BRITISH COLUMBIA "REAGAN SENDS ME 10 SEE IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING IN THE LINE OF A LIGHT ofa SIZE LIMITED NUCLEAR. CONFLICT... Have land, can build, need housing policy in Coquitlam While the clamor for public in- vestigation of Coquitlam council’s gravel pit sale to Jack Cewe Ltd. holds the headlines, other no less important issues are occupying the team of ACE candidates contesting council seats in the Nov. 21 elec- tions. Housing is one such issue. The three candidates — incumbent school board chairman Eunice Parker, former Telecommunica- tions Workers Union president Bob Donnelly and Gloria Levi, wife of, New Democratic MLA Norman Levi — are agreed that the urgent need in the municipality is for housing within the reach of people who cannot contemplate ei- ther purchase of a house at current high mortgage rates or rental of an apartment at current high rents. The municipality has land, 1,900 acres of it on Westwood plateau alone. Most of the plans coming before council, however, are those submitted by. developers whose projects, when completed, will be beyond the means of those most in need. “We know the need. We have the land. What we require now is a policy stipulating that a reasonable proportion of that land-be set aside for construction of affordable housing and aldermen determined to put that policy intoeffect,’’ Par- ker declares. “‘It’sareflectiononall . levels of government that we have mills shutting down, woodworkers unemployed, people desperately seeking a place to live, and yet there’s a reluctance to build the kind of housing people can afford, which would be to everyone’s benefit.” Then there’s the issue of con- tracting out garbage services, against which Parker already has submitted a brief to the incumbent council. ‘“‘And provided voters support me in our program, P’ll have alot more to say about it when I am elected,’’ she promises. Private garbage disposal is now — controlled by the multinationals, _she notes, and rumors of graft and payoffs smell as badly as the gar-_ . _ bage itself. ‘ One multinational, Canadian- based Laidlaw Transportation Ltd., with operations across this country and the U.S., has just con- cluded a contract with West Van- . couver through its Vancouver sub- sidiary, Haul-Away Ltd. ““We have to concern ourselves with the jobs of our own sanitation workers,” says Parker. ‘‘And we have to make sure we don’t lose -sight of the fact we can recycle our waste, use it to generate heat, and convert it into an asset for taxpay- ers, not profit for monopolies.’’ Parker agrees that the Cewe gravel pit contract, a deal conclud- ed under questionable circum- stances with scant regard for bids . submitted by other contractors, merits full and open investigation, but “‘it must not be allowed to ob- scure the larger issues.”’ ~ his job to protect the taxpayers ‘Luxury’ for people, ‘need ' for business spending hundreds of millions for Transpo ’86 to help the hotel and other tourist-oriented in- dustries which will be the sole beneficiaries, is spending $60 ~ million for a new stadium for private sports promoters, $100 | million on a trade and conven- tion centre solely for the profit of business interests and some wouldincludeatrail projectand $400 million on B.C. Place. We’ _ playing field improvements. need these like we need more The minister says these are rain.. : Municipal affairs minister Bill Vander Zalm is at itagain — this time sticking his nose into the internal affairs of municipal councils. He has ordered two councils, Prince George and Richmond, to drop their plans for new capital projects — spe- cifically for an aquatic centre, and for a sports complex that Harry Rankin One of the methods used to finance these and other pet pro- jects such as the giveaway of our coal resources to big multina- tionals is through cuts in social services — education, health, welfare and so on. ‘luxury projects” and that it is from theif own councils. He won’t even allow the two coun- cils to hold -public referendums on these projects on Nov. 21, 1981. Apparently Big Brother Vander Zalm knows better than The rumor is going around the voters whaf they want or ‘that when the new session of the- need or are willing to pay for. legislature gets under way, the . On the other hand Vander _ provincial government, or more Zalm has allowed Langleytogo —_ specifically, municipal affairs ~minister Bill Vander Zalm and _finance minister Hugh Curtis, - will introduce legislation to take away from municipalities the right to do their own planning (and place it in the hands of Vander Zalm so that he can ahead with a referendum on a $4.6 million project that in- cludes a recreation centre, swimming pool, solarium and craft studies. Apparently these facilities are not considered “Juxury. projects’’ by the min- - ‘ister. Vander Zalm’s double okay developer projects turned — - standards can’t be explained by . down by councils). There is also logic, only by politics. legislation apparently proposed to give the cabinet veto power On the other hand the provin- over slate budgets. cial government is intent on _PEOPLE AND ISSUES Weare at Burrard Shipyards in North Vancouver must be wonder- ing about Barbara Stewart, widow of Bill Stewart, long secretary of their Marineworkers and Boilermakers Union. Every week for more years than many of them have worked at the yards, she has sold and distributed the Tribune at the gates with an unfailing cheeriness; -greeting oldtimers by name, gratefully accepting donations. For the past two weeks she has been absent from her voluntary post, however, and it was workers at a B.C. Lotteries agency who first sus- pected that something might be amiss. In recent years she has been’sell- ing lottery tickets around the city (this was how she raised her $1,000 donation to the Buck-Bethune Educational Centre) and invariably she ‘turned in her money and got her new tickets at a set time each week. When she failed to show up at the usual time, the agency phoned her apartment and getting no answer, contacted the RCMP. Police had to break down the door to get in and they found her in’a chair only semi-- conscious. After she was rushed to Lions Gate Hospital and placed under intensive care, they still had the problem of notifying her next of kin, for she has no close relatives. Fortunately, she had alderman ‘Harry Rankin’s card in her purse and through his office word of her — plight was Spread among her scores of friends. She remains in hospital undergoing tests to determine whether she may have suffered a stroke, but she now is able to receive visitors. * * * * * W hen Kerensa Lai left South Africa in 1966, it was an exile imposed — ‘on her and her soon-to-be husband George by the racist apartheid laws of that country. For Kerensa was white and George was of Chinese descent and accordingly, their marriage was banned under the Mixed Marriages Act, one of the many pieces of racist legislation im- posed by the Nationalist government. Since that time, she has returned briefly only once, though she has been active for several years in Can- ada in the southern Africa solidarity movement, notably the Southern Africa Action Coalition. So it was with some apprehension that she returned to South Africa in August. Actually, she hadn’t planned the visit but since she was in Zimbabwe as part of a tour for the Interagency Committee on South- ern Africa, she decided on the spur of the moment to make the trip to Johannesburg where her parents still live. -Her visit coincided with South African Women’s Day, Aug. 9, which this year marked the 25th anniversary of the 1956 march on the Union buildings in Pretoria by thousands of women protesting the law forcing African women-to carry passes. She had heard about a com- memorative meeting in Johannesburg but when she and her daughter found it, almost ey: accident, the ait was startling. she was a member of the redoubtable Women’s Labor League and af- “The room was filled with people of all races, Sitting and standing wherever they could find a space,”’ she reports. ‘ ‘The walls were cover- ed with posters, some showing a woman.with her fist raised high, some were ‘boycott Rowntrees’ posters. . ““Here were people who knew that ‘by speaking out they risked har- assment, intimidation, banning andi imprisonment. Yet here they were, close to two hundred people, strong in their determination to speak out against a cruel system.” You can hear Kerensa’s full account of the meeting as well as the rest of the tour of southern Africa at a public meeting and film showing Nov. 15 at the Peretz school, 6184 Ash St., at 7:30 p.m. * * * * * tapes enue National Exhibition president Erwin Swangard rec- ognized in Ronald Reagan.a fellow political dinosaur, but what Tom McGrath, president of CBRT Local 400, wants to know is why Swangard singled out Reagan for the only toast at the annual PNE din- ner on Labor Day. McGrath, who accepted thei invitation to ne dinner ‘‘because of the role the labor movement plays in the success of the PNE,’’ was ready to walk out when the toast was offered. But instead — as he told Swan- gard in a subsequent letter — he decided ‘“‘to ignore such a foolish and questionable toast,”’ adding that should a toast to a political figure be appropriate, the prime minister and the premier might be more to the point. In any event, he concluded, if toasting the U.S. president was to be the pattern at future dinners, ‘‘then just forget my invitation.”’ Vancouver Labor Council delegates, endorsing McGrath’s letter last week, concurred in the sentiment after IWA delegate Garth Brown confirmed that the toast was the only one offered. * * * ~* * 2 WwW etook part in just about every struggle there was in those days, or- ganizing with the neighbors to stop evictions, paces with the unemployed, picketing to protest food profiteering . active.”’ » This is how Phyllis Lawson sums up the lifetime of activity she shared with her sister, Elva Black, who died at the age of 80 on Oct. 24. With her death, B.C. Peace Council loses an ardent supporter who was indefatigable i in collecting signatures to peace petitions until galling health in recent years forced her to quit. The peace movement, however, was only the last of the causes in which she had worked over the half century since she came to Vancou- ver in 1929 from her native St. John, N.B. In the years before the war, . we were very ter that, of the Housewives’ League, in which she worked with Effie Jones, who will be honored at a dinner in the Ukrainian Hall on Nov. 22; PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOV. 13, 1981—Page 2 SYS er at Or Sa (OE Ps te Ee