The Laurentian Plateau in Canadian Economic Development

Abstract

C ANADA lies within two spheres of influence; she derives her origin from Great Britain, and the United States is her neighbor. Canadians have been told repeatedly of recent years that they act as the interpreter of one to the other. Similarity of economic and geographic conditions turn us to the United States; the ties of race and tradition hold us closely to Great Britain. As a small and proud people, Canadians have as a rule been prone to exaggerate their differences with the United States just as the Scots have always drawn exaggerated distinctions between themselves and the English. A certain dissimilarity of outlook and tradition there assuredly is, but its extent has been pardonably overemphasized. On the other hand, the assumption of the geographic and economic similarity of Canada and the United States has usually been accepted much too uncritically. There are, it is true, great major facts which have powerfully affected the histories of both countries. The most significant among these have been the presence of free land and the consequent problems of internal expansion. As soon as we consider, however, the course of the internal expansion, similarity between the two countries to a considerable extent fades and we discover that in Canada the development of inland empire, dominated though it was by similar motives, involved very different problems which called for new and distinctive solutions. There is, at present, need for less emphasis on distinctions of race and tradition between ourselves and the people of the United States, and somewhat more emphasis on the different geographic and economic factors which have dominated each distinctive development. THE CENTRAL LOWLAND OF NORTH AMERICA