atlantic guardian

• Canada Moves North
by Richard Finnie
MacMillan Company of Canada.
Toronto-$3.00
HIS is a book which should
T be of more than casual interest
to Newfoundlanders because
of Newfoundland's possession of,
and responsibility for, the vast
territory of Labrador. Described
by famed explorer, Vilhjalmur
Stefansson, as "the best general
book about Northern Canada," it
does much to upset the popular
conception of the Canadian North
as a barren land utterly unfit for
settlement or development.
Mr. Finnie, born in the Yukon
Territory, has covered most of the
Canadian Arctic and sub-Arctic
and has been an explorer-writer
since the age of eighteen. His description
of life and living in the
Canadian North has an air of
authority not present in work of
writers of a more transient type.
Probably the most controversial
part of 1\o'lr. Finnie's book is his
frank opinion that Christian missionaries
to the Eskimo and Indian
in the north have done more hann
than good to these native peoples.
He looks at things from a purely
materialistic viewpoint and seems
to be of the opinion that the Government
should take over respon-
22
sibility for the education and
material welfare of the natives as
soon as possible and on a strictly
non-religious (and particularly
non-sectarian) basis.
There are veteran missionaries
who have done good work in the
arctic who could dispute with and
even perhaps confound Mr. Finnie
but his viewpoint is nevertheless
an interesting and provocative one.
• Left Turn Canada
by M. J. Coldwell
Duell, Sloan and Pearce.
Toronto and New York.
Because of their recent decision
to join in Federal Union with the
Dominion of Canada, Newfoundlanders
are going to have to decide
soon what political parties in
Canada appeal most to them.
Canada's Co-operative Commonwealth
Federation, a mildly
socialist party roughly equivalent
to Great Britain's Labor Party and
to the Labor parties of Australia
and New Zealand is a potent, but
by no means decisive, force in the
political life of the Dominion and
in this book the party's leader,
English-born M. J. Coldwell, explains
what the C.C.F. stands for.
A frankly partisan setting forth
of a party program and the Socialist
ideal, Mr. Coldwell's book
should be read as such.
ATLANTIC GUARDIA)!