Mi ; 4 — Sean Griffin photo Hundreds of people filled the Legion Hall at 49th and Fraser last Wednesday in eloquent tribute to William Stewart. Which way for the GVRD? By Ald. HARRY RANKIN In recent weeks the idea has been put forward that it’s time to scrap the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) ‘and replace it with a metro form of government. Pf ponents of this view include J. Daem, chairman of a citizen’s advisory committee. associated with the GVRD, and an editorial in the Province of April 6, 1974. I’m now in my second year as a director of the GVRD representing: the city of Vancouver. My ex- perience leads me also to believe that some changes are needed, but I don’t think metro government is. the solution. In the first place metro govern-; ment, in the places where it is in operation, such as Winnipeg and Toronto, has hardly proved to be an unqualified success,.or even a success. If anything it has placed the centre of political power far- ther away than ever from the people. ' As far as I can see, the GVRD i still in the process of evolution. Some of the changes I think due for discussion now include: (1) Further mergers: The GVRD is composed of 17 municipalities and _ districts ranging in size of population from about 250 to 450,000. Each of them has at least one delegate on the 22- member Board of Directors. Lion’s Bay, the University Endowment ‘Lands, Bowen Island and the 100 yy area, with very small populations, have one delegate just as big municipalities like Surrey, Rich- mond, North Vancouver, and New Westminster. (Burnaby with 150,000 has only two delegates while Vancouver with 450,000 has only five). This discrepancy is overcome to some extent by a weighted vote based more on population, but we are a long way from having “‘rep by pop’’. I don’t think that at this stage we _ should have “rep by-pop’’, entirely because then Vancouver could outvote all the others combined and that would hardly make for unity in the region. The alternative as I see it, at this stage, is some merging of municipalities and areas. Some of the mergers that could be considered are: West Van- couver, Lions Bay, and Bowen Island to form one area with one with delegate: the University En- dowment Lands and Vancouver . with five delegates; North Van: couver City and North Vancouver District with two delegates; Rich- mond and Delta with two delegates; Surrey and White Rock with two delegates; Coquitlam district — Port Moody-Port Coquitlam, and Ioco (area B) with two delegates: Burnaby with two delegates and New Westminster with one delegate could remain as is. (2) An Elective Board Of Control: A second problem of the GVRD arises from the fact that each member of the board of directors is an alderman or mayor and. just -hasn’t the time to give the GVRD the effort and attention it deserves. _One way out of this dilemma might be to elect a sort of. Board of Control of say, five members from the electorate of the whole region. They would in effect perform the See RANKIN pg. 12 HARRY RANKIN’S BIRTHDAY PARTY and Klondike Night FRI., MAY 3 — 8:30 MASONIC HALL 1795 E. 1st Avenue . Prizes for best costumes — games” of skill — entertainment — more! ADM.: $3.00, unemployed, students $2.00 COMMITTEE OF PROGRESSIVE ELECTORS Nearly 700 people from all over Vancouver thronged the old Legion Hall at 49th and Fraser last Wednesday to pay their last tribute to Bill Stewart and to affirm his honored place in, the labor movement with which his life had been bound up for more than four decades. Marineworkers from the shipyards and steel plants, his comrades from the Communist Party and officers of the B.C. Federation of Labor on~- whose executive council Bill had held the post of vice-president, filled the huge hall and overflowed into the adjacent corridors and rooms. For them, his death was not only the loss of a trade union leader whose voice was ever felt in the councils of labor, but of a longtime friend — from those who recalled working with him in the war-busy shipyards to those of another generation, who sought out his advice. . In his eulogy provincial Com- munist leader Nigel Morgan caught the feelings of those who come to share their grief. ‘‘Since man’s dearest possession is life,” he said, echoing the words of Lenin, ‘‘and since it is given but once to.live, we must live so as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose; so ‘to live, as not to be Seared by a cowardly past; so live, that in dying we can say: ‘All my life and strength have been ‘given to the greatest cause-in the world — the liberation of mankind.’ “William Angus Stewart was truly one of these. Just a few hours before he was suddenly cut down by the dread disease of cancer, though he was in terrible pain, his thoughts were not for himself but for friends and comrades; with what was happening in the labor movement, in the Party, in the Legislature and the world around. They were the thoughts and con- cerns of Bill Stewart.to the very end as they were throughout his adult life. “Death brings home to each of us, the common concerns, the common crises and “common destiny of all. It should help us to see the human race as Bill saw it — striving forward toward a happier, peaceful and secure future, in a world without exploitation of man by man and without the brutalization and suffering of war. ‘And Bill Stewart will always be remembered for the fact that the world is a better place because of him.” Bernie Keely, a lifelong friend 00 pay tribute to Bill Stewart ia and a member Of | Marineworkers’ union for m0 his working life, recall evening 34 years before when had come to work on the gravé shift in the shipyards. __ He told of the turbulent history the union that had begun 1% storm over a Canadian Congr vite | Labor trusteeship in 1942 CCL president A. R. Moshet refused to recognize the elect® Stewart and others. ‘oni “The history of our on almost the history of Bill SWS himself,” he said, “the two @ 7 closely interrelated. not B.C. Federation of b@ president George Johnston ail | recalled his first meeting Wi", Stewart on a mass pické around the Hotel Vancouver # when the bus boys and waiter tt struck. The Hotel and Rest@! ie Workers were suspended 1f08 : : ent) international and subsea bol from the Vancouver : Council. ded | “First, his union was suspen” and then ours — the Meateutters do ql for supporting the Hotel og : Restaurant Workers. It was 3i : the most tumultuous meetin 4 : the coufcil’s history,” hé ee | “And that struggle — vee the | odd years ago — epitomit pil | tempestuous career 9 the | Stewart, from that day thro : apd fight against Bills 42 and 4 " later Bill 33.” : i He told, too, of stewart’s victory in the 1972 B.C. Fede bet of Labor executive elections vice . he won the post of fifth . resident. a i “Although he had been @ oe didate for several year’, e pat | ston said, ‘“‘he succeed wig way — he beat the slate. pe? \ ‘‘Now that he is gone, it WP" ge | grievous loss. to the wholé union movement.” eo e / : William Stewart | Memorial Fund In response to nu jo donations to the current P f pil drive in the memory © jeg | Stewart, a special fund has es . established to encompass ji9st | Donations in addition © yoo named last week ar€" sch Soderholm $3; Cora eet Phillips $20; J. Shoulder $3 * goys | and Sue Radosevic $10; “ ra pi. at Burrard” $15; G. re ; fia Greenwell, (Nanaimo), Meo ved 55 Chunn $15; E. Podovinikoff oo" Searle $5; B.C. Provincia mittee, Communist Party ; TOM McEWEN lhe philistines who write the editorials for our “free press’”’ can always register a new low which corresponds to the job at hand. To these hired intellectuals of modern capitalist journalism there is no depth to which they will not stoop to echo and re-echo their paymaster’s voice. Recently a Vancouver Sun oracle featured one of his rare editorial blurbs under the sanctimonious caption “Not by bread alone’. This frustrated and insulting screed purported to take issue with an Alberta university professor who had recently visited the Soviet Union, and’ upon his return to Canada, had dared to make some ‘favorable comparisons between the freedoms and material well being of the Soviet peoples and us in Canada. ; ; Obviously, upon relating his views on things Soviet, the worthy professor didn’t indulge in the usual cold war anti- Soviet tirades so popular with the editorial pharisees of the kept press. Hence the necessity for the Sun scrivener to do it for him. A shameful and insulting screed to both Soviet and Canadian people, made more so by a philistine dredge-up of a touch of scripture. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 1974—PAGE 2 The Alberta professor didn’t whoop it up for Solzhenitsyn, foretell the ‘‘failures’’ of socialism or wax hysterical about the limited way in which those poor Russians may acquire property. So he had to be set straight after the fashion of the modern scribe. “Over here,” says our philistine scribbler, “too many people can find little to do but acquire material goods. The difference however, is that they do have a choice. They can sink all their money into real estate, oil wells or gold mines ..: books. “Perhaps Canadians are no happier for this than the Russians are in their limited way. The latter are friendly and good-natured, Prof. Orchard says. Generally,-so are Canadians. So are cattle when they are well fed. “If all that socialism can offer in its motherland is no better than this, it lacks everything that makes the dif- ference between men and animals...” Here endeth the lesson according to St. Ananias of the Vancouver Sun. But not quite. While the Canadian people see ‘‘free enterprise” monopoly gobble up their natural resources heritage daily, amass vast profits daily on their food, clothing and shelter, condemn millions to unem- ployment and a future of indignity, the Soviet people are building and enjoying the security of a new human society in which the exploitation of man by man has been ended forever; a society in which monopoly exploitation, and they can buy Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s profiteering and plunder is non-existent, and where the. ao preed of brainwashed pablum of the Solzhenitsyn oiution? | capitalism and socialism the latter “Jacks everyt),,” makes the difference between men and anima ‘to bs There’s hardly much point in preaching mor als up? business. As the chairman of a U.S. commission investigate corporate skullduggery recently Avene “the problem of dealing with these Madison /" yjd) attired people is that they pose as ‘gentleme? ‘wort makes it more difficult.” Our humble advice to thé chairman would be to deal with them just as they # for what they are, profiteering monopoly nope od avaricious greed surpasses that of the porcine bre" So well typify. the Socialism disposed of the breed 57 years ag0 ant Soviet people, in their great and multiple achiev" yo! during that span of time, have learned, inter alia, wes just cannot “make a silk purse out of asow’s ear - |. cof’ haven’t learned that simple lesson, and the P with 4 tinues to make scriptural-tinted comparisons, of é Solzhenitsyn thrown in to help tip the scale 0 ait ferientation between two social systems — me alist animal. The question therefore is not what 59%) iis “Jacks”, but what “free enterprise” never had: “e's. moment the latter is doing very well on the bread! re;