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AMERICAN FORESTRY 



CANADIAN DEPARTMENT 



By ELLWOOD WILSON 



Ust year was a very bad year for for- 

 est tires and the early part of this season 

 also, and after a strenuous time of fire- 

 fighting, everyone was breathmg a sigh 

 of rehef that the fall had come and all 

 our troubles were over. After an exceed- 

 ingly cold spell, the weather became very 

 warm and dry and no rain fell. Day by 

 day passed and the woods grew drye,r 

 and ryer, the brooks dried up and the wa- 

 ter in the rivers and lakes got very low. 

 Suddenly fires began to spring up as if 

 by magic, especially in the neighborhood 

 of towns and villages. Hunters were go- 

 ing out after partridges, the weather was 

 so fine that people were going ofl for 

 picnics in their cars and everything in 

 the way of slash and stumps was so dry 

 that it seemed an ideal time for the farm- 

 er to clean up his land. Then high winds 

 came and tlie fires began to spread. Then 

 forest fires began to break out and we 

 woke one morning to hear of the terrible 

 disasters in Northern Ontario where 

 whoV towns and villages have been 

 burnt up and many lives lost. Then rain 

 came and every one breathed more freely 

 only to hear that the fire fiend had visit- 

 ed northern Quebec and burnt two towns, 

 but without any loss of life. The de- 

 struction has been appalling, in Ontario 

 . 48 lives and eight million dollars worth 

 of property, not counting timber de- 

 stroyed. Haileybury, a town of 3000 in- 

 habitants was wiped out, also Cobalt and 

 several other towns, 700 square miles 

 in all. In northwestern Quebec the towns 

 of North Temiskaming and Nedelec were 

 destroyed. Fires in the St. Maurice Val- 

 ley and at Lac Frontier also took their 

 toll of timber. Whole families have been 

 destroyed, one family was found suflfo- 

 cated in a root cellar and from the at- 

 titude in which the bodies were found it 

 was evident that they had given up hope, 

 had taken leave of eachc other and re- 

 signed themselves to die. 



The whole thing is heartrendingly pa- 

 thetic and so unnecessary that one could 

 weep in impotent rage over the situation. 

 Every fire (except those caused by light- 

 ning, less than a fraction of one pe.r cent) 

 is set by a human being, is actually light- 

 ed by a match, a cigarette butt, ashes 

 from a pipe, a neglected camp fire or a 

 spark from a railway train or steamboat. 

 No fire ever starts from spontaneous 

 combustion. Therefore every person who 

 lives near or who has occasion to go into 

 the woods must be educated to be careful 

 and to have a sense of responsibility. At 

 least a dozen times during the past sum- 

 mer T have seen fires started along the 

 highways by people driving by in motor 



or other vehicles. Probably the greatest 

 menace is the cigarette, because so many 

 are smoked and there is danger from the 

 match used in lighting them and in the 

 butt which is always thrown away. 



Fires occur every year, every so often 

 we have a dry season when holocausts 

 occur, like the Mirimichi fire, the, Cobalt 

 fire, the Cloquette fire and now the 

 Haileybury fire. Why as intelligent be- 

 ings shoulld we not learn from the ex- 

 perience of the past? Why do we let 

 such a situation continue. I have never 

 found a man who was willing to admit 

 tha/t a forest fire was a good thing, but I 

 have met men who pass for intelligent 

 men of common sense who say that we 

 will always have bad fires. The Man- 

 ager of the Woods Department of a large 

 company years ago told me that God 

 sent the fires just as he sent the rain. 

 Only last week the woods superintendent 

 of an operation told me that there was 

 no use in putting out a fire because it 

 would only burn again next year. A man 

 whose job is to extinguish fires said that 

 once a fire was started nothing but pro- 

 longed rain would put it out. Others 

 say you cannot stop smoking in the woods. 

 Price Brothers and Company stopped their 

 men from smoking except in camp by 

 taking away their matches and by a heavy 

 fine or imprisonment for smoking. An- 

 other difficulty is the attitude of some of 

 the maeistrates who will not fine a man 

 for setting fires or will let him off with 

 a fine of a few dollars. A settler, this 

 summer, applied for a permit to burn a 

 few acres of poor land and was refused. 

 He set his fire in spite of this and burned 

 up ISO square miles of timber land. 



Fires have been set by ganffs operating 

 in the woods and no action taken in the 

 way of dismissal, fine or reprimand. 



The whole trouble is lack of aoorecia- 

 tion of the desperate situation. We can- 

 not afford to have the timber burnt up. 

 Wood is of such basic importance that 

 our forests must be saved from fire. The 

 public must be made to realize the situa- 

 tion, they must understand that it is just 

 as bad 'to bum young timber as it is to 

 burn trees which are already merchant- 

 able- When the latter is burnt the loss 

 is heavy right at the moment, but without 

 the young growth there will be no future 

 forest. Then too. in a country like Que- 

 bec and northern Ontario, the country is 

 absolutely unfitted for anything else but 

 the erowing of timber, excent in relatively 

 small areas. One forest fire sometimes 

 burns away all the soil and two or three 

 invariably do so. I traveled through a 



section this summer, where ten years ago 

 there was virgin timber. Today, after 

 repeated fires, the tops of the hills are 

 burnt down to the rock and wide^ 

 stretches of country are so burned that 

 for over a hundred years there will be 

 no timber of any sort or kind. 



What can be done about it all? What 

 practical means can be taken to stop this 

 terrible devastation, which if continued 

 will wipe out our wood-using industries 

 and leave us a desert? Can we not learn 

 the lesson from the fate of China, North 

 Africa, Spain and Persia? Are we so 

 blind to our own interests, to our re- 

 sponsibilities, so silly that we are going 

 to let this thing continue? Canada has 

 good fire laws and the governments have 

 ample authority and can have ample 

 means to stop fires. The lands belong in 

 most part to the governments and they 

 have absolute control of them. There is 

 no escape from the responsibility, no ex- 

 cuse for not having proper fire prevention. 

 It requires intelligence and firmness. 

 Children in the schools must be taught 

 that a forest fire is worse than the feaf 

 of hell. Railroads must be forced to take 

 adequate prevention measures. Settlers 

 must be watched during all dangerous 

 periods. Men working in the woods must ' 

 be absolutely prevented from smoking. 

 Hunters and fishermen and campers must 

 be careful or must be barred from the' 

 woods. As far as lumber and paper com- 

 panies are. concerned, the responsibility' 

 for fires set by their own employes is' 

 squarely up the the managers. If the men' 

 working in the woods ktxow that the com- 

 pany will not stand for fires, that if they ' 

 are careless or se^ a fire it is cause for 

 immediate dismissal and prosecution they 

 will at once become interested and care- 

 ful. If in a district a man who sets a 

 forest fire is blacklisted others will soon' 

 stop being careless. I have seen a case 

 where the manager of a company was 

 very anxious not to have fires, but his 

 woods superintendent held the opinion 

 that men could not be prevented from 

 smoking and that fires were bound to oc- 

 cur, so his chief's efforts were completely 

 nullified. 



It seems to me that the danger has be- 

 come so great that about the only means 

 for checking fires is to have a force of 

 fire rangers who at the same time have 

 police powers and can arrest and bring- 

 out any man caught contravening the 

 law. either in or out of the forest. Mag- 

 istrates must then be educated up to the 

 point where they will consider setting a 

 forest fire or burning slash without a per- 

 mit in the same category as arson. In- 



