tourists from the United
States and how arrogant and
boastful they were...

‘We picked up a worker on the
roadside. He was from Kitimat,
the huge aluminum project in the
northern mountains. There are
6,800 workers on that job, he said,
«all working under Yankee bosses.
...And again you hear that word
“arrogant” . .. You hear of the
whiskey -that’s sold there at $10 a
bottle and the poker games at a
dollar a game . American
culture for Canadian workers...
And: of wages that leave little
when you get back to town.

Away to the south there’s a wo-

man you pick up to take into -

Hope, lovely town on the banks of
the Fraser, now swathed in the
smoke of a nearby forest fire...

Her husband is a sawmill boom
man, has been for many years.
Now the plant has been sold to
U.S. owners who are planning to
bring in their own crew — Decco-
Walton of Seattle. .
son in Korea: “I can’t figure out
what the war is being fought for,
can you? What a mess it is over
there. My son writes me about
the Americans and how. everyone
hates them .'. .”

€
British Columbia has not escap-
ed the U.S. occupation . . . See
that “U.S. Government” license
plate ‘on the street of Vancouver.
. That U.S.: military “black
maria” that’s used to pick up Yan-
kee troops that get into trouble
and ship them across the border so
the Canadian courts can’t get at

. She has a-

them. See this headline and story
in the Vancouver Sun of Sept. 29:
- “U.S. Lumberman Buys Boston
Bar Stand”

“Raymond, Wash.—(AP)—Mc-
Corkle Bros. Logging Co. of Men-
lo has bought a half interest in
185,000,000 feet of timber in the
Fraser River valley near Boston
Bar. 2

“Mr. McCorkle explained that
finding stands of timber in south-
west Washington is becoming
more and more difficult and that
the jump across the Canadian
border was being made ‘to gain
longevity, for ourselves as a busi-
ness concern’ . .. Many of the
company’s employees already
have indicated they would like to
make the move to B.C. to work,
Mr. McCorkle said.”

Travel up the beautiful road
from Nanaimo to Campbell River.
Take the “private” road down to
the docks—you will have to ignore
as everyone does the sign at the
entrance that tells you this is We-
waiken Indian property — and
there you will see a ship loading
iron ore from the Campbell River
mines. The name on the bow is
Indian Bear out of San Francisco.
At the stern flies the Stars and
Stripes. The destination? Japan.

The natural gas and oil discov-
ered:in the B.C. north will be
piped to the Pacific Northwest of
the United States.

The lumber market depends al-
most solely now upon the U.S.
which also dictates the price it will
pay. Other markets are gone.

The, price the fishermen get for
their fish and the markets they are
able to find are dependent upon
the whims of the U.S. canning in-
dustry. The old British market
is lost.

Is it any ‘wonder that every-
where you go in this fabulous land
there is a detestation for things
American — a love for that part
of America that is Canada and
a hatred for that part of Amer-
ica that is the United States of
Morgan, Mellon and Dupont, Tru-
man, Eisenhower and Dulles?
€

Pages and pages of notes I have
from this incredible land, this land
that still is frontier and adven-
ture, that goes up or down as the
logging and fishing industry goes
up or down, that has-‘more unem-
ployed than anywhere else in-Can-
ada; whose people are seeking the
way out of the crisis that hangs
over their heads and have arrived
at a political stalemate wherein
Social. Credit and CCF seek to
siphon off the discontent.

But the new force that is aris-
ing, that is foreseen by the B.C.
Labor-Progressive party, is a peo-
ple’s coalition, the coming together
of British Columbia’s considerable
progressive population including
the LPP, that will in the not
distant future sweep away the re-
actionaries and the demagogs and
install a government of the people
acting independently for British
Columbia and for Canada.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 28, 1952 — PAGE 9

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