THE BIRTH-RATE IN CANADA
SIR,—In his remarks (November 15th) on the fecundity of the French Canadians, Janus says that the example he quotes reaches him " from a perfectly reliable source." No one who is familiar with the Province of Quebec will doubt his statement. Families of fifteen or twenty are not at all unusual among the French-speaking population there. They have apparently little choice in the matter. When a French Canadian acquaintance bemoaned the advent of his seventeenth child, which he could ill afford, I made the obvious comment. He replied, not bitterly, but as a matter of course, that the Church in Quebec forbade family limitation, even by abstinence, and that the clergy visited their parishioners yearly to make sure that this ordinance was being obeyed. A highly-placed Jesuit once told me (not knowing at the time that I was not of his persuasion) that the ambition of the Church was " a Canada French- speaking and Catholic from coast to coast."—Yours, etc., VEIUTAS.
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