392 



Canadian Forestry Magazine, August-September, 1920. 



'*#!*»*? 



Forest fires take a severe toll of property in newly settled districts where loss is hardest to bear. A 

 scene at Five Fingers, New Brunswick, on May 27th, 1920. 



have been no holocausts such as the 

 Northern Ontario horror of 1916, but 

 loss of life has been recorded in North- 

 ern Manitoba, and shocking loss of pro- 

 perty in many sections of the country, 

 notably the burning of St. Ouentin, New- 

 Brunswick. 



Again and again .the Canadian Fores- 

 try Association has stressed the fact that 

 when a forest burns the people pay. They 

 pay because the private owner of a 

 timber berth makes the smallest of all 

 the profits that come out of a well-ope- 

 rated forest. He also bears the smallest 

 of all the losses involved in the destruc- 

 tion of a forest by fire. This is so, be- 

 cause for every four dollars that come 

 out of a log in the woods, three dollars go 

 to wages and suppHes and one goes to 

 government taxes and interest on 

 investment. It is reasonable to assert, 

 likewise, that when a forest burns the 

 loss in employment and railway traffic 

 and supplies greatly exceeds the license 

 holder's loss. One may the more readily 

 agree with this by remembering how a 

 cord and a half of logs worth perhaps 

 $30 at a railroad siding becomes worth 

 $120 when manufactured into a ton of 

 newsprint paper. Growing in the for- 



est, the wood equivalent of the ton of 

 paper w^ould be worth at most a few 

 dollars. The community value of an 

 accessible timber limit, therefore, must 

 be counted by our governments and 

 private citizens in terms of potential em- 

 ployment, potential export trade, new 

 towns and population, railway freight, 

 and public taxes. As a nation we have 

 bromided ourselves with the foolish 

 thought that when a grocery store burns 

 (^own an insurance company writhes in 

 great pain and that the common folk get 

 off scot free. Similarly, there is a 

 widely-held notion that w^hen a timber 

 limit goes up in smoke, the individual 

 limit holder bears the entire burden. As 

 a matter of hard truth, it is the com- 

 munity that "stands the shot." 



]]liat JVent Up in One Fire 

 Only occasionally is it possible to 

 render into graphic terms the icy 

 statistical totals of timber fires. Here, 

 however, are terms graphic enough for 

 anybody ; they were embodied in a 

 statement made to the Foresty IMaga- 

 zine by one of the best known lumber 

 firms in the Ottawa \'allev : 



"Some years ago, a settler who was 

 allowed to locate on the e.<:]ge of our 



