PAPER MILLS AND FORESTRY IN CANADA 



BY ELWOOD WILSON 



fO little is known of Canada in 

 Europe and the United States, 

 and so vague are the ideas re- 

 garding this wonderful country, that it 

 may not be amiss to give in a few 

 words some description of it. While 

 far larger than the United States, its 

 habitable portion is comparatively small, 

 although this, through modern engineer- 

 ing enterprise, is rapidly growing, the 

 hardy pioneer pushing forward his rail- 

 way lines and establishing himself 

 where civilized life seems hardly pos- 

 sible. As one passes from East to West 

 the habitable zone rapidly widens from 

 a narrow strip on the inhospitable Lab- 

 rador coast, fifty to a hundred miles 

 north of the St. Lawrence in Quebec, 

 gradually growing through the prairie 

 regions until in British Columbia it 

 stretches 1,000 miles, almost to the Arc- 

 tic circle. Stunted, almost worthless 

 timber in Labrador, immense forests of 

 medium-sized conifers mixed with hard- 

 woods in Quebec. Large spruce and 

 great forests of white pine in Ontario, 

 treeless prairies and forests of poplar 

 through Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Al- 

 berta, and, finally, the magnificent for- 

 ests of British Columbia to the Pacific. 

 Of .all the provinces which form the 

 Dominion, Quebec is in many respects 

 the most interesting, representing as it 

 does one of the oldest civilizations on 

 the American Continent, differing from 

 its sister provinces in language and re- 

 ligion, and retaining traces of the old 

 French tongue and medieval customs. 

 Three-quarters of the population are 

 French, and the majority of these farm- 

 ers, "habitants," who earn their living 

 in the winter by working in the woods. 

 Along in late August and early Sep- 

 tember, when the crops are all gathered 

 in, they go to some one of the big lum- 

 ber or pulp companies and make a con- 

 tract to cut and haul so many thousand 

 logs 13 1-2 feet long. This is called 

 jobbing and the man a jobber. The 



jobber takes his sons, if he has any 

 over fifteen if not he hires a man or 

 two takes his horse and sleighs and, 

 sometimes, even his whole family, and 

 goes off into the woods, frequently a 

 hundred or more miles from home. 

 Here he gets provisions from the 

 nearest Company depot, and, building 

 a log camp, walls, roof and floor all of 

 logs, he settles himself for the winter. 

 The camp has one room for the people 

 and one for the horses, sometimes all 

 are in the one room. Bunks of poles 

 are built along the wall, two or three 

 windows about 2 feet by one, are cut in 

 the walls, a rough table and a couple 

 of benches are hewed out and a big 

 iron stove set up. Here the jobber 

 spends the winter, cutting and piling 

 logs until Xmas, going home then for 

 his "devoir," as commanded by the 

 Church, having a jolly time with friends 

 until "Little Xmas," and then back to 

 haul his logs on one-horse sleighs to the 

 nearest lake or river, and going home 

 in March. 



In the days of the lumberman this 

 was all, but now have come, dotted here 

 and there like islands throughout the 

 province, the pulp and paper mills, of- 

 fering indoor labor, bringing in new 

 ideas, founding towns and bringing 

 modern "civilization," which, while not 

 an unmixed blessing, is progress and is 

 bringing light into a darkness almost 

 medieval. The first requisites of a pulp 

 mill are water power no other can 

 grind wood profitably a plentiful sup- 

 pi v of clean water and a river to carry 

 the logs on their long journey from the 

 forest to the mill, covering, in some 

 cases, two years. Si- the mill must 

 locate beside a waterfall, and as these 

 occur in most out-of-the-way places, 

 towns of one to live tliusand souls 

 have sprung up in I!K in-art of the 

 wilderness. As the entire personnel 

 of such companies must be brought in 

 from other places, it is necessary to 



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