Dear TIME-Reader:

CANADA Deskman Art White was back in TIME'S news bureau last week after his tenth visit to Canadian bureaus and correspondents in three years. This time White traveled 10,000 miles in four weeks, zigzagging across the country from Quebec to Vancouver, from Churchill on Hudson Bay to Whitehorse in the Yukon. His purpose: to extend TIME'S coverage of that booming nation.

"Signing up new correspondents is necessary not only to keep abreast of Canada's economic and cultural growth but to anticipate and stay ahead of that growth," said White. "It is not enough to have correspondents in the centers of population; more and more significant news is being made out in the bush, in mining towns, in tough, hard-to-reach areas where men are digging, farming, lumbering and gathering the riches of a rich land."

Typical of such frontier news sources, he discovered, is Churchill (pop. about 1,100), a fast-growing grain port and supply point for the strategically important eastern Arctic. Nearby Fort Churchill is a cold-weather proving ground for Canadian and U.S. military weapons, gear and clothing, and has been designated for next year as an observation station for the International Geophysical Year.

Traveling by plane, train, boat and bus, White met a wide cross section of the population and was pleased to hear how many consider TIME their principal source of world news. Said a technician on the Mid-Canada Warning Line, who gets his copy of the magazine by helicopter: "There's a scramble when TIME comes in--and all along the line on the way in other guys have been reading it. Some of 'em cut out stories they like, and that's the worst part. I'll say this, though--it may arrive in tatters but it arrives."

Across the country, readers repeatedly expressed surprise at the scope and accuracy of TIME'S reports on remote regions of Canada. White's explanation was simple enough: much of TIME'S local news from Canada is reported by top Canadian newsmen, who are often managing editors and editors on leading local newspapers; some of them, like Ralph Daly, editorial writer for the Vancouver Sun, have been reporting for us as long as twelve years.

To add another northern tier to this sort of first-hand regional coverage, White on his latest trip signed on new stringers to report to TIME from Churchill, The Pas, Grande Prairie, Whitehorse, Prince George and Fort William. These bring the number of part-time correspondents (in addition to TIME'S three full-time bureaus in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal) to an all-time high of 35.

Cordially yours,

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