CANADA: Boom Town

A Tulsa oilman walked into the office of Edmonton's Finance Commissioner one day last week and said: "Oil's sure pulling this town out of the dumps." Said Commissioner John Hodgson: "You've got it wrong, man. We were booming before. Oil has just doubled the headaches."

In the two years since the nearby Leduc oil strike opened up Canada's biggest oil area, Commissioner Hodgson has had headaches aplenty. His new city budget, just completed, calls for $26 million (up from a prewar $9,000,000). Edmonton has never really caught its breath since the war, when it was the supply base for the...

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