(See Cover)
Upon the whole surface of the globe, there is no more spacious and splendid domain than Canada open to the activity and genius of free men. —Winston Churchill, Ottawa, Jan. 14,1952
In Wall Street last week, barely five weeks after it had been freed from controls to establish its own value, the Canadian dollar hit par with the U.S. dollar. Across the world, in the free markets of Paris, Milan, Tangier and Beirut, Canadian dollars were suddenly in such brisk demand that money-changers priced them at 101 U.S. cents. In the confused hippodrome of international finance, the wide, moss-green Bank of Canada banknote was running neck & neck with the U.S. dollar as the world's most desirable currency.
The robustious Canadian dollar was a symbol of Canada's growing strength, and the diploma for her industrial coming-of-age. In twelve years, Canada has undergone the most impressive industrial development of any nation in the world, a surge of industry and prosperity that Wall Street's conservative investment firm of Lehman Bros, calls "the biggest business story of this decade." Since 1939, Canada has:
¶ Quadrupled her national production, climbing from a lowly par with Norway and Sweden to a point where she nearly triples the output of these Scandinavian countries and rivals that of France.
¶ Made a 50% advance in the Canadian standard of living, raising her average income for a family of four to $4,000 a year—$622 above the corresponding U. S. average.
¶ Kept her finances in splendid solvency (for the first nine months of 1951, she had a $721.6 million government surplus).
Though still dwarfed by the productivity of the U.S., Canada's growing industrial muscle has expanded her world influence to an extent never before achieved by a country of 14 million inhabitants. The swelling flood of foodstuffs, metals, oil, newsprint and goods flowing from her fields, forests, mines and factories has given Canada a position of importance in the free world's councils subordinate only to the U.S. and Britain. Canada now supplies:
¶ More than 90% of the free world's nickel, and an important share of the zinc, copper, aluminum and other strategic metals for the West's defense.
¶ Half the world's newsprint; three out of five of the world's newspaper pages are printed on Canadian paper.
¶ A growing share of North America's oil and natural gas from the new-found Alberta fields, the "Texas of the North."
¶ A substantial (but highly secret) supply of uranium for U.S. atomic bombs.
¶The world's second-biggest export wheat crop, a source of food for 71 nations.