BRITISH COLUMBIA

Vancouver and province walk for peace Saturday

The peace movement is. getting bigger
and is spreading out.

While the organizers of the annual
Walk for Peace in Vancouver Saturday
are aiming for a participation rate match-
ing or surpassing last year’s 100,000 figure,
the emphasis is as much on local peace
events in the province-wide protest against
the arms race this Saturday.

With organizing going on full-tilt for
the growing Vancouver and Victoria

‘peace walks, plans are also underway for

marches and rallies in several Interior and
Northern B.C. communities, from Prince
Rupert over to the Kootenays.

Star Wars, the so-called Strategic
Defence Initiative of the U.S. Reagan
administration, will be a key theme in the
5-km 1985 Walk for Peace in Vancouver.

Carrying the message that the Star
Wars laser-in-space scheme is a major des-
tabilizer in the arms race and prejudicial to
a positive outcome of the current U.S.-
USSR peace talks in Geneva. will be
former Canadian disarmament ambassa-
dor George Ignatius.

Currently chancellor of the University
of Toronto, Ignatius has first-hand
knowledge of the arms race and nuclear-
weapons treaties as a former disarmament

ambassador in Geneva, as well as ambas-
sador to NATO and the United Nations.

He'll share the stage at Sunset Beach
Park, the rallying point, with New Zealand
Labor Party MP Jim Anderton, former
Labor Party president and chair of the
party’s policy council. That council is
responsible for New Zealand’s banning of
warships carrying nuclear weapons from
the South Pacific nation’s ports.

Dr. Dorothy Goresky, of the University
of B.C. hospital and national president of

the Physicians for Social Responsibility is

the other keynote speaker.

Assembly for the Vancouver event beg-
ins as usual at 11:30 a.m., at Kitsilano
Beach park for the walk across the Bur-
rard Street bridge and through the down-
town core en route to English Bay. Trade
union marchers, however, will assemble at
Seaforth Park at the south foot of the
bridge. The march begins at 12 noon.

Several local high schools — Carson
Graham in North Vancouver and Ideal
and Eric Hamber schools in Vancouver
— have several peace events planned for
this week. At Carson Graham, students
have erected a peace camp lasting until
Friday night.

In Victoria, marchers are assembling at

Centennial Square at 12 noon for the city’s
annual Walk for Peace. The marchers will
move out at 12:30 p.m. for a rally at the
Legislature.

Star Wars, which movements nation-
ally are declaring the number-one priority,
will be featured in the speeches of George
Morrison, a United Church official and
member of the Veterans for Multilateral
disarmament, and Helen Spiegelman of
End the Arms Race.

Entertainment for the Victoria rally
includes the Seattle political rock group,
the Crustaceans, Washington state singer
Holly Graham and other groups.

Up the coast, Prince Rupert is hosting is
first annual peace walk, organized by the
Prince Rupert Organization for Disar-
mament. The walk through the downtown
area begins and ends at the local United
Fishermen and Allied Workers Union hall
for a picnic and rally. Participants will be
asked to provide photos of their families
on the march which will be sent to Prime
Minister Brian Mulroney inside a large
paper mache dove.

In Prince George the third annual Walk
for Peace carries the theme, “Join hands
against nuclear arms.” Participants will
march through the downtown to St.

Michael’s hall for a rally and fund-raising
lunch. Money raised will go to the Green-
ham Common women’s peace camp in
England, and the Nanoose Bay Conver-
sion Project.

In Vernon, marchers assemble Apr. 27
at city hall at 11 a.m. fora march to Polson
Place Park for a rally.

The Salmon Arm branch of the
Kamloops-Shuswap Peace Council plans
a march beginning at 11 a.m. No further
details were available at press time.

In Kamloops, the Peace Council, in
conjunction with Project Ploughshares,
plans a noon walk to a rally at Riverside
Park. Speakers include Robin Denton
from the B.C. Peace Council, Jose Chacon
from the Canadian-Latin American
Committee, and NDP MLA Rosemary
Brown.

Citizens from Trail, the Slocan Valley,
Nelson and Kaslo will participate in the
region’s first annual Walk for Peace Sat-
urday, sponsored by the Slocan Citizens
for Peace. They'll march a 5-km route
from New Denver to Silverton to hear
speakers Mickey Kinakin of the Canada-
USSR Association, former Trail mayor
and Mine-Mill union official Buddy De
Vito and other speakers.

{

The “two superpowers” theory of the
nuclear arms race got short shrift from

_visiting Soviet trade unionists who

received a standing ovation from the
Vancouver and District Labor Council
meeting Apr. 16. :

“We want to express here our sincere
wish for peace. We don’t want another
war. There is hardly a family in the
USSR which did not suffer some loss
during World War Two,” Yuri Bobkov
of the USSR’s State Commerce and
Consumers Co-operatives Workers
Union said.

“We absolutely reject the idea of equal
responsibility for the arms race. We
think you know of the many Soviet
proposals for reductions in the arms

race, including the call for a nuclear

freeze and the pledge not to be the first to
use nuclear weapons,” he told the labor
council delegates.

“Tt is not our fault that the U.S. has
rejected these proposals,” Bobkov said.

Bobkov was one of 16 trade unionists
and academics from the USSR who
toured Canada and met with their coun-
terparts earlier this month. The group
had been refused visas to enter the Uni-
ted States shortly before the tour.

“Tt is a crime that these ambassadors
of peace were denied visas to the U.S. ata
time when peace talks are going on in
Geneva,” said Marine Workers and

Norton Youngs of the Telecommunication Workers Union presents gifts on
behalf of Vancouver trade unionists to visiting Soviet unionists, including
Viadimir Penchekhin of the Medical Workers Union.

Soviet trade unionists’
calls for peace lauded

i ee iS

Boilermakers Union president John
Fitzpatrick.

“Whether we live under socialism or
capitalism, we have things in common:
we need security, food, shelter and above
all, peace,” he remarked.

“As trade unionists we know that the
arms race diverts resources from social
needs, in your country as well as ours,”
Bobkov, speaking in English, told the
labor council delegates.

Soviet film actress Natalya Gundar-
eva said she had viewed the Expo 86 film
on transportaiton and realized “how
small the world really is.

“Tt is terrible to think that one day it
could vanish (through nuclear war) and
our children would not have the chance
to live their lives,” said Gundareva in an
impassioned speech.

Speaking through a translator, Gun-
dareva, a member of the Cultural
Workers Union, said Soviet artists are
“deeply involved” in peace work, and
“we hope that our campaigns for peace
around the world will unite all working
people.”

Putting his own plug for Saturday’s
Walk for Peace, Bobkov gave his “‘mes-
sage”’ to Canadian trade unionists: ““We
must work for solutions to the arms race,
today, for peace today. Trade unionists
in Canada and the USSR can be united
in finding those solutions.”

~

Hundreds brave ‘gauntlet’ _

to support pro-choice

Women entering the Morgentaler abor-
tion clinic in Toronto are forced to run a
gauntlet of abuse from anti-choice demon-
strators outside the clinic who call them
“murderers” and demand they “repent.”

And in Vancouver-Apr. 13.some-900
people who had tickets to attend a public
meeting to hear Dr. Henry Morgentaler
were forced to run that same gauntlet.

A mob of shouting, pushing demonstra-
tors who variously sang hymns and hurled
abuse at those attending the meeting, had
arrived at John Oliver School hours before
the meeting sponsored by the Concerned
Citizens for Choice on Abortion was set to
begin.

Two lines of marshals with arms linked
cleared a narrow path through the hostile
crowd to permit access to ticket holders
who were pushed and shoved, insulted and
harassed as they made their way into the
meeting.

“Those people out there want to turn the
clock back 25 years to the days of self-
induced abortions and back-alley butchers,”
said Morgentaler in opening his speech.

“But across this country I sense a grow-
ing tidal wave of indignation against this
group of fanatics who seek to deny women
their fundamental reproductive rights,” he
added.

The enthusiasm of those inside the meet-
ing was not dampened by the demonstra-
tion outside which delayed the start of the
meeting by 30 minutes. Morgentaler
received a prolonged standing ovation as he
entered the meeting hall, and his speech
together with those from Carolyn Egan, a
representative from the Ontario Coalition
for Abortion Clinics, Vancouver gynecolo-
gist Dr. Nelson Savein, and Vancouver
Ald. Libby Davies who introduced Mor-
gentaler, prompted frequent sustained
applause.

Morgentaler was in Vancouver as part of
a cross-country speaking tour to publicize
the campaign for legal free-standing abor-
tion clinics and to raise money for the Mor-
gentaler Clinics Legal Defence Fund.

During his 25-minute speech Morgen-
taler repeatedly condemned Canada’s abor-
tion laws as a “national scale,” noting that
“even the country of the Pope has better
abortion laws than Canada.”

He outlined his long legal battle to estab-
lish abortion clinics in three provinces.
-Already acquitted on abortion charges by
four juries, he has yet to face charges in
connection with the clinic in Winnipeg.
Those.charges have been stayed pending the
outcome of the Crown appeal on the Onta-
rio case.

“In Manitoba we have to fight on four
fronts,” he said. “We’re up against the NDP
government, the Winnipeg police who raid
the clinic regularly and take all our equip-

ment and don’t give it back, a fundamental-
ist sect of anti-abortionists and the Manitoba
College of Physic-

ians and Surgeons.

to win,” he said.

risks involved in

tion while women
wait out the present

HENRY
MORGENTALER obtaining approval
through a hospital’s accredited review
committee.
“We pride ourselves on the excellent
medical care available to Canadian people

but why don’t we provide women with that

same standard of care?” he asked.

This point was also taken up by Egan,
who emphasized that for many women

across the country there is no longer any
access to a therapeutic abortion committee,
as anti-choice forces take over hospital
boards and abolish the committees.

“We must recognize anti-choice as the
cutting edge of reaction,” she said.

“We are in a historical struggle. The
struggle for abortion rights is the first step to
full reproductive rights for women. The
right to free and accessible day care, the
right to jobs with fair wages, this is what we
are fighting for.”

Citing the trade union movement as “our
most vocal and consistent ally. . willing to
put its weight on the side of women in this
struggle” she called on trade unionists to
continue to press for resolutions in their
union calling for removal of Section 251
from the Criminal Code and the establish-
ment of legal abortion clinics.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 24, 1985 e 3

} “But Pm confi-
} dent that we're going

He went on to
outline the medical

delaying an abor-

‘ ee

legal procedure of