148 REPORT Ol^^ THE No. .'J 



A HISTORY OF CEOWN TIMBER REGULATIONS. 



From tlie date of the French Occupation to the Present Time. 



Compiled with the Assistance of Mr. Aubrey White, 

 Deputy Minister of Lands and Forests. 



Reprinted from the Annual Report of the Clerk of Forestry, for the Province 



of Ontario, 1899. 



The French Regime . — The Seigniors. 



The Ontario system of dealing with the timber upon Crown Lands, as it 

 exists to-day, is far in advance of any other system of regulating the dis- 

 posal of public timber resources on this Continent. Those in charge of it 

 from time to time have made greater efforts to preserve for public uses as 

 large a measure as possible of the country's natural wealth than have been 

 attempted elsewhere. Though, owing to the difference of local conditions, 

 we are, as yet, far from the perfected forestry system of Europe, the result 

 of the increased attention bestowed upon the question of forest preservation 

 has been a gradual development in the direction of modified forestry methods, 

 calculated to secure the perpetuation of the woodlands with the least pos- 

 sible disturbance of existing interests. The latest legislation providing for 

 the establishment of forest reserves is a further step to the same end. 

 d*esigned not onjly to secure for the people the largest possible present 

 return from the timbered area of the Crown domain, but to secure thai 

 revenue in perpetuity. In order to a thorough understanding of the present 

 system as it has been evolved by means of numerous modifications and 

 advances from the point of beginning, with a view to possible suggestions 

 for such alterations as may more efficiently subserve the ends in view, it is 

 necessary to study its growth and development from the earliest days of 

 Canadian colonization to the present time. Moreover, to obtain a complete 

 grasp of the subject in all its bearings it is requisite to consider it in con- 

 nection with the various systems of Crown Land management which have 

 from time to time prevailed. The two branches of administration are so 

 intimately connected that it is hardly possible to treat intelligently of one of 

 them without largely adverting to the other. In fact, during the French 

 Regime the timber resources were regarded as of comparatively little import- 

 ance and furnished siich a small part of the commerce, or the interests of the 

 oolonv, that they were treated merely as incidental to the general land policy 

 of the Government, and the relations between the Crown, the Seignior and 

 thp habitant under the feudal tenure which then prevailed. Apart from the 

 adjustment of the respective rights and privileges of these parties in the 

 timber upon the lands granted for settlement, there can hardly be said to 

 have been any system of timber regulations in existence. The aim of the 

 French in colonizing the banks of the St. Lawrence was to reproduce, as 

 far as possible, in spirit and in form the political and social institutions of 

 France in their New "World Empire. They faithfully copied those sur- 

 vivals of the feudal system, based upon the needs and conditions of a bygone 

 age, which, already out of harmony with the growing spirii^ of industrial 

 and commercial development at home, were doubly unsuited to the environ- 



