New schemes for forcing freeways on city East End

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Once again City Council is discussing freeways. And once again, schemes are afoot to force freeways through Vancouver’s East End despite the solid opposition of its residents.

Georgia Viaduct is to be replaced with a completely new structure. It is geared to be part of an East-West freeway that would go East along Malkin Street, through the Great Northern Railway cut, down the Grandview Highway and then connect with Highway 401.

Council has agreed to this route in principle. It would cause a minimum of disturbance to

residential areas. If there must be freeways leading to the heart of the city (a concept that I don’t agree with at all) then this route would be the logical and natural one to choose.

However, there’s a catch to it. Such an East-West freeway would cost an estimated $40 million. Council has no provision for such an expenditure, so this project is being shelved.

In its place it is proposed to build two couplets going off the East. end of the new Georgia

Viaduct. The first would be a one-

way Eastbound Highway going East along Prior and Venables Streets from Main Street to Commercial Drive. The second

in Vietnam.

opinion.

and the White House.

massacre. Ed. )

and military leaders’’.

financial or moral survival.

hen Communist and other progressive bodies press the issue for the termination of Canada’s complicity and in- volvment in the U.S. agression in Vietnam, they are not merely demanding that Canadians cease from war profiteer- ing by supplying the U.S. with death-dealing arms for use

The issue goes much deeper than that. What they are demanding is that Canada through the media of its governing Establishment, cease being a running-dog accessory to U.S. war criminals, whose shameful and debasing crimes are already well catalogued and established by world-wide

Following the revelations of the Songmy village massacre in 1968 and numerous similar horrors before and since in the villages of Vietnam, the U.S. Army brass are making a big hullabaloo about bringing U.S. GI’s, alleged to be responsible for such Hitlerite horrors, to ‘‘justice!’’

In short, the real Pentagon war criminals who design these war horrors, the cold-blooded murder of Vietnamese, men, women and children; the burning and poisoning of land and people, the kill and over-kill policy of genocide; those are the people who should be put on trial as atrocious war criminals— not their degraded expendable hand-picked tools, and scape- goats. These scapegoats are a product of U.S. war policies in Vietnam — not its designers; scapegoats put in the war criminal’s box, to take the minds of the American, and other peoples, off the identity of the real criminals in the Pentagon -

The late Lord Bertrand Russell, just a few months before he died, put the case squarely on the line.

“This is why the prosecution of isolated junior officers is quite inadequate. They are to be made scapegoats. The more wicked war criminals are the highest ranking military and civilian leaders, the architects of the whole genocidal policy. Have we so soon forgotten the regular White House breakfast at which Johnson boasted openly he and McNamara and their closest colleagues selected the targets for the coming week. (The Vietnam villages and their inhabitants picked for total

“The. whole U.S. Establishment stands condemned. . .the entire American people are now on trial. If there is not a massive moral revulsion at what is being done in their name to the people of Vietnam, there may be little hope for the future of America. Having lost the will to continue the slaughter is not enough; the people of America must now repudiate their civil

And what about Canada and Canadians ? Is the stooge role of the present and past Establishments, both in relation to its blood-money profits from the sale of arms to the U.S. and/or its increasing subservient role: to the demands of U.S. monopoly, highly subversive of the rights of Canadians to their own natural resources, Sovereignty and independence to continue, despite the growing protests of the Canadian people?

Must Canadians continue under the illusion— fed by govern-

ment propaganda, that our complicity and involvement with U.S. war criminals is essential to Canadian economic,

If so, then the words of Bertrand Russell apply with equal force to the Canadian people — ‘‘there may be little hope for the future of Canada’’; and least of all in the role of profiteer- ing merchants of death to U.S. war criminals. Not even the most sauve, polite, but utterly evasive phrase mongering of M. Trudeau can obscure that fact.

would be a one-way Westbound couplet along Union and Adanac Streets from Main Street to Com-

mercial Drive. The estimated cost of these two couplets is slightly over $1 million.

A further alternative is to rebuild Prior and Venables Streets into a two way four lane highway connecting Georgia Viaduct and Commercial Drive.

The understanding is_ that these streets would only be temporarily used for this purpose and would revert to normal two way operation when traffic is rerouted to the East- West freeway.

But East End residents are not only suspicious, they are downright distrustful of City Council’s-real intentions. They fear that whatever alternative is chosen, whether it be the two Union-Prior, couplets. or the Prior-Venables two way roadway, it will become the East West freeway. They believe that both alternatives are the thin wedge to force an East-West freeway through the residential areas of the East End.

I agree with them; I think these fears are well founded. Once an alternative is built and put into operation, the next move would be to extend it beyond Commercial Drive and connect with Highway 401 at Cassiar Street. And lack of money to build the East-West freeway through the Great

‘Northern cut can always be used

as an excuse for postponing this project indefinitely. This is why East End residents believe that Council is trying to hoodwink them by talk of temporary alternatives.

Such a freeway through the East End would destroy a huge residential area, planting in its midst an unsightly concrete monster. Hundreds of families would lose their homes and the compensation they would receive would not enable them to buy comparable homes in any other part of the city. The whole East End would be cut in two by an ugly structure. To understand how East End residents feel, just imagine a huge concrete elevated freeway cutting through the middle of your residential area.

In my opinion, all these alterna

tive routes (Union-Prior couplets and the Prior-Venables two way street) should be dropped. Viaduct should lead directly into Prior Street. If Prior Street can’t handle all the traffic (and it probably won’t be able to) then the traffic will simply have to find other routes.

In the meantime, Council should allot a couple of million dollars to begin engineering studies on the Malkin-Great Northern cut freeway route. Once this is done, Council will be in a position to approach senior governments for financial assistance.

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OE SURVIVAL by Alderman Harry Rankin

PRICE 50c

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The new Georgia °

COPE MEETS MARCH 11

The annual membership meeting of the Committee of Progressive Electors (COPE) will be held Wednesday, March 11 at 8 p.m. in the Rio Hall, 3325 Kingsway.

‘PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCHS! 1970Page 22 1S

Front cover of Ald. Rankin’s latest pamphlet.,

New pamp hard at pollution

Pollution is not only destroying your environment, it’s slowly killing you. This is the theme of a

new pamphlet, . ‘Pollution, Suicide or Survival’’ by. Alderman Harry Rankin of

Vancouver.

Alderman Rankin describes the dangers of DDT, of cancer- producing cyclamates and nitro- samines in our food, how our lakes and rivers and oceans too are being rendered unfit for life by phosphates, sewage and

industrial pollution, and the extent and efforts of air pollution.

Pollution control in B.C. is a farce, says Alderman Rankin, as he charges the provincial government with lack of effec- tive action and big industries with a callous disregard for the public welfare.

Alderman Rankin has clear ideas on what should be done to end pollution. He calls for legislat.ve action to ban DDT, phosphate detergents, ll drilling for oil on the ocean floor, and demands tertiary treatment of sewage and strict laws governing air pollution.

hlet hits

He calls for action too by

people.

“We need an unending torrent of resolutions, briefs, delega tions, meetings, parades, sit-ins, sit-downs and teachins direct to every level of government.”

“We must simply make life un bearable,’ he says, ‘‘for any

public servant or industrial leader who refuses to take meaningful steps to stop polllution.”’

“If we don’t raise hell,” be

warns, ‘“‘that’s what we’ll get.”

This hard-hitting, thought-pro voking pamphlet should be in the hands of every person concernet with saving our environment an@ passing along our natura heritage in beautiful B.C. to ouf children.

The pamphlet is available at Co-op Bookstore, 341 West Hastings, Vancouver, B.C. fof 50¢ per copy. Bundle orders of 10 or more may be ordered at 40¢ per copy direct from the office ® Alderman Harry Rankin, at 19 East Hastings Street, Vancouver 4, B.C.

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“Is that the news or tomorrow’s weather? ”

—Eccles, Morning Star

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