five million native born is being called on to absorb yearly a third as
many immigrants as the United States with eighty million native
born?[4] He has been so busy handling the rush of prosperity that has
come in on him like a tidal wave that he has not had time to pause over
the problems of this new destiny--the fact, for instance, that in two
more decades the newcomers will outnumber the native born.


II

Unless the edifice be top heavy, beneath it all must be the rock bottom
of fact. Beneath the tide is the pull of some eternal law. What facts
is Canada building her future on? What pull is beneath the tide of
four hundred thousand homeseekers a year? What has doubled population
and almost doubled foreign trade?

It is almost a truism that the farther north the land, the greater the
fertility, if there be any fertility at all. There is first the supply
of unfailing moisture, with a yearly subsoiling of humus unknown to
arid lands. Canada is super-sensitive about her winter climate--the
depth and intensity of the frost, the length and rigor of her winters;
but she need not be. It should be cause of gratitude. Frost
penetrating the ground from five to twelve feet--as it does in the
Northwest--guarantees a subterranean root irrigation that never fails.
Heavy snow--let us acknowledge frankly snow sometimes banks western
streets the height of a man--means a heavy supply of moisture both in
thaw and rain. There is second the long sunlight. An earth tilted on
its axis toward the sun six months of the year gives the North a
sunlight that is longer the farther north you go. When the sun sets at
seven to eight in New York, it sets at eight to nine in Winnipeg, and