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The Soviet Union has translated and published 6,305 books by U.S. authors (the figure refers to the book titles alone; it may have appeared in several editions and in several different Soviet languages). On the other hand, the

_US. has published about 500 books

by Russian and Soviet authors, counting both the pre-1917 and

post-1917 period.

In the 1972-73 theater season, Soviet drama companies put on 40 different plays by U.S. authors; in the U.S. four pre-revolutionary Russian plays and no Soviet plays at all were performed in the entire country.

The Soviet motion picture in- dustry has shown nationwide four or five U.S. produced films for every single Soviet film shown anywhere in the U.S. Since 1972, U.S. distributors have shown no

Soviet films at all, anywhere, at

any time.

U.S. radio and television uses virtually no Soviet materials of any king; contacts between Soviet and U.S. radio-TV networks are practically non-existant although

“Who is for cultural ex

the Soviet Union has sought

‘agreements for an exchange.

The facts and figures quoted here are from an article by Alexander Mulyarchik entitled “Cultural Exchange is a Two-Way Street”? in the Moscow News last month. It does raise the issue: who is for cultural exchange and: closer relations between people of the Soviet Union and the capitalist states? ne

The same questions may well apply to Canada, although figures are not available. But the number of Soviet books published in Canada (outside of books by anti- Soviet writers which are plentiful) is almost nil. The same applies to Soviet films, which Canadians never get a chance to see through the regular film outlets. Coverage of Soviet life on Canadian radio and TV is non-existant, except for anti- Soviet materials such as is now appearing in a new CTV three-part series on World War 2.

It raises the serious question: Who is for cultural exchange and flow of ideas?

Vancouver's unsavoury birth pains

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

With the growth of Gastown and development of the downtown area and the waterfront, business in- terests in our city have shown a sudden interest in ' Vancouver’s history, searching for facts and incidents which can be used to promote their business and par- ticularly the tourist industry.

There are a few facts about our early history which they would like to cover up, however, because of their unsavoury nature and because they show that election shenanigans and looting of the public purse by private enterprise both have a long and dishonorable record dating right back to Van- couver’s birth and before. Eric Nicol has revealed some of them in his entertaining book, ‘‘Van- couver’’.

Take Vancouver’s first civic election, for instance, held on May 3, 1886, two months after Van- couver was officially incorporated as a city.

Qualifications for voters required that they be British subjects, 21 years of age, owners of freehold property, or pre-emptors

or tenants with six months,

residence. Excluded were women, Orientals and Indians. For pur- poses of political expediency, however, these rules’ were

modified to allow anyone to vote who paid $5 a month in rent, with the same exclusions, of course.

On election day, they were modified still more in practice.

Running for the office of Mayor were the manager of Hastings Mill, Richard H. Alexander, and Alexander MacLean, a recent arrival from Winnipeg. The latter had the support of the city’s only paper, the Herald, which ap- parently advised its readers to vote early and often.

The MacLean secured a copy %f a lease and ac- cording to one report,: at least 50 people voted as the lessee by the simple process of writing a name on a piece of paper and pasting it over the name of the lessee. When the pile got too thick, it was simply removed and a new one started.

The Alexander forces brought in a boatload of 125 voters from Victoria and also tried to bring some 50 or 60 Chinese laborers in from the mill but these were chased away by an angry crowd of MacLean supporters.

The result — Maclean won 242 to 225. When the loser charged fraud and launched legal action, the election records were mysteriously burned. _ : :

Or take the B.C. Sugar Refining Company, which today has a

supporters

monopoly on the sale and distribution of sugar in the west, which can and does charge what it pleases, thanks to a_ nice arrangement with other sugar companies. :

It was started in 1890 by a B.T. Rogers, an American. He received a $30,000 cash grant from the city to start his business, to sort of sweeten his pot, so to speak. And the city has been sweetening it ever since, by assessing this property at far below its market value and thus enabling the Rogers family to evade paying its fair share of taxes.

Then there was the CPR which was given 6,000 acres of land in Vancouver in return for com- pleting the railway from Port Moody to Vancouver, something it intended to do in any case. It is still the biggest private landholder in the city and now that its lands on the North Shore of False Creek and

on the waterfront are about to be °

rezoned, it will make a clear profit of several hundred million dollars just by Council passing a motion rezoning these lands from. in- dustrial to comprehensive.

Finally, there is the establish- ment of Hastings Mill itself, started in 1865 and going into production two years later. It’s founder, Captain Ed Stamp, hardly

lacked modesty in the demands he

‘put forward as a condition for

building the mill. These included:

e That Burrard Inlet be made a port of Entry.

e That we beallowed to purchase 100 acres at $1.00 an acre, adjacent to the mill site.

eThat we may select 15,000 acres on Fraser River, Burrard Inlet, Howe Sound and adjacent coast and 1,000 acres spar land at Port Neville to lease at one cent per acre.

e That we may purchase 12,000 acres (if it can be found) where we may pasture our oxen when from hard work, they require rest.

e That we have the free right of way for our fresh water from lake to mill.

e That all mill machinery be admitted free of duty.

Stamp and his financial backers must have had the right political connections,. because all the demands were granted by the colonial secretary. ts

Finally, one last “‘small’’ fact.

When Vancouver was _in- corporated as a city on April 6, 1886 it had a population of only 2,500 people, but it already had 10 Real Estate companies.

Things haven’t really changed that much, have they?

a

—

change

SOUDARITAT MIT DEM YOLK CHILES

FREIHEIT FUR ALLE EINGEKERKERTEN

ave THE ABOVE special stamps | been issued in the e Democratic Republic and tidait | an extra charge for the 5° Fund for Chile.

Vietnam aid ‘imperative _

. : ‘viel The Canadian Aid er uve!

Civilians Committee i ea) in is carries a front page best just Spring-Summer Bue published calling fot N tot | support to help rebuild at Vietnam. wig ta e | The Bulletin carries a of | from Dr. Joan MeMicha recent! | British Aid Committee, “ites |

returned from Hanoi, W% aif | that malaria is almost univ South Vietnam, and that peer of the children suffer TC a thal Dr. McMichael WO g coil!) “30,000 children in North 9) ing. Vietnam have lost theif and many their speech ‘ia effects of nia “ Aol There are man isco rheumatic fever and hear wo | among children who . derground for so 10m ‘at culosis, which was alm fore 9" out in North Vietnam be j has again become r problem; there are M0), cases, 50,000 are serious. ys thé The CAVC Bulletin gition "| these facts, in add!

thousands of casualties; on | the magnitude of 2 vie rehabilitation faciN& “| sop al

says the appeal. pe sent :

Contributions cat ncouve! CAVC, Box 2543, V2Ugaaie Canada

upsival

TOM _ McEWEN

lection 74’’ is now history of a sort. Aside from ex-

plaining the obvious the news hawk “‘analysts’’, much more adept on hindsight than foresight, are already busy as beavers concocting “‘causes for the widespread coups de grace.

They know of course that on this dull Tuesday morning a majority Liberal Establishment under the tutelage of

the versatile Pierre Elliot Trudeau has been elected. They |

know also that the no-glitter image of Tory Bob Stanfield faded out in the ballot boxes along with his dual ambition to become prime minister of Canada and to put a Tory “freeze’”’ on the nation’s pay envelope. Old-line capitalist politics is like that, something like the Scotsman “‘grippin fleas’’ — now you have it, now you don’t!

The big guessing contest for the hawk analysts is

however something else: how to ‘‘explain’’ the utter rout.

of the NDP, nationally and at home. A rout that saw even much of its hard core “‘socialist’’ territory go down the drain. Had Turdeau and his Liberal strategists planned the job (which perhaps they did) they couldn’t have done better.

A “socialist’”’ party which insists upon “running with

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JULY 19, 1974—PAGE 2

the hares and hunting with the hounds” in order to win political yardage is not destined in Canada (or anywhere else) to achieve permanence in the scheme of things. Even the most enthusiastic NDP’er was keenly conscious that his “socialist” party could gain little by ‘‘balance-of- power” juggling — that Trudeau would pocket the “credit”, while the NDP got the crumbs... and the “gratitude” of lost seats.

But then the last days of the 29th Parliament of Canada and “Election 74” were just like that. George du Maurier put it just right in 1874 and it fitted the menu and the political major domos of 1974 like a glove: “Meat so dressed and sauced that you didn’t know whether it was beef or mutton, flesh or fowl, or good red herring’’, could

not be digested, and what the people could chew on with ~

gusto (the main issues) was kept off the menu.

Much of the “blame” for the election results the ‘‘anaylsts”” and their kind would like to load onto the Barrett government. Some socalled “backlash” or other from its 20-months dabbling in NDP “‘socialism’’ has been show too why it must go. The mining and power monopolies in B.C. have been more than busy in this political game. The “backlash” excuse is as phoney as a three-dollar bill.

Much of the legislation enacted by the Barrett government is highly commendable, far superior than anything the Socred Bennett regime ever did for the people of B.C. in 20-years or more. Not socialist as is too often claimed, but moving in a progressive direction.

Some of this legislation suffers from an ingrown ten- dency of the right-wing “socialist” to timidity, not ‘to go

too far or too fast” lest the ire of monopoly — ne odie : enterprise’’ be roused against it. Hence 02 finds a complete capitulation to these predato onal Jea in B.C.’s NDP government. Even depos is Lewis found it “politic” to publicly ee right “Barrett had goofed a little bit’, meaning } “socialist”. parlance that Davie has taxé ‘ and profits of ‘free enterprise”’ much too mu! “official”? dictum of NDP national policy- All such drivel is more akin to ¢ t po “backlash”, but it is the stuff that capitalis ain made of, and the “analysts” feel at hom — Es 3 capacity. e Bar is | Eisics the assessment of praise or blame te a 4 government is not at issue. The post-eleclO a 0 first and foremost to see to it that the TTUC’™ agi government does what its half-baked promis ques to make and keep ‘“‘the land strong’’. The en amo B.C. in the aftermath of "74, is to see to it the © og “we “backlash” balderdash or Liberal-Tory3or tt gov" (read disruption) will be able to oust the “16 so dee i

ment until the majority who gave it its ma! tically on le While we disagree with the NDP emphall®©_, asso brand of ‘‘socialism” we disagree more W! ho

gangs of Liberal, Tory and Socred conniver™ and turn B.C. back to the rule of monopoly Pro’ iyis its people more stripped than ever befor ‘te pattern of the “backlash” now emereit’’ “socialism” of the Barrett government. ‘ said ( “Tt is time,” as a French philosopher 0D 5, case), “that the NDP looked to its moutom®