Fiftieth Annual Meeting 13 



ada I could not help trying to visualize the extent of the mag- 

 nificent resources that touch upon that line at either side and 

 at either end. You men who have travelled far and wide, ask 

 yourselves whether there is any other place in the world where 

 a line of the same length can be drawn and contiguous to 

 which there will be as remarkable a group of natural resources 

 as there is contiguous to the boundary line between Canada 

 and the United States. I do not believe you will find it any- 

 where on earth, and that is the reason why we who live on 

 either side of that line can sing the doxology, if you please, 

 and thank God that we are neighbors and friends and that 

 we have around us the most magnificent heritage that prob- 

 ably was ever given to any two nations in the world. 



I am not going to turn this into a sermon at all. I am 

 simply trying to point to one reason why we should make 

 this meeting, the fiftieth in our history, the greatest event of 

 rejoicing, the finest kind of love feast, that we have ever cele- 

 brated. Let us do that for a starter; then we will finish the 

 job at a meeting of the International Association of Fish, 

 Game and Conservation Commissioners. 



We have heard this morning words of welcome that would 

 hearten any crowd of red-blooded men. We are tremendously 

 interested in what is, perhaps, the finest occupation in the 

 world, that of making the great outdoors attractive to all 

 classes of people in all walks of life. There is not any one 

 activity that can result in more genuine, wholesome good to 

 the human race than the very things that we are endeavoring 

 to do, provided they are properly promoted and intelligently 

 directed. 



Some of the remarks that have been made here have taken 

 a sort of turn that I desire to correct to some extent. The 

 American Fisheries Society has been referred to as preemi- 

 nently a United States organization, as a foreign body coming 

 into Canada. Certainly the contributions to the work of the 

 American Fisheries Society by the representatives of Canada 

 in years gone by have been as valuable as those coming from 



