FUTURE OF CANADA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19386, 22 July 1926, Page 6

FUTURE OF CANADA.

COMING DEVELOPMENTS. ERA OF EXPLOITATION. THE NEW CITY OF ARVIDA. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT. J TORONTO. June 5. Is Canada entering a long-term era of exploitation and prosperity that will rival or surpass that of twenty years ago ? The answer obtained in manv quarters is a deliberate affirmative. What is to be the character of the new development and where will it take place ? Take a map of North America and a pair of compasses. With Toronto as centre and a radius of 500 miles describe a circle which will pass through Chicago to the west and Richmond, Virginia, to the south. At Cochrane, Ontario, the northernmost tip of the circle, draw a tangent stretching from the Saguenay in northeastern Quebec, across the hinterland of Canada to a point hundreds of miles north of Winnipeg on the west. Along this tangent developments are to-day under way involving a capital expenditure of more than £50,000,000. And that just begins to tell the story. The era of exploitation twenty years ago was based on railway construction. It opened up a great area of wheatgrowing lands in the north-west which made Canada the world's greatest wheat exporter. Nevertheless, when the period of railway construction ended, the boom collapsed. The war came and except for war-time prosperity Canada's great forward movement has seemed checked. New Undertakings. The new exploitations will be based on huge industrial enterprises, on mineral and water-power developments, and with agriculture as a subsidiary adventure. Unlike railways the new enterprises aro designed to be permanently self-support-ing from the beginning. It has been the fashion to denounce Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the other Canadians who were responsible for the era of unparalleled railway construction of the pre-war period as visionaries who loaded Canada with a millstone of unnecessary railway mileage. The fact remains that it is that railway exploitation that makes the approaching advance possible. The area of current activity in eastern Canada roughly parallels the line of the National Transcontinental Railway, stretching from Winnipeg to Quebec, sometimes described as Canada's greatest white elephant. The line has made accessible resources in minerals, in water power, in pulp and paper, whose potentialities are as yet only guessed at. , aHitherto Canada has been described as length without breadth. The new development in a latitude of 500 miles north of Toronto will give it breadth. And already eager pioneers are clamouring to get still further north, as witness the agitation for a railway to Hudson Bay, urged not merely to provide a questionable new ocean "route but to tap new natural resources. Individually, the most spectacular development in northern Canada at the moment is on the Saguenay at Lake St. John, in north-eastern Quebec, hitherto known only to tourists and fishermen With a natural mill pond in Lake St. John of 375 square miles and a natural drop of 300 ft. to tidewater it is an ideal power site. The Duke-Price Company—including John B. Duke, tobacco king, and the late Sir William Price—started a year or two ago to develop 1.500,000 horsepower and erect the largest paper mills in the world. Then the Aluminium Company of America, attracted fcv the cheap power, came along to build their export plant. Instead of buying power at retail they ended by buying out the whole DukePrice Company, and have inaugurated a development which, it is said, will, in scale and speed, rival Florida or California. Name of New City. Arvida is to be the name of the new Aluminium City. It is a name compounded of the first two letters of the Christian, middle and surname of Arthur Vincent Davis, president of the Aluminium Company of A.merica. It replaces the more picturesque but awkward name of Cheste-a-Caron. Eight months ago Arvida was not even a flag station. It did not exist, either in word or in embryo. In a year or two Arvida is expected to have a population of 25,000, and some dreamers talk about 150,000 in five years. But so far it has not even a real-estate office or a civic publicity bureau. It has not even a woman—an Eve-less Eden. But it has two or throe thousand men busy as ants rushing up the gaunt skeletons of huge factories. All notices in Arvida are printed in English, French and Finnish. There is also a sprinkling of Russians, Italians and Greeks, but the population is predominantly French, and it is expected to remain so. ' The Aluminium Corporation anticipates no trouble in getting a supply of labour in Quebec. It will do something to stop the migration to New England. Arvida, it is said, will double the world's output of aluminium. It will import bauxite, the ore of aluminium, from British Guiana, and its cheaplyoperated electric furnaces will turn out aluminium utensils for the world's kitchens and aluminium plates for the world's aeroplanes. It may make possible an era of aeroplane " flivvers." The original investment of the Aluminium Corporation at Arvida is estimated at £20,000,000.