Editor’s Note HALF TRUTHS

I don’t know how often I’ve heard this, but it’s certainly been often enough I and in so many different contexts that for a time I came to consider it only a comfortable cliche — one of those sayings that people rely on for lack of deeper insight. “They say” that Canadians are a conservative lot, that, by and large, we are not a country of risk-takers. We’ll put our money under mattresses before we’ll take it to a bank. And we would sooner hand it over to bank tellers than stockbrokers. (The Toronto Stock Exchange has statistics to back that up.)

I heard a former publisher of mine, one who had served on several of Canada’s largest daily newspapers, say it in the context of our rather spotty performance in matters technological. Later, as a financial reporter, I heard it said time and again that Canadians prefer “safe” investments. Fledgling firms with a new product or new service as often as not go begging in this country for venture capital.

I always felt it was a half-truth at best, concealing something more fundamental in the Canadian psyche. At worst, it was an outright deception. If Canadians are averse to speculation, how do you explain the thriving Vancouver Stock Exchange and the scores of mines that were found and built by risk capital?

Unfortunately, in gathering material for this issue, I was again confronted by the same old saw. And it sounded rather convincing (and ominous). A representative for a mining equipment manufacturer had been trying to sell a new, technologically superior machine. The mining companies, however, were reluctant to bite. “The thing we’re battling,” he told me, “is that no one wants to be first. It takes commitment and guts to take that step. Canada tends to be conservative.”

I’m tired of hearing this, but I think I’ve finally accepted it as a truism. Our penchant for speculative mining stocks is merely a curious aberration.