32 CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 



is too difficult to be remunerative, very little is cultivated generally; grain hardly 

 at all. And the astonishing thing is that many of my parishioners have the oats 

 necessary for their horses brought in from the West. Many work in the mines, but 

 there are some rich people in the parish those who sell wood. A father of a 

 family may thus make as much as fifty dollars a week. But in ten or fifteen years 

 everything will be exhausted. Then what will they do? How will they live? " 



Another assures me that in twenty years saw-timber and even firewood will 

 have disappeared from his parish; another believes that the crisis will arrive in his 

 parish in fifteen years. Another cur^ of a more recent parish postpones the 

 limit to twenty-five years. Then, like his confreres, he asks what will happen then. 

 And the answer which he gives to this agitating problem is very characteristic. 

 Allow me to quote it literally. " Then," said he " w r e shall do what is done now in 

 some northern regions: we shall sell for twenty-five dollars the cleared land, 

 improved by barn and house." 



A missionary, a keen observer, who has travelled through nearly all the counties 

 in the vicinity of Quebec, and knows well what is going on, confirms in all points 

 the statements of his confreres. 



In a parish quite near to Quebec, a farmer owned a magnificent grove of maples, 

 which yielded every year a fine supply of sugar. One winter, when firewood had 

 reached a high figure, he cut down all his maples and sold them as firewood. This- 

 transaction gave him at once several hundred dollars ; but now he gets not another 

 sou from the land as the soil on which the maples grew is too rocky to produce any 

 harvest of cereals worth counting. In another parish still nearer Quebec, some 

 farmers sell their maple groves to wood merchants. They clear the land entirely 

 and leave the soil completely bare, covered only with debris of all sorts, with the 

 probability that this forest, formerly so rich, will never reproduce itself. Others who- 

 are wiser only sell their largest maples and themselves oversee the cutting. Ten 

 years later their maple groves, renewed, may be submitted to a new exploitation, 

 and yield a good supply of sugar. 



This is a statement of absolutely exact facts. Undoubtedly we should do 

 wrong to generalize too quickly and to believe that the same state of things exists 

 everywhere. I hope that it is not so and that in the regions which I do not know,, 

 more care and more foresight is used in preserving private woodlands. But all 

 the same we must admit that with too many of our compatriots a regrettable 

 indifference exists. We have to change their mental attitude, so to speak- 

 It is necessary to inculcate in those interested the care of the future; to make them 

 understand that they ought not to occupy themselves exclusively with the present, 

 that after them their children will either profit greatly by their wisdom or suffer 

 keenly the consequences of their improvidence. And I think that it is to this end 

 that we ought to direct all our efforts, we who have the mission of enlightening 

 public opinion. For to-day, I know, if one should ask these prodigals of their 

 fortune, what is to become of their heirs, when they the parents have squandered 

 after this fashion their best revenues, they would unhesitatingly answer: "Our 

 children they will do as we do, they will wriggle out." This is to give proof of a 

 great want of foresight, too great not to be culpable, at least to a certain extent. 



Here is an important social and patriotic work to be undertaken and to be 

 carried out to a happy conclusion. Naturally we cannot dream of forbidding 

 these owners of private forests to exploit their resources. This would be exactly 

 the way to accomplish nothing. For very often the exploitation of these woods is 

 necessitated by the temporary difficulties with which certain colonists find themselves 

 laden. All that we can and should do is to suggest to them a rational means of 



