[Mackenzie] PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS S 



in them. Canada has nothing of the nature of the National Physical 

 Laboratory of England or the Bureau of Standards of Washington; 

 it has nothing national in education and science of any kind, except 

 perhaps in agriculture ; and yet the fostering of science is an absolute 

 national necessity. The Research Council of Canada has made a 

 visit to the United States to study this problem, and has seen the 

 Bureau of Standards, the Bureau of Chemistry, the Bureau of Mines, 

 the Carnegie Institution, the National Canners' Association Labora- 

 tories, the Mellon Institute, the Philadelphia Commercial Museum, 

 and more of the same general type; and Canada has nothing of the 

 kind whatsoever. Add to these the dozens of great universities' 

 laboratories, a score of even larger research laboratories of manufac- 

 turing corporations, and hundreds of smaller ones, and one begins 

 to have forced upon him the extent of the inadeqiiateness of our prep- 

 aration to meet post-war industrial competition, and of our present 

 position as a parasite on the research institutions of our friends and 

 neighbors. It is surely the part of this Section to urge upon the 

 Government that it immediately vote the money needed for the foun- 

 dation of some sort of National Research Institution for Canada. 

 The opportunity is now, while the war has made our legislators see 

 the value of Science and Research; lack of pressure now may leave 

 us in the parasitic stage. What we are looking for is a better under- 

 standing and a feeling of mutual dependence between science and 

 industrial enterprise, and a reliance upon ourselves and our own 

 resources for our progress and our place in the industrial world. No 

 state hereafter can be satisfied to be dependent on another for the essen- 

 tial products, when they can be produced within its own borders. 

 These things mean that research must be stimulated, that the state 

 must give the stimulation, that it must provide generously endowed 

 research stations where these problems can be studied for the general 

 good of the state. 



The effect of -the war upon Science should then result in industrial 

 revolution. Its first effect on Canada should be seen in the stoppage 

 of wastefulness and of the rapid destruction of our really limited 

 natural resources, which are the very antithesis of anything connoted 

 by the word scientific. This in itself would be an industrial and 

 scientific revolution, and were it accomplished we should know the 

 whole battle would be won. But it can not be accomplished without 

 great improvement in fundamental scientific education. The problem 

 of teaching science so that it is real, without at the same time falling 

 into the other extreme, of devitalizing it and making it merely rule-of- 

 thumb utilitarianism, is one that seriously confronts us. This is the 

 second of those things which I think this Section should do, or take the 



