| FEATURE

: ‘Bridgi

| ng the
| generations
_ for peace

: 7 was two years ago, on Apr. 25, 1972,

that Frank Kennedy, president of the
new. End the Arms Race Coalition,
addressed the more than 35,000 people,
Who had thronged Sunset Beach park in
the largest-ever demonstration for peace
in Canadian history. As he told the crowd
that their walk for peace was making his-
tory, he reminded them that the huge
demonstration was a testament to “the
People who kept the peace movement
80ing through the years,” who kept on
Marching and petitionining, “even when
there were only a handful of people with
them.”

Ask most people in the peace move-
Ment what organization is most associated
With “keeping the peace movement going
Over the year” and almost invariably they
will point to the B.C. Peace Council.

And the name that will come up more
often than any is that of Rosaleen Ross.

Sitting down in the tiny Peace Council
office amidst the paper and journals col-
lected from 30 years of peace activism,
Rosaleen is quick to disclaim any promi-
-} Nent role. “The work had to be done and
We just did it,” she says.

It’s true that she has never been in the
}} limelight, preferring the supporting roles,
} Onand off the stage. But as secretary of the
}} Peace Council for 15 years and an activist
}| in the organization for more than twice
that number of years, she is well known
among other peace organizations with
Which the Peace Council has co-operated
Over the years.

a

By SEAN
GRIFFIN

ss

Together with many of the others
Whose involvement parallels hers —

| People such as Jonnie Rankin, Elsie Dean,
Barney Hanson and Minnie Searle — she,
too, was among the 35,000 people at

|| Sunset Beach on that April day two years
} 4880 — and among the 80,000 and more

than 100,000 people in 1983 and 1984 _

~ |} fespectively.
| And the feeling of exhilaration as the
| huge expanse of park filled with marchers
}| Was “absolutely fantastic,” she recalls. _
| “That was the greatest feeling, the reali-
ation that we weren’t alone, that we
| Weren’t just a few people any more.”
| Not surprisingly, it wasn’t that way at
_ }] all decades ago when Rosaleen began
_}} Working in the peace movement on the
) ‘Ban the Bomb” petition.

In a sense, her link with the peace
Movement began 15 years earlier in Spain
Where she had gone from her native Bri-

| ‘ain to work in the hospitals of the
| °Mbattled Spanish Republic as an interna-
honal volunteer for British Medical Aid.
he was there for nearly two years and
) When she left in September, 1938, it was to
Come to Canada with her Canadian-born

| 1Usband whom she had met in Spain. —

The campaign against Franco’s fascist

| @tmy, continued even in Vancouver and
nce settled here, she joined the Spanish
| aid committee with the late Muriel Bladen,
hose work, she says, very much influ-
| “ced her own.

It was Bladen who set the example,
when she joined the newly-established
peace movement after the war seeing in the
campaign to maintain peace in the face of”
a growing cold war the link with the earlier
anti-fascist cause. :

Rosaleen points out that she was not
part of the founding of the Vancouver
Peace Assembly, the forerunner in this
province of the B.C. Peace Council. But
she was soon involved in the petitioning
campaigns that swept across the province
and the country.

The first was launched by the national
organization, the Canadian Peace Con-
gress, in 1949 and gathered some 200,000
signatures for the demand to ban all
atomic weapons, although Prime Minister
Louis St. Laurent’ refused to meet the
Congress delegation in Ottawa.

A few months later, the Stockholm
Conference of the Permanent World
Committee — later formalized as the
World Peace Council — launched the
historic Stockholm Peace Appeal which

‘was circulated throughout the world as a

petition demanding the unconditional
prohibition of atomic weapons.

Both petitions were sparked by the
development of the hydrogen bomb by the
USS., its first deadly escalation of the arms
race, touched off in the beginning by the
development — and use in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki — of the atomic bomb.

These were times of tremendous peace
activity, as dozens of volunteers took part
in the petition campaign, Rosaleen recalls.
“T remember we used to hold regular meet-
ings in the Electrical Workers hall. There
would be hundreds of people in attend-
ance.”

But they were also the times of the gath-
ering Cold War when the federal govern-
ment, in a policy echoed by the media,
maintained either official silence about the,
peace movement or actively sought to
smear it as a “Soviet conspiracy.” The
intimidation began to be felt at the front
doorstep as petitioners took their cam-
paign to people’s homes.

“Tt was tough going sometimes,” she
says. ‘“We had great difficulty getting sig-
natures. oe

“IT remember vividly one incident in par-

‘ticular. We had knocked on the door and

a women answered. She didn’t wait but
called for her husband. Suddenly he
appeared at the top of the stairs, and
started screaming at us and threatening:
“You get out of here! Get out!’

“There was also a reporter who worked
for the Vancouver News Herald — I’ve
forgotten her name — who used to follow -
us down the street shouting: ‘I’ll pay for
you to go back to Russia!’ ”

Because of the official intimidation — it
was also levelled at those who might sign
the petition — those who did put their
names down were making a committed
statement for peace, she adds.

“The contrast between petitioning then
and now — on the recently completed
Peace Petition Caravan Campaign in
which the Peace Council participated — is
dramatic.”

As the Cold War hysteria mounted, the
number of those active in the Peace Coun-
cil and attending meetings also began to
fall away. Says Rosaleen: “Many were

TOP: B.C. Peace Council lobby to legislature, 1960, pressing the government to
oppose installation of nuclear arms in B.C. CENTRE: Rosaleen Ross (right) with
Minne Searle at Peace Council table in disarmament week display, October,
1980. BOTTOM: Petitioning in downtown Vancouver for second Stockholm

Appeal, October, 1977.

buoyed up by what appeared to be a big
popular movement. But when they began
to feel the political isolation or the intimi-
dation on their jobs, many left.”

But for many others, like Rosaleen, the
heightening of world tension only under-

- scored the urgency of action for peace.

Unlike the current. period which has
seen the emergence of more than 40 peace
organizations, “there really was no peace

movement then — not as we know it~

today. There was a small group around
the Fellowship of Reconciliation (Quak-
ers) as well as a group of people in the
Women’s International League for Peace
and Freedom.” ;

That changed in 1960 with the decision
of the federal government. to accept
nuclear Weapons at Canadian Forces
bases at Comox and Bagotville, Quebec.
A newly-emerging student movement
founded the Combined Universities Cam-

paign for Nuclear Disarmament (CUCND)
to oppose the government’s action while
the Canadian Committee for the Control
of Radiation Hazards focused attention
on the effects of atmospheric testing.
Within two years, the campaigns

merged in the CCND — Canadian Cam-. :

paign for Nuclear Disarmament — anda
new Ban the Bomb campaign came to
national prominence. : J

At the same time, the issue of atmos-
pheric testing and new evidence of the
effects of Strontium-90 in radioactive fall-
out on children’s teeth and bones became
a focus for a new organization, the Voice
of Women, Rosaleen recalls.

The new impetus for disarmament
which resulted in the easter peace marches
and huge car cavalcades to the Comox

’ base breathed new life into the B.C. Peace

Council which initiated actions under its
see PEACE page 15

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 19, 1984 e 13

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