Canada: Great Expectations

To many a Canadian, life south of the border looked better than it had since the booming '20s. In the first six months of 1947, 21,000 Canadians, more than in all 1946, picked up permanent U.S. residence visas and headed south.

A typical emigrant was husky William A. ("Bill") Dickman, 34, who visited the U.S. consular office on the twelfth floor of Vancouver's Marine Building one day last week. What Bill Dickman wanted was a "job with a future." For four years during the depression, he was jobless; finally he got work driving a railway speeder in the lumber woods. For eight years he left the logging camps only once in every four months to see his wife Christine and his young son. When the war began, he got a $300-a-month welder's job in a shipyard, but Selective Service ordered him back to the woods for the duration.

Last year he quit the woods, has worked off & on in shipyards ever since. By the time he was laid off three months ago, he had had enough of uncertainty. Said tall, willowy Christine Dickman, 32, "We were disgusted with the shipyards. Every time Bill gets a job there he gets laid off. If he's going to be having a job and losing it all the time, he'll have to go back to the logging camps. We don't want that." Said Bill: "I think I'll have a better chance in the States. We'll be better off."

Last week a smiling U.S. consul looked over Bill Dickman's completed papers, handed him his visa and wished him luck. Bill sold his car for $900. Christine Dickman's father & mother, who were going along too, sold their house. Then all of them boarded a Great Northern train for Oak Grove, Ore.