PHOTO — BILL CAMPBELL PHOTOGRAPHICS

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Youth bolster B.C. walks

B.C. MARCHES FOR PEACE ... Labor contributes to Kamloops Walk for Peace (I) while in Victoria veterans make their sentiments visible on April 25.

While thousands marched in the annual
Walk for Peace in Vancouver, thousands
more marched in communities around the
province, in some cases doubling the partic-
ipation in peace walks of previous years.

And in one community, the numbers
may have been slightly down, but — heart-
eningly — the participation of young
people was up, the legacy of a visit by Stu-
dents Against Global Extermination.

Trade unionists, church people, com-
munity organizers and youth took to the
streets under sunny skies in Prince Rupert,
Courtenay, Kamloops and Victoria on
April 25.

In Victoria, participation in the sixth

annual Walk for Peace nearly doubled over .

the previous year Saturday as an estimated
8,000 marched from Centennial Square to
the rallying point on the legislature lawn.

Marchers, bolstered by unprecedented
Numbers of young people, heard a brief
Speech from Victoria Mayor Gretchen
Brewin before moving down Douglas
Street.

At the rally Dr. Mary-Wynne Ashford,
National vice-president of Canada’s branch
of the International Physicians for the Prev-

ention of Nuclear War talked about steps to
ensure the prevention of world’s most fear-
some health hazard —nuclear war. Ash-
ford was one of the delegates to the recent
peace conference in Moscow who met with
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

More than 400 individuals, along with
127 organizations, supported the walk in a
newspaper advertisement.

Up-Island in Courtenay, the peace walk
saw 800 — more than double the usual
number for the area’s peace events —
march through the downtown core to a
rally at Lewis Park. The march was the
result of the pooled efforts of the peace
groups in Courtenay, Campbell River and
Quadra Island.

Moira Walker, an executive member of
the Greater Victoria Disarmament Group
and of the Voice of Women, spoke of her
attendance at a women’s peace conference
in Leningrad last fall, while University of
B.C. professor and peace activist Dr. Luis
Sobrino hit the spiralling arms race.

A key feature of the march and rally,
besides the presence of dozens of trade
union banners, was the increased participa-
tion of youth, organizer Janet Fairbanks

Kamloops-Shuswap
Peace Council

sends May Day greetings to all our Trib readers.

reported. Crowds were enthralled by a skit
from high school students performing “A
Day in the Life of Emergency Canada —
spoofing the agency’s nuclear war emer-
gency pamphlets — and by a group of
jugglers who stopped on their way to a
scheduled performance at the Comox
armed forces base.

Over in Prince Rupert some 200 marched ~

in the annual peace walk organized by the
Prince Rupert Organization for Disarma-
ment (PROD).

The march was preceded earlier in the
week by a student peace-balloon launching
initiative and had the backing of city coun-
cil. Speakers included student Treana Nagy,
NDP MLA Dan Miller, and labor council
president Lorne Quick.

In Kamloops, the recent visit by Mont-
real students Seth Klein, Desiree McGraw,
Alison Carpenter and Max Faille — the
four members of the touring Students

GREETINGS

ON MAY DAY
: rom
-Canada-USSR

Friendship Society

Fraser Valley Branch

May Day

FORA
NUCLEAR
WEAPONS

FREE CANADA

Against Global Extermination — was felt
with the greatly increased participation by
teenagers. Particularly evident were stu-
dents from Kamloops secondary school
who, after hearing the SAGE members
speak, organized Students Against Nuclear
Extermination (SANE).

Some 350 marchers moved from Allan
Mathews school through the downtown to
a rally at Riverside Park to hear speakers
Allan Richards, a United Church minister,
and president John Harper of the Kam-
loops Labor Council.

The Kamloops News supported the walk
with an editorial and a free advertisement.

May Day
Greetings
from MIDA

Mid-Island Disarmament
Association

“for a nuclear weapons
free Nanaimo and a
nuclear weapons free
B.C. by 1990”

FOR
JOBS
NOT
. BOMBS

Fraser Valley Peace C ouncil

594-0539

531-1009

to all our friends
and supporters

Free Zone in 1987.

B.C. Peace Council,
712, 207 W. Hastings St.

May Day Greetings

Together let us make British
Columbia a Nuclear Weapons '

Vancouver, B.C. V6B 1H7

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 29, 1987 e 13