In progress Photostory 1/14 : What this country needs is a good five-billion-dollar mineral industry - and probably this year, in 1969, that is exactly what Canada is getting. _x000B__x000B_Spurred by the burgeoning demand of a world exploding with technological and industrial developments, the crustal surface of the Canadian demi-continent is yielding a steadily-increasing stream of mineral wealth that promises to become torrential. _x000B__x000B_Today's estimated annual production figure of $5,000,000,000 is a ten-fold increase over that for 1945, triple that for 1955 and double the value for the first year of this decade. This tremendous expansion of the Canadian mineral industry outshines the growth of any of the other primary resource industries and the national economy as a whole. _x000B__x000B_This year, as the industry reaches a nice round, fat milestone in production figures, the excitement is expected to continue even faster and hotter with yet another billion dollars being staked on the investment table. And this excitement is nationwide and at all levels of the industry. _x000B__x000B_In the big skyscraper offices of Canada's bustling cities or in the pockets of secrecy amid the clamour of raucous taverns in distant northern communities, the deals, private and corporate, big and small, are being made, partnerships agreed, hunches being played. While, to the tune of champagne corks, big international contracts are signed involving millions of dollars and thousands of people, two student prospectors sharing a coffee pot by a wilderness lakeshore will shake hands on becoming buddies for the summer season. _x000B__x000B_And, while an arctic scientific task force deploys its electronic airborne squads and flies in delicacies from the deep south for its busy crews, a grizzled veteran bushwhacker will scrape hopefully with a pocketknife at a rock specimen as he cooks his morning flapjacks. _x000B__x000B_But, though the beckoning field of prospecting is still open to all kinds of adventurous souls, the task of recovering the valuable mineral deposits after initial discovery is very big business - employment (in all about 12 per cent of the Canadian labor force depend on mining activities for their jobs). It is this important group of Canadians who contribute a vigorous seven-plus percentage towards the country's gross national product and whose shipments abroad earn more than $3,000,000,000 annually - an extremely vital one third of the nation's total exports.