8 



Canadian Forestry Journal, J an. -Feb., 1912. 



Mr. Aubrey White, Deputy Minister of 

 Lands and Forests for Ontario, then 

 spoke briefly. He defended the use of 

 college students as fire rangers, claiming 

 that in dealing with parties of sportsmen 

 and campers a young man of education 

 was more capable than the average woods- 

 man or 'lumber-jack.' 



Other speakers of the morning were Rev. 

 Dr. Geo. Bryee of Winnipeg; Lt.-Col. J. W. 

 Harkom, of Melbourne, P.Q.; Mr. A. 

 Knechtel, Inspector Dominion Forest Re- 

 serves, and Mr. W. H. Berry, Assistant De- 

 puty Surveyor-General for New Bruns- 

 wick, St. Stephen, N. B. 



Wednesday Afternoon. 



Wednesday afternoon's proceedings were 

 opened with the reading by Dr. Fernow 

 of the Report of the Committee on Forest 

 Fire Legislation. This committee was 

 composed of Dr. Fernov/, chairman, and 

 Messrs. Thos. Southworth, of Toronto, W, 

 C. J. Hall, of Quebec, P.Q., Ellwood Wil- 

 son, of Grandmere, B.Q., Dr. Judson F. 

 Clark, of Vancouver, B.C., Frank Davi- 

 son, of Bridgewater, N.S., and G. C. Piche, 

 of Quebec, P.Q. 



The committee, the report stated, had 

 collected all the existing forest fire legis- 

 lation in Canada and most of the United 

 States. They also received expressions of 

 opinion from competent persons and upon 

 these they based their report. They found 

 that while the Dominion and all the pro- 

 vincial governments had passed legislation 

 to protect forests from fire, these laws 

 varied greatly in detail and in efficiency. 

 They reviewed the laws of all the pro- 

 vinces, and having taken all things into 

 consideration they stated that the law of 

 Nova Scotia was probably the most effi- 

 cient for the conditions there. New 

 Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario had laws 

 which were good in many respects, but 

 they were all primarily designed to pro- 

 tect unorganized territory and they needed 

 to be supplemented by provisions looking 

 to the co-operation of county and township 

 authorities in the organized districts with 

 the officers of the province and the rangers 

 of the lumbermen in the unorganized dis- 

 tricts. The laws of the prairie provinces 

 were designed in the first place to stop 

 prairie fires and needed to be very consid- 

 erably supplemented. In British Columbia 

 and the Dominion, fire protection was 

 largely a matter of executive administra- 

 tion. 



The committee reported that legislation 

 to be effective must be carried out by a 

 thorough organization backed up by pub- 

 lic opinion. Different sections required 

 different laws and the reason the Nova 

 Scotia system was efficient was Ijecause all 

 parts of the province were organized ter- 

 ritory. Preventive measures were need- 



Dr. B. E. Fernow. 



ful, uad pul)lic opinion must be so aroused 

 that persons guilty of causing fires might 

 be properly punished. 



The three main causes of forest fires 

 were railways, settlers and persons, like 

 sportsmen and prospectors, passing through 

 the forest. Regarding railways, safety 

 should be sought in improved equipment 

 'of locomotives, clearing of the right of 

 way and i^atrol. In regard to settlers the 

 first suggestion was an educative cam- 

 paign. Quebec was congratulated in that 

 the clergy under the direction of the 

 bishops read letters of caution from their 

 pulpits. Times should be fixed in which 

 settlers must burn the slash from their 

 clearing operations and in each case a per- 

 mit to burn the same should be secured 

 from the fire warden of the district. Re- 

 garding those whose business takes them 

 into the woods, it was suggested that per- 

 sons like tourists and prospectors passing 

 through the woods should not be allowed 

 to start fires for any purpose without hav- 

 ing a permit from the proper officer. Such 

 permits should be for a short time only 

 and renewable upon good conduct. To re- 

 duce the danger from lumbering opera- 

 tions the report recommended the burning 

 of the slash, while the logging operations 

 were going on, or the 'downing' of tops 

 and branches so that they might lie close 

 to the ground and rapicll- decay. Upon 

 the important question of organisation the 

 committee report that it should be central 

 and permanent, and should at fhe same 

 time co-operate with municipalities and 

 timber limit holders. The organisation 



