464 



Canadian Forcslr}) Journal, November, 1919 



ON THE EXHIBITION CAR IN ONTARIO 



B}) J. R. Dickson, B.A., M.S.F. 



The Exhibition Car of the Canadian Forestry 

 Association, which made a most successful de- 

 but as a propaganda agent in 1918, when it 

 was taken through parts of Quebec and New 

 Brunswick, has through the interest and cour- 

 tesy of the railways again been sent forth to 

 continue its good work of spreading the gospel 

 of forest conservation. 



At midsummer this car was placed in my 

 charge and with an assistant to run the moving 

 picture machine, I left for a three weeks' trip 

 through Northern Ontario, going as far west as 

 Kenora and as far north as Cochrane. We 

 visited en route some twenty towns and cities, 

 stopping at each place about a day and wher- 

 ever possible holding an evening lecture. 



GREAT PUBLIC INTEREST. 



The keen interest which we found nearly 

 everywhere was most encouraging and shows 

 that this vitally important question of securing 

 better protection and better management for 

 our timberland heritage is steadily strengthen- 

 ing its appeal among all classes of our citizens. 

 For instance. North Bay, a railway centre; Port 

 Arthur, a great lumber depot; Dryden, a Kraft 

 paper fame; and Timmis, the gold mining cen- 

 tre; to mention only four places, each furn- 

 ished an enquiring throng of 500 to 1 ,000 car 

 visitors and at a number of evening meetings, 

 the accommodation was taxed to the utmost. 

 It is only fair to say, however, that the potent 

 lure of "the movies" drew crowds of children 

 to these meetings, and although this mixing 

 of kiddies and adults makes a difficult audience 

 to deal with, the boys and girls were always 

 welcomed as potential citizens and a special 

 attempt made to explain the meaning of con- 

 servation and to enlist their sympathy and in- 

 terest. 



On entering the car, the first thing to engage 

 the visitor's eye was a map of Canada, showing 

 as a green band from coast to coast, this coun- 

 try's great "tree farm" of some 400,000,000 

 acres. The average visitor showed a growing 

 sense of interest when it was pointed out that 

 the title to practically all this absolute forest 

 land was still held in the name of the people, 

 giving some 50 acres on the average to every 

 man, woman and child in Canada. The re- 

 markable fact that since the days of the French 

 Regime our policy in general has been to lease 



and not sell our timberland, is what makes it 

 worth while to-day to send out this car to edu- 

 cate public opinion. In the United States, 

 where an ultra laissez-faire policy so foolishly 

 sold outright 80 per cent of the national timber- 

 land, they are becoming more and more alarmed 

 about the future, and more and more envious of 

 Canada's unique opportunity in this respect. 



Some lumbermen are fond of telling how they 

 can return again and again to their limits for 

 another cutting, but none the less a constant 

 forest depreciation is going on in Ontario both 

 in quality and quantity. I was on a berth near 

 Cobalt where the first cutting was largely white 

 pine, the next largely red pine, the next, and 

 most recent one, largely spruce, the next en- 

 suing one promises to be largely jack pine and 

 the one after largely weed trees or nothing. 

 Ontario people are at last awakening to the fact 

 that it is absurd to have only two or three for- 

 esters looking after a 200,000-square mile tree 

 farm when they should have two or three hun- 

 dred foresters. Quite outside of guaranteeing 

 the many auxiliary forest benefits, such as the 

 maple sugar industry, the fur trade, the hunt- 

 ing and fishing, the enormously valuable sum- 

 mer tourist possibilities, the hydro-electric en- 

 ergy, an unfailing domestic water supply, and 

 the beneficial climatic influences, it would pay 

 well for the primary purpose of securing future 

 log and pulpwood supplies, to properly man- 

 age our timberlands, for man can grow 5 to 10 

 times as much valuable timber per acre as is 

 now being produced by nature on our cut-over 

 areas. 



ONTARIO HAS MUCH AT STAKE. 



The abundant production of wood is vitally 

 necessary to safeguard the future of our two 

 thousand wood using concerns in Ontario. By 

 showing a few of the hundreds of essential uses 

 of wood, the car exhibit clearly indicated how 

 nearly every industry is keyed into the forest. 

 To see products as widely different as sugar and 

 vinegar, candy flavors and powerful poisons, 

 fibre silks and imitation iron, all made from 

 wood, is an impressive method of education. 

 Although as yet we manufacture in the main 

 only two pulp products — newsprint and kraft 

 paper — Canada's export pulp and paper busi- 

 ness has grown in twenty-five years from $100 

 to $100,000,000 per annum, and about one- 



