144 KEPOET OF ONTARIO GAME No. 52 



individual or corporation and his guilt were brought home to him, the 

 offender would meet with but little leniency in the courts or sympathy 

 from the public, and there is no apparent reason why any individual 

 gliould be held guiltless or escape punishment who either maliciously 

 or through wilful carelessness is the direct cause of the loss of thou- 

 sands, perhaps millions, of dollars' worth of property to the public of 

 the Province through setting fire to the forests. Indeed, it can hardly 

 be doubted that a few instances of rigorous investigation and prompt, 

 drastic punishment would tend to awaken those who go into the forests 

 for one reason or another to the importance of and necessity for exer- 

 cising the most unremitting vigilance and caution. 



If the above conclusions are just in regard to individuals, plainly 

 lliey must apply equally, if not with added force, to corporations such 

 as the railways, to whom the public has granted most valuable privi- 

 leges from which they derive very considerable profits. Unfortunately, 

 it is only too certainly the case that by far the greater number of forest 

 fires which have occurred in the Province of recent years must be attrib- 

 uted to the direct agency of the steam engine, and yet no effort is or 

 has been made to obtain from the corporations adequate compensation 

 for the damage effected through their operations. Along certain sections 

 of the Canadian Pacific Railway between Sudbury and the provincial 

 boundary the stumps of trees, black or gre}^ as the fire was recent or re- 

 mote, bear mute witness to the fiery devastation of the steam locomotive, 

 and from Port Arthur to Rainy River, along the liue of the Canadian 

 Northern Railway, it is the same story repeated, great stretches of black 

 and desolate burn. How far this destruction has been carried on either 

 side of the rights of way will depend on the conditions prevailing at 

 the times of the various and constantly occurring fires. In some locali- 

 ties it will be deeper ; in some not penetrate so far into the interior ; but 

 in all cases the most casual observer cannot fail to note that consider- 

 able tracts of country on either side of the lines have been laid waste 

 and rendered desert, unhabitable and unproductive. Through the heart 

 of the forest country lying between Lake Superior and Hudson's Bay 

 the Grand Trunk Pacific is now penetrating, while the Canadian 

 Northern Railway is preparing to do so, and it is to be feared that unless 

 most stringent and special precautions are taken a similar fate awaits 

 these regions, and that the Province will suffer losses at the hands of 

 these railways which could hardly be estimated in currency. 



It has been estimated that in the region traversed by the Grand 

 Trunk Pacific Railway alone there are 300,000,000 cords of w^ood suit- 

 able for making pulp and paper. The rivers of the region are numer- 

 ous and large and the wood can be easily floated down to the vicinity of 

 the railway, where, doubtless, under the wise provincial provision 

 which enacts that all pine saw logs, spruce pulpwood and hemlock must 

 be manufactured into lumber, pulp or paper in the Province, it will be 

 so treated, thus opening up an enormous new area to settlement and 



