WEALTH OF WATER.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 25 August 1924, Page 7

WEALTH OF WATER.

WHITE WIZARD OF CANADA. ELECTRICITY FOR POWER AND HEAT. The Hon. P. C. Larkin, High Commissioner for Canada, dealing with Canada’s wealth in water iu the Wesleyan Magazine, shows, as that magazine states, that “the history of Canada’s development js enriched with a wealth of romance. But no part of the story is more fascinating than that which tells of the yoking of the thunderous waterfalls and foaming rapids in man’s service.” “Coal at the beginning of the nineteenth century transformed England from a country of villages and scattered farmsteads into the unrivalled leader of the industrial world. What coal achieved for the Mother Country it is conceivable that water, the white wizard of the Dominion, may do for her daughter on the North American Continent,” says the Hon. P. C. Larkin. “Water power is to the industrial life of a country what the mainspring is to a watch. But with this considerable difference: the spring needs winding; the water runs on for ever. Canada owes a vast number of the amenities of life to the running water of her rivers, lakes, and streams. You press a button in your hotel bedroom, and the place is illuminated; you take a joy ride on the electric trolley; you turn on. the electric stove to cook your dinner. “It is the waterfall that lights you, that propels you, that warms and cooks for you. In the steel furnaces, the pumping works, the engineei’ing shops, the pulp mills*, the sawmills, the factories of a hundred varieties, the busy hum of their machinery is an echo of the thunder of the waterfall a hundred miles away. It is the waterfall thatlights the prairie village, and through the telephone annihilates distance between the isolated homestead and its neighbour a dozen leagues away. “In short, Canada possesses in her water-power a slave as puissant and obedient as any pictured in Arabian story. While every passing year diminishes the content of the coalfields and raises the cost of production, it adds to the exploitation of these waterpowers. The available water-power of the Dominion is estimated at 18,250,(XX) horse-power; the developed power is only one-seventh of that enormous total.

“This wonderful reservoir of force is more and more making Canada a centre for the manufacture of many products in which power is ail important raw material. The great waterfalls of the Dominion are being rapidly surrounded by plants for the production of aluminium, calcium carbide, carborundum, and various other chemical products. The industry which in importance comes second only to agricul-ture-lumber and wood-pulp—owes its position almost as much to the presence of abundant water-power as to the vast forest wealth of the Dominion. “The possession of these unlimited stores of “white coal“ undoubtedly opens the road to a vast development of industrial operations in the Dominion. which may in days to come place Canada at the very* summit of the manufacturing nations of the world. The tendency in this direction is illustrated by recently-collected statistics concerning the expansion of joint stock companies in the Dominion.

“Tn 191.9 there were 11 companies incorporated in Canada, with a capital in excess of 10.000,000 dollars. In 1921 the number of such companies had risen to 2\l. The mini her this year will he in excess of 30. Development of water-power resources. lumbering and paper and pulp operations account for most of these big corporations. “But whilst these vast prospects loom upon Canada’s horizon, it remains true that her most vital interest will still lie her function as the granary of the world. Every stimulus that eaii he applied to the cultivation of the broad and fertile plains of t'he West adds to the Dominion’s world-useful-ness and internal wealth. To some degree the harnessing of her rapids and waterfalls to. the service of man has effected considerable changes in. the amelioration of the conditions under which the basic industry of agriculture is carried on. Already what would have, appeared to our forefathers mechanical miracles are the commonplace of life and work in the homestead.

“But one dreams of a time when the more laborious and wearisome operations of farming will be effected by electrically-driven machinery, and when the lack of labourers will' no longer circumscribe the fanners’ enterprise. With the development of hydro-elec-tric energy, following on the'-cxploita-\tion of water energy now running to waste, man’s ingenuity will he concentrated upon the application of this cheap and abundant power to the needs of the agriculturist. . “Life on the land will be revolutionised. Labour-saving devices for the housewife, as well as auxiliary power for the fanner, recreation and swift change of scene for his family, a clean and hen Ithv life liberated from drudgery—those all lie in embryo in the. laughing streams, broad lakes, and majestic rivers that intersect the land <>f the Maple Leaf.’’