1232 JAMES I^AWI^ER 



on the other has for half a century Ijeen one of the dilhculties of Canadian 

 forest administration. 



This plan of annual leases, with ground rent dues and bonuses, con- 

 tinued to be the method for many years in Canada, and, generally speaking, 

 when the interior provinces and British Columbia came to be opened up it 

 was the method applied to the forests therein. 



Canada, it must be remembered, existed previous to 1867 as a group 

 of British Colonies each independent of all the rest, though all owing 

 allegiance to Great Britain. When the colonies on the eastern side of the 

 continent were federated into the Dominion of Canada in 1867 an apportion- 

 ment of assets and liabilities, rights and duties, was made as between the 

 colonies (which at that time became provinces) and the new Dominion or 

 federal government. By this apportionment the provinces retained the 

 possession and management of their lands and forests. British Columbia, 

 which was a British Colony on the Pacific coast, came into the federation 

 later under the same arrangement. One of the objects British Columbia 

 had was to get railway connection with the Atlantic coast and, to assist 

 in securing this, British Columbia granted to the Dominion Government 

 a strip of territory forty miles wide and about five hundred miles long 

 throiigh the province from east to west — twenty miles on each side of the 

 railway which should be built. 



Canada consisted then of the old colonies of Nova Scotia, Prince Ed- 

 ward Island, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario (lyovver Canada and Up- 

 per Canada) on the Atlantic Seaboard. British Columbia on the Pacific 

 joined the confederation a little later. In the interior was a stretch of 

 prairie country, roamed over by bison and redmen (North American In- 

 dians), and, since 1670, under the control of a British trading company — the 

 Hudson's Bay Company. The Dominion of Canada, for a cash payment and 

 other considerations, bought out the rights of the Hudson's Baj- Company, 

 and after a period of direct federal control, created three provinces in this 

 territory : Manitoba, vSaskatchewan and Alberta. These provinces were 

 given a cash subsidy in lieu of their lands, minerals and forests. The re- 

 sult is that the older provinces, that were original^ colonies, retain the 

 management of their lands and forests, while in the newer provinces of 

 Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and in the forty-mile-wide strip 

 through British Columbia on each side of the Canadian Pacific Railway, 

 the Dominion Government manages the lands and forests. 



The settlement and commercial and governmental development of 

 Canada from the Atlantic coast to the Rocky Mountains has been uniform 

 from east to west, and throughout this region the selling of the timber and 

 the leasing of the land under it by the government to the lumberman has 

 been the basis of the timber administrative .system. British Columbia, 

 the only province which lies west of the Rocky Mountains, was settled b}' 

 people who reached it from Great Britain and Eastern Canada by way of 

 Cape Horn or the Isthnuis of Panama or by the overland route through 

 the United States. Lumbering in this province was begun in 1827 by 

 Dr. John McI^aitghi,in, a Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, who 



