Editorial

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Official misogyny

Adding insult to assault, Minister of International Trade John Crosbie now
contributes his crude sexism to Finance Minister Michael Wilson’s economic
and social attack on women, with his comments directed at Liberal leadership
candidate Sheila Copps.

The whole depressing and alarming charade now typical of this Tory crowd,
is more blatant coming as it did just days before International Women’s Day.
Crosbie’s repeated degeneration into “‘old boy” sexism, as the National Action
Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) wrote to Mulroney last week,
“gives licence to, and perpetuates misogyny of the kind which gave rise to the
tragic massacre of 14 women in Montreal less than three months ago .... (It)
gives a clear message to Canadians that Mr. Crosbie and by inference your
government holds women in the lowest possible esteem ....”” NAC properly
asked Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to fire Crosbie.

No less indicative of Tory attitudes toward women and the cruelty of their
neo-conservative drive, is Wilson’s budget itself. Its entire thrust is aimed
against low income Canadians, a fact which targets women specifically. In a
mean-spirited Tory tangent, the budget takes direct aim at women’s centres,
feminist publications, child care and women’s advocacy groups. Added to last
year’s cuts, important publications will be eliminated, and other advocacy
programs slashed to the danger point.

Some 100 women’s centres whose funding has been either cut or ended, will
face closure, removing a vital service for tens of thousands of women. The Baie
St. George women’s centre in Stephenville, Nfld., is a tragic and typical victim.
The only service in an entire region, with a mere $36,000 in funding, Baie St.
George supplies rape crisis and battered women counselling, runs an incest
survivor’s group, a single mother’s group, divorce support and job retraining for
welfare mothers. Its funding (less than the cost of running one government jet
for one hour) is gone. It will close in April.

These amounts of money represent nothing to the federal government’s
budget — they are peanuts compared to the $560 million increase in defence
spending. Where is the peace dividend Canadians have been waiting for?

These cuts clearly have nothing to do with reducing the deficit. They are

designed to silence women’s voices, to effectively eliminate the means by which
women communicate and educate, the means by which our society supports

women in need and the means by which women organize. Perhaps it is this last
which the Tories find so threatening. In the wake of such an extreme example of
violence against women as the Montreal massacre just a few short months ago,
the Tories have shown their committment to eliminating women’s inequality in
this society for what it’s worth: nothing.

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TRIBUNE

EDITOR
Sean Griffin

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

- Dan Keeton

BUSINESS & CIRCULATION MANAGER
Mike Proniuk
GRAPHICS

Angela Kenyon

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registration number 1560

| n the end, she showed the characteristic
toughness that in part defined her
nature. But finally, former fish plant
worker, peace activist and environmental-
ist Lillian Robson succumbed to the cancer
that claimed her late in life her after 83
years. Lillian died Feb. 22 at her home in
Vancouver.

Born Lillian Dentrey in the Cockney
part of London, England in 1906, she was
six when her family moved to Canada and
settled in Manitoba. She was still a child
when her mother took sick and Lillian was
forced to leave school to care for her fam-
ily. She went back at age 14 and finished
grade 8. The family then moved to Sioux
Lookout, Ont., where there was no high
school and her formal education was cur-
tailed.

While there, the Dentrey family formed
a branch of the Communist Party which
Lillian, too young, could not join. She was
further thwarted from joining the party of
her choice when she married, at age 21,
and moved to Winnipeg in 1927, being at
that time too young for party membership
and too old for the Young Communist
League.

Three years and two children later Lil-

. 4

Lillian Robson (far left) joins other shore plant workers as they walk off the job on

lian separated from her husband and
staged an ultimately successful fight with
the welfare system, which had denied her
mother’s aid because of her single status.
She later became a leader of unemployed
women in Winnipeg.

Lillian moved to Vancouver in 1938
and four years later married Robbie Rob-
son (who predeceased her in 1968). She
had her third child, and with her husband

strike July 25, 1975.
formed the first parent-teacher association
in the city’s west end. In 1952 she becamea
fish cannery worker, and shortly after a
chief shop steward and a member of the
executive of the United Fishermen and
Allied Workers Union. She retired from
the cannery at age 72.

Lillian was involved in a host of other
activities, including the B.C. Peace

4

Council — she was among those picket-
ing ships exporting Canadian scrap metal
to Japan before World War II — and an
environmentalist, winning an award for
recycling from the province last year. The
wife of a Canadian volunteer of the Span-
ish Civil War, and the sister of a volunteer
killed in Spain, she was active in the vete-
ran’s movement. And she put in her con-

TRIBUNE PHOTO — SEAN GRIFFIN

tribution in the civic movement, working
on the Committee of Progressive Electors
campaigns as recently as the 1988 election.

She was diagnosed as having stomach
cancer last October, and elected to forgo
chemotherapy treatment.

Lillian is survived by three children —
Jacqueline, Lorne and Roberta — several
grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A
memorial with family members was held
in late February.

* * *

W: goof up small, we goof up big: But
seldom as prominently as we did

with last week’s (March 5) paper.

A qualifier for top awards in the blush-
ingly big department, page one featured
with headlines and photos two inside arti-
cles: one on the: MacDonald’s experience
in Moscow, the other on a Public Service
Alliance member’s fight for justice. In
what we’re chalking up to late-production-
night burn out, we mixed the photos and
cutlines in each case, with inadvertently
humourous results: two men sitting in a
MacDonald’s above the headline, ““Union
calls for probe as Crown decides not to

prosecute,” while Brad Holmes’ photo and -

cutline topped the head, “The strange
workings of USSR-joint ventures.”

Now, how many noticed?

In the small error department, we were
incorrect when we said the late George
North was born in Burnaby (People and
Issues, Feb. 26). George in fact was born in
Lloydminster, Sask., and attended school
in Burnaby.

4 « Pacific Tribune, March 12, 1990