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British Columbia still fights to realize the |
full possibilities of Confederation

By HAL GRIFFIN

» ©. and Confederation

| colony. They contribute direct-; But the shadow of U.S. dom-|
HE word had been passed | ly the greater portion of the| ination, under which the battle

. = Ae 7 ao , raat. | . . . eee
around in Barkerville and| taxes. Yet how are they treat-|to bring B.C. into Confeder-

carried up and down
creeks. Wednesday was July 1
and supporters of the new Con-
federation League planned to
hold an open air rally. There
Were sure to be good speeches
and even better arguments.
For the gold miners this was
Sufficient invitation to make
the day at once a holiday and a
- Spirited demonstration of their
demands. Beyond the- moun-
tains and the plains the people
of distant Canada in that year
of 1868 were celebrating the
first anniversary of Confeder-
ation. But Canada was not so
remote from the miners of the
Cariboo as the colonial bureau-
cracy at Victoria which denied

them responsible government|
and dallied with their aspira- |

tions to join Canada
Some of the merchants openly
agitated for annexation to the
United States.

On July 1 the miners gath-
ered in their hundreds at Bar-
kerville, nodding their heads
as J. S. Thompson proposed his
resolution condemning the
Colonial government for con-
tinuing “to resist the wishes of
the people” and calling for
adoption of ‘‘some organized
and systematic mode of obtain-
ing immediate admission into
the Dominion of Canada.”

They applauded as he out-
lined the grievances which

Made Cariboo the stronghold
of the pro-Confederationists.
“The people of the Cariboo are
of the whole

the mainstay

-_—

while |

the| ed?”

ation was fought. out, has

|
|

The speaker answered his| grown, filling the corridors on
own question; ‘Although the} Parliament Hall, reaching into

mines of Cariboo have now
been in existence seven years,
we cannot go a dozen miles
from Barkerville without fight-
ing our way, step by step,
through primeval forests and
swamps, over rugged
tains and foaming torrents, and
had it not been for the indomit-

able energy of the miner, this}

region would still have re-
mained the home of the cari-
bou, the beaver. and the mar-
ten.”

The colony, Thompson de-
clared, was almost bankrupt.
Confederation would lift not
only the oppressive rule of the
colonial bureaucracy but also
the oppressive burden of debt.
What could British Columbia
offer in return?

“While they would raise us|

from our present abject state

of bankruptcy and serfdom,”

he asserted, “we would open to

them the gates of the Orient.”
-@

ORE than 90 years later
M the opportunity foreseen
by the men who struggled to
bring B.C. into Confederation
is still largely unrealized.

Trade with China, which
brought John Meares to Van-
couver Island in 1788 and

quickened Britian’s contest to
wrest these coasts from Spain,
remains a logical development
of British Columbia’s  geo-
graphic position on the Pacific.

a

Sai

BARKERVILLE, which was

th

GS SRS SEAS Se

centre of agitation in

-C. for joining Confederation. A famous mining centre
at the time, it gradually became a ghost town and is now
€ing restored as an historic site.

moun-|

| every province to distort econ-
| omic. growth.

| eae

Amor De Cosmos, British
| Columbia’s second premier
| after Confederation, and the

| Confederation League defeat-
}ed the colonial movement for
; annexation to the United
| States. But 90 years later, at
Ottawa, the Conservaive goy-
ernment of Prime Minister
John Diefenbaker, which came
to power on demagogic prom-
ises to retrieve
sovereign independence, does
nothing to halt the process of
“integration” with the

with China cut off by U.S. dic-
tate.

>

raphy,” De Cosmos once said
in a speech to the B.C. legis-
lature, “I could see Vancouver
Island on the Pacific from my
home on the Atlantic, and I
could see qa time when the
British possession, from

Arctic Ocean, and extending
| from the Atlantic to the Pacific
| would be consolidated into one
| great nation.

| “And if I had my way, in-
stead of the United States own-
}ing Alaska it would have been
| British today.”

|’ But the legislature of 1870
| failed to act on De Cosmos’

;| resolution to purchase Alaska |

}and in 1903 President Theo-

‘| dore Roosevelt’s “big stick”
sacri-|

| diplomacy and British
| fice of Canadian interests seal-
led off British Columbia’s
northern coastline with the
Alaska Panhandle.

Now, in 1960, Premier W.
A. C. Bennett’s giveaways to
the Wenner-Gren interests and
U.S. fear of the growing move-
ment for Japanese neutrality
threaten to transform the
vision of B.C. as Canada’s
gateway to Asia
war nightmare.

build in 1943 as

neighbours, the Soviet Union

line to northern B.C., but a
noose for the Canadian people
in their own Pacific gateway!

The Bennett government is
rebuilding Barkerville as_ it
was in the sixties when the

Canada’s |

e
‘ROM the time I first mas-|
tered the institutes of
physical and political geog-

into a cold}

The railway to Alaska that!
the U.S. planned but failed to|
a lifeline!
against q fascist Japan now is|
seen by U.S. militarists as a}
link for missile bases in North-|
ern B.C. aimed at our Pacific}

and People’s China. Not a life-|

Confederation League helped
to build a nation. Yet even as

it restores the shell of our
early history, it dissipates the
heritage by its lavish give-
aways of our natural re-

sources. Struggle created that
heritage. And, in the spirit of
the Cariboo miners, only
struggle that links the working
people of B.C. with the world’s
peoples striving for peace and
disarmament against U.S. mili-
tary entaglements can triumph
anew over domestic betrayal
and U.S. domination.

peo SSS SSS CE Sl

AMOR DE COSMOS, who
led the fight against annex-
ation of B.C. to the United
States and for joining Con-
federation.

Issues in the coming

elections

Policies of
or policies

By NIGEL MORGAN

Never since the Cariboo |
miners demonstrated a century
ago and helped win the right
to become a part of Canadian
Confederation, has the welfare
of Canada’s Pacific province
and Canadian nationhood been
endangered as it is today.

U.S. |
and nothing to restore trade|

the |
| United States boundary to the|

In the 1860s, the issue was

to become a part of Canada, or
be victimized by U.S. expan-
sionism and shut Canada out!
| of its natural Pacific outlet —
the golden gateway to Asia.
The working people and pa-
triots of that day met that
challenge and defeated the
plot of U.S. absorptionists and
|fur-trading betrayers who con-
trolled B.C.’s legislature. The
majority triumphed!

Today, the issue is one of
continued surrender to the
Pentagon’s war plans —-allow-
ing our province to become an
advanced U.S. nuclear war
base, dominated militarily,
economically and politically
by the U.S. atom-maniacs; or,

of restoring Canadian inde-
pendence, standing up for

| new national policies of peace,
| Canadian neutrality and world
| disarmament.

B.C. is on the eve of a gen-

| eral provincial election, For
many- workers, farmers and/}
small business people the

choice is obvious. It is to work
and vote against the threat of
|involvement in a possible nu-

| clear war, for jobs and mar-
kets, for municipal tax relief,
for a cheaper publicly owned
| power system that will put
|B.C.’s) and Canada’s needs
| first. This is the great chal-

| lenge of 1960.

The time has come to take a/|

cold war
of peace

stand. This Canada Day the
B.C. Provincial Committee of
the Communist Party of Can-
ada appeals to all B.C. work-
ing people to unite, work and
vote for genuine people’s rep-
resentatives who can be count-
ed upon to fearlessly cham-
pion our welfare. Among these
will be the 19 Communist can-
didates in the forthcoming
election,

Brifish CP greeted
on anniversary

Warm congratulations have
been sent to the Communist
Party of Great Britain on its
40th
tional
munis

Over the nature of Tim
Buck the Sage declares
that Communists

1s, have always

with the deepest
> work of your par
c tactics of t
Communists, and t
political writings of your mem-
bers, which have added greatly
to our Marxist-Leninist
unders

own

good question
O ALBERNI — The

P
Danish ship Inger Skori sailed

1s &

from this Vancouver Island
port last week with 5,000-tons
of unbleached pulp for Shang-
hai. Also included in the cargo
was a large shipment of alum-
inum ingots from Kitimat.
Comment at dockside: “Why

| don’t we ship more of our pro-

ducts to Peoples’ China?”

June 30, 1960—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 7