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THE FISHERMAN
December 16, 1963
THE FISHERMAN
KEEP PLUGGING!
Behind the Headlines
138 East Cordova Street GEORGE NORTH, Editor
Vancouver 4, B.C.
Phone: MU. 3-9655
Authorised as second class mail by Post Office Department, Ottawa and tor payment of postage in cash. Published every Friday except the last Friday of the month.
The Struggle Continues
TO COVER the key events of 1963 in a brief editorial is impossible. It was far too signicant a period for that. It was a year of disillusionment — of promises made and promises broken.
Before the federal election on March 30, the Liberal Opposition stood with the fishermen in demanding a full hearing before the House committee on marine and fisheries prior to any official action on amendments to the International North Pacific fisheries treaty.
After the election, as a minority government, it took the major first step in selling out BC fisheries by granting Japan the right to fish halibut in the eastern Bering Sea and herring off the Queen Charlottes. It did so before parliament was convened.
The new minister of fisheries promised an early meeting of the standing committee on marine and fisheries. It still hasn't met.
The government promised a 12 mile limit for fisheries. Its present proposal is an utter farce.
Robichaud was frantically anxious to settle last summer's strike by arbitration. He has since dawdled and delayed in spite of numerous requests from fishermen to act. Coinciden-tally, canners find the minister's procrastination happily acceptable.
This year has seen the paradox of Canada affixing her signature to the nuclear test treaty while accepting a US demand to place nuclear weapons on Canadian soil — under US control.
Organised fishermen, shoreworkers, and tendermen have offered powerful resistance to these negative policies. The two lobbies that went to Ottawa this year won important support for the Union's positive fisheries program, support expressed mainly by NDP members in the House.
Last summer's strike, forced on the industry by the price cutting policies of the fishing company monopoly, was one of the toughest struggles in the history of the Union. It was a collective effort by many hundreds of workers to protect living standards that are being threatened by the companies themselves, by lowered salmon runs, and by lack of licence limitation.
Through all the vicissitudes of what is in many respects a sick industry emerges one certain fact: the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union has led the fight for the industry's preservation and its restoration to a degree of health.
The Fisherman has done its best throughout 1863 to report the significant events and to express in forthright terms tha policies needed to bring prosperity back to the fishing industry.
We intend to continue battling to save our fisheries from decimation by foreign fleets regardless of how strongly that campaign runs counter to official government policy.
And we intend to continue expressing the economic needs of those who produce and process the fish.
The Fisherman has gained in popularity and circulation over the past 12 months, placing us farther ahead than ever of the readership of all other fishery publications in Canada combined.
That position, without question, has been attained in large measure by the interest in the articles and letters from our readers themselves, many of whose names appear in this annual Christmas issue.
We cannot praise them too highly, particularly those who, like Mary Harder and Joe Yarmish, regularly put many hours into creating interesting columns.
We wish them and all readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year with the perhaps superfluous observation that we can only win the conditions that make for happiness and wellbeing by constantly struggling to achieve them.
New Canadian Sellout
/CANADIAN fishermen are again being ignored in negotiations con-
ducted by the federal minister of fisheries and the minister for external affairs. This time it is on the subject of the 12 mile limit.
According to Globe and Mail correspondent George Bain, "the Canadian government has surrendered a point upon which it. strenuously insisted . . . that US fishing rights within 12 miles of Canada's coasts cannot be maintained unlimited and in perpetuity."
He also says -'there is an effort to see historic rights untouched and to minimise the areas of sea (such as the Gulf of St. Lawrence and ihe Bay of Fundy) that may be enclosed behind the base line."
This ietreat must be seen in the light of these developments:
First, the long standing demand of Canadian fishermen for an extension to 12 miles;
Second, the minister cf fisheries in 1956 declared Canada favored a 12 mile limit outside a headland to headland baseline.
There was talk of a phase out period, but it appeared this would be limited to not more than 10 years.
Fishermen protested the 1958 retreat to a six plus six formula and considered it disgraceful when Canada formally joined with the United States in sponsoring a resolution containing this "deal" at the Geneva convention. The "deal" included a Canadian vote against a full 12 mile limit.
Our Union presented a 23 page brief to the minister of fisheries in June. 1963. in M'hich wo condemned the retreat to a three mile territorial limit and an additional nine miles for fisheries. This was worse than six plus six.
We argued against further recognition of socalied ".historic rights" as we feared a long phase out period. We pointed out Canada was already many years behind on extension of our territorial limits.
So now we learn the retreat is even more disastrous. When our Union said a phase out period was unwarranted, we were demanding decisive and determined action by Canada to control the full 12 mile area and exclude all foreign fishing vessels.
To the government in power in Canada "no phase out period" means granting US fishing vessels freedom to operate in perpetuity right up to three miles off our coasts. It is hard to imagine a worse betrayal of Canadian interests.
Even the enclosure of Hecate Strait is now in doubt, as well as the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Bay of Fundy.
Instead of a forthright proclamation on baselines, the government of Canada is in rctteat. in addition to the United States, France, Portugal, Spain, Norway, Denmark, and Italy are reportedly getting special consideration on "historic rights."
The Union brief clearly pointed out the attempt to discriminate ?,nd to grant special privileges to one or two nations was a betrayal and would create more trouble in dealing with the other nations.
The whole world is moving toward wider territorial waters and fishing limits. According to the Globe and Mail article, 47 maritime slates have taken unilateral action on the matter. Only recently, Great Britain served notice of her intention of abandoning the three mile limit and going tor a 12 mile limit.
It is clear that any extension automatically conflicts with those who claim "historic rights." Small wonder government spokesmen were so sure they could reach agreement with the United States.
The word is "surrender" — not agreement.
The Union brief also demanded a hearing before the parliamentary standing committee on marine and fisheries. We said it would be "a travesty of justice and an insult to parliament" to enter negotiations with the USA, France, and perhaps 10 other nations "without first fully deciding in parliament cxaqtly what the Canadian position snould be."
We demanded "the inclusion of the true representatives of Canadian fishermen from both coasts in Canadian delegations" which miulil sit down with other nations on this issue. We suggested the other nations be required to approach Canada for such talks.
All our advice is ignored. Parliament is being ignored. Instead. Canadian fishery resources arc being sacrificed in perpetuity as another sequel to the "60 days of decision" and the "Hyannis Port Siesta."
We can only urge all members of parliament who claim to stand for Canadian development of Canadian natural resources, to demand an end to such "surrenders"! • —Homer Stevens
WHO TRIGGERED MURDER WEAPON?
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
WINJO WRITES
SERIOUS THOUGHT AT CHRISTMAS
WE HAVE come to that time of the year when good old Santa comes into his own again. Of course he has the help of every type of store. For a price you can buy anything, and at this time of the year the price is the thing.
I think the time to buy is after Christmas when all the big clearance sales are on. How much cheaper are things sold after the big rush is over; but that's the way the ball bounces.
No doubt a lot of you have heard time after time on the radio stations the word "only." The announcer says so much down, full price only a measly few thousands.
The way they talk one would think everyone is walking around with a few paltry thousands in his pocket.
Wish that were true, but it ain't necessarily so.
★ ★ ★
WELL, NO MATTER WHICH way you look at it, Christmas is almost upon us, and that is the time for greetings. Last year I sort of slipped up, so this year I will be a little early.
To the editor of The Fisherman, George North, and the staff of the paper, many thanks for putting up with me this past year. I know there were many mistakes to be corrected, and words to be put into their proper places, and a lot of other things done to produce an article that is properly put together. Many thanks and a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you.
To my very good friends on the west coast of Vancouver Island, in Port Renfrew, Norm Smith and family, Murray Smith and family, and Mr. Smith — a very pleasant holiday season. So sorry I didn't get over to see any of you this fall. Maybe next year.
A Merry Christmas to each and everyone of you. wherever you may be.
★ ★ *
FOR THE PAST FEW YEARS,
my father-in-law has been confined to the veterans' home in Burnaby, the George Darby home for old and young soldiers with a disability.
My wife and I have gone to see him as often as we could. While making these visits, we met quite a number of those grand gentlemen who have become residents of this home.
In the same room with my father-in-law, William Skellett, are three other veterans. One of them is a man by the name of John Adams, just about the finest gentleman 1 have ever met.
John Adams is always busy. One of his hobbies is weaving handbags, the kind a person can carry groceries in. He has a frame that he sets up and being an old sailing ship man, he ties his twine with his special knot and hums a tunc as he makes the handbags.
Some of you might think — what is so hard about that? It any of you saw John Adams, you would wonder how he can do it, because John is totally blind. He hasn't been able to see for quite some time, but this doesn't stop him. He does a lot of things such as shaving, looking after his clothes, keeping things tidy around his bed; in fact, very-little has to be done for hirri. And John Adams will be 92 years of age on December 27! How about that!
★ ★ *
ABOUT A YEAR AGO I WAS
silting by John's bed and listening to some of his stories about the old days, the day.s of the sailing ships—fascinating stories.
It was around this time that he recited a poem about the trials and tribulations of being a seaman aboard a sailing ship. Just, recently I copied this poem and will pass it along and hope that some of you will enjoy it.
John Adams told me he read this poem in the Boston Globe
about 50 years ago, and he has remembered it all these years. The title is:
The Guy Who Couldn't Lie
I stood one day by a breezy bay Watching the ships go by, When an old tar said with a
shake of his head, I wish I could tell a lie.
Why I've seen some sights that would jigger your lights,
They have jiggered my own in sooth,
But I ain't worth a darn at
spinning a yarn That wanders away from the
truth.
We were out in a rig-a-jig-jig A mile and a half to sea, When Captain Snook with a
troubled look Comes up and he says to me:
Oh, Bosun Smith, make haste
forthwith, Hemstitch the forward sail. Accordion-pleat the dory sheet For there's going to be a gale.
I straightway did as the captain bid
And before the job was thru, The north wind "woofed,"
bounced over the roof And murdering lights it blew.
It blew the tars from off the spars
And the spars from off the mast, While anchors and sails, pails
and nails Flew by on the wings of the
blast.
As the galley shook it blew the cook
Right thru the port hole glim, While pots and pans, kettles and cans
Flew clattering after him.
It blew the fire from our gallant stove
And coal from our gallant bin, And it whistled past the captain's face
And blew the beard right off his chin.
Well, the captain said as he
ducked his head And felt around his mouth, We are lost I fear if the wind
don't veer And blow awhile from the south.
And swoggle my head no sooner
he'd said The words that blew out of his
mouth,
The wind swung round with a
hurricane sound And blew straight in from the
south.
Well, wc opened our eyes with
some surprise We had not a word to say, For in changing our tack the
wind blew back The things that had blown away.
It blew the tars upon the spars And the spars upon the mast, Anchors and sails, pails and nails Which into the ship stuck fast.
Before wc could look it had
blown the cook Back into the galley coop, Back dropped the pans, kettles
and cans Without even spilling the soup.
It blew the fire to our own
gallant stove Where it burned in it's proper
place,
And all of us cheered, when it
blew the beard Back onto the captain's face.
There's more to the talc said the
sailor hale That would jigger your lights in
sooth,
But I ain't worth a darn at
spinning a yarn That wanders away from the
truth!
* * *
A very Merry Christmas to all of you at George Darby hospital, and to all of you everywhere. So long, until the next time.
-U7N/0
This is the second article of two on the subject of US President John F. Kennedy's assassination.
By BEN SWANKEY
WHO pulled the trigger of the gun that killed President Kennedy? Was it Lee Harvey Oswald? The evidence against him is circumstantial and contradictory. He maintained he was innocent. "I did not kill the president. I did not kill anyone," he said.
He made the statement after many hours of "questioning" by Dallas police from which he emerged with facial bruises and lacerations. He claimed that he was a "patsy" for someone else, that he was framed.
What about Jack Ruby, the man who "rubbed out" Oswald in the basement of the Dallas police station? Why did the Dallas police not prevent the murder when even the FBI had twice warned them that an attempt might be made on Oswald's life?
If, as the police claim, there was no connection between Oswald and Ruby, how is it that Oswald's mother says the FBI showed her a large photo of Ruby-some 17 hours before Oswald was murdered? It is strange, to say the least.
To ask us to believe that Jack Ruby, gangster and police stool pigeon, murdered Oswald for reasons of patriotism is really asking too much.
★ * *
AND WHY DID THE DALLAS police, immediately after Oswald's murder, announce that the whole case was "closed?" Why were they in such a hurry to have the investigation ended?
The suspicion persists that there's something very rotten in the state of Texas, that something is being hushed up, that someone is being shielded.
While we do not know yet who murdered the US president, there is not the same doubt as to who wanted him out of the way, who was politically responsible for his death.
The responsibility, as most serious political observers agree, lies with the forces of the far right in US politics. But they are not just a "lunatic fringe" as some suggest. These ultraright forces reach into the heart of US capitalist society. They derive support from many rich and powerful corporations that profit from the cold war, from the armaments race, from low wages for Negroes.
They are part of the "military industrial complex" that Eisenhower warned about when he retired as president.
They are bitter about the trend of US foreign policy under the late President John Kennedy, and in particular the signing of the nuclear test ban treaty and the negotiations with the Soviet Union aimed at peace and eventual disarmament.
They never forgave Kennedy for his failure to launch a full scale military invasion to wipe out Cuba.
They violently opposed Kennedy's integration policies and resorted time and again to murder in an attempt to stop the march to equality of American Negroes.
They are the forces of bigotry, hate, prejudice, violence and death. They are the American form of fascism.
★ ★ * POLITICALLY THESE ULTRA
right forces are represented by the Dixiecrats (the reactionary Democrats from the south), their counterpart in the Republican Party (where they are dangerously strong), by those grouped around Senator Barry Goldwater who wants to be the next US
president, by the John Birch Society.
It is no accident that President Kennedy was murdered in the state of Texas. As an Associated Press dispatch admitted on Dec. 3: "For someone openly and loudly to wish the president dead was not unusual in Dallas. And it was quite respectable."
A United Press International release the same day quotes a Georgia publisher as stating that in some areas there was open jubilation at the news of Kennedy's death.
The hatred of Kennedy was worked up to such a pitch that in some schools children cheered and clapped at the news of Kennedy's assassination.
What can you say about a society that stirs up such barbarous feelings? There is something very sick in American society today. It is a product of race hatred, of anti - labor prejudice, of anti - Communist hysteria and of the erosion of civil liberties.
★ * *
OF COURSE THESE REAC-tionary forces want to take the blame off themselves for the murder of President Kennedy. That is why they tried to pin it on the Communists. That is why the falsehood was put out (and spread throughout the world by US news agencies) that Oswald was a Communist, that he was pro-Soviet and pro-Cuba. As we showed conclusively in this column last week this is an outright lie — Oswald was anti-Communist, anti-Cuba and anti-Soviet.
The Vancouver Sun contributed its venomous bit to trying to whip up anti-Communist hysteria. On November 23, a front page sub-headline on the murder said, "Police Charge Arrogant Red."
The same day an editorial described Oswald as a "boastful Marxist" and a "noisy supporter of Castro."
On November 27 it said editorially: "Kennedy's assassin appears to have been a member of the lunatic left. Typically he was loyal only to Russia — provided he didn't have to live there."
This can only be described as cold war, gutter journalism, the only kind available in our monopoly Vancouver daily press.
It is to the credit and good sense of Americans (and Canadians) that they haven't been taken in by this evil intentioned and false propaganda. Many Americans are today looking into their own society with critical and clear eyes, some for the first time.
★ ★ *
JAMES K. MATTHEWS,
Methodist Bishop of Boston, pu' the blame on "... a people wlu could endure the murder of (assassinated Negro leader) Medgai Evans without remorse, wh( could observe the slaughter oi the innocent by a bomb in a Birminghom Church and not really cry out for justice ..."
Wounded Texas Governor James Connolly blamed ic on "... the passion, the hate, the bigotry that permeate this whole society in which we live" and he linked it with "the bombing of five little girls in Birmingham."
Even Chief Justice Earl Warren, now heading a special presidential investigation into the assassination, said: ''But we do know that such acts are commonly stimulated by forces of hatred and malevolence, such as today are eating their way into the bloodstream of American life."
It is to be hoped that this agonising reappraisal will result in a new resurgence of the liberal and democratic forces in American society and restore that great nation to the noble ideals upon which it was founded.
Fish and Ships
/"\NE of the saddest pleas at v/ Christmas is the cry for alms to aid the poor. The cause is good because the need is real. We can recall vividly the poverty of the depression when the sound of a truck stopping was enough to bring the youngsters to the window to see if someone was coming with Christmas treats. And in those days the looked for goodies included staples as wet I as a few apples, nuts, and candies. Merely to eat enough was the rarest of all treats. Poverty is a terrible thing and children are its chief victims. The answer to the misery and degradation that is the lot of so many in the "pocket depression" of today lies not in charity from well meaning people, but in jobs and salaries for the unemployed. Would that these folk, basically kindly and sometimes Christian, would devote themselves to healing society's wounds instead of simply putting dabs of quack balm on them. Yes, we believe in helping the poor and unfortunate at Christmas and at all other times within our meagre abilities. But we must do much more than that if we are to sincerely serve out-fellow men.
★ * * The story by Nick Stevens on page 17 was accompanied by a
notation that George Nicholson in his book, Vancouver Island's West Coast, mentioned four vessels that were wrecked off the west coast in the area where Nick and his companions very nearly met their fate. They were the Chilean barque Carelmapu in 1915, the British brig Wm. G. Irwin in 1887. the US barque General Cobb in 1880, and the British barque Mustang in 1866. It's a treacherous piece of water.
We were at the BC Federation of Labor convention last month and a delegate from Vancouver Island — Port Alberni we're sure — asked us if we'd send him The Fisherman. We wrote his name and address on a book match cover, somebody borrowed the matches and we're lost and so are his name and address. We mention the incident in the longshot hope that he might pick up this copy of the paper and drop us a line.
Archie Reagh, a member of the New Westminster Local and owner of the gillnetter Isle of Hope, has had a tough time of it this year. He became quite ill
See FISH AND SHIPS — Page 5