Year Book of Jehovah's Witnesses - Watchtower Archive

Yearbook 123
former shipping room now enlarging our storage space.
It has been a real pleasure to work in the office with its
greatly Increased space, light, ventilation and organization,
all of which has made for added efficiency in all departments.
Forty-one Canadians graduated from the 14th class at
Gilead last February, seventeen of whom were assigned to
missionary service overseas, and the remainder were commissioned
to serve in the Quebec "foreign assignment". It
was good news especially for the graduates serving in
Quebec to learn of your decision to consider Quebec as a
"foreign assignment" and to know it would be dealt with
in exactly the same manner as other far-off missionary fields.
The faithful and capable service of these brethren in Quebec
province has assuredly made tremendous inroads into this
special Hierarchy preserve of 3t million population.
There are now 164 full-time ministers in Quebec, 83
general and 81 special pioneers, 63 of this latter group being
Gilead graduates. How wonderful to realize that four years
ago there were only 18 company organizations (8 French
and 10 English) caring for the needs of some 300 brethren,
whereas today there are 36 companies (21 French and 15
English) serving well over 1,000 brethren. We now are printing
the French intormateur instead of mimeographing it,
bringing added pleasure to our French-speaking brethren.
Great joy was expressed when announcement was made of
the new publication in their language, "The Kingdom i8
at Hand", for much work yet has to be done in Quebec
province.
The campaign with half a million of the special issue
(April 8) Awake! magazines was enthusiastically pushed
in 200 towns and villages in Quebec, also throughout the
country. Its distribution brought to the surface many
persons, even Catholics and residents of Quebec, who are
entirely out of harmony with the tactics and policy of the
Vaticanites, and numerous expressions of appreciation were
made to our brethren during the campaign. One lawyer who
has been closely associated with the Duplessis pOlitical
machine phoned to this office from 600 miles away and
declared that he was surprised and shocked to learn of the
unrighteous acts of the Catholic Church and of those in
authority in Quebec, and definitely stated his disapproval
of the same, offering freely and without charge to associate
himself with our legal counsel in the courts and fight for
our rights.
Throughout the year the fight in the courts has continued,
much having been reported in Awake! magazine. We are now
awaiting the decision in the well-known Boucher vs. The King
case, our outstanding sedition case. This was the case which