7 full-time workers for 2 months more than 100 localities to be visited
Our two directors for a month - 8 congresses and other assemblies
Weekly radio broadcasts over all western French stations
Our movement has already sent its missionaries into Western Canada. We have a multitude of subscribers to our two papers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. But this year we are going to undertake a vast campaign of consolidation and expansion. A team of 7 full-time workers will pass two months in the West. Our two directors-general will preside over 8 congresses there.
This number of congresses may seem disproportionate to those who consider only the population figure and do not reckon with the distance factor. A Montrealer who travels to Winnipeg hasn't even arrived at the halfway mark to Vancouver. The provinces are from 400 to 600 miles in width (east to west). And their lengths (south to north) is vastly greater. The farms there do not comprise the few acres that make up the average Quebec farm; they are miles and miles square. The neighbors are not just down the road; they can be five, ten miles distance. So it is not difficult to understand the necessity for a number of congresses in order to be able to reach all the people.
The various congresses are listed below. Meals will be taken together in the hall. Everyone is invited, subscribers as well as non-subscribers.
As in the east, so in the west, our congresses have several objectives; one of these is to make new Social Crediters, men and women convinced of the principles of Social Credit, who are willing to do their part in making these principles known and accepted, by gaining new readers for the paper by learning, themselves, and training others to that form of political action laid down by the formula of the organization of the Union of Electors.
It is the Institute of Political Action which publishes Vers Demain and The Union of Elec- tors and which guides and inspires the movement known as the Union of Electors. The Institute recognizes no boundaries to its activities whether of language or province or country or nation. However, since the movement took its origin in Quebec its first members were Canadians of the French language. Naturally, the full-time workers, when moving into other provinces have gone to those centers where they would be understood, that is, to French-Canadian centers.
However, today the Institute publishes a second paper in the same spirit as Vers Demain, but in English, The Union of Electors. It is up to those Crediters of the French language, who rub elbows with the English and speak their language, to spread this paper among their English-speaking brethren. So any expansion of the French-speaking communities there. This is by no means the worst method of bringing about that union of the two cultures so heartily desired by the Canadians of both races. Social Credit will give them a common goal, an end to be pursued in the common effort to save our society from the cataclysm towards which the pressures of the existing financial system is driving it.
There are over a half million French-speaking Canadians living in Ontario alone. There are very important centers of French-Canadian influence in such localities as St. Boniface in Manitoba, Gravelbourg in Saskatchewan and in the south and north of Alberta. There are undoubtedly numerous Albertans who still carry in their hearts the original and pristine doctrine of Social Credit as taught by Aberhart before the name of Social Credit was prostituted to serve the ends of party politicians. We can hope that these factors will contribute no little to the impetus lent the spread of our movement by the 8 congresses which will be held in the west this summer.
The branches of our Institute are thus pushing out from the Atlantic on the east to the Pacific on the west. They testify that the Institute is as strong and enduring as the oak. As these branches spread and grow they strengthen the trunk instead of weakening it. For it is characteristic of the things of the spirit that in giving one enriches oneself and especially in giving of ones self.
The 7 full-time workers who are going to the west will leave from Sturgeon Falls, Ontario where they are having an assembly on May 23. They will leave for the west on the following day, May 24. These men are:
Alphonse Pelletier Manitoba;
Bernard Gaouette ond Robert Daigle Saskatchewan;
Camille St. Cyr, Gérard Migneault and Eudore Leclerc - Alberta;
Louis-Philippe Bouchard, British Columbia.
On June 17, Mr. Louis Even and Mrs. Gilberte Côté-Mercier, the two directors-general of our movement will take to the road for their tour of the west. They will, of course, be on hand to direct each of the eight congresses.
Beginning the 17th of June, there will be a series of weekly broadcasts from the four prairie French broadcasting stations. The programs and dates are given below.
While most of our workers here, in the east will be unable to take part in all of the congresses, they can still do a great deal to aid this program in the west by continuing the good work of taking subscriptions in the east and by collecting money. In this fashion it will be possible to make full use of radio broadcasting in the west and to undertake other programs which cannot be launched without considerable expense because of the great distances to be traversed and the manner in which the population is scattered. All can share in this great work of spreading the movement from one ocean to the other.