The historian's understanding of past situations benefits greatly from the fact that he, unlike any contemporary observer, knows a good deal about the subsequent development. It is only in retrospect, if at all, that germinal forces, unnoticed or underestimated at the time, can be seen in their true significance. However, hiridsight also has its dangers. Reading history backwards we are easily misled into postulating specific “antecedents” and “early phases” of phenomena which seem to require a long period of gestation; and we are almost inclined to distrust our records if they fail to confirm our expectations.

It is well to be on guard against this temptation when trying to appraise the general character of the closing years of the seventeenth, and the early decades of the eighteenth century. Certainly, as far as the demographic situation of this period is concerned, there was little if anything to herald the impending changes. Man was still very much at the mercy of the elements. As late as the 1690's a succession of poor and indifferent harvests created severe subsistence crises in almost all countries of Europe. So far from growing, the population declined here and there, as dearth and starvation stalked through the lands from Castile to Finland, and from the Scottish Highlands to the foothills of the Alps. In 1698, after a serious crop failure, certain regional death rates in Sweden are known to have risen to 9 and 16 per cent respectively.

Toward the end of Louis Hémon's novel Maria Chapdelaine, which is perhaps the work most representative of traditional French Canadianism, one finds this lyrical passage: “… in the country of Quebec, nothing has changed. Nothing will change, because we are a testimony.” This was written in 1916, but evidently many things have changed since that time. Economic evolution, urbanization, spread of knowledge, technical progress have greatly modified individual and family life as well as social environment. And these transformations have affected the very core of both French-Canadian society and French-Canadian individuals. As a matter of fact, they have burst the old framework of self-sufficient social life and they have transformed the most fundamental motivations of the individual and of conjugal behaviour. Even in the observance of formal moral rules their impact has been felt. It is not surprising that such changes have affected the demographic pattern to a large extent. Most French-Canadian scholars, social philosophers, and political leaders, who are specially interested in the French-Canadian ethnic group, are relatively unaware of the extent of this demographic change and some would not readily admit it. In this paper, I would like to try to throw some light on the main demographic facts and problems of this evolution or, as one might be tempted to name it, revolution.

Students of the national institutions of government in Canada are safe in taking a great deal for granted; the phrase in the British North America Act “a constitution similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom” is perhaps as important as all the rest of the act put together. It assumed a transfer of parliamentary institutions of the British type to Canada and, in fact, the transfer had taken place in eastern Canada well before 1867. The main change that has come about since is the adaptation of parliamentary government to the federal system. An assumption that provincial governments follow the parliamentary system and observe the conventions and usages associated with it may or may not be justified. In many cases provincial characteristics and habits of mind have moulded the institutions of government so as to make the features of the British ancestor barely discernible. Manitoba is a first-class example of this process of adaptation at work. The great forces that have operated are the fur trade, the premature creation of the province, and its primarily agrarian outlook. This paper is an attempt to describe and assess their influence on parliamentary government in the province.

This paper is an appraisal of the theory of crowds from the perspective of a study of how metropolitan police see and control them. Students of the behaviour of crowds have commented on the almost complete absence of empirical studies and of the consequent highly speculative nature of the major theories. To a great extent this state of affairs is a result of the difficulty of studying crowds, which are unpredictable in appearance, and formidable to study when identified. Furthermore, owing to the highly dramatic nature of the phenomenon, the usual secondary sources, both journalistic and historical, are quite unreliable.

A study of how the police see and control crowds obviates some of these difficulties. Individual policemen have recurrent experiences with most types of crowds. To control them they must make some appraisal of their origin, nature, and organization. The success or failure of the tactics they adopt functions as a test of their appraisal. The researcher, interviewing these policemen, is able to apply the test of consistency, and to check the most frequently recurrent statements against those of policemen with a great reputation for being able to control crowds. All the points presented in this paper have been validated in this way.

The past two decades have witnessed a remarkable development in the science of national accounting. This development has taken or is taking place in three interrelated systems of accounts: first, the national product accounts; second, input-output accounts; and, third, money flows or flow of funds accounts. The national product accounts are concerned with transactions reflecting the economy's over-all productive accomplishment, that is, principally with incomes and expenditures measuring the value of final product. The input-output accounts focus on transactions between productive establishments and thereby supplement the national product accounts by providing an intensive analysis of technological interrelationships within the economy. The money flows or flow of funds accounts trace transactions in financial claims as well as goods and services and thereby contribute—what is lacking in the other two systems—an intensive analysis of financial interrelationships within the economy. The national transactions accounts in process of preparation in Ottawa are a version of this third type of accounts.

This study deals with what P. Sorokin calls “inter-generation occupational mobility.” It endeavours to ascertain the extent to which occupation is transmitted from father to son, and the occupational transfers that occur when sons do not follow their fathers' occupations. Similarity of occupation between father and son is called occupational stability; change of occupation from father to son is referred to as occupational mobility. Our study is concerned with both occupational stability and occupational mobility.

We started with the conviction that research of this kind can contribute to the knowledge of social stratification and social mobility in the province of Quebec. In fact, it is not easy to study social stratification as such. In almost any contemporary society what we call social stratification is a generalized concept which may refer to one or the other of several scales of stratification depending on the point of view adopted. Sorokin, for example, distinguishes three scales of social stratification. “Concrete forms of social stratification are numerous. The majority of them may, however, be reduced to three principal classes: the economic, the political, and the occupational stratification. As a general rule, these forms are closely intercorrelated with each other.”

More than two-thirds of Canadian trade union members, some 900,000 workers, belong to international unions. Unlike unionists in such countries as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Australia, whose heritage lies in national organizations, the majority of Canadian workers have for over three-quarters of a century aligned themselves in unions with American workers. The organizations which make up the structurally unique Canadian labour movement are most often relatively small sections of unions operating in the United States and Canada. On both sides of the border the same unions dominate the labour scene–their membership is in the major industries; and their support is essential to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, and to the Canadian Labour Congress, which are the national labour centres.

It has been my good fortune to be a member of the Canadian public service for approximately twenty years. I hope that the authorities of the Bank of Canada will forgive me if I include in this period my employment with that important institution. I am afraid that the bank cannot escape the responsibility for having brought me here in the first place. It was characteristic of Ottawa and of the significant role of the bank that I felt myself to be a part of the larger public service from the start. Here I should confess that I made an attempt to enter the civil service from the beginning, but jobs were few and I did not make the grade. Upon graduation I made an application to write an examination but the opportunity to do so never arose. Unquestionably I was eliminated by inspection and, I have no doubt, quite rightiy so. It is proper that I should admit my failures from the outset. However, the bank was willing to take a chance. This was the first of many pieces of good luck which I have enjoyed.

The return of the Conservatives to power in 1911 was the signal for a mad scramble for place and position by the men who had weathered fifteen lean and hungry years of political adversity. In forming his cabinet, Borden was subjected to all the usual pressures exerted on such occasions and, in addition, he had to take cognizance of certain special factors arising from the election campaign just concluded. But in the cabinet-making process much more is involved than an awareness of constitutional conventions and an appreciation of the political realities of the moment. The selection of the personnel of his government is a most difficult task for a prime minister and one which involves a host of considerations, administrative, political, and personal. In the discharge of this important duty, much may be revealed of the qualities of leadership of the party chieftain. This was certainly true of Robert Borden, and a study of his first essay at cabinet-making is instructive and rewarding.