(See front cover)
During the wintry years of its northern Depression, Canada's financial centre of gravity shifted westward from the first city of the Dominion to the second, from staid old Montreal to booming Toronto. In mental atmosphere the two cities are different as Boston and Chicago. From the golden days of the fur trade to the building of the railroads, from the peopling of the prairies to the rise of lumber and newsprint, the wealth of Canada tended to flow through Montreal. Some of that wealth always came to rest in the snug little mansions at the foot of Mount Royal, and Montreal became about as venturesome as the Bank of England.
Meantime Toronto, with a native itch for the long shot and a grandstand view of Ontario's vast mineral resources, captured Canada's relatively young mining industry. As far back as the century's turn when the big strikes were still in the West, Toronto's interest in mining was so hot that not one but two mining stock exchanges were founded. Later they merged as the Standard Stock & Mining Exchange, long a rival of the conservative old Toronto Stock Exchange, which dates back to 1852. With development of the great Ontario mines around Cobalt, Sudbury, Porcupine and Kirkland Lake, the wealth of the North funneled into Toronto. Thus when the greatest mining boom in Canadian history was touched off by the pound's fall from gold and the New Deal's devaluation of the dollar, Toronto was ready-set to cash in.
Cash in it did. In the five years through 1936 the value of Canada's mineral output soared from $191,000,000 to a new high of $360,000,000, nearly one-third in gold alone. The total of dividend payments by Dominion mines more than tripled. Mining now ranks ahead of lumber and newsprint as the most important Dominion industry outside of agriculture. And the Toronto Stock Exchange, now merged with its old mining rival, not only outstrips the Montreal market in dollar-volume of trading but also exceeds every exchange in North America except New York's "Big Board" and the Curb Exchange. In number of shares traded it even tops the Curb.
This week after a four-day Easter holiday the Toronto Stock Exchange will re-open for business in a brand-new building, the most up-to-date trading floor in the world. Toronto likes to think of this new building as symbolizing not only the new importance of its mining mart but the coming of age of the Dominion's most boisterous industry. To mark this notable event with appropriate fanfare, President Harry Broughton Housser scheduled not one but two formal openings.
The first occurred last fortnight when Broker Housser played banquet host to 800 U. S. and Canadian bigwigs, including President Charles R. Gay of the New York Stock Exchange and President Kenneth S. Templeton of the Chicago Board of Trade. The party afforded a public opportunity for hosts & guests to brush up on such goodwill items as that the U. S. is Canada's best customer, that, next to Britain, Canada is the best U. S. customer, that the U. S. stake in Canada amounts to some $4,500,000,000 (far larger than the Mother Country's) and that Canadians own more than $1,000,000,000 worth of U. S. securities. And after the well-wishing, Broker Housser proceeded to show his potent visitors a few new tricks in their own trade.