Big Wind from Ontario

While Ontario bowed to a big wind from the U.S., Manhattan last week experienced a big wind from Ontario. Through western Ontario last week whipped a devastating near-hurricane, strayed from Texas (see p. 22), that killed three people, leveled grain fields, pancaked buildings, blocked highways, raveled out power and telephone lines. And into Manhattan on a three-day good-will visit blew dimple-chinned, corpulent Mitchell ("Mitch") Frederick Hepburn, who, in or out of politics, acts as if he were equipped with a built-in hurricane.

Canadians know Mitch Hepburn as the Liberal Premier of Ontario, a tough, loud-talking self-made politico on the lines of the late Huey Long, whose political leitmotiv is making ill-tempered cracks at the leader of the Dominion's Liberal Party, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. They know him as a onetime pal of Quebec's smalltime "fascist" Maurice Duplessis, but now 110% for all aid to Britain. They know him as a perennial dark horse who, because of his enmity to King, can never be counted on to take the leading role in the Canadian political picture, but who, because he is a crowd-pleaser, can never be relegated to the background. They also know him as the most rabid enemy that the C.I.O. has in Canada.

British United Press and Canadian Broadcasting Co. announced that the Premier was going to New York to broadcast on "Canada's war effort and America's lack of preparation." Not quite so undiplomatic, Mitch's speech was still quite a surprise to many a U.S. listener unaccustomed to the usual Hepburn fireworks.

Broadcasting on a two-nation hookup, Mitch began by assuming that Russia will be defeated, that Germany, with Russia's resources at her command, will soon be in position to menace Canada and the U.S. Thus Canada and the U.S. must necessarily work more closely together. Under the circumstances, he went on, leaders of defense strikes in the U.S. and Canada "should be listed, classified, condemned and divorced from society."

The same day in an interview he insisted that the Ottawa Government is harming Canada's war effort by allowing strikes to go on at their present rate. In Ottawa "they only consider their political hides."

Before his words had cooled, the Premier found himself knee-deep in another quarrel. To the head of Canadian Broadcasting Co. in Ottawa he sent a hot telegram insisting that the Government chain had deliberately misquoted him in saying he was going to talk about "America's lack of preparation." CBC acknowledged that it had erred in giving the date of his broadcast (though the network carried it), ducked responsibility for the rest of the item.

Also on Hepburn's whirlwind schedule were a victory luncheon, a slapstick initiation to Manhattan's Circus Saints and Sinners.* Mitch breezed through both of these, then headed back home to Canada.

Waiting for scrappy Premier Hepburn in his own country was a fight that promised to be more serious than heated telegrams or radio polemics. This week the Dominion Government will grapple with the question of taking over part of the provinces' revenue sources for war needs. Though it would be like losing teeth, observers thought that for politico-patriotic reasons Mitch would have to give up some of Ontario's cherished pin money, possibly sign away the Province's share of the joint dominion-provincial income tax.

> While Premier Hepburnwas fulminating about Canadian defense strikes, two of the largest ones were drawing to a close. This week 4,000 workers of the striking McKinnon Industries autoparts plant at St. Catharine's, Ont. returned to their jobs; 700 coal miners on Cape Breton Island voted to end the slowdown that had cut their production 40% (TIME, Sept. 29).

* A luncheon club that exists for the purpose of giving slapstick initiations once a month to current celebrities and notorieties. At Hepburn's initiation he shook hands with former Governor Harold Hoffman of New Jersey, who wore a mask of Franklin Roosevelt (see cut).

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