1200 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



land express told o.f the big engines that drove the 

 Canadian Pacific trains over the big grades of the 

 Canadian Rockies. They were critical of the toy French 

 engines. They were invited to take the trip over the 

 border into Pontlarher, the sentinel town of the inter- 

 national border. On they climbed, and when the end 

 of the run was reached, two begrimed, but happy beings 

 climbed off the engine honorary members of the French 

 Railwaymen's Union. One man worked the engine up the 

 winding grades and the other had stoked. One 

 was a professor of Mechanics at McGill University, 

 and the other was chief engineer for one of the 

 biggest lumber companies in Ontario. That was the 

 kind of material of which the Forestry Corps was made. 



When the timber famine 

 came along the fighting 

 fronts of Europe, the e.x- 

 treme east of the French 

 lines and fortresses like 

 I'elfort were jjleading as 

 urgently as the rest. There 

 were huge forests but nf) 

 material or men to cut them 

 fast enough for military 

 needs. Heavy timber 

 m e a n t the saving of 

 l'"reiichmen's lives, so a 

 bargain was struck that 

 treble the amount cut and 

 delivered by the Canadians 

 in the Vosges and Jura, for 

 the French armies would 

 be delivered in standing 

 timljcr near the Rritish 

 lines. In two weeks boilers 

 and mills from the far away 

 Dominion were installed in 

 the mountains. The rail- 

 way officials were their 

 friends, and loading sidings 

 were blasted out of the 

 solid rock cuttings through 

 the mountains. The peas- 

 ants, who formerly cut the 



big trees, used to slowly bring them down the mountain 

 roads by o.x teams into the valley town where there were 

 ancient mills driven by water wheels. Ten trees a day 

 was a good average for the mill to saw. 



Then the Canadians came on the scene. There were 

 many engineering difficulties to overcome. The supply 

 of water for the big Nova Scotia boilers was solved by 

 their own men and miles of piping were laid that defied 

 gravity by artful pumping. Light railways were built 

 through the forests and mud roads were macadamized 

 by mountain rock which was crushed by our own outfits. 

 In the various mills at the end of the war the output of 

 all sizes of timber had reached 400,000 feet daily, more 

 than the whole Jura produced in the year before hostili- 

 ties broke out. Fifteen or twenty mills of Canadian type 



C.\BLE E.MLW.'WS BRING DOWN AN UNENDING SUPPLY OF 

 LOGS IN THE VOSGES 



were distributed at strategic points — anyone coming on 

 the scene might have thought themselves to be in Northern 

 Ontario, or British Colupibia. The clever engineers of 

 the Forestry Corps were always willing to help the 

 villagers. They showed them how to harness the rush- 

 ing streams that irrigated the vine-clad slopes, and turn 

 them into power for electric light or to run their wine 

 presses. One Canadian major who had been in the 

 wooden pipe business on the Pacific Coast gave up his 

 trade secrets in the fraternity of war-time, and water 

 systems were started in villages that for centuries had 

 dipped buckets in the communal stream. 



In the south of France the huge pine forests which 

 Napoleon planted for the peasants yield them fortunes 



in resin and turpentine. It 

 is estimated that the value 

 extracted from each tree 

 per year is five francs. But 

 in forty years the tree goes 

 sterile, and there were mil- 

 lions of these trees ready to 

 be cut into railway sleepers, 

 and inch planks badly need- 

 ed for the war. The 

 French Government had 

 difficulty in buying them 

 from the unsophisticated 

 peasants. A governinent 

 official went with a Bank of 

 France cheque to close a 

 deal with one old forester 

 near the Spanish border. 

 It was for a quarter of a 

 million francs, and a for- 

 tune for the old man. He 

 tore the cheque up as 

 worthless; he could only 

 think in tree values, not in 

 coinage. For several weeks 

 the deal hung fire, and then 

 he exchanged the sterile 

 forest for a productive one 

 fifty miles away, asking as 

 his profit one hundred ex- 

 tra trees. The rapidity with which the Canadians cut 

 the forest amazed the Frenchmen, who called them the 

 "madmen of Canada." They were all good friends, 

 though, and hundreds of the poor folks who had never 

 had the services of a doctor or been in the hospital were 

 treated free by the kindly surgeons attached to the corps. 

 As in the Vosges and Jura, the Canadians who worked 

 in the Landes and Gironde also left the mark of the new 

 world when peace called them back to Canada. The 

 hospitals remain and funds have been raised for a French 

 staff to keep them going. New railroads built by the 

 men from overseas link up hamlets that never thought 

 to see the ribs of steel. It was a quaint experience for 

 the men from overseas, and it was a strange temporary 

 awakening for the people of the Landes. 



