BRIGHT OUTLOOK

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 45, 21 August 1930, Page 9

BRIGHT OUTLOOK

DOMINION OF CANADA

WEALTH OF RESOURCES

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, 'sth July.

The present generation in Canada feearcely knows the meaning of hard ;times.. Individuals or groups suffer Occasionally, but the country is well iable to provide for them. The World War left Canada far more prosperous ,-han it found it. The pains of adjustment were no more than growing pains, followed by a period, from 1925 to 3.930, of the greatest development the jeountry has ever experienced.

In volume of total foreign trade, Canada now ranks fifth among the nations; after Great Britain, the United States, Germany, and France. Normally only two countries, the United States and India, have larger favourable trade balances, and only one country in the world, New Zealand, has iso favourable a balance of trade in proportion to population. New Zealand, again, is the only country with larger •trade or larger exports per head than Canada. The United States, for example, with the world's largest export trade, sells abroad about £8 worth of goods per capita per annum, compared with £26 for Canada.

It is not generally known that Canada now produces from one-quarter to one-third of the world's wheat exports. The Dominion has become in the last four years the world's largest producer of paper, mines 90 per cent. of its nickel, and has virtually a world monopoly of asbestos. The Canadian Pacific Railway is the largest transportation system in the world; the Canadian National Railway the second greatest railway unit. The largest life insurance corporation in the British Empire (as distinct from general insurance) is Canadian. The Dominion has two of the Empire's largest universities, one French and one English-speak-ing. Montreal'has the Empire's largest office building, Toronto its largest hotel. Railway mileage is second among the countries, and per capita Railway equipment the largest. AN ENEECKETIC PEOPLE. From the days of the canoe and dog 'team to the tractor and aeroplane, Canada's progress has not been entirely a gift of the gods. There is a fierce energy about the country and its people, East and West, which finds any outlet in big national undertakings and private -enterprises, backed by an immense flow of American and British capital. The legendary solitudes of the Arctic are fast coming within tho scope of economic exploration. Onequarter of the world's cool reserves, limitless mining resources and water powers yet await development. From existing mines in the pre-Cambrian shield a billion dollars worth of metals have been taken. Known ore reserves in these mines aro estimated at three times that value. This takes no account of British. Columbia, the Maritimes, or the Arctic Islands, all immensely rich s_. mineral ores. Here on the ancient rocks of the northern' wilderness will be founded such a chain of metal industries as will prodigiously magnify Canada's wealth to a world that is becoming more dependent on its metal supplies.

Tho potential hydro-eleetrie power of the North America has its centre of gravity just north of the Canadian border; gradually the focus of industry is moving steadily toward it. In the St. Lawrence is one of Nature's potential miracles; latent in its tumbling waters is 5,000,000 horse-power of electric energy, four-fifths of which belongs to Canada —enough to employ 1,500,000 workmen, and support a new population of 7,500,000 in tho St. Lawrence basin. Together with this power, Canada will presently develop a waterway for ocean-going ships reaching 2000 miles into the heart of the continent, serving a population as .great as that of the British Isles. The vision of Sir John MacDwnald, the'first Prime Minister, of "a forest of smoking chimneys" is approaching its fulfilment. Tariff or no tariff, the day is fast approaching when the United States will buy Canadian beef and wheat because they cannot do without them. Thia change-over of 100,00„,t)00 people to a food import basis will be more sweeping in its effects that the food dependary of oithcr Great Britain or Germany. Canada's expanding agriculture will yet find a vast agricultural gw__et; at its very door.