UTOPIA IN CANADA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21829, 16 December 1932, Page 10

UTOPIA IN CANADA

“LOOKING BACKWARD” WHERE MONEY IS NOT USED. A modern Utopia, based on Bellamy’s "Looking Forward” —a work that was one of the talks of the book readers’ world 40 years ago—is in the making in the rural Canadian municipality of Burnaby, set in a lake-strewn forest of tall firs and cedars on the Pacific highway, southward from Vancouver. A community of beautiful but modest homes, gardens- and ranches, beset by depression and unemployment, evolved its own emancipation, under the leadership of a transplanted Scot, Donald MacDonald. Tired of enforced inactivity and relief grants the little community eagerly listened to Mr MacDonald’s plan of creating their own employment, dispensing with money and paying what they owed with their labour.

Mr MacDonald’s Army of the Common Good, as. it is called, now numbers 700 adults. More recruits are being sworn in. The preliminary to membership is answering the following questions on the attestation form:—What is your training? Your physical condition? What work do you prefer Do you own your own home? Are you renting? Have you read Bellamy’s books? What other economic writers have you read? Here is the attestation:—“ I hereby enlist in the Army of the Common Good, and agree to abide by the rules and regulations, and promise to fulfil whatever duty is assigned to me to the best of my ability, to abide by the will of the majority, to be loyal to the highest interests of the citizens of Canada, to make honesty and justice the basis of all my dealings with my fellow-men.” The army is incorporated under the British Columbia Societies Act, and has six directors. Shares are one dollar each. Neither salaries nor wages are paid. There is a general store and coupons have been issued to the amount of £IOOO, the value of the stock. Directors are pledged not to issue more coupons than the amount of goods on hand. Coupons, which must be-- signed by their owner, countersigned by the secretary, ore good either for com; modifies in, the store or for hours of labour.