Westward Ho!.

A Vancouver Stock Exchange official watched the frantic floor trading one day last week and murmured: "A miniature 1929." On Calgary's exchange, 1,747,284 shares were traded--an alltime high. In Toronto, where 6,537,000 shares were traded, excitement swept Bay Street like a prairie fire; the high-speed ticker fell 17 minutes behind. Even in Manhattan, far from the source of the commotion, the New York Curb Exchange exceeded the volume of the New York Stock Exchange's Big Board for the first time on a full trading day in six years. Oil stocks, especially Alberta's, were the riotous star performers. The fillip that touched off their jump had long been anticipated; but when it came, the jump was bigger than expected.

Late the preceding afternoon, Alberta's

Premier Ernest Manning had announced that the Westcoast Transmission Co. had been given permission to pipe natural gas from Alberta's Peace River oilfield to Vancouver and down across the U.S. border to Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. A closer look at Manning's announcement caused many knowing gas & oil men to wonder what all the trading excitement was about. The Alberta Conservation Board, while approving Westcoast's application, had declined to approve five other applications for permits to tap Alberta's gas reserves. It had carefully earmarked a mere 300 billion cu. ft. for export; one utility man reckoned that it would take five times that much to justify a $100 million pipeline to Seattle. The obvious fact: Alberta was by no means ready to permit large-scale gas export. The province still stood by its established policy of holding on to its gas, hoping to bring industry to Alberta.

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