PASSAGE 1 – Questions 1–10

Basic to any understanding of Canada in 20 years after the Second World War is the country's impressive population growth. For every three Canadians in 1945, there were over five in 1996. In September 1966 Canada's population passed the 20 million mark. Most of this surging growth came from natural increase. The depression of the 1930's and the war had held back marriages and the catching – up process began after 1945. The baby boom continued through the decade of the 1950's, producing a population increase of nearly fifteen percent in the five years from 1951 to 1956. This rate of increase had been exceeded only once before in Canada's history, in the decade before 1911, when the prairies were being settled. Undoubtedly, the good economic conditions of the 1950's supported a growth in the population, but the expansion also derived from a trend toward earlier marriages and an increase in the average size of families. In 1957 the Canadian birth rate stood at 28 per thousand, one of the highest in the world.

After the peak year of 1957, the birth rate in Canada began to decline. It continued falling until in 1966 it stood at the lowest level in 25 years. Partly this decline reflected the low level of births during the depression and the war, but it was also caused by changes in Canadian society. Young people were staying at school longer, more women were working, young married couples were buying automobiles or houses before starting families, rising living standards were cutting down the size of families. It appeared that Canada was once more falling in step with the trend toward smaller families that had occurred all through the Western world since the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Although the growth in Canada's population has slowed down by 1966(the increase in the first half of the 1960's was only nine percent). Another large population wave was coming over the horizon. It would be composed of the children of the children who were born during the period of the high birth rate prior to 1957.

PASSAGE 2 – Questions 11–20

Are organically grown foods the best food choices? The advantages claimed for such foods over conventionally grown and marketed food products are now being debated. Advocates of organic foods a term whose meaning varies greatly – frequently proclaim that such products are safer and more nutritious than others.

The growing interest of consumers in the safety and more nutritional quality of the typical North American diet is a welcome development. However, much of this interest has been sparked by sweeping claims that the food supply is unsafe or in adequate in meeting nutritional needs. Although most of these claims are not supported by scientific evidence, the preponderance of written material advancing such claims makes it difficult for the general public to separate fact from fiction. As a result, claims that eating a diet consisting entirely of organically grown foods prevents or cures disease or provides other benefits to health have become widely publicized and form the basis for folklore.

Almost daily the public is besieged by claims for "no-aging" diets, new vitamins, and other wonder foods. There are numerous unsubstantiated reports that natural vitamins are superior to synthetic ones, that fertilized eggs are nutritionally superior to unfertilized eggs, that untreated grains are better than fumigated grains and the like.

One thing that most organically grown food products seem to have in common is that they cost more than conventionally grown foods. But in many cases consumers are misled if they believe organic foods can maintain health and provide better nutritional quality than conventionally grown foods. So there is real cause for concern if consumers, particularly those with limited incomes, distrust the regular food and buy and buy only expensive organic foods instead.

PASSAGE 3 – Questions 21–30

There are many theories about the beginning of drama in ancient Greece. The one most widely accepted today is based on the assumption that drama evolved from ritual. The argument for this view goes as follows. In the beginning, human beings viewed the natural forces of the world, even the seasonal changes, as unpredictable, and they sought through various means, to control these unknown and feared powers. Those measures which appeared to bring the desired results were then retained and repeated until they hardened into fixed rituals. Eventually stories arose which explained or veiled the mysteries of the rites. As time passed some rituals were abandoned, but the stories, later called myths, persisted and provided material for art and drama.

Those who believe that drama evolved out of ritual also argue that those rites contained the seed of theater because music, dance, masks, and costumes were almost always used. Furthermore, a suitable site had to be provided for performances, and when the entire community did not participate, a clear division was usually made between the "acting area" and the "auditorium." In addition, there were performers, and since considerable importance was attached to avoiding mistakes in the enactment of rites, religious leaders usually assumed that task. Wearing masks and costumes, they often impersonated other people, animals, or supernatural beings, and mimed the desired effect - success in hunt or battle, the coming rain, the revival of the Sun - as an actor might.

Another theory traces the theater's origin from the human interest in storytelling. According to this view, tales (about the hunt, war, or other feats) are gradually elaborated, at first through the use of impersonation, action, and dialogue by a narrator and then through the assumption of each of the roles by a different person. A closely related theory traces theater to those dances that are primarily rhythmical and gymnastic or that are imitations of animal movements and sounds.

PASSAGE 4 – Questions 31–40

Staggering tasks confronted the people of the United States, North and South, when the Civil war ended. About a million and a half soldiers from both sides had to be demobilized, readjusted to civilian life, and reabsorbed by the devastated economy. Civil government also had to be put back on a peacetime basis and interference from the military had to be stopped.

The desperate plight of the South has eclipsed the fact that reconstruction had to be undertaken also in the North, though less spectacularly. Industries had to adjust to peacetime conditions, factories had to be retooled for civilian needs.

Financial problems loomed large in both the North and the South. The national debt had shot up from a modest 65 million in 1861, 3 billion in 1865, the year the war ended. This was a colossal sum for those days but one that a prudent government could pay. At the same time, war taxes had to be reduced to less burdensome levels. Physical devastation caused by invading armies, chiefly in the South and border states, had to be repaired. This herculean task was ultimately completed, but with discouraging slowness. Other important questions needed answering. What would be the future of the four million black people who were freed from slavery? On what basis were the Southern states to be brought back into the Union?

What of the Southern leaders, all of whom were liable to charges of treason? One of these leaders, Jefferson Davis, President of the Southern Confederacy, was the subject of an insulting popular Northern song , "Hang Jeff Davis from a Sour Apple Tree." And even children sang it. Davis was temporarily chained in his prison cell during the early days of his two-year imprisonment. But he and the other Southern leaders were finally released, partly because it was unlikely that a jury from Virginia, a Southern Confederate state, would convict them. A ll the leaders were finally pardoned by President Johnson in 1868 in an effort to help reconstruction efforts proceed with as little bitterness as possible.