Catholic Problems in Western Canada

rcumstances that help the work

c value these new Provinces have leaped into prominence and forced themselves upon the attention of the Country at large. The Western issues are now so weighty that only the greatest prudence and wisest statesmanship will maintain the equilibrium between the conflicting forces of the East and the West of our broad Dominion. Canada now stands at the parting of the ways in its h

conditions will enable us to take our bearings and impress upon our minds the value of our co-operation at this juncture of our History. The Church in the West is in its making and we cannot over-emphasize the responsibility of every Ca

contend on the prairie and in small towns. We pointed out those obstacles, geographical (distance and climate), ethnical (race and language), religious (absence of catholic traditions and surroundings), and marked how they were as wide crevice

itude than that which is offered to the traveller as his train goes rolling on through the even prairie. Ever emerging on the horizon and dotting the landscape of the bald plain the grain elevator stands indeed as the most conspicuous land mark of our Western towns. The elevators are in our prairie landscapes what the church spires are in the Quebec villages, along the shores of the St. Lawrence. Here and there they stand as symbols; they interpret an ideal. Naturally a population so immersed in material

rticularly of our young people. Like a strong acid it eats away the teachings of good Christian parents and the impressions of a Catholic h

izers have alighted on those parts of the Provinces where the new Canadian is in the making. We have seen in another chapter (Pro aris, et focis-or, the Ruth

ze (sic!) our Catholic foreigners. The final result of this proselytizing effort is not a permanent increased membership for these churches, but rather indifference and irreligion among

the new Provinces. We all willingly and gratefully acknowledge the contributions in men and money that have come from the East through the channels of the Religious Orders, of the Catholic Church Extension and from other sources. But absorbed by

lap the boundaries of dioceses and provinces, as is the case with the Catholic Press and Higher Education. Diocesan isolation, if we are not careful, can become the weakness of our strength, in these critical stages of rapid development. Yet, there are

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rkest cloud, there is a bright side f

people reflect it faithfully. Optimism is the predominant note in that land of immensities and great possibilities. Untrammelled by set traditions

nto the service of the Church. They form an atmosphere of tolerance which proves mos

heories, to redefine notions brought from the East. The great success with which he has met in various co-operative schemes has also developed in him a high sense of self-reliance. The only danger is that he carries that same self-assurance into domains where he

fer our reader to the Chapter "Ploughing the Sands." To what extent this rather negative disposition will hasten the spreading of the true Faith, is difficult to state. Will it, as is evident in England, promote a movement of return to the Church or accentuate,

our firm

f our new Provinces. Our sole ambition is to help to wipe away, in our work, useless curves, make easier the grades and map out the straightest and most direct route to

rs of direct doctrine, for which the modern world has largely ceased to care, but in the effects of that doctrine. The Catholic'

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