A Letter From The Publisher: Sep. 30, 1966

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It is probably safe to say that not very many people list dogsled driving as a hobby. No doubt only a few more can say that, while traveling by other means, they have been forced to drive off the road to avoid a moose and have had their leather two-suiter eaten by Eskimos. These very special experiences belong to Ed Ogle, an Indiana-born, New Orleans-trained newsman who for the past nine years has been our bureau chief in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and who traveled some 10,000 miles over his sprawling territory to do the major reporting for this week's cover story.

His experiences in the course of this assignment were somewhat less exotic than those of his earlier far-north forays, but one was little less surprising. This happened when the cover subject, Premier W.A.C. Bennett, told him: "If it weren't for one of your people, I wouldn't be here in British Columbia at all." Bennett then explained that he started a hardware store in Kelowna, B.C., in 1930, with the moral and financial support of John Truscott Elson, the vice president of an international hardware distributing firm. He was the father of Robert Truscott Elson, an executive of Time Inc., and the grandfather of Associate Editor John Truscott Elson, who, by coincidence, was sitting in last week as editor of the special news section published every week in our Canada edition.

The regular editor of that section, Canadian John M. Scott, stepped away from his desk in Montreal for two weeks to bring his expertise to the World cover story. Also lending special knowledge on the research side was the Canada staff's Beth Cattley, who grew up at the other end of Canada (in Fredericton, N.B.), first got to know and love the West when she trained there with the Royal Canadian Air Force (she came out with the rank of flying officer). For an outsider's impressions of the West's wonders, World Editor Edward Hughes sent Chicago Correspondent Ed Shook on a 4,000-mile trek through the booming prairies and mountains.

Another eye from the outside was that of Painter Henry Koerner, who, in one of our rare gatefold covers, included British Columbia's totem poles, snow-capped mountains, fresh water, lumbering and petroleum industries. In the process, he talked the management of one plant into lighting up early so that he could see the smokestack flame in the right light. He found the pointing pose highly appropriate for Premier Bennett, as he considered his subject "a gesticulating man." Studying the painting in the light of the hitherto untold story of bustling growth and wealth in Western Canada, one office caption writer suggested that the title might have been "This way to the bank."