Eyes North

Atop Winnipeg's limestone Legislative Building stands a statue of a naked boy with a sheaf of wheat under one arm. Manitobans dub him the "Spirit of Enterprise' see something symbolic in the fact that he faces north. Last week every Manitoban looked northward too.

Doughty, able Premier Stuart Sinclair Garson asked the provincial legislature for authority to raise a loan of $10,500,000, then to embark on an ambitious project to buttress Manitoba's basic agricultural economy with new and expanded industries. If he got the loan, he proposed to add $5,500,000 more which the Government had laid aside out of tidy wartime surpluses.

"Manitoba Hard." Manitobans pricked up their ears. Ever since Lord Selkirk and his band of British crofters had sailed across Hudson Bay in 1814 and then portaged to the rich Red River Valley, agriculture has been king in Manitoba. The valley's rich, black velvety soil had been the magnet which drew colonists. They hugged the area close to the U.S. border, grew Canada's best grade wheat (No. 1 Manitoba Northern Hard) and other grains in enormous quantities.

Indians and grasshoppers plagued them first; drought and depression periodically blighted their crops and hopes. For many it was a marginal existence.

Manitoba had long known there was a solution: diversification of the province's industries. In 1912 provincial boundaries were redrawn and Manitoba, which had been known as the "Postage Stamp Province," unrolled 500 miles northward to Hudson Bay. Adventurers and prospectors had already discovered copper and gold, trapped beaver, muskrat and wild mink.

The chances for wealth in the cold, barren, undeveloped north were good. But even so, only 2% of Manitoba's population (under 750,000) last year lived in the northern two-thirds of the province.

No Spendthrift. What Premier Garson, one of the few non-farmers to head the farmer government of Manitoba, wanted to do now was to exploit the northland, add a few amenities to farm life. He proposed to spend:

P: $3,000,000 to electrify 5.000 scattered farms.

P: $3,940,000 for farm roads and roads to open up new mining areas, open Manitoba's forest reserves to tourists.

P: $3,200,000 on vocational and industrial training.

P: $300,000 for a mineral-testing laboratory.

Dogged Manitoban farmers know that Garson, who came into the premiership after a tight-fisted stint as provincial treasurer, is no spendthrift. If he was convinced that now was the time to splurge and make Manitoba a more prosperous province, they" were ready to give him what he wants.

One Canadian province was ready to make the long-discussed term "postwar plan" mean something.

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