Originally broadcast on CHED Radio, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 1964

A few weeks ago I drove with my family over the Banff - Jasper highway, surely one of the most beautiful spots in the world.  The passes are high through there, and often you find yourself up at or beyond the timberline.  The trees are mostly evergreens and they are small, round and perfectly straight.  There are millions of them on each mountainside, crowded so closely together that it would be hard to walk through them.  I noticed that all of the lower branches of the trees were dead.  The only branches that showed life with those at the top of the tree.  Smaller trees, those which couldn't reach up to the light had died completely.  I looked at those forests and I thought how like people those trees are, each one striving for a place in the sun, each one looking for a little light and a little warmth.  In this rough, tough competitive world we all must find our spot. Too many of us are like the little trees that can't break out of the mass and wither away and die in obscurity, lost and unlamented.  In our day to day dealings with people, I think it is well to remember that everyone needs some recognition, the girl who sets your hair, the man who adjusts your carburetor, the clerk who sorts the files, the operator who answers the phone, all have to feel necessary.  Like the trees on the mountain-side if we find a little place of our own, if we can find OUR place in the sun, then we can grow to be worthwhile human beings.