Abstract

The Great $$ Invasion

The first impression a traveler gathers driving across Canada is the nation's vastness. The second, inevitably, is that this is one of the world's last great frontiers--thinly peopled and barely explored. One drives for a thousand miles and sees little else but forests, or lakes, or muskeg. Few weeks ago, one can journey for days and see only small, dusty, ramshackle towns, where the water sometimes is unpotable, the stores sell guns and tents and Geiger counters, and the taverns are filled with rough-hewn men speaking with the accents of French Quebec, or Finland, or the Ukraine. The official statistics certainly provide food for argument. Since the World War II, Canada's economy has been expanding at a rate as fast as that of any country, East or West. Today, with a total population just twice that of New York City, Canada is the world's sixth largest industrial and fourth largest trading nation.