CANADA: Ontario Amazed

The brightest meteor in Canada’s political sky, Ontario’s blatant, spellbinding Premier Mitchell (“Mitch”) Hepburn, amazed his Province last week and staggered his closest friends. “I will retire from public life,” he announced. “There is no chance of my changing my mind.” “It can’t be so!” cried Ontario’s Welfare Minister David Croll* and sprinted for the Premier’s office. “I could write columns on the dismay and regret I feel!” gasped Ontario Attorney General Arthur Roebuck, the spearhead of Mitch’s onslaughts upon “the power barons” and “the interests.” “If there were only himself to consider,” snorted Ontario’s Health Minister James Faulkner, M. D., “I wouldn’t blame Mitch for quitting!” After much pecking, Ontario newshawks convinced themselves last week that Mitchell Hepburn was not abdicating to please the Power Barons but solely because service in His Majesty’s Flying Corps during the War cost him a kidney and his remaining kidney has now abruptly convinced him that it is Death to go on as Premier. Mr. Hepburn was said to be in acute pain last week, unable to sleep nights. His whirlwind swing around the entire Dominion during the General Election (TIME, Oct. 21) which made him for the first time a continent-wide figure, also overstrained his kidney. And Mitch believed last week that he faces angina pectoris. After the first shock of amazement, Ontario did not quite believe that its Premier will in fact resign after the legislative session next spring, as he is now resolved to do. He sped south to Florida last week and friends considered that by Christmas the impulsive and emotional Mitch may find himself feeling so much better that he needs must carry on. Cried sprinting Minister Croll after anxious cogitation: “Mr. Hepburn can’t quit! We won’t let him.” Assuming that he does quit, Hepburn, will return to his 600-acre cattle, onion and celery farm. There he was born and there at three years of age, according to his fond mother, he lisped, “I want to be a Politician.”

*As chief Canadian guardian of the quintuplet “Wards of the King,” Minister Croll approved later last week a contract with Fox Films for production of The Country Doctor starring the Dionne quintuplets and based on the life of Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe.