What are we bid?
Walter Alliott photo
• These troller "cannonball" moulds were donated to The Fisherman by longtime UFAWU member Otto Jeworsky, now retired, with the request they be auctioned and the proceeds sent to Canadian Aid to Vietnam Civilians. Bids should be submitted to Box 5, The Fisherman, before May 30. Entries must include offer and name and address of the bidder. Best offer takes the moulds.
* The Fisherman welcomes letters to the editor, asking only that they carry the address from which they are written and be signed by the writer, although names will be withheld from publication on request. Opinions expressed are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect those of The Fisherman, which reserves the right to cut letters to meet space requirements.
T. (Buck) Suzuki voices thanks
Editor, The Fisherman:
Through the years my name has appeared often enough in your columns when you have been reporting my activities in various capacities for the UFAWU. Now I ask for space in a personal sense to thank the board of trustees of the United Fishermen's Welfare Fund and particularly my successor as welfare director, Glenn McEachern, for the total disability and hospital benefits I received during my recent illness. They were indeed welcome.
I offer my most sincere thanks to the various locals and women's auxiliaries of the UFAWU, as I do to Ken Campbell and the Fisheries Association of British Columbia, for their kindnesses during my sojourn in Shaughnessy Hospital.
Likewise I express my appreciation to my many friends in the fishing industry who took time out from their busy round to visit me while I was being pampered by the hospital staff, especially the nurses.
Our deep freeze at home has never before held such a variety of marine delicacies as during the past year — all thanks to the generosity of my fishermen friends.
I thank you all, for your warm messages, your kindnesses and, above all, your demonstration of the finer qualities that inspire all our strivings for a better world.
T. CBUCK) SUZUKI
Delta, B.C.
Muitipie use concept abused
Editor, The Fisherman:
I am writing to advise you of the environmental problems observed on a trip from Hazelton to Watson Lake.
My particular concern is directed to the area between the village of Kitwancool and Mezia-din Lake. At a point about 51 miles north of Kitwanga on a forest access road which passes Kitwancool, I observed hundreds of coho salmon which were unable to proceed upstream because of trees bulldozed into the stream.
It was evident from the devastation created in the logged off areas that no consideration had been given to multiple use of the forest.
In my opinion, fish and wildlife will suffer immeasurably as a result of this type of logging operation. Because of the topography, logging roads are traversing the slopes. This will result in siltation of'the streams, obstruction of fishways by roads, bridges, culverts, stream diversions and logging trash.
It would seem that pressure should be brought to bear on the provincial government to ensure that adequate supervision in future prevents such mismanagement of our natural resources. It would also seem reasonable that the government should demand a security deposit from the developer to ensure that he does not rape and run, leaving the public with the devastation we commonly see after a resource industry has satisfied its need.
BASIL K. MacALISTER Castlegar, B.C.
Walter Alliott photo
• Retiring after 30 years as a shoreworker, Claus Johnson, cold storage worker at B.C. Packers' Rupert Brand plant in Vancouver, is seen here at a lunch hour party given him by fellow workers at which a presentation was made by manager Dick Boyle. Johnson, praised as "a great shop steward and union man" who has served as a delegate to union conventions and on numerous committees, plans to retire to Half Moon Bay. With him here is another veteran shoreworker, former Rupert Brand employee Alice J. Hamilton, who earlier was chief shop steward at Canfisco's home plant for some years.
THE question of Canadian trade union independence is very much to the fore these days, what with Liberal and Social Credit MLAs displaying a sudden interest completely at variance with their lack of support for labor's rights in the past. And it was with the idea of obtaining another viewpoint that this department interviewed Communist national leader William Kashtan when he was in Vancouver last weekend to attend the Communist party's provincial convention.
"Let's bring the question into focus," he said. "The bureaucratic right wing leadership of the AFL-CIO, by sponsoring the Burke-Hartke bill and supporting other protectionist measures in the U.S. Congress directed to imposing mass unemployment on Canadian workers, is sharpening the relationship between itself and the CLC. Inevitably it's going to sharpen the whole issue of Canadian-American trade union relations and Canadian-American relations as a whole.
"The Communist party, from its founding, has always stood for an independent, united, sovereign trade union movement. Communists were pioneers in the struggle for the independence of the trade union movement of this country." He smiled. "Now you ask me what stand we take.
"It seems to me that there has been a tendency among many unionists, including some Communists, to mix up the question.
"The question is: who's the main enemy of the workers in this struggle? Is the main enemy those workers who, for this or that reason, decide to break with international unions? Or is the main enemy those right wing union bureaucrats in the U.S. pursuing policies inimical to the interests of Canadian workers?
"Having said that, Communists are not advocates of leftist, reckless, adventurous moves. But neither are they defenders of a status quo which perpetuates a situation in which a large part of the trade union movement in this country is not free to determine its own course according to the needs and interests of Canadian members.
"Some international unions, notably the longshoremen and the electrical workers, have already expressed support for the view that Canadian workers have the right to full and unconditional control of their unions. The need is to compel recognition of that view by the leadership of international unions generally."
Pointing out the danger "of allowing chauvinism, narrow nationalism, to turn the working class of this country against the American working class, with which we have bonds of solidarity — the bonds that link us with the working class everywhere," Kashtan said the need was for "an independent, united, sovereign Canadian trade union movement having the full fraternal relations of equals with the American trade union movement.
"It's a complex question, inseparable from the struggle for Canadian independence, genuine independence," he said in conclusion. "But I repeat what I said earlier: the standpoint must be the goal of an independent, united, sovereign trade union movement."
Franco's foreign officials won't like the letter they will receive from Vancouver Labor Council, but neither did council delegates appreciate the letter they received from Jose Montero de Pedro, Spanish charge d'affaires at Ottawa, when it was read to them at their last meeting.
In reply to the council's protest against the arrest of 10 leaders of the Spanish Workers' Commissions, de Pedro blandly asserted that the arrested men were not members of the (fascist sponsored) syndicates "and therefore were not arrested for trade union activities, as stated in your letter, but for illicit association in belonging to an organization (comisiones obreras) which has been declared subversive by the Supreme Court of Spain."
This brought a derisory comment from Len Norris, who had addressed delegates earlier on behalf of the Canadian Committee for a Democratic Spain. "That's the only way they can hope to win trade union rights and democratic liberties," he declared.
But de Pedro reserved what he obviously considered his most telling retort for the final paragraph of his letter.
"It will help us to better understand your concern for this case if you could inform us of your views about the jail sentences being served by Quebec's top three labor leaders . . ."
By now he should have received quite a sheaf of material, including the call for "immediate and complete amnesty" made by the Canadian Labor Congress this month and the council's own demands for immediate release of Louis Laberge, president of the Quebec Federation of labor; Marcel Pepin, president of the Con-Federation of Labor; Marcel Unions, and Yvon Charbonneau, president of the Quebec Teachers Corporation.
As Norris put it, two wrongs don't make a right. And freeing of the Quebec labor leaders has a bearing on the restoration of trade union rights in Spain.
The roots in this province of the late Joe Kipp, the 85-year-old UFAWU honorary member whose obituary we carried in our last issue, go back even further than we had been led to believe when we made inquiries about his life.
We reported that his grandfather, Isaac Kipp, was one of the earliest settlers in the Chilliwack-Agassiz area, moving to this province from Ontario in the eighteen-sixties. But it seems we were a decade out. According to an article by Donald Bruce in the current issue of B.C. Motorist, Isaac Kipp participated in the Fraser River gold rush of 1858, a year later preempting land in the valley on which he and a partner, Jonathan Reece, 'raised beef cattle. "Brought from Oregon, the cattle were seared with the first officially registered brands in B.C."
Reece later opened a butcher's shop in Hope while Kipp, with a Native Indian helper, "hacked a trail to Yale over which cattle were driven to their first market in the then gold rush community," Bruce writes.
"By 1864, Kipp had a quarter section producing oats at the yield of three tons per acre — and worth $100 a ton delivered in the Cariboo. The land was plowed with a 26-inch breaker which was pulled by eight teams of oxen."
UFAWU member Nick Pisac of Vancouver isn't saying what precisely it was that he and two fellow union fishermen saw on the beach near the head of Bute Inlet one early morning last week — except it definitely wasn't a human being or a bear.
Like most British Columbians, Nick is familiar with reported sightings of the legendary Sasquatch, but he's not prepared to say the lonely figure fell into that category either — although that's the interpretation the media put on it judging by reports in the daily press and the CBC national news service.
As Nick tells it, he was sitting in the galley of the Tracey Lee 3 as the seiner cruised about 200 yards offshore, looking for herring, when he spotted this creature "walking very slowly along the beach."
Shouting to Pete Spika and Luko Burmas. he ran out on deck for a better view. All three men watched whatever it was, which had stopped and appeared to be looking in the boat's direction, for a few minutes until it was lost from sight. Nick describes it as being "very tall, maybe 10 feet tall" with skin "a sort of grey rock-like color."
He added, "Look, I know the kind of remark that will be made, but we all saw this thing at the same time. And you can't convince me we all imagined the same thing together."
THE FISHERMAN — MARCH 30, 1973 /5