Canadas Contribution

Northern Advocate, 2 December 1939, Page 6

Canadas Contribution

THE announcement that Canada has delivered the first of eighteen ; bombers built in Quebec provides striking evidence of the important place which Canada holds in the British Empire during wartime. The selection of Canada as a great training school for Empire airmen has made a P 1 0" nounced impression upon the world at large, but particularly Germany, which has realised the immensity of the war effort which Britain will be able to make, in the shape of planes and men to fly them. „ It is not alone in the manufacture of planes and munitions and the training of men that Canada is able to make a war contribution to the Empire. She is a great grain producing country, for she exports more than 80 per cent, of the whea she grows, which is estimated this year at 400,000,000 bushels, and, as in 1928, has been as high as 500,000,000 bushels. In all food production, in fact, she has increased her area under crops in 1914 from 33,000,000 acres to 51,000,000 acres in 1918, and already she has added 10,000,000 acres to the 1918 figure. This suggests her potentiality as a food provider foi Bi itain. However, it was her readiness to adapt herself to new activities in other fields that marked her greatest willingness to help in the Great War. She manufactured nearly every type o± shell required in the war, and 15 per cent, of the total expenditure of the Ministry of Munitions was incurred in Canada, her peak of production being 55 per cent, of all shrapnel shells used in the last Mx months of war. Incidentally, she built 2900 aeroplanes. To-day Canada is producing 87 per cent, of the world’s supply of nickel, a mineral greatly in demand for war purposes; 11 per cent, of copper, 11 per cent, of lead and 9 per cent of zinc. She has an annual peace-time production of 1,500,000 tons ot iron and steel.

The part which Canada might play in a major war was realised even before the crisis which was ended at Munich in 1938, and steps were then taken to assist Canada to change-ovei at short notice from peace-time occupations to that of munitionmaking. This includes the all-important bombers, which, if required, can be flown to Britain by pilots who have been trained on the flying fields of the great Dominion. _