132 



SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



The stage-diagram forming Fig. i6 may help to explain how this idea 

 of ' choice of possibilities ' has arisen. It is true that in Southern Ontario 

 we have seen man at first dependent chiefly on fur, then on lumber, then 

 on farming, hydro-electric power, and mining. But all these in turn 

 depend on Nature's bounty, and, given sufficient knowledge, could be 

 predicted as the inevitable development of an expanding nation in the 

 given environment. 



In the lowest stage in Fig. i6, we see a generalised economic map 

 about 1750, showing that fish, farms, and fur had expanded to the limits 



Fig. 16. — A Stage-Diagram of Industrial development in Canada from 1750 to 

 1930. It supports a deterministic attitude towards man's occupation of a 

 country. 



approximately there shown (Griffith Taylor i936d). Some sixty years 

 later, by 1810, farming had spread approximately to Detroit ; while 

 Mackenzie was exploiting for furs the river-basin named after him. By 

 1870 mining was becoming of some importance, and gold (Au), silver (Ag), 

 and iron (Fe) mines were being exploited both near the St. Lawrence 

 and on the Fraser River. Still more important, Selkirk had, over fifty 

 years earlier, settled his isolated band of farmers on the silts of Lake 

 Agassiz in the heart of the continent. About 1 880 the modern migration 

 to the wheat-fields of the prairies began, in the last and uppermost 

 stage we see in a generalised fashion the conditions to-day. The whole 



