Canada: THE DOMINION: Thanksgiving Day, 1947

Because the “day of general thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful crop and other blessings” fell on Monday this year, most Canadians made a long weekend of it. In Ontario, crisp, clear weather favored the football games— Hamilton’s Tigers lost to Toronto’s Argonauts, 13 to 1. Over the northern prairies lay a heavy overcast; “fowl weather,” said the gunners, setting out to shoot geese or ducks for the holiday table. At Mile 450, on the railway to Churchill, the Rev. W, E. Williamson hoped to bag a caribou, planned to share the meat with his Negro congregation in Chicago.

Liquor stores did a rush trade. Practically every Canadian who wanted a drink had the price of a bottle, though it came high. The turkey supply was spotty; there were plenty of birds around Winnipeg, but few in southern Alberta, where growers were holding out lor fatter prices at Christmas.

The “bountiful crop” did not come up to last year’s—the potato harvest was down by 10%, sugar beets were down 14%, and wheat, most important of all, was off 16%. Yet the Winnipeg Tribune could say: “Even momentary comparison of our lot [with Europe’s] makes us seem as rich as Croesus: it is a time both to give thanks and to share.”

The joy of harvest home was tempered by forebodings of tomorrow:

¶ Finance Minister Douglas Abbott, just back from a sobering view of conditions in Europe, warned that the Dominion’s cost of living index, now at 136.6, might well go to 145 by next spring.

¶ External Affairs Minister Louis St. Laurent said that economic regimentation, gradually relaxed since war’s end, might return.

¶ One-fifth of the population of Halifax war doubled up or living in attics or basements. All last week the Dominion awaited a wondrous new housing plan which Reconstruction Minister C. D. Howe was to unveil. When he spoke, in Vancouver, the best he could do was to promise 6,000 more homes—a year from now.

¶ To cure the dollar-shortage sickness, the only remedy in sight was a cut in imports of U.S. goods; to many the cure seemed worse than the disease.

Over Canadians also hung the threatening clouds of the unwon peace. Said one Alberta mother who lost two sons in World War II: “Now in my Thanksgiving prayers I am asking the Lord to show the way of peace to the world before another war can take my other two boys.”