CANADIAN FORESTRY CORPS WORK IN FRANCE 



BY ROLAND HILL 



(Canadian War Correspondent) 



OF THE many experiences in quaint places in which 

 the Canadians found themselves doing war duty 

 those of the Canadian Forestry Corps can claim 

 almost prior place. In 1917 Britain, France and Italy 

 were all appealing for lumber — and more lumber. The 

 Allied forces in Salonika were crying for it in the worst 

 kind of way. Russia offered a supply if cutting could be 

 organized. So into the four corners of Allied Europe 

 were sent Canadian timber cruisers, men who had 

 foraged through Northern Quebec, Ontario and British 

 Columbia. Some of them could speak no language but 

 their own, but they knew what they were after, and they 

 could tell to the thousand how many billion feet could 

 be cut from a forest. At one time, after three Ontario 

 men had cruised Crete and Mudros, a Canadian mill 

 outfit was started on its way to the picturesque Mediter- 

 ranean. But the Royal Engineers decided to do the job 

 and the Canadians were robbed of one of their quaint 

 experiences. Parties were sent to Russia and were about 



to start operations when the distant rumbles of the 

 revolution were heard and they were withdrawn. 



The best record of the Canadian Forestry Corps, out- 

 side that done for the British was the supplying of every 

 class of lumber direct to the French Armies from the 

 Vosges and Jura Mountains on the Swiss border and 

 from the Landes and the Gironde, south of Bordeaux, 

 in sight of the Pyrenees. In the north Canadian uni- 

 forms came to be known in the quaint mountain villages, 

 and the peasants opened their homes to the strange men 

 froni across the Atlantic. Down in the Landes, where 

 reigned a "dolce far niente" almost Spanish, the vigor 

 and expedition of the Canadian wood choppers was an 

 unceasing marvel. Some of the Canadians from Acadia 

 found distant relations of the same names through Cabot 

 and Cartier in the mountaineers of the Jura. 



One day in the early spring of 191 7, two Canadian 

 officers chatting with the engineer of the Paris-Switzer- 



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