New schemes for forcing
freeways on city East End

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Once again City Council is
discussing freeways. And once
again, schemes are afoot to
force freeways through
Vancouver’s East End despite
the solid opposition of its
residents.

Georgia Viaduct is to be
replaced with a completely new
structure. It is geared to be part
of an East-West freeway that
would go East along Malkin
Street, through the Great
Northern Railway cut, down the
Grandview Highway and then
connect with Highway 401.

Council has agreed to this
route in principle. It would cause
a minimum of disturbance to

residential areas. If there must
be freeways leading to the heart
of the city (a concept that I don’t
agree with at all) then this route
would be the logical and natural
one to choose.

However, there’s a catch to it.
Such an East-West freeway
would cost an estimated $40
million. Council has no provision
for such an expenditure, so this
project is being shelved.

In its place it is proposed to
build two couplets going off the
East. end of the new Georgia

Viaduct. The first would be a one-

way Eastbound Highway going
East along Prior and Venables
Streets from Main Street to
Commercial Drive. The second

in Vietnam.

opinion.

and the White House.

massacre. Ed. )

and military leaders’’.

financial or moral survival.

hen Communist and other progressive bodies press the
issue for the termination of Canada’s complicity and in-
volvment in the U.S. agression in Vietnam, they are not
merely demanding that Canadians cease from war profiteer-
ing by supplying the U.S. with death-dealing arms for use

The issue goes much deeper than that. What they are
demanding is that Canada through the media of its governing
Establishment, cease being a running-dog accessory to U.S.
war criminals, whose shameful and debasing crimes are
already well catalogued and established by world-wide

Following the revelations of the Songmy village massacre
in 1968 and numerous similar horrors before and since in the
villages of Vietnam, the U.S. Army brass are making a big
hullabaloo about bringing U.S. GI’s, alleged to be responsible
for such Hitlerite horrors, to ‘‘justice!’’

In short, the real Pentagon war criminals who design these
war horrors, the cold-blooded murder of Vietnamese, men,
women and children; the burning and poisoning of land and
people, the kill and over-kill policy of genocide; those are the
people who should be put on trial as atrocious war criminals—
not their degraded expendable hand-picked tools, and scape-
goats. These scapegoats are a product of U.S. war policies in
Vietnam — not its designers; scapegoats put in the war
criminal’s box, to take the minds of the American, and other
peoples, off the identity of the real criminals in the Pentagon -

The late Lord Bertrand Russell, just a few months before he
died, put the case squarely on the line.

“This is why the prosecution of isolated junior officers is
quite inadequate. They are to be made scapegoats. The more
wicked war criminals are the highest ranking military and
civilian leaders, the architects of the whole genocidal policy.
Have we so soon forgotten the regular White House breakfast
at which Johnson boasted openly he and McNamara and their
closest colleagues selected the targets for the coming week.
(The Vietnam villages and their inhabitants picked for total

“The. whole U.S. Establishment stands condemned. . .the
entire American people are now on trial. If there is not a
massive moral revulsion at what is being done in their name to
the people of Vietnam, there may be little hope for the future of
America. Having lost the will to continue the slaughter is not
enough; the people of America must now repudiate their civil

And what about Canada and Canadians ? Is the stooge role
of the present and past Establishments, both in relation to its
blood-money profits from the sale of arms to the U.S. and/or
its increasing subservient role: to the demands of U.S.
monopoly, highly subversive of the rights of Canadians to their
own natural resources, Sovereignty and independence to
continue, despite the growing protests of the Canadian people?

Must Canadians continue under the illusion— fed by govern-

ment propaganda, that our complicity and involvement with
U.S. war criminals is essential to Canadian economic,

If so, then the words of Bertrand Russell apply with equal
force to the Canadian people — ‘‘there may be little hope for
the future of Canada’’; and least of all in the role of profiteer-
ing merchants of death to U.S. war criminals. Not even the
most sauve, polite, but utterly evasive phrase mongering of M.
Trudeau can obscure that fact.

would be a one-way Westbound
couplet along Union and Adanac
Streets from Main Street to Com-

mercial Drive. The estimated
cost of these two couplets is
slightly over $1 million.

A further alternative is to
rebuild Prior and Venables
Streets into a two way four lane
highway connecting Georgia
Viaduct and Commercial Drive.

The understanding is_ that
these streets would only be
temporarily used for this
purpose and would revert to
normal two way operation when
traffic is rerouted to the East-
West freeway.

But East End residents are not
only suspicious, they are
downright distrustful of City
Council’s-real intentions. They
fear that whatever alternative is
chosen, whether it be the two
Union-Prior, couplets. or the
Prior-Venables two way
roadway, it will become the East
West freeway. They believe that
both alternatives are the thin
wedge to force an East-West
freeway through the residential
areas of the East End.

I agree with them; I think
these fears are well founded.
Once an alternative is built and
put into operation, the next
move would be to extend it
beyond Commercial Drive and
connect with Highway 401 at
Cassiar Street. And lack of
money to build the East-West
freeway through the Great

‘Northern cut can always be used

as an excuse for postponing this
project indefinitely. This is why
East End residents believe that
Council is trying to hoodwink
them by talk of temporary
alternatives.

Such a freeway through the
East End would destroy a huge
residential area, planting in its
midst an unsightly concrete
monster. Hundreds of families
would lose their homes and the
compensation they would
receive would not enable them to
buy comparable homes in any
other part of the city. The whole
East End would be cut in two by
an ugly structure. To understand
how East End residents feel, just
imagine a huge concrete
elevated freeway cutting
through the middle of your
residential area.

In my opinion, all these alterna

tive routes (Union-Prior
couplets and the Prior-Venables
two way street) should be
dropped.
Viaduct should lead directly into
Prior Street. If Prior Street
can’t handle all the traffic (and
it probably won’t be able to) then
the traffic will simply have to
find other routes.

In the meantime, Council
should allot a couple of million
dollars to begin engineering
studies on the Malkin-Great
Northern cut freeway route.
Once this is done, Council will be
in a position to approach senior
governments for financial
assistance.

Tit

SUIC

OE SURVIVAL
by Alderman Harry Rankin

PRICE 50c

: |!

The new Georgia °

COPE MEETS
MARCH 11

The annual membership
meeting of the Committee of
Progressive Electors (COPE) will
be held Wednesday, March 11 at
8 p.m. in the Rio Hall, 3325
Kingsway.

‘PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCHS! 1970Page 22 1S

Front cover of Ald. Rankin’s latest pamphlet.,

New pamp
hard at pollution

Pollution is not only destroying
your environment, it’s slowly
killing you. This is the theme of a

new pamphlet, . ‘Pollution,
Suicide or  Survival’’ by.
Alderman Harry Rankin of

Vancouver.

Alderman Rankin describes
the dangers of DDT, of cancer-
producing cyclamates and nitro-
samines in our food, how our
lakes and rivers and oceans too
are being rendered unfit for life
by phosphates, sewage and

industrial pollution, and the
extent and efforts of air
pollution.

Pollution control in B.C. is a
farce, says Alderman Rankin, as
he charges the provincial
government with lack of effec-
tive action and big industries
with a callous disregard for the
public welfare.

Alderman Rankin has clear
ideas on what should be done to
end pollution. He calls for
legislat.ve action to ban DDT,
phosphate detergents, ll
drilling for oil on the ocean floor,
and demands tertiary treatment
of sewage and strict laws
governing air pollution.

hlet hits

He calls for action too by

people.

“We need an unending torrent
of resolutions, briefs, delega
tions, meetings, parades, sit-ins,
sit-downs and teachins direct
to every level of government.”

“We must simply make life un
bearable,’ he says, ‘‘for any

public servant or industrial
leader who refuses to take
meaningful steps to stop
polllution.”’

“If we don’t raise hell,” be

warns, ‘“‘that’s what we’ll get.”

This hard-hitting, thought-pro
voking pamphlet should be in the
hands of every person concernet
with saving our environment an@
passing along our natura
heritage in beautiful B.C. to ouf
children.

The pamphlet is available at
Co-op Bookstore, 341 West
Hastings, Vancouver, B.C. fof
50¢ per copy. Bundle orders of 10
or more may be ordered at 40¢
per copy direct from the office ®
Alderman Harry Rankin, at 19
East Hastings Street, Vancouver
4, B.C.

es

“Is that the news or tomorrow’s weather? ”

—Eccles, Morning Star

ee Ne ee i ae

Naeger tet Poe RR UM oe oun