Perhaps the most outstanding event of the year in which Canada was interested, was the Disarmament Conference at Washington, where she was represented by Sir Robert Borden. If it did anything, it certainly paved the way for saving billions of dollars by restricting the construction of capital ships, and in this Canada was no mean factor.
But before all, it is domestic problems which concern the Dominion particularly. No country { 476} realises better than she does that it is coal and comfort which will attract settlers from the Motherland to till her fields, build up her factories and engage in the trade which makes a nation truly great. As Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba have no coal mines, "white coal" is a vital necessity. Not long ago the Dominion Water Power Branch took a census, and found that Canada has available nineteen million horse-power. Of this practically 90 per cent. of the Central Station power is derived from water power, 95 per cent. being in the above-named provinces, which have to import their coal supplies from other provinces and the United States. As far back as 1911 the Province of Ontario realised this, and began to arrange for the building of the Chippawa-Queenston Power Canal and plant, which represents an investment of almost a hundred million dollars. The plant will have a capacity of 650,000 horse-power, which will be distributed throughout Canada and possibly the neighbouring States, and will be an important addition to the Ontario Hydro-Electric Power Transmission System which was inaugurated at Kitchener, Ontario, in October, 1911.
Elsewhere in the Dominion the fuel problem is being met by fresh discoveries. In the Mackenzie River district gushers of oil have been struck, in one case producing a flow at the rate of 1,000 barrels a day. Already several large companies are operating in that district.
As for comfort, not only Canada but also the world realises that the day of hand power is past. Without agricultural implement machinery driven { 477} by motor force, it would be impossible for the great Northwest to yield the harvests which she does without a labour to which new settlers would be unaccustomed. By means of the hydro-electric commission homes are warmed in winter, lighted all the year round, as indeed are the cities, towns and villages, and cooking for the family accomplished with a modicum of trouble. Electric railways connect communities and settlements. The telephone is in almost everyone's home. So that with the pianola, the gramophone, and other means of diversion, the winter nights are not what they were to the people in the years of the nineteenth century.