22 CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 



country we have a large area of land not particularly favourable or suitable for 

 agriculture. It is rough, broken, hilly land, with not very rich soil in most cases. 

 If we can keep that district as a forest reserve, and preserve the great bulk of 

 forest land in the hills, we have an assurance that the streams which come 

 from it and break through the hills, from the northern country, will be kept at an 

 even flow and will supply that strip of cultivable la,nd between the Laurentians 

 and the river with abundant water for the agricultural well being of that country. 



You, gentlemen of Montreal, are dependent upon the maintaining of the water 

 level of the St. Lawrence for your commerce. The depth of water in the channel 

 is a measure of the advantages of the Port of Montreal, and if you are going to have 

 large vessels coming to your wharves and quays to supply the commere and trade 

 of Montreal and to preserve it as the commercial metropolis of the Dominion, it is 

 necessary that the water supply of the St. Lawrence should be maintained and not 

 be allowed to go down and down as it has in the past every summer. (Applause). 

 You, therefore, you, merchants of Montreal, you people who are dependent upon the 

 commercial progress and commercial success of this city, are vitally interested in 

 the Forest Reserves which will maintain the summer level of your great river and 

 its trade channel to the sea. It is only by these reservoirs of water, which will 

 come down gradually from the mountains, that the high level during summer can 

 be maintained. 



Now, if I may say a word or two with regard to something the president alluded 

 to, that is with regard to pulp wood. My lines have been laid for many years in the 

 thick of political warfare throughout the country. During that time I have con- 

 stantly been mixed up in public affairs, regarding them from a political standpoint. 

 I agree with the President entirely that this question of pulpwood should not become 

 a political question, and I wish to say a word or two entirely apart from political 

 views, but to regard it from a purely economical standpoint. There has been an 

 agitation, and it is spreading amongst those specially interested in forestry, to put 

 an export duty on pulpwood. I grant that as a forester, and interested in forestry, 

 at first sight I have been rather tempted to think that this would be a good thing. 

 But the more I have examined it, arid the more I have studied it, I find this, that 

 every argument which can fairly be brought forward to put an export duty upon 

 pulpwood is equally applicable to the putting of an export duty upon the pulp itself, 

 and I was glad to hear in your president's address just now that he pointed out, that 

 in the near future, and the nearer the better, the pulpwood of Canada would be 

 made into pulp in Canada, and the pulp made into paper also in Canada. (Applause) . 



If we are going to build up our industries in this country along that line, why 

 not go to the full extent. Why stop short of the export of pulp and allow Ameri- 

 cans and others making the paper for us or for themselves to do it with Canadian 



