nearly a million. Canada has, besides, three
lake harbors subsidiary to ocean traffic with an aggregate population
of half a million. One may infer when the Pacific becomes a front
door, that Vancouver and Victoria and Port Mann and Westminster and
Prince Rupert will soon have an aggregate population of a million.

Behind the Atlantic ports, supplied by them with traffic, supplying
them with traffic, is a provincial population of five millions. Behind
the Pacific ports in British Columbia and Alberta, one would be
justified in expecting to find--Strathcona said a hundred million
people, but for this generation put it at twelve million.

Through the Atlantic ports annually come two hundred and fifty thousand
or more immigrants, not counting the one hundred and fifty thousand
from the United States. What if something happened to bring as many to
the Pacific, as well as those now coming to the Atlantic?

Then a century of peace has a sleeping-powder effect on a nation. We
forget that the guns of four nations once boomed and roared round old
Quebec and down Bay of Fundy way. If the Pacific becomes a front door,
the guns of the great nations may yet boom there. In fact, if Canada
had not been a part of Greater Britain four or five years ago when the
trouble arose over Japanese immigration, guns might easily have boomed
round Vancouver long before the Pacific Coast had become a front door.
Front door status entails bolt and strong bar. Front door means navy.
Navy means shipbuilding plants, and the shipyards of the United States
on the Atlantic support fifty thousand skilled artisans, or what would
make a city of two hundred and fifty thousand people. The shipyards of
England support a population equal to Boston. In the United States
those shipyards exist almost wholly by virtue of government contracts
to build war vessels, and in Great Britain largely by virtue of
admiralty subsidies. Though they also do an enormous amount of work on
river and coastal steamers, the manager of the largest and oldest plant
in the United States told me personally that with the high price of
labor and material in America, his shipyard could not last a day
without government contracts for war vessels, torpedoes, dredges, etc.
Front door on the Pacific means that to Canada, and it means more; for
Canada belongs to an empire that has vaster dominions to defend in Asia
than in Europe.

But isn't all this stretching one's fancy a bit too