STEERAGE TO CABINET

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 October 1928, Page 8

STEERAGE TO CABINET

SPECTACULAR CAREERS.

Three immigrants from the British Isles now occupy seats in the Canadian Cabinet. They are the Ministers of Railways, Labour, and Immigration. They have all made their own way in . Canada without any adventitious aid. They arrived in a new country without capital and without friends, and their experience (Reuter s Ottawa correspondent writes) shows what young men going to Canada can accomplish on their own. Charles Dunning, now Minister of Railways, went from England at the age of 17 years; Peter Heenan, Minister of Labour, born in Ireland, arrived in Canada at the age of 28 years, in the same year, 1902, as Dunning; while Robert Forke, now Minister of Immigration, left Scotland for Canada in 1882, at the age of 22 years. All three tried their hand first at farming. Dunning’s rise was meteoric. At the age of 26 years he was vice-presi-dent of the Saskatchewan Graingrowers, general manager of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevative Company, and member of the Canadian Council of Agriculture. At 34 he was Provincial Treasurer of Saskatchewan a few years later Premier of the Province, and at 41 Minister of Railways in the Dominion Cabinet. Heenan’s career was also spectacular. After being a professional football player in the Old Country he tried engineering for a construction company in Costa Rica. An attack of yellow fever necessitated a colder climate. He chose Canada, and went on an Alberta ranch. He left that to become a locomotive engineer, got into the Labour councils on Ontario, and 17 years after coming to Canada became a member of the Ontario Legislature. Six years later he was representing in the Federal House a constituency larger in area than the whole of Great Britain. In 1926 he became Minister of Labour. Forke’s career held more - the moral of the fable of the hare and the tortoise. Forke began farming, and kept at it. He soon got interested in munibipal politics, and became in 1921 member of the Dominion House of Commons.

DAYLIGHT SAVING. Reniemberl Advance the clock half-an-hour to-night. Daylight saving commences to-morrow.