If you have a chance to go to Finland, you will probably be surprised to find how “foolish” the Finnish people are.

Take the taxi drivers for example. Taxis in Finland are mostly high-class Benz with a fare of two US dollars a kilometer. You can go anywhere in one, tell the driver to drop you at any place, say that you have some business to attend to, and then walk off without paying your fare. The driver would not show the least signs of anxiety.

The dining rooms in all big hotels not only serve their guests, but also serve outside diners. Hotel guests have their meals free, so they naturally go to the free dining rooms to have their meals. The most they would do to show their good faith is to wave their registration cards to the waiter. With such a loose check, you can easily use any old registration card to take a couple of friends to dine free of charge.

The Finnish workers are paid by the hour. They are very much on their own as soon as they have agreed with the boss at the rate. From then on they just say how many hours they have worked and they will be paid accordingly.

With so many loopholes(漏洞) in everyday life, surely Finland must be a heaven to those who love to take “petty advantages”. But the strange thing is that all the taxi passengers would always come back to pay their fares after they have attended to their business and that not a single outsider has ever been found in the free hotel dining rooms. And workers always give an honest account of the exact hours they put in. As the Finns always act on good faith in everything they do, living in such a society has turned everyone to a real “gentleman”.

Basic to any understanding of Canada in 20 years after the Second World War is the country’s impressive population growth. In September 1966 Canada’s population passed the 20 million mark. Most of this 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. Undoubtedly, the good economic conditions of the 1950’s supported a growth in the population, but the expansion also derived (源自) 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 falling in step with the trend toward smaller families that had occurred all through the Western world since the time of 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 composed of the children who were born during the period of the high birth rate before 1957.