f

House was ‘too good

_ for working people’.

*

TORONTO

_ Beeause it is “too good for the working people” a house designed
by Grant A. Whatmough, young Toronto architect, has been rejected
for building in Ontario by the federal government’s Central Mortgage

and Housing Corporation.

According to Wallace B. Nesbitt (PC, Oxford), speaking in the

House of Commons housing de-
bate on January 21, this house
would sell for $10,000, including
the land. He said that J. R. Page
Company, one of the largest con-
tractors in Toronto, had “given a
specific contract price on these
houses of this design.”
Nesbitt continued:

BRITAIN
WANTS
PEACE

JOHN BURN
National president of the Fire
Brigades Union of Great Brit-
ain, is a thirty-year veteran of
the trade union movement an
the Labor Party. ’

FRIDAY, FEB. 12

8 p.m.
PENDER AUDITORIUM

New Westminster

FEB. 10 - 8 p.m.
NORDIC CENTRE

Victoria
FEB. 11 - 8 p.m.
WILLIAMS BUILDING

749 Broughton

B.C. PEACE COUNCIL

S HUB HUMOR:

“Little Joe is tellum
dirty stories!”

_ Our story about FREE CREDIT
1s clean and simple — you pay

absolutely nothing extra and

Payments are arranged to suit
you.
self,

Try it:and convince your-

THE Hun

“Houses of similar area, but of
much inferior quality and with a
box-like appearance, sell at present

of design similar to the one de-
signed by Mr. Whatmough are of
a custom-built nature and cost
around $25,000.”

Whatmough’s qualifications as an
architect show wide experience
both in Britain and Canada. In the
past two years in this country he
has supervised over $15 million
worth of important building. He
had previously designed $100 mil-
lion worth of building in the Unit-
ed Kingdom.

Whatmough was engaged to de-
sign a 250-house project for -work-
ers at the Avro aviation plant near
Toronto. He resigned later charg-
ing that Central Mortgage and
Housing was “strangling” Canadian
housing development.

Whatmough charged CHMC was
“fasifying, disterting and desecrat-
ing his plans.”

“T make no claim they are great
architecture. I believe people would
have been proud to own them.
Now CHMC states that this cannot
be. Is it too much for the aver-
age man to expect, or demand?

x x

On the surface it would appear
that amendments to the National
Housing Act recently announced
in the House of Commons will make
it easier for the average working-
man to buy his own home.

Closer examination shows, how-
ever, that it is the big mortgage
companies that will gain.

Previously a “$10,000 house”
could be secured for a down pay-
ment of $2,000, 5% percent inter-
est, and 20 years to pay.

Now all that is required is a
down payment of $1,400, 5%4-6
percent interest, and 25 years to

ay.
is the end of 20 years under
the old scheme the buyer actually
put out $12,960.

Under the new scheme, after 25
years (at 6 percent) the buyer has
paid $16,500 for a “$10,000 house,”
plus an additional $200 for mort-
gage insurance.

In summary, the gain to the
mortgage companies in increased
interest is $3,700 for every “$10,000
house.” ;

for $15,500 to $16,500, and houses ;

By HAL GRIFFIN

Are you tired of standing on the
street corner waiting for a bus?
Well, just keep standing there for
the next 15 years and, if a bus
hasn’t come along in the meantime,
you'll have squatter’s rights on the
B.C. Electric’s projected helicop-
ter service. :

And for those of you who haven’t
seen a seat on the No. 14 street-
cars for so long you are convinced
these vehicles were designed for
one-legged seagulls, the B.C. Elec-
tric also hakds out pleasant pros-
pects. By 1970 or thereabouts
you'll be travelling by mono-rail
trains and vou won’t.even have to
stand — you'll probably have to
cling from straps hanging on the
outside.

With the dauntless vision of free
enterprise, the B.C. Electric really
intends to rise to the occasion and
fly its surviving passengers through
the air with the greatest of ease,
although fares will probably be out
of sight by then.

All of this we have on the auth-
ority of Ernest Douglas Sutcliffe,
B.C. Electric director of planning
and development, who sits in his

office and dreams of the shape of

at “the smashing of unions.”
Participating in the march were

the CTCC (Catholic Syndicates);

the CCL Provincial Federation; the

| Alliance of Catholic Teachers; the

ontreal Policemen’s Brotherhood,
aa many rank and file AFL union-
ists, among them aft members of
the Brotherhood of Railway and
Steamship Clerks.

An official. declaration from
Roger Provost, president of the
AFL Provincial Federation of La-
bor, that AFL affiliates would not
participate in the march, drew fire
from both CCL and Catholic Syn-
dicates leaders who accused the
AFL of. splitting labor unity. . It
had been indicated earlier that the
AFL would participate. :

Arrival of the delegations Friday
afternoon was anticipated by Du-
plessis who adjourned the legis-

-ljature at. 1 p.m. ‘An hour later,

“45 BAST, HASTINGS

none of the MLA’s, including the

Protest march staged
by Quebec unionists

_ By HARRY GULKIN

MONTREAL

Thousands of workers marched through the streets of Quebec’s
ancient capital last week. They converged on Quebec City from in-
dustrial centres throughout the province to protest passage of the
Duplessis government of Bills 19 and 20, designed, in the words of
Romeo Mathieu, secretary of the CCL Federation of Industrial Unions,

Liberals were around to meet their
constituents.

The deterrent effect of the march
on anti-labor legislation were felt
even before the march itself be-
came a fact. The day after it was
announced, the Legislative Council,
Quebec’s Upper House, decided to
postpone debate on Bills 19 and 20
until a later date. The bills must
pass the Legislative Council before
they become law. ‘

Duplessis’ fear of the march was
clear at the outset. The Montreal
delegation of 800 workers boarded
the train under the watchful eye of
“anti-subversive’ squad chieftains
Paul Benoit and John Boyczam.
The Quebec City chief of police
announced that the workers would
not be allowed to parade in Quebec
streets. .

(See also earlier story. on page 2).

Don’t crowd. There’s a seat on the mono-rail just behind.”

What, no bus ?.But there'll be a
helicopter along in fifteen years

things to come while other more
practical—and_profit-minded— of-
ficials deal with the things that
are.

It may have been mere coinci-
dence that Sutcliffe outlined his
plans for the future just around
the time that a snowstorm had
thrown Vancouver’s transit system
for a total loss. Obviously, the
public’s mind had to be taken off
the deficiences of the present tran-
sit system. And what better way
than offering an ultra-modern sys-
tem — ultra-modern in other re-
spects than employee speed-up,
fare-gouging and political chican-
ery.

~ x *

Sutcliffe envisages a system of
helicopters and mono-rail trains
bringing commuters from the heavi-
ly populated suburbs of Burnaby,
Coquitlam and Surrey to Vancou-
ver where they would transfer to
seats on continuously-moving end-
less belts.

This system, he explains, will
render subways obsolete, so the
B.C. Electric, which has acquired
a wealth of knowledge and more
material reward in operating ob-
solete transit systems for more than
half a century, has no plans for
building a subway. After all, even
the most long-suffering citizens
might balk at having to pay for
an obsolete subway.

Sutcliffe did reveal that the B.C.
Electric applied to the Public Util-
ities Commission in 1939 for the
right to operate a helicopter ser-
vice on the Lower Mainland, al-
though he failed to say whether
this was just to reserve its mono-)
poly in case some one had old-
fashioned ideas, about free enter-
prise.

If you live in Burnaby or North
Vancouver you may, of course, be
a little impatient of this odd separ-
ation of theory and practice. You
may even ask—but you'll have to
raise a real ruckus if you expect,
to get a satisfactory answer — by

what reasoning Sutcliffe concludes

there will be a huge population to
support mono-rail transit in these
municipalities by 1970 when the
fact is there are already big popu-
lations and they can’t even get a
decent bus service.

_Whatever you do, don’t contain
yourself for another 15 years or
you still won’t have a bus service.

* * ok

However, Sutcliffe is a young man,
only 33 years old, and pre-
sumably hasn’t had time yet to
delve into the history of the B.C.
Electric to discover the relation-
ship between plans and profits.

Although he admits that there
seemed to be a certain amount of
star-gazing involved in the appli-
cation for helicopter service rights,
he should know by now that the
B.C. Electric doesn’t go in for star-
gazing, and won’t unless there is
money to be made in a rocket ser-
vice to Nanaimo.

Its vision extends no further
than the political firmament at Vie-
toria, with particular attention to
the galaxy at Vancouver City Hall,
and its guiding star is the annual
balance sheet. Otherwise it keeps
its wheels on the ground and if
its directors dream of helicopters
it’s only because they see another
excuse for jacking up the fare. _

For 50 years successive genera-
tions of Vancouver citizens rode in
antiquated streetcars until some of
the pioneers felt it was time the

.C. Electric burned the mortgage
and let them keep one or, as a
public-spirited gesture, present it
to the museum as a worthy sue-
cessor to the Red River cart.

So, figure it out for yourself.
If it took the B.C. Electric half a
century to admit that the public
had, in fact, paid for the streetcar
system several times over, how
many decades will it take before
the B.C. Electric concedes that its
trolley service should be scrapped
for mono-rail trains, =—

Or figure it out this way. Why
not take over the B.C. Electric and
operate a public service?

coed O Ee

== 0 0 IOI

BOOK SALE

ENDS FEBRUARY 6 2

> People’s Co-operative Bookstore
337 West Pender
Excellent Bargains in Progressive Books

|
°
0
|
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(By —(e) — Orior

1OEI6

1006

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JANUARY 29, 1954 — PAGE 7