1776 



Canadian Furestiij Journal, July, 1918 



to headquarlers. Owing to the earlier 

 season this year a complete stalT was 

 put on at once. 



Equipment Purchased 



For the purpose of coping with any 

 fires that might break out in the 

 bush country, the department has 

 purchased this year 65 canoes, 100 

 tents, 5 portable fire pumps, 5 boats 

 placed on Georgian Bay, Lake Wah- 

 napitae. Lake Nipissing, Metagami 

 River and Lake Abitibi; 5 motor 

 trucks stationed at Matheson, Engle- 

 hart, Gowganda, Port Arthur and 

 Dryden. These can be quickly run to 

 the difierent points of danger, and 

 in this way probably prevent any- 

 thing like the disaster of three years 

 ago. 



The department has also built live 

 chief rangers' headquarters, fourteen 

 rangers' cabins, seven lookout tow- 

 ers, six decks, one railway motor car 

 house, one boat house, 187 miles of 

 new trail, new portages, eight miles 

 of telephone line, and there were 45 

 acres of special fire hazard burned 

 and cleaned by the rangers. 



Additional information r.eaching 

 the Forestry Journal from Nova 

 Scotia shows the great need for in- 

 tensive educational w-ork along the 

 lines of forest fire prevention. A I any 

 of the disastrous fires sw^eeping 

 through parts of Nova Scotia in June 

 were directly attributable to careless 

 fishermen. Stories have come to hand 

 of numbers of farmers and villagers 

 who have lost their entire property, 

 many of them uninsured, through 

 preventable forest fires in the neigh- 

 borhood. 



Were Precautions Taken? 



A tirnely word on Nova Scotia's 

 losses is spoken by the Lunenburg 

 Enterprise, as follows: 



"There is scarcely any concep- 

 tion of the amount of property or 

 its worth in cold cash that has been 

 destroyed not only in Nova Scolia 

 but in Lunenburg County during the 

 past couple of weeks, by reason of 

 carelessness in regard to bush fires. 



They start from nobody knows 

 where, but there is one thing evi- 

 dent that thev svnchronize with 



the sportsman's visit to the woods 

 and streams for a day of sport. 

 A cigarette, a careless match, some 

 dry grass or tinder for it to^ fall in, 

 and there you have the whole etjuip- 

 ment for a destroying, devastating 

 forest fire. The same thing goes on 

 from year to year, and all the preach-- 

 ing of public men and public bodies 

 seems to have but little effect. 



People deplore the high cost of 

 living and assessment and the enor- 

 mous amount of money it takes to 

 keep things going, and then, thous- 

 ands of dollars are wasted, just plain 

 w^asted. Their expenditure does no- 

 body any good. It is a shame and it 

 is pertinent to ask whether every pre- 

 caution is taken by those in charge 

 of the woods to prevent this annual 

 waste or to discover those responsible 

 for it. All will agree that the in- 

 stances are rare when anyone has 

 ever been called to account." 



According to the Bridgetown, N.S. 

 Monitor, the forest fires in Hants 

 County have driven the wild animals 

 out of their retreats. Bears and a 

 large number of deer have been en- 

 countered on the railroad tracks. 



PERIL IN EDMONTON DISTRICT 



"There is considerable fire danger in 

 some parts of the Edmonton district," 

 states E. H. Finlayson, District In- 

 spector of Forest Reserves at Calgary, 

 according to an interview in the 

 Edmonton Journal. "A year's total 

 of fires is usually from 150 to 250, or 

 more, and while most of these are con- 

 fined to areas of less than ten acres 

 each, the sum total of ground covered 

 runs into as much as 40,000 acres. 

 The causes of a large proportion of the 

 fires are never known, but many of 

 them are traced directly to settlers 

 and campers." 



Some way of utilizing the fire-killed 

 timber on wooded lands that have 

 been swept by these conflagrations is 

 one of the matters to which Inspector 

 Finlayson has given attention. "Only 

 an insignificant proportion of this tim- 

 ber can be used for sawing purposes" 

 he says, "but it is of considerable value 

 in connection with the coal mining 

 industry." There are billions of feet 

 of fire-killed timber on the Alberta 



