132 NEW BRUNSWICK FORESTRY CONVENTION 



Mr. Power, M. P., of Quebec (West), made the following address : 



It is certainly a pleasure to me today to have the honor of sitting at 

 this important meeting ; but, Mr. Premier, you take the pleasure from me 

 when you call me to my feet, because I really came here to study. I 

 feel somewhat in the position of the gentleman who was walking down a 

 fashionable thoroughfare, and was attracted by a small boy attempting to 

 ring a doorbell about the height of the boy. The gentleman kindly offered 

 to assist the boy, and rang the bell for him, when the boy turned around, 

 and in his own sweet tone said : " Run, you son of a gun." 



That is how I feel, aud : the only thing that deters me from running is 

 that I am a native-born Canadian and Canadians never run, but endeavor to 

 do their duty to the best of their ability. 



Mr. Price has touched on everything that appertains to forestry, so far 

 as the Province of Quebec is concerned. I am here to do a certain amount 

 of duty and to give you a certain amount of information, which I shall be 

 most happy to do. 



It has been my lot to have practically spent a half - a - century in the 

 lumber business, and to have travelled from one end of the Dominion to the 

 other, and outside of this Dominion, and I have seen a great deal of what is 

 going on, and especially one feature, to which I will refer, and it has im- 

 portant bearings on the commerce which we have today, and that is the 

 destruction of the most valuable forests which are tor the benefit of 

 mankind. 



It was my lot when but a boy, in 1866, to have left my native province 

 and to have crossed the American territory into that great Pine State of 

 Michigan, when it was practically a forest, from the City of Saginaw to the 

 Straits of Mackinac, and where is it today ? In later years I crossed the 

 Straits of Mackinac and on to the bounds of Michigan, and here there was 

 nothing but the tracks of the Indians and the lumberman's trade, and there 



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I had looked upon forests which it appeared a century's work would not cut 

 away, but today it is done. 



In later years I crossed into the pine regions of Wisconsin and Minne- 

 sota. Today there is nothing left in that section cf the country but hack 

 pine and Norway. To come back to my own country, and to the 

 destruction of the pine in our own province. Many a time have I 



