192 ONTARIO 



The Future of Ontario. 



The oft .issrrtion that before long the West will dominate the 



IT it- |M>pulation and resources will be greater than those of tin- 

 older Confederation is wurtliy of sonn- attention. The Globe, 

 which uiuler the far-seeing direction BfOWO campaigned fifty years 

 ago for the purchase from the Hudson lla\ Company of tile land now em- 

 1 in the Prairie Provinces, and winch has i nd of 

 <-rn development from that (jay to this, will not he accused of enmity 

 to the West when it says there is n,, , ssihility of that portion of the 

 IK mnifii west of the Great Lakes booming more influential in the national 

 councils than the Kast. 



The jn.tentiality of the West is great, almost unthinkably so. But here 

 in Ontario alone tin I in sufficient quantity and \ 



to support the population of Great Britain and (iermany combined. The 

 history of the Ka*tcrn and Western States of the American t'nion will be 

 repeated in the historx f Kastcrn and Wextern Canada. Minnesota, the 

 braska. and the other great agricultural States of tin- 

 Middle West may have held the belief forty years ago that they would 

 become as populous and powerful as \\ -\\ York, ami Pennsylvania, and 

 Ohio. T! e same rush of immigration then into these mid-W 



States that is now going into the Canadian Northwest They drained New 

 England, and took much of our own best blood. Rut the point of saturation 

 in these States has been almost reached, while the great industrial States 

 of the East still absorb an increasingly large proportion of the inflow of 

 immigration. 



To Western Canada Ontario and Quebec will continue to bear the same 

 relation as New York, and Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, and Ohio bear 

 to the Western States. Ontario alone, with the single exception of 

 for the absence of which compensation is found in an abundance of electrical 

 energy has resources as great as the four States above mentioned with 

 their population of almost thirty millions. Its mineral resources art ;\< 

 varied as they are valuable. Gold, silver, nickel, copper, iron ore, mica. 

 and many other ores and minerals are produced in large volume. Its forests 

 are still of huge extent and great value. In paper-making its spruce is 

 second only to that of Quebec. For all time thousands of highly paid opera- 

 tives will find occupation in the paper and pulp mill*, of the remote north. 

 The soil of Southern Ontario is far more fertile than that of any other 

 Province of the Dominion. Its factories increase daily in number and in 

 variety of output. Industries depending upon cheap electric power in large 

 quantities will inevitably gravitate to the water-power developments that 

 are so widespread. 



Ontario still has more population than all the Western Provinces com- 

 bined, and the wave of immigration from P.ritain is adding rapidly to it. 

 Ten years ago Winnipeg men were confident that their splendid city would 

 soon outstrip Toronto. We do not now hear such assertions, because To- 

 ronto in the past ten years has added almost as many to her number- as 

 the entire population of Winnipeg. In the growth of Ontario as a whole 

 all find that while the population increase will be slower than in the 

 it will continue probably at an accelerated pace long after the land 

 is all taken up in the agricultural Provinces of the West and the rush of 

 settlement slackens. The country west of the lakes, which has a little over 

 nillion people in it to-day, will have almost five millions twenty years 

 hence. But by that time Ontario alone will have over four millions of very 

 and prosperous people, and at their hand for the production of wealth 

 such : in field, forest, and mine as no other four million people in 



the world will have. The future of Ontario is in no doubt. This Province 

 will long remain what it is to-day: the most populous and powerful of the 

 Canadian Confederation. -Globe, June 16, 1913. 



