DEPARTMENT OF LANDS AND FORESTS FOR 1934 11 



west as Dryden in the Kenora District, at the Head of the Lakes, in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Lake Simcoe and Uxbridge, in the Parry Sound District, in the 

 Ottawa Valley and practically throughout the East part of Northern Ontario 

 from New Liskeard to Hearst, the cost has been greater than would obtain if 

 such class of settlement could be more centralized, but distribution of settlers 

 was largely the result of efforts to place them on roads. 



The results to date, however, can best be proven by the expressed feelings 

 of a considerable number of those placed in 1932. Their attitude has been 

 and is that, notwithstanding the hazards of pioneer life and the discomforts 

 and hardships that accompany the same, they take pride in the sense of owner- 

 ship and the absence of rental, heating and light problems, and in the oppor- 

 tunities of performing tasks and rendering services usually denied unemployed 

 relief recipients. Discouragement and disillusionment natuially follow in 

 some instances, but the efforts of those who for the most part have faced their 

 difficulties with a good heart and with some success are evident and very 

 many of them would not be willing to consider abandonment of such rights 

 as they have been able to establish to date. 



But to pass a clear-cut definite opinion upon the ultimate success of the 

 plan, laudable as it appears, one must wait for a reasonable period of years 

 during which interval the settler will have ample opportunity of testing out 

 his ability to apply his energies and develop a spirit of independence. When 

 the settler is freed from subsidized measures and is placed upon his own 

 initiative and resources, and then measures up to individual responsibilities, 

 the assistance given to him and the efforts directed on his behalf will be mani- 

 festly justified. 



So many factors of a controversial character enter into a consideration 

 of the merits of a Back to the Land Movement at the present time that a 

 certain hesitancy to extend the plan in pioneer sections may be advisable. 



When long tried and old established settlers in well settled and fertile 

 areas are faced with the complex problem of production and marketing, and 

 are even urged in instances to restrict production, and when abandoned farms, 

 well cleared, fertile and attractive, are lying idle awaiting only the return of 

 the plow, it seems anomalous to induce individuals, though they are motivated 

 by a desire to be self-supporting, to trek to bush lots and undertake the tedious 

 task in unorganized areas of hewing out and establishing homes where even 

 in normal times it takes years to develop paying farms. Under normal con- 

 ditions the settler has a chance of bush work in the late fall and winter and 

 limited employment in river driving in the spring, but when the lumber in- 

 dustry is so harassed and pulpwood operations so reduced from what they 

 were a few years ago the settler finds himself so handicapped that he is obliged 

 to seek aid from the Government, and undertakes to devote a goodly portion 

 of his time to doing road work, thus considering the clearing of land and 

 ordinary farm labours a secondary concern. 



An exhaustive survey will be made towards segregating agricultural areas 

 in the newer parts of the Province in order to consolidate settlement and to 

 withdraw from agricultural disposition, where it is found advisable, certain 

 areas that are obviously unsuitable for productive farming. 



It is important that a situation now grave throughout the Province with 

 respect to farming, with so many productive holdings so closely tied up with 



