Ninety-one years after the Confederation Fathers brought together the scattered provinces and two peoples into one country, the creation of Canada, which began as a supreme act of faith, was approaching fulfilment. In nine decades, Canada has walked boldly from colonial dependence to the full sovereignty and responsibilities of an independent nation. Her strength, as she faced the future, lay in the stability of her parliamentary government, the diversity and vitality of her people and the richness and beauty of the land that cradled them from sea to sea. Canada, in the words of her eminent historian Arthur Lower, had sought and found a new consciousness -- a national spirit -- in the land which gave her birth: "in the little ports of the Atlantic provinces, in the flaming autumn maples of the St. Lawrence valley, in the portages and lakes of the Canadian Shield, in the sunsets and relentless cold of the prairies, in the foothill, mountain and sea of the west and in the unconquerable vastness of the north".