Steady on course for the new year, Canadians can now look back over the wake left through the choppy seas of 1961. Despite the blustery months, the track across the first year of the decade is slicked with the soothing oil of calm appraisal -- result of sober studies into many phases of Canadian life. Last year Canada took stock. Surveys, polls and conferences hit an all-time high. Among the surveys carried out in 1961, were: a population census, a conference on national resources for the future, a full-scale arctic expedition and a northern wildlife survey. The spotlight flashed on Canadian art, the treatment of criminals, the railways, national health, adult education, manpower and employment, mental illness and religion. The results from these searching inquiries will provide Canadians with a vivid, three-dimensional picture of the nation. Briefly, as Canadians settle down for the long haul through the sixties, they find: a better chance for keeping physically fit through the new Fitness and Amateur Sport Act, increased hope for rescuing people from mental illness by the ideas and knowledge stemming from the Third World Congress of Psychiatry (held in Montreal), plans for solving future economic problems by the Special Committee of the Senate on Manpower and Employment.