Saskatchewan: Only Socialists Need Apply

Time magazine
Jan. 14, 1946

He was glad to get off the train at Regina, despite the sub-zero weather. George W. (for Woodall) Cadbury's 6 feet 5 inches fold uneasily into a sleeping-car berth. After a good night stretched diagonally across two Hotel Saskatchewan beds, he was in fine humor as he talked to newsmen about the job which had brought him all the way from England.

Handsome, positive George Cadbury,* who thinks socialism in all Canada is inevitable, sees Regina as a city of opportunity. On the invitation of Saskatchewan's socialist CCF government, he will head a new "industrial planning commission," will thus get in on the ground floor of a province-owned industrial empire already worth nearly $4 million.

His new bosses, peppery Premier Thomas C. Douglas and dapper Treasurer Clarence M. Fines, are just as enthusiastic about Cadbury. They imported him as a student of famed Economist Lord Keynes, a veteran of 22 years in Britain's Labor Party, a director of a cooperative cannery and a custard powder firm in Britain.

Saskatchewan's government-owned plants are already set to turn out boots & shoes, bricks, fish fillets, horsehide coats, woolens, boxes, type, lumber and power. The government can also supply fire and general insurance, looks forward to marketing a volcanic-ash kitchen cleaner, running a bus service and perhaps a Moose Jaw radio station. With Cadbury at the helm, this might be only the beginning.

* A name famous on candy boxes in England. The Cadbury chocolate business at Bournville was founded by Grandfather George Cadbury, a paternalistic Quaker who sponsored housing reforms and recreation facilities for his workers.