CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 11 



HONOUEABLE SYDNEY FISHER'S ADDRESS. 



Your Excellency, Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, It gives me 

 great pleasure to take part in this meeting of the Canadian Forestry Asso- 

 ciation. I was especially pleased to hear from His Excellency such an 

 address as that with which he opened this gathering. It is a renewed indi- 

 cation and proof of the keen interest and the wisely directed study of the 

 Governor-General of Canada in all that is of interest and value to that Dom- 

 inion over which and in which he represents His Majesty the King. 

 (Applause). It shows that the head of the State and I am sure that in this 

 His Excellency the Governor-General is a true exponent of the feelings and 

 views of His Gracious Majesty King Edward the Seventh considers this 

 question of Forestry one of paramount importance in the economic develop- 

 ment of our country. His Excellency has referred to what is being done 

 in the American Union to the south of us. He has pointed out to us that 

 the President of the United States has taken the lead in urging the people 

 of the United States to study this question of Forestry and take the neces- 

 sary steps towards the conservation of their forest areas and their natural 

 resources. It seems to me, Sir, that in the conservation of our natural 

 resources, of whatever character, that in the conservation of our forests, is 

 involved the conservation of nearly all the other resources. (Applause). 

 Our mineral and mining resources are little aside from that. As regards our 

 agricultural resources, the resources of our water powers in streams and 

 rivers, and the lakes for navigation and transportation purposes the future 

 of all those resources depends upon the proper conservation of the forests. 

 (Applause). This being the case, it is but right that we in Canada should 

 look carefully into this question and take the necessary precautions and 

 steps to see that we do not waste in the future as we have been doing in the 

 past, to a very considerable extent, and as our neighbors have done, far 

 worse than we have. I do not wonder at all that to-day the powers that be 

 and the thinking men in that great country are earnestly endeavoring to 

 change the current of public opinion and the practice of the people to con- 

 trol these things, in regard to the conservation of their natural resources. 

 I regret to say that in this, as in many other ways, perhaps in the bad ways 

 a little more than the -good ways, we, the smaller and younger people, have 

 been following the example and the model of the greater and richer repub- 

 lic to the south of us to a lamentable extent. We have not wasted so much 

 because we have not gone so far and so long in that direction, but in pro- 

 portion to the numbers of our people we have done just as badly, perhaps, 

 as they have. Let us take warning by their condition. Let us stop sooner 

 than they stopped in this wasteful procedure, and let us conserve the 

 natural resources which we still have, more promptly and effectively than 

 ;hey have been able to do. His Excellency remarked that we have a forest 

 srea of 350,000,000 acres of forest lands. I fear me that the Canadian people 

 lave been trading a little too confidently on those vast figures. (Hear, hear). 



