100 i \niAy FORI-:*TI;Y ASSOCIATION 



Mr. SOUTHWORTH. I do not want to take up any time at this late stage, neither 

 do I desire to differ in any way from my superior officer, Mr. White, but while it is 

 quito true and conceded by every one, that the trend of events in connection with 

 rational forestry by the legislature of the province of Ontario has been in the right 

 : wise and progressive, at the same time I do not like to think that we 

 have reached a finality by any means. As Mr. White pointed out, we do not have a 

 timber sale every year, although we receive about a million dollars every year from 

 the receipts of previous sales. We do not sell timber for revenue purposes only, but 

 from emergencies, pressure of settlement, building of railways, &c., but may we not 

 hope, may we not look forward to the time when the timber will be sold for revenue 

 purposes and because it is ripe to be sold ? It is true, we are protecting the timber we 

 have now sold or partly sold, but the forty millions of acres, more or less, of timber 

 lands referred to by Mr. White is largely unprotected. Mr. White succeeds in getting 

 (a little larger appropriation every year to expend for surveys, but as Mr. Bertram 

 pointed out, there is' still a very large proportion of the province unprotected. I do 

 not think, as Mr. Bertram says, that offence will be taken by tfce Government if the 

 Association helps the department in getting from the legislature the aid required 

 for the proper conduct of this work. 



Mr. MACOUN. About the matter of posting notices, I might state that this last- 

 season was my twenty-fourth season in travelling what we may call the sub-arctic 

 forest. With the exception of the James' Bay district of the province of Ontario the 

 country is brule. In the whole districts of Alberta and Athabaska there is practically 

 no green timber, except in the river valleys and some isolated spots that have not been 

 reached by the fires. But as to the point Mr. White has mentioned about posting 

 notices regarding fire, as one who has travelled for so many years as an explorer, I 

 would say that if we do not learn to put out our fires through seeing those notices, you 

 cannot expect a stray person going through the country to do so. Year after year 

 I have found myself and I am as careful as most people are going away from camp 

 and leaving fires burning. Sometimes I have gone back half a day's travel to put out 

 a camp fire. If those notices that Mr. White speaks of cost a man's wages for a whole 

 season to put up one of them it would be worth the money to the Government. I did 

 not camp over five times last summer that I did not see a notice signed ' E. Stewart,' 

 and we never left one of those camps with fire dry. Whoever posted Mr. -Stewart's 

 notices and it could not have been one person, because they were up the whole length 

 of the Peace river made a very thorough job of it. The notice recites the penalties, 

 but I do not think it is the penalty that people think of. They are apt to forget. 

 But no man who eats his dinner with a notice up before him on a tree will go away and 

 leave a fire burning. On every portage on these regularly travelled routes between 

 Keewatin and the Georgian bay these notices should be posted in French and English, 

 because there are very few people, perhaps none at all', who will wilfully start a fire, 

 but many, many people, experienced travellers at that, who will go away and leave a 

 fire burning. In 1886 I went through Lake Winnipeg to Hudson bay and one of our 

 men went ashore for a moment or two and lit his pipe. For six weeks after that we 

 saw the smoke from that fire, and there must have been millions of acres burned 

 through the carelessness of one man. I am willing at any time publicly to say that if 

 it costs a man's wages for a whole season to put up one notice on each portage it pays 

 the provincial government to have this notice put up. 



