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SIXTH FLEET CARRIER WITH ROGERS’ “PEACE” PLAN

| SIDELIGHTS |

My dad wasa miner...

My daddy, Jack Whyte, was
a miner and I’m a miner’s son.

I was born in Cobalt, the silver
city set admidst a welter of
rocks, on July 27, 1909. The
town was a going concern in
those days. It had sprung into
being in 1903 when a blacksmith
named LaRose, working on a
railway rock gang, chipped off a
hunk of pure silver in a cutting
and a couple of lumberjacks
named McKinley and Darragh
pried a piece of flaky white ma-
terial off a rock face and it
turned out te be native silver.
Later millions were taken from
the mines which bore their
names.

The Cobalt boom was in full
swing when I was a lad, and
after a few drinks in the blind
pigs on Lang Street you could
hear the miners bellowing the
chorus of the Cobalt Song: .

For we'll sing a little song of

Cobalt,

If you don’t live there it’s your

fault.

Oh, you Cobalt, where the big

gin rickies flow, :

Where all the silver comes

from,

And you live a life and then

some, ‘
you Cobalt, you’re the
best old town I know.

Cobalt opened the door to the
riches of the Canadian Shield,
foundation rock of the world
and source of the most varied
minerals known to man.

But, of course, it wasn’t the
miners who profited. In_ the
boom years it was the speculat-
ors and_ stockbrokers (Mark
Twain once called a mine “a
hole. in the ground with a liar
sitting on top”) and the big min-
ing corporations who squeezed

West Coast edition, Canadian Tribune

the little fellows out. As J. B.
MacDougall wrote in his book,
Two Thousand Miles of Gold:
“In the mining game, it is the
man of means that usually
makes the money. Yet the
honest, though poor, prospector

‘is the bedrock on which the en-

tire mining enterprise is built.”

Take the case of Sandy Mc-
Intyre, the Scot from Glasgow
who was a familiar figure in
Cobalt, Kirkland Lake, Gowgan-
da and other Northern Ontario
mining centres in those early
days. In 1909 he found gold near
the Hollinger property in the
Timmins area, sold his claim (for
he was broke) for $125. The
MclIntryre Mine made millions—
and Sandy eventually received a
total of $8,000. He blew this
modest stake, ‘died penniless in
Toronto some years later.

I began working in the mines
in 1927, when I was 18. It was
an alleged gold mine, called the
Conroyal, about four miles east
of Kirkland Lake. Eventually it
closed down, leaving the resi-
dents of a small Southern On-
tario city who had been persu-
aded to invest heavily in the
enterprise, sadder but wiser.

My last direct contact with
the mining industry was in 1936,
when I. was fired from the
smelter “at Noranda Mines in
Quebec for trying to organize a
union. Noranda has smashed a
miner’s strike in 1934 and boast-
ed that the mines would never
be organized. :

But the world moves — and

today the Steelworkers Union —

has most of the major mines in
Canada under: contracts. The
mining magnates said it couldn’t
be done. The miners said it
could. And it was.

—B. W.

Tribune

Editor —MAURICE RUSH
Published weekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hostings St.,

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 16, 1970—PAGE 4

we

Cruel hoax

President Nixon’s so-called peace
proposals are a cruel hoax. It is a typi-
cal carpetbagger trick to try to make
people believe that something new has
been added. Boiled down to their es-
sence, the proposals mean that Ameri-
can imperialism would remain in con-
trol of the territories it has seized by
aggression, and would continue to ex-
pand its control with the typical mum-
bo-jumbo and fakery so typical of the
U.S. State Department.

As was to be expected, the capitalist
press in Canada is-busy “justifying” it
all, because Canadian capitalists make
money out of the-war.

“Good guy” Nixon, they say, wants
to move into an area of negotiations,
but the “bad guy” USSR aims to plunge
the world back into the cold war. This,
mind you, from the country that opened
the door to the cold war by its contriv-
ed spy-scare hoax in 1946!

The questioning of the sincerity of
the USSR is being done to hide the
growing credibility gap, both in Can-
ada and the United States, with offi-
cial government policy. The capitalist
press seriously overestimates the fav-
orable position of the Nixon Adminis-
tration. Here and there, there seeps
through the cracks in official propa-
ganda the hope of some in high places
that accommodation of some kind will
open up.

What is needed is a stepping up of
activity for an end to the war in Indo-
china, for the total withdrawal of U.S.
imperialism’s troops, and for popular
support for the Provisional Govern-
ment of South Vietnam’s reasonable

proposal for a peace in that country.

A working class stand —

Hearings will begin soon on the Le-
Dain Commission’s report on drugs.
The working class needs neither

‘drugs, tobacco nor alcohol. The fact

that they are here and are widely used
is another matter. History has handed
down the widespread use of drugs of
all sorts. Their use goes back for thou-
sands of years.

However, under class society the rul-
ing class began to profit from it, and
used it to try to keep the exploited
quiet. .

Capitalism, which turns everything
into a commodity, is the ultimate cri-
minal in this process. The speed drugs
are not manufactured at home, but in
“respectable” places of business. Many
so-called respectable businessmen in
Canada got their start in these illicit
ways. Little would-be capitalists who
shun work, peddle them to school chil-
dren. The capitalist press sensational-
izes their abuse.

While those who argue that the basic
solutions await the winning of social-
ism have truth on their side, there is
room for considerable reform right
now.

Those reforms should include the re-
moval of the most punitive aspects of
the law as it applies to the victims. In-
stead, drugs should be provided free,
through properly supervised. clinics,
to all those who are victims, combined

capitalist

with a policy of assisting them to ®
cured. The law must be aimed at 1
straining drug users whose behavi0l”
threatens either themselves or society:
The law should be strictly applied @

the pushers and peddlars, with stria

check-up of the business concerns wh
manufacture drugs. Action by paren
teacher organizations and local com
munity committees, and other forms

should be developed to assist in the pro”
tection of school children from the
pushers.

Above all else, everyone — and et
young people in particular — should
have a purpose in life, should feel they
have.a future, and should be free fro!
insecurity. The desire to escape from |
the reality of life, to remove oneself
from society and its doings, is anv:
human and proof enough of the failul®
of capitalist saciety. ; a

Working people with a purpose 1”
life don’t need or crave drugs. At this |
time of our history, the active involv& |
ment of everyone in the struggle fo!
meaningful social advance is the bes
way to turn on. .-.

| Provinces opt out

The closing of their borders to thé
flow of poultry and eges—particularly
from Quebec—by provincial gover”
ments, brings into sharp focus the issv®
of Canada’s unity. 100 years ago ¢
Founding Fathers wrote into the BN?
Act that there would be a free flow &
goods across all provincial borders. Th?
latest actions of provincial gover
ments are in violation of that Act. —

National unity is not an abstra@
question. It involves basically what®
in the best interests of the workiné
people. The solution to overproductio®
under capitalism and the resulting shat,

ning of competition is not to be found

y actions which turn each province?
into a separate “country.” This is all th |
more important because of the grow!
in government-created unemployment
which is being reacted to by provincl4
governments in a similar fashion.

There are alternatives open to thé
overnments of Canada’
provinces. The interests of workel® |
and farmers alike require the bas!
strengthening of Canadian unity
ensuring the east-west’ flow of g000
and services, and developing the 14 }
tional ties of energy development. —_,

Every provincial government, and |
the government of Quebec as well, ©
ducking out of its responsibilities. They
should be fighting for markets — and
all recent experience indicates thal
‘such markets are available.

U.S. democracy

We are treated to a great deal of

‘talk about the superiority of capitalis’

democracy. Apparently there are som@
who don’t believe it. We are told that |
between January 1969, and April 197% |
some 4,330 bombs were exploded 1 |
buildings and public places in the Unit |
ed States, and that another 1,174 at
tempted bombings were forestalled.
Those are the kind of statistics thal
blow to. smithereens the carefully cu’ |
tivated myth that “everybody’s satis |
fied” with capitalism. a