‘WE STOOD IN WATER TO SERVE COFFEE’

\WVomen help out on dykes

THE OTHER NIGHT I went’™*table, and a small mantle ardio

into the dockside canteen which
has been set up on the dyke at
the Canadian Pacific Airlines site
in Queensborough, the flood-men-
aced section of New Westminster
across the Fraser River on the
north-east tip of Lulu Island.
The building looks as if it had
been used as a_ storage shed.
Weary men, and women too, sit
on the benches drinking soup and
coffee served across a two-inch
thick plank which is-used as @

CHILD CARE

across the room gives the latest
flood bulletins. Helpers Pack in
pails of hot water, dumping them
into a large wash tub full of dirty
cups placed there by each worker
as he finishes his coffee.

Mrs. Newsome, president of the
Army, Navy and Air Force Wom-
en’s Auxiliary of New Westmin-
ster, who is in charge of this can-
teen, told me:

“Last Sunday morning at nine
o'clock I sent out a call for volun-

Forming food habits

THE PROBLEM OF nutritional improvement in children
often cannot be solved unless the food habits of the family

rather than the children are treated as the basic factor.
the home, menus .are planned, marketing
are prepared to be eaten by the family as a group,

each individual member.
Children’s eating patterns are

established by the practices of the
family group while their likes and
dislikes are unconsciously copied
from their parents or older broth-
ers and sisters.

When a child’s food habits are
poor, inquiry will usually show
that others in the home follow
the same eating pattern. If John-
ny has an iron deficiency, prob-
ably other members of his family
are also low in hemoglobin and
would benefit from a diet that in-
cludes more vegetables, citrus
fruit, whole grain bread and cer-
eals, eggs and liver. Also, Johnny
will «enjoy his meals more if the
same foods are served to the rest
of the family.

An inadequate amount of mon-
ey available for food is often the
cause of a family’s poor diet.

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. not only ceiling p

In
is done, and meals
not for

Families with children are hard-
est hit by the increased price of
milk. Parents with three growing
children must spend about .one-
fourth of their food budget for
milk if they buy adequate am-
ounts. Though if the equally nu-
tritious but less expensive evap-
orated or dried whole milk is sub-
stituted, a slight saving may be
effected. But even these items
have gone up.

The present high cost of living
is a potential threat to the health
of the nation. An expectant moth-
er is unlikely to drink the recom-
mended quart of milk daily when
she is-unable to buy enough milk
for her children.

. Often the purchase and prepara-
tion of foods for a “special diet”
may further limit the variety and
amount of food that can be bought
and prepared for all the family.
And, as for. the individual, diet
recommendations sometimes work
more harm than good. A “diet”
may set the child or adult aside
as needing foods that are special
or different from the rest and he
may either resent this difference
and fail to follow the diet, or he
may exploit his need for special
foods as an advantage over the
other family members with re-
‘sulting emotional problems.

Those who work to improve the
food habits of children and their
families will be interested in a
recent statement by Bertha §&.
Burke:

“The child’s food habits will be
no better than those of his family,
and if we are to improve the food
habits of the children we must im-
prove the family pattern of eat-
ing.” ;

will never know-

teers, and by four that afternoon
I had all the help I needed.” This
rvsponse, she felt, was exception-
aily good. “We were working at
the foot of Jardine Street that
day,” she pointed out, “and we
had to stand in a foot of water to
give out the coffee and sand-
wiches.”

Mrs. Newsome indicated a
tired-looking man sitting on @
packing box and told me that his
name was Yousachuk. “He has a

- lovely home at thy foot of Jardine

Street,’ she explained, “and
when he saw our canteen workers
standing in water he offered his
own home as a Place for thgm to
rest.and have their own tea.”

Mrs. Newsome introduced me to
two of, her helpers, Mrs. McKen-
zie, who works eight hours in a
coffee shop and then does at least
a four-hour stint every night in
the canteen, and Mrs. Simmons,
mother of four children, the
youngest of whom is sixteen
months.. She, too, puts in at least
four hours at the dyke canteen.

While interviewing the women
in the canteen I had been served
with a paper cup full of delicious
vegetable soup. When asked who
made the soup, Mrs. Newsome
pointed to a six or eight gallon
vacuum tank on the floor, and
said:

“The women of Queensborough
make the soup in their own kit-
chens for us to serve down here.
Most days we serve between eight
and ten tanks of soup.”

Mrs. Newsome has been on the
job continuously since her organ-
ization took ov2r this canteen a
week ago. She has seen her hus-
band twice during the week and
then only to say, “Hello,” “Good
morning,” and “Goodbye.”

“Lots of people ask us if we are
seared,” Mrs. Newsome said, “but
I don't think we are any more
scared than the others. This talk
of women working on the dykes
getting panicky is nonsense.”

* aK *

AT THE FOOT of Jardine
Street another canteen serves the
scores of volunteers keePing an
anxious vigil over the sodden
dykes. Here Bert Samson, long a
member of the floor layers’ sec-
tion of the International Brother-
hood of Carpenters and Joiners,
and his wife, Rita, have thrown
open their house to the dyke
workers. :

At any other time Jardine
Street would be a little-travelled
side road running between fields
and vegetable gardens down to
the hous¢s on the river bank. The
night I went there it resembled
an embattled community with
soldiers halting and directing traf-
fic, men and women endlessly
patrolling the dykes under flood-
lights and trucks lurching out of
the darkness to unload still more
sandbags. :

The Samsons’ and the other
houses along this part of the
river all stand atop the dyke, and
as Mrs. Samson remarked to me,
“Tf the dyke goes, there's not
much hope of saving the houses.”

I came away from Queensbor-
ough, however, with the impres-
sion that no one is giving much
thought to what will happen if
the dyke does go. They are all too
busy with the big job of the mo-

ment, organizing, improvising, to »

make sure that the dyke does not
go. And if it does hold, as they
desperately believe it will, it will
be a supreme tribute to the work
‘of ordinary men and women tri-
umphing by their own efforts over
all difficulties—difficulties created
as much by governmental short-
sightedness and complacency as
by the river waters on the ramp-
age.—GLADISE BJARNASON.

Safety First festival

A float illustrating the dangers of jay- walking passes d
Constitution Avenue in Washington during the 12th peti

national scl:ool safety patrol rally.

More than 15,000 boys and

girls from all parts of the U.S. took part. The New York
delegation, however, withdrew because Jim Crow practices in
the U.S. capital would have operated against four of its mem-

bers,

ONE DAY LAST WEEK, when we were out in the
Fraser Valley, I stopped by to see Mayme MacDonald at
here home outside Langley — it’s a sort of community

center for there always seems

to talk over local problems.

Mrs. MacDonald is one of those
women who refuse to allow the
difficulties of raising a family and
all the attendant problems of
making ends meet to restrict her
community work. She looks upon
community work, for better
schools, mor: recreational facil-
ities and so on, as part of the
larger problem of raising a fam-
ily. In good times and bad, and
for the MacDonalds times are
rarely good, she has struggled to
raise her family—several sons and
Caughters served in the armed
forces and the merchant marine
during the war—and still contriv-
ed to do an amazing amount of
work in her community.

Two years ago her election to
Langley School Board was a trib-
ute to her work, particularly as
presidcnt of the Langley Parent-
Teacher Associdtions, and Lang-
ley lost a hard-working progres-
sive trustee last December when
a reactionary campaign accom-
plished her defeat by the narrow
margin of two vot:s.

Now, however, she is back on
the school board—one trustee re-
signed and it would have been
difficult to appoint any one else
to the vacancy without raising a
local furore. By some of the state-
ments that have been made in
Langley Municipal Council recent-
ly, the people need representa-
tives like her too.

* * *

DURING THE RECENT arbit-
rations hearings between Langley
council and school board, for in-
stance, Councillor Langdon ob-
served: “The standard of educa-
tion has surpassed the standard

of living the children are accus-

tomed to or could ever hope to

attain.”

How Mrs. MacDonald answered
this I can best show by quoting
her own letter to the Langley Ad-
vance, in which she stated:

“J would like to ask, Mr. Editor,
since when did one’s economic

to be some one stopping by

status determine his intellectual
ability? Is it that a child, coming
from a home where a low stand-
ard of “living prevails, “is not en-—
titled to a chanc: of raising him-
self to a higher level?

“Surely the councillor has more
faith in the future of Canada
than that! ‘

“True, our system of education

has been directed towards fitting —

students for a high-r education
along professional lines but we
are gradually becoming more

practical and giving them a wider _

choice of subjects. cS

“Rather than cut down on the

standard of education and the op- |

portunities thus afforded, it is our
sacred duty to k-ep on raising it. —

I do agree with the councillor |
that the Dominion government ©
should bear a greater share of the
cost, but until a more equitable
system is worked out and put into :
effuct we will just have to keeP
on. It is an investment in the
future and the bigger the invest-
ment thé greater the return will

be. see

“I think that any person holding ©
@ responsible public office should
be very careful of advocating a
lowering of the educational stand- _
ards as he immediately stamps —
himself as a block in the path of
progress and unfit for public ser-—

vice. se

“Only recently there has been a
Grive to collect school books ; and
send to Germany, You remember _
how Hitler also lowered the stand-
ard of education of the German
working pcople. He believed in
education according to one’s econ-
omic status and it did not work
out. ‘ear ee ct ‘

“No, Mr. Editor, we cannot al-
low our standards to be lowered
or goodness knows to what depths _
they may fall. We must keep on

: raising our level and help produce ©

a high .r type of citizen."—B.G. _

PACIFIC TRISUNE—JUNE Ul, 1918—-PAGE 9