men and women and their children were dragged down 

 as if by hungry wolves. No refuge was safe. Mine 

 shafts were charnel houses, and even the small rivers 

 were a useless protection. My brother, being close to 

 Matheson, brought out his family in safety, but his five 

 years' labor was gone in thin air. Two hundred and 

 twenty-three people, mostly women and children, died 

 that week-end, because settlers did their burning "as 

 they pleased" and without reference to the laws of 

 safety. 



Of course, all this is changed in Ontario, for the year 

 following the fire, they started fire ranging in the set- 

 tlements and made every settler take out a permit for 

 his burn. The fires are supervised just as in nearly all 

 the other provinces. Life is safe and the people are 

 gradually forgetting the times when -forest fire horrors 

 were continually before their eyes. 



Alberta Does Not Want a "Claybelt Horror." 



Since I came to Alberta, I have seen those same On- 

 tario conditions of the days before the fire duplicated 

 in almost every detail. We have the settlements in the 

 tree-covered country of the North. In fact nearly all 

 the new farmers are homesteading in more or less tim- 

 bered territory. We have to use fire to burn off our 

 slash and we have been, doing it just like Ontario used 

 to do with a strong invitation to a wholesale waste 

 of life and property. 



I'm a farmer couldn't earn my living at anything 

 else but I can see beyond my farm gate when the good 

 of the province of Alberta is at stake. I can see that 

 Alberta can't get along on merely bare land and a set 



