1230 JAMES I^AWIvER 



the front row of townships came another, and, so on, into the interior, 

 as far as the need of the day demanded. The people saw the first and 

 second rows of townships cleared and filled with farmers, and reasoning 

 from these totally insurficient data, they imagined that the timber adminis- 

 tration would settle itself. They thought that all that was necessary was 

 to give the lumberman the right to take off the timber and that the farmer, 

 ever on his heels, would press him further into the interior where it was be- 

 lieved more and better timber existed. In fact this idea of getting the lum- 

 berman to take off the timber without delay was so strong in the minds of 

 early legislators that a clause was inserted in all contracts in Upper Canada 

 and Lower Canada (Ontario and Quebec) that they must cut at least one 

 thousand fe-^t per acre per year. This was later reduced to five hundred 

 feet per year, but the underlying idea remained as the spirit of the regula- 

 tions. In the public mind the real and natural occupier of the land was 

 the farmer and the lumberman was \newed as a necessary evil, who must 

 be tolerated because he paved the waj^ for the farmer. When anything 

 Hke lack of markets or transportation interfered with the operations of 

 the lumberman the settlers did not hesitate, even long after the timber trade 

 was established, to cut and burn the most magnificent timber in huge 

 piles containing thousands of feet. 



Lands i.eased, not sold to lumbermen. 



This being the state of affairs, the S3^stem of leasing tracts of land to 

 lumbermen for sufficient time to enable them to take off the timber was the 

 natural outcome. When a settlement was begun, say at the mouth of a 

 river, a lumberman would be given in the spring the lease of a block of land 

 technically known as a " limit " (i), either back of the settlement or farther 

 up th^ river, with the understanding that he would take off the timber dur- 

 ing the follo\%ing autunm and winter, so that farmers might enter upon the 

 land the next spring. Thus in a great part of Eastern Canada to-day the 

 timber is cut by lumbermen who lease the ground upon which the timber 

 grows from the government, under an annual lease which terminates on the 

 first day of May. Since the lumberman was viewed as a bird of passage, 

 always being pashed farther back into the unknown interior where in the 

 public mind the timber was always " illimitable and inexhaustible ", 

 he did not gain possession outright of the land on which the timber grew. 

 While in the province of Nova Scotia the great proportion of the timber land 

 is held by purchase or grant in fee simple yet, viewing the whole of Canada, 

 the proportion of timberland held in fee simple is so small that practically 

 the leasing .system may be said to be the rule. Probably less than 5 percent, 

 (jf the timberlands of Canada are owned in fee simple, the remainder being 

 owned by the different provincial governments or by the Dominion Govern- 



(i) Su called because the lessee must injtcutliiuber outside certain stated limits ur bound- 

 aries. 



