CANADIAN DEPARTMENT 



By ELL WOOD WILSON 



During the summer the Premier of On- 

 tario planned to appoint a forester as Dep- 

 uty Minister of Lands and Forests, and to 

 bring the management of the Province's 

 timber lands to an up-to-date and efficient 

 basis. He planned to improve fire protec- 

 tion, to establish county forests, and many 

 other improvements. The appointment of 

 Mr. Cain, Secretary to the present Minis- 

 ter, has just been announced. It is sincerely 

 hoped that this appointment will not mean 

 that the old policy will be retained. The 

 new Deputy Minister has an enormous op- 

 portunity if he will but have the courage 

 to forget politics and try and administer 

 the forests for the good of the people. All 

 strength to his arm. 



The two peripatetic cars of the Canadian 

 Forestry Association have been combined 

 and are now touring the Eastern Provinces. 

 From November 14 to 19, nearly 3,500 

 people visited these cars to see the exhibits 

 and to hear the lectures in French and 

 English. A great many school children 

 came and it is safe to say went away know- 

 ing a great deal more about the forests. 

 The basic demand for forestry progress 

 is popular education along popular lines, 

 and the travelling cars are doing a splendid 

 work. 



A Johnson gasoline fire pump was last 

 spring sent over to Scotland for use on a 

 large estate on which a serious forest fire 

 had occurred the previous year. This season 

 was an exceptionally dry one, and the 

 pump helped very materially in extinguish- 

 ing two fires. 



The inaugural meeting of the Empire 

 Forestry Association was held in the Coun- 

 cil Chamber of the Guildhall in London on 

 the sixteenth of November. The Lord 

 Mayor presided. This association has been 

 granted a Royal Charter, and has for its 

 patron the King, and for its first president 

 the Prince of Wales. The object of the 

 association is to spread information as to 

 forestry, to bring about closer relations 

 and co-operation between the forestry 

 agencies throughout the empire and try 

 and encourage the interchange of timber 

 products among the Dominions and Colo- 

 nies. It will endeavor to educate public 

 opinion to demand the adoption of rational 

 forest policies and will try to serVe as a 

 link between associations and individuals 

 who are interested in forestry. It will 

 also collect and publish facts as to existing 

 forest conditions throughout the empire and 

 its future limber requirements. It will pub- 

 lish a quarterly magazine. 



Mr, HcIkc Sylvcn, writing from Sweden, 

 voices the need for an international society 

 of f>,rcst CMKiiieers. An attempt was made 



to do this about 1912, but only two members 

 were obtained, one in Spain and one in 

 Canada. Dr. Unwin has tried to get a 

 Society for British Foresters started also. 

 It. would seem, however, that an interna- 

 tional society would be better. Foresters' 

 problems are the same the world over and 

 great good would come from a closer re- 

 lationship and exchange of ideas. The 

 present close relations between Swedish and 

 Canadian, and between Indian and United 

 States foresters have certainly shown how 

 useful some such society could be. 



Forestry in Australia has met a very bad 

 blow by the resignation of Mr. C. E. Lane- 

 Poole. Large vested interests asked for 

 large timber cutting rights which were de- 

 cidedly contrary to good forest policy. In 

 order to prevent this from going through 

 until the matter could be discussed openly 

 in Parliament, Mr. Lane-Poole asked to be 

 released. Another instance of the forester 

 sacrificing himself for the good of his 

 country. Mr. LanePoole will make a re- 

 port on the forests of Papua. 



The past season has been the worst ever 

 experienced in the St. Maurice Valley. For 

 seven weeks in the spring no rain fell, and 

 in the western section July and September 

 were also very dry. Many men were out 

 of work, so that the woods were full of 

 hunters and fishermen, and as many of the 

 farmers who usually work on the drives 

 and in the woods could get nothing to do, 

 they turned their attention to clearing more 

 land on their farms, so that the number of 

 settlers' fires was larger than for many 

 years. The cost of extinguishing fires 

 reached a figure never before heard of, 

 $114,180 having been spent as against 

 $13,004 spent in 1914. The number of fires 

 along railway lines was much reduced, 

 owing to the awakening of railway officials 

 to the seriousness of destroying timberlands 

 by fires, and their much-increased interest 

 in seeing that they set as few fires as pos- 

 sible. From managers to sectionmen they 

 did their best and have demonstrated that 

 railway fires can be controlled. Railway 

 fires were reduced from 149 for 1920, to 52 

 for 1921. In all 216 fires were reported, 

 82 less than the previous season, and of 

 these 79 required extra labour. The total 

 loss this year is greater than the total of 

 the nine previous years, 193,791 acres were 

 burnt over, 17 per cent of which was mer- 

 chantable timber. There is a strong pre- 

 sumption that some fires were set to obtain 

 work and some were kept burning for the 

 same purpose. Nineteen prosecutions were 

 brought against men who refused to fight 

 fires and six against settlers for setting fire 

 to their clearings without permits. Settlers 

 caused more fire than they did in the last 



five years. Most of the large fires were 

 caused by hunters and fishermen in inac- 

 cessible places. Seven fires burned over 

 an area of more than 10,000 acres each, 

 and five between 5,000 and 10,000 acres. 

 One fire was so severe that one of the mills 

 closed down and all the available men went 

 to fight the fire. On some fires men were 

 kept busy for over two months. A vigor- 

 ous campaign of education was carried on 

 during the last year, a man with a moving 

 picture machine visited villages and drivers 

 camps, and much interest was excited. The 

 only hope is in educating the people who 

 use the woods to be careful. It seems that 

 the only way to enforce carefulness on 

 those travelling in . the woods will be to 

 require all who go into the woods to ob- 

 tain a permit from the district ranger, 

 simply to keep track of them. If men know 

 that their presence in the woods is recorded, 

 it will make them much more careful. 



The lesson of the season is that when 

 bad dry summers occur in country which 

 must be traversed almost entirely by canoe, 

 and where there are no means of quickly 

 reporting fires, the system of ground patrol 

 breaks down entirely. Rangers travelling 

 along the water routes cannot see smoke 

 behind the hills until the fire is beyond 

 their control and then it takes so long to 

 travel to a telephone and get back with 

 help that the fire has become a conflagra- 

 tion. During the last season a number of 

 fires were picked out and reported by sea- 

 planes on other duty, which had not been 

 seen at all by the rangers and which had 

 been burning for some time. In a country 

 so covered with lakes and rivers as the 

 St. Maurice Valley, a daily aeroplane patrol 

 would be better than even an intensive 

 ground patrol and the crew of the plane 

 could easily land and extinguish fires long 

 before they had time to assume any size 

 at all. This method may be given a thor- 

 ough tryout ne.xt season. 



A new flying boat has just been con- 

 s1;ructed which can climb easily to 19,000 

 feet, as against 8,000 for previous models, 

 and which can cruise for six hours at 

 speeds from 60 to 130 miles per hour. It 

 has climbed 15,000 feet in 39 minutes. It 

 has a low landing speed and would seem to 

 be an ideal machine for forest patrol and 

 mapping. 



It is hoped that before long the Provinces 

 of Canada will announce definite forest 

 policies which will safeguard the forests 

 so that our important wood using indus- 

 tries will be assured of a continual supply 

 of raw material. Two of the Provinces, 

 British Columbia and New Brunswick, have 

 appointed advisory committees of lumber- 

 (Continued on page 120.) 



