DR. FINDLAY IN LONDON.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 23, 7 June 1911, Page 8

DR. FINDLAY IN LONDON.

IMPRESSIONS CROSSING CANADA.

LONDON, April 28. Associated with Sir Joseph Ward as a delegate from New Zealand to the Imperial Conference is the Hon. Dr. J. G. Findlay, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice in the Dominion. Although Dr. Findlay has not eseaped the epidemic of sore throats which spread amongst the Prime Minister's party on the voyage from Canada, he was sufficiently recovered this afternoon to give me an interview.

I asked Dr. Findlay what point of special interest occurred to him in connection with his trip across Camila. The question led to some interesting impressions of Canada, and a comparison with New Zealand, which was decidedly in favour Of the latter. “I would like to say this to the people who undervalue New Zealand as a place to go to,” said Dr. Findlay. “I have been in Canada four times, and through it from East to West twice. I have seen it twice in early spring, and this year we came through in the middle of April. And from East to West the country lay under one unbroken mantle of snow.

“Such towns as Winnipeg were still frozen hard with the touch of winter. The cold was extremely uncomfortable, and when one remembers that Canada has this kind of thing for nearly five months in the year, and that now and then during the visit of a blizzard people are frozen to death near their own doors, the New Zealander is reminded forcibly as to what great advantages his climate has over that of such a country as Canada.

“I met there some New Zealanders, who expressed the difference thus—that they would rather have £BOO a year and the comforts of the New Zealand climate than twice that amount in Canada.”

Town-planning is a subject in which interest is being awakened in New Zealand, and I inquired if he had seen many evidences of its application on his way through Canada.

“The most wonderful development in a town that I saw was in Vancouver,” replied Dr. Findlay. "The growth there is more rapid than I have seen in any town I ever visited. In motoring, as I did in and around the city, I was shown what I was told numbered 3000 different dwelling-houses and shops being erected at the same time.

“The development seems prodigious, and yet I was sorry to observe that no very extensive provision was made, in the new quarter, of up-to-date townplanning. “The population when I was there at the end of 1902 was 40,000. In less than nine years it has grown to 150,000, and the increase for some months past has been at the rate of over 2000 a month. These figures will give some idea of the rate of growth. This growth largely anticipates the expected results from the new great railway systems which are to junction and in some eases terminate at Vancouver.” “THE WEAKEST TO THE WALL.” Dr. Findlay went on to speak of the individualistic spirit in Canada, and the comparative lack of a social conscience. It is the land where the weakest goes to the wall. “While throughout Canada there are signs of great progress,” he said, “and fortunes are being rapidly accumulated

in all directions, there is less provision being made for the very poor and the unfortunate than in any part of Australia or New Zealand.

“The Canadians rather despise—so some of their leaders say—the country which requires to make provision in the shape of an old age pension, because* they declare that Canada enables every man to make ample provision for his old age with his own hands and his own industry. Yet this self-complacent declaration is confronted by men sweeping the snow from the crossings in some of the bigger centres for such a pittance as they can obtain from the charity of passers-by.

“Much might be said upon this topic, but of one thing I am certain. The sense of social life and the activities of the social conscience is and are much less than in New Zealand. By the present trend it can clearly be seen that in Canada, as in America, huge fortunes will be accumulated at one end of the social scale, while particularly in thei enormously rapidly growing centres poverty, squalor, and degradation will be* found at the other end.

“One need only point out what stares one in the face in every large eity in America to prove what will be the ultimate result unless those social agencies for which the Canadian people just now, appear to have little time are placed in some shape upon their Statute Books.”