Fifty years from now historians may be able to discern some clear trend or visible pattern running through the muddy waters of public life in 1961. But to those who lived through it the nation seemed to have lost its footing amidst the onrushing tides of domestic and foreign problems. Economics everyone agreed presented one major problem, but economics had long since ceased to be a subject of public knowledge, and even the experts were caught between their theories and their politics. Economics had become politics and politics economics. In foreign affairs the nation was caught between its idealism and...

In marked contrast to the hopes raised in the dying months of 1959, 1960 closed in an atmosphere of tension and confusion, which left little room for optimism. There was some slight bettering of the international situation late in December, when the Soviet-Chinese quarrel was temporarily plastered over at the November–December conference of communist parties in Moscow. Addressing the Supreme Soviet on December 23, Mr. Gromyko, the Foreign Minister, declared that he was “authorized by the Soviet government” to express its wish for better relations with the new U.S. administration and its hope to get them back to the...

By late in 1961 there were indications that the economy was pulling out of the most recent recession or at least that the relative decline in economic activity had been halted. Employment, production, investment, and income were rising from the low levels at the beginning of the year but, in major areas, the recovery was still hesitant and uncertain. While some found immediate prospects encouraging—estimates of a 4 per cent rise in economic activity during 1962 were common—longer-term economic trends filled others with pessimism and fear. In the light of evidence that Canada’s economic growth in 1961 was...

Though the federal government did not publicize it in such terms, the energetic and highly personal campaign of Mr. George Hees, the ebullient and extroverted Minister of Trade and Commerce, to push Canadian exports reflected the traditional concern of the Conservative party for the health of the Canadian secondary manufacturer. Not since the days of Sir John A. Macdonald’s “National Policy,” which created the national tariff structure under which many Canadian-owned as well as foreign subsidiary manufacturing units have since prospered, has any individual Conservative cabinet member identified himself so prominently with the activities of the secondary manufacturer.

Yet, though...

Public concern in North America about present school systems and the value of what they are trying to do—so marked and so heated after the Sputnik launching in 1957—continues to be a feature of Canadian life. To date there have been no specific comparisons of the Canadian and Soviet educational arrangements, and no Canadian version of the recent book by A. S. Trace,What Ivan Knows that Johnny Doesn’t.There has been, however, a continued lively public interest in the arguments about the worth of the present Canadian educational system. Increasingly during 1961, these arguments seemed to focus...

La nouvelle législation est assurément le fait le plus important survenu dans le domaine de l’éducation en 1961. Le gouvernement lui-même a qualifié l’ensemble de ces lois « la grande Charte de l’éducation ». Il est vrai que ces mesures sont surtout d’ordre administratif et financier, mais elles amorcent des réformes qui affecteront profondément tout notre régime scolaire.

La plus importante de ces lois est, à mon avis, celle qui oblige les commissions scolaires à dispenser l’enseignement secondaire de la 8^eà la 11^eannée. L’obligation qu’avaient jusqu’ici les commissions scolaires de donner l’enseignement jusqu’en 7^eannée se trouve donc...

Where the federal parliamentary debate and the attendant public discussion over the drafting and final enactment of the Canadian Bill of Rights dominated the Canadian legal scene in 1960, developments in public law in 1961 were much more diversified.

The experience with the Canadian Bill of Rights itself has been disappointingly limited and modest in contrast to the professed high hopes and expectations of the Diefenbaker government at the time of the bill’s adoption; but this confirms some of the then expressed reservations and doubts of opposition speakers in Parliament as to the bill’s legal efficacy in view of the...

Nous avons essayé dans ce chapitre d’extraire d’événements le plus souvent politiques qui sont rapportés ailleurs les éléments d’intérêt juridique. Ils sont pour la plupart liés à la session du parlement provincial et à l’attitude du Québec à l’intérieur du fédéralisme canadien.

Commencée le 11 novembre 1960, la deuxième session de la vingt-sixième législature—la première n’ayant été qu’une brève session spéciale en septembre 1960—s’est continuée jusqu’au 10 juin 1961, ce qui signifie que presque toute l’activité législative des débuts du gouvernement de M. Jean Lesage s’est manifestée pendant l’année 1961. Les deux chambres adoptèrent et le lieutenant-gouverneur sanctionna...

Doubtless the most significant tendency in 1961 was the spirit of co-operation among the religious bodies, especially the search for unity among the members of divided Christendom. Religion in Canada in 1961 reflected this general concern for better understanding. This, of course, is nothing new for the Protestant churches in this country, who have pioneered in co-operative ventures and in organic unions. What was remarkable and what could have very significant implications in several areas of national life was the increasing desire of the Roman Catholic Church to enter the ecumenical dialogue. In the autumn, a Centre of Ecumenical Studies...

Scientific research during the year came in for considerable comment. Was the country’s total research effort nearly enough? How could Canadian industries best improve their own research position, how use available technology more widely? Who would finance the expansion of science foreseen in the universities over the next twenty years? Science was judged for its political and social effects—on the international scene, on government, on education, on employment, and on the habits of people in general. The gap between science and the humanities, and between the scientist and the layman, was re-examined. Meanwhile gains were made in research, in...

At a canadian national exhibition luncheon in August, W. P. Freyseng asked: “Would an impartial board of newspaper governors, patterned after the Board of Broadcast Governors, be capable of preparing and enforcing a suitable code of ethics in the business?” At the same meeting, Clifford Sifton said: “Until the governmental discretionary control of broadcasting is eliminated and the rule of published laws enforced in the courts of the land has been substituted, as has been the case with all printed publications, broadcasting will be handicapped in rendering to the public the services of which it is capable and to which...

L’année littéraire 1961 fut assez agitée et fut particulièrement remarquable aux chapitres du roman et de l’essai. L’ouvrage le plus commenté de l’année n’appartient toutefois pas à la littérature, mais à la politique; c’estPourquoi je suis séparatiste,par Marcel Chaput. Le mouvement séparatiste et le mouvement laïque ont fait couler beaucoup d’encre; on en trouve les manifestations autant dans des livres que dans les journaux et revues. Quant à la littérature proprement dite, c’est le roman qui a dominé toute l’année et, dans ce genre, Yves Thériault a accompli une sorte de tour de force en publiant en un...

The governer general’s awards for writing in English Canada in 1960 were won by three well-known figures, Margaret Avison, Brian Moore, and F. H. Underhill. The medal for poetry was given to Miss Avison for her first book of poetry,Winter Sun(University of Toronto Press). Although her perceptive, speculative work has appeared in periodicals for many years, Miss Avison only last year selected for publication a group of her finest poems. Brian Moore, who came to live in Canada in 1948, is an established novelist with an international reputation. His first novels were set in Ireland, the country of...

In this attempt to present a brief but comprehensive summary of the scope of the theatre in English Canada, professional and amateur, from Newfoundland to British Columbia, it has, of course, been impossible to see even a tenth of the productions or groups listed, and so no extensive qualitative judgements have been passed. Although the list of productions and groups may appear impressive, one must remember that these are events spread over a year and that the pickings are in actual fact thinner than they read. Canada’s post-war flourishing of theatre remains basically eclectic and derivative both in writing and...

Le théâtre de langue française est enfin parvenu au point où il peut être assuré d’une permanence et d’une sécurité financière relative. En quelques années, le nombre de directeurs de compagnies a augmenté, la qualité des spectacles s’est stabilisée, la moyenne des spectateurs s’est maintenue et la plupart des troupes se sont installées dans leur propre salle.

Une industrie s’établit peu à peu : les affiches publicitaires et l’intérêt que manifestent les journaux à l’information théâtrale l’indiquent bien. La décoration théâtrale, d’une qualité exceptionnelle, l’invention du costume, l’originalité de la musique écrite expressément pour la représentation, le soin qu’on apporte...

Musically, 1961 was a year in which Canadian projects and personalities gave unusually effective accounts of themselves abroad despite local unsettledness of various kinds at home. The foreign extensions included tours by Canadian soloists, conductors, ballet companies, choirs, and even orchestras; commissions given to Canadian composers by foreignentrepreneurs;and remarkable signs of life in Canadian production of scores, recordings, and books on music. The local discomforts included unusually acute financial and organizational problems of festivals and symphony orchestras and, in many of the big-city newspapers, an unprecedented amount of wrangling between critics and criticized.

The symphonic-orchestra situation for 1961...

Two events dominated the art scene in Canada in 1961, one domestic, the other imported: the Conference of the Arts and the great exhibition of French art,Héritage de France.

For three days, on May 4–6, at O’Keefe Centre in Toronto, a remarkable event took place, the first Canadian Conference of the Arts, which was, perhaps, the first conference of its kind to be held anywhere in the western world in that it embracedallof the arts—from painting and sculpture, theatre and music, to landscape-architecture and creative leather-work—andeveryevent took place under the one roof....

C’est en 1961 que les téléspectateurs ont cessé d’avoir du talent…

Ou ont commencé à en avoir… (mais certainement pas tous !)

En tout cas, fini le bon temps ! Le bon temps où les réalisateurs étaient des faiseurs de prestiges, comme me le confiait récemment, avec un peu de mélancolie, un réalisateur résigné.

Comme les enfants qu’ils sont — paraît-il! — les téléspectateurs se sont lassés des spectacles que leur propose cette fenêtre ouverte sur le monde imaginaire des autres. Et on ne sait pas encore si cela est bon signe… (mais c’est peu probable !)

Ils se mettent...

By the end of 1961 Canada had acquired nine new private “second” television stations, in Halifax, Montreal (2), Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver. It has seen them joined in a part-microwave, part tape and film ctv Television Network. It had watched the new development amass a record number of headaches and headlines in its first full year.

It had also watched the publicly owned cbc link horns in a first clash with the private interests and survive, with some support from the Board of Broadcast Governors but none from a report by the Parliamentary Committee on Broadcasting, one...

The year 1961 was the Year of the Pause in Canadian radio, the little-disturbed calm before an apparently inevitable storm. The storm was due to arrive with the first major moves by the Board of Broadcast Governors to fit radio to the 1958 Broadcasting Act’s demands for a “varied and comprehensive broadcasting service of a high standard, basically Canadian in content and character.”

Canadian radio as a whole already loosely fitted that definition but only because cbc with its public financing had always carried most of the responsibility, leaving many privately owned stations making mighty profits from “formula broadcasting” of...

It was an eventful year in Canadian sport. In Europe, Canada regained the world amateur hockey crown. At home, the Montreal Canadiens finally relinquished their five-year monopoly of the Stanley Cup. Led by a sparkling band of track stars, individual Canadian athletes shattered a host of national records. But the most significant development was Parliament’s approval on September 28 of a “People’s Programme” to promote amateur sports and physical fitness.

Foreshadowed in the speech from the throne in November 1960, the new programme is designed to benefit not only gifted atheletes but also the great mass of Canadians. Effective December...