单项选择题
| Basic to any understanding of Canada in
the 20 years after the Second World War is the country’s impressive population
growth. For every three Canadians in 1945, there were over five in 1966. In
September 1966 Canada’s population passed the 20 million mark. Most of this
surging growth came from natural increase. The depression of the 1930’s and the
war had held back marriages, and the catching-up process began after 1945. The
baby boom continued through the decade of the 1950’s, producing a population
increase of nearly fifteen percent in the five years from 1951 to 1956. This
rate of increase had been exceeded only once before in Canada’s history, in the
decade before 1911, when the prairies were being settled. Undoubtedly, the good
economic conditions of the 1950’s supported a growth in the population, but the
expansion also derived from a trend toward earlier marriages and an increase in
the average size of families. In 1957 the Canadian birth rate stood at 28 per
thousand, one of the highest in the world. After the peak year of 1957, the birth rate in Canada began to decline. It continued falling until in 1966 it stood at the lowest level in 25 years. Partly this decline reflected the low level of births during the depression and the war, but it was also caused by changes in Canadian society. Young people were staying at school longer; more women were working; young married couples were buying automobiles or houses before starting families; rising living standards were cutting down the size of families. It appeared that Canada was once more failing into step with the trend toward smaller families that had occurred all through the Western world since the time to the Industrial Revolution. Although the growth in Canada’s population had slowed down by 1966 (the increase in the first half of the 1960’s was only nine percent), another large population wave was coming over the horizon. It would be compared to the children of the children who were born during the period of the high birth rate prior to 1957. |