114 ADMINISTRATIVE SECTION 



in Toronto all the births from January, 1908, to 

 November, 1908, inclusive, being 375 births in all, 

 and searched for the same in the alphabetical birth 

 register in the office of the City Clerk of Toronto. 

 Only 268 or 71*5 per cent, were found. This would 

 show that probably only about 75 per cent, of our 

 births are registered at all. Since no burial permit 

 is issued without proper registration of the death, this 

 correction of our vital statistics would make a 

 difference to the infant mortality rate. A correction 

 should also be made for still births, which should not 

 be counted either as births or as deaths. 



In the year 1908, for example, the infant mortality 

 rate of Toronto is officially given as 193 '4. 



Corrected for stillbirths it is 155*5. 



Corrected further for incomplete registration, it is 

 i*6-6< 



Besides, to quote Dr. T. H. Whitelaw, the Medical 

 Health Officer of Edmonton : " We are endeavouring 

 to get our vital statistics as accurate as possible, but 

 with the heterogeneous population we have here, 

 including people from all parts of the world, it is 

 questionable whether we get all. 



" No words of mine could bring before you the 

 difficulties we have upon us in our enormous non- 

 English speaking immigration." 



Our world in Canada is a New World. In the 

 " Power House of the Line," sanitary laws and the 

 collection of vital statistics are so much better under- 

 stood and carried out than with us. 



Our pioneers found a vast forest and there they 

 hewed out homes for themselves. It was in the home 

 of the God-fearing, loyal, hard-working pioneer that 

 the Dominion of Canada was made, and on these 

 homes, now of the second and third and fourth 

 generation, the hopes of the Dominion of Canada 

 rest to-day. The pioneers laid the foundations truly, 

 but they had their hard times. 



