FUTURE CANADIAN RACE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18758, 11 January 1923, Page 7

FUTURE CANADIAN RACE

A NOTE OF WARNING. It is well, as I sought 'to show recently* with Canadian childhood to-day; but no, student of our Imperial population, which is* in the last analysis, our Imperial all, can be wholly content if he seeks to look a littlo further into the future (writes a medical, correspondent of the Observer from Mon-; treal). Upon the vast and generous surface : of this dominion, • superabundantly provided with all that mankind requires for life and; health and happiness, a distinctive race, to . bo called Canadian, is now in the earliest stages of its formation. If wa endeavour, to foresee its 'quality, we must not merely appraise the environment which will in part, fashion and determine it; we must also coneider the intrinsic nature of tho stuff, the germplasm, as Weismatm taught us to call it. of which that race will be made, and

upon which that naturally perfect environment will work. And hero wo have to ask two questions; First, what kind of immigrants are now being, and! are in the future likely to be, admitted into Canada; and.; second, what are the qualitative and quantitative facts of the birth-rate among those who constitute the Canadian population of to-day? * Tho answers to these questions, as 1 see them, are very far from, being so entirely satisfactory as the answers to all the. necessary questions that may be asked

concerning the environment. Canada today is empty; a population of. eight or nine millions is nothing in 'comparison with the area and .vital resources of the dominion, and none know this bettor' than Canadians themselves. _ Population fa/ greatly needed, and one obvious source of it ~ is immigration. On the negative aide it' i» evident that persons diseased in body and . mind should- bo excluded and thus, before' one. enters the country, one signs a statement asserting one’s freedom from such dis- , ease, and the negro porter -on the train 1 , from Nave York signs a further statement ’ to the effect that the passenger in question' appears to him to he free from such dis-'; case. On the positive side, most of those whose opinion determines action in Canada appear to believe that, by means of a suit- . able policy, such as our own Colonial Office has lately furthered by legislation, an nn-.' : limited number of the right kind of imihi; •• grant, desired to be'of British 'stock, can be obtained, and thus the problem of poplilalion can be solved. 1 do not believe that . this view is well founded. By all means let-’ us, in the name oi' Imperial Demography, ap- .. . pland the efforts of the Salvation Army, and , of Dr Bernardo's Homes, in sending suitable emigrants from Britain to Canada, but mealy while we must beware of supposing that any. factor but one can suffice to maintain, great..,; race. . .-'■■•H

That factor is worthy parenthood upon then ,' soil which is to bo populated. But the ~ .qualitative facts of the birth-rate are, weliv. nigh as unsatisfactory in Canada as in Bn- ; tain. The race is not being-chiefly recruited from the physically and mentally best decay. ,of parenthood, as in older peoples, is ■ threa- -: tened. Not, however, to French-speaking. .. and Roman Catholic Quebec, but to English-,; ; speajfing Canada does the eugenic warning' apply that decay of parenthood is the mortal - disease of nations. •