The departure of the Aging Turks--Ontario gets a new school reader
THROUGH the habit of a century, Canada emerged from the Second World War lamenting its modesty, decrying its inferiority complex, and asking itself quite audibly why it was so timid about raising its voice.
But the half-true stereotypes of a half generation before were no more than the roughest, most approximate sort of fit for the Canada of 1945.
Canada had learned to recognize the sound of its own footsteps. If, in this first year of what passed for a new peace, they seemed to be taking many directions, they still had a firmer ring than ever before. In another decade they might lose some of their sharpness amid the muffling sounds of Hollywood, NBC-TV, and a new rush of U.S.A. investment money. At times they would disappear entirely amid the thunder of the cold war and the overwhelming pronouncements of Washington. But in this confident year of 1945, no country in the world was more confident than Canada, or had better cause to be.
The first war had established Canada as a tough little military nation, precocious and resourceful. In spite of the red herring of conscription the second war confirmed this part of the country's place in the world. And economically and industrially it had grown beyond imagining.
Thanks to efficient price and wage controls, heavy taxation, and war-bond drives, the treasury had spent more than eighteen billion dollars on the war--an average of six thousand dollars for every family of four--and emerged at least theoretically solvent. It had paid its own way (or assumed its own debts) and in addition
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Ordeal by Fire:Canada, 1910-1945.
Contributors: Ralph Allen - Author.
Publisher: Doubleday Canada.
Place of publication: Toronto.
Publication year: 1961.
Page number: 473.
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