Canadian Fovcstvij Journal, July, 1915 



131 



Where the Remedy Lies. 



The trio of factors which man may 

 direct as he pleases are sufficiently 

 important to place the responsibility 

 for poor water powers on his shoul- 

 ders alone. In southwestern Ontario, 

 for instance, with such rivers as the 

 Nottawasaga, Saugeen, ^Maitland, 

 Ausable, Thames, Grand, Credit and 

 Humber rivers, every one of which 

 possessed originally valuable water 

 powers, but without any natural stor- 

 age of water except in the soil, the 

 ruthlessness of forest destruction has 

 brought their water powers practi- 

 cally to the point of ruination. It 

 would be too much to suggest that a 

 government buy back the valuable 

 farm lands in this area and restock 

 tliem with timber. Since the original 

 blunder was permitted, expert opin- 

 ion cannot propliesy anything better 

 than that the districts served by these 

 rivers will have to look to Niagara for 

 their future supply of electrical 

 power. 



The situation in Central Old On- 

 tario is, however, substantially dif- 

 ferent and offers an opportunity for 

 immediate governmental activity. The 

 French. ]Maganatewan. Muskoka. Sev- 

 ern, Trent, Moira, Rideau, Missis- 

 sippi, Madawaska, Bonnechere, Peta- 

 waAva and ^lattawan rivers all rise 

 from a connnon plateau, much of it 

 still in forest and only a small por- 

 tion fit for agricultural purposes. A 

 great portion of tliis area shows piti- 

 ful mismanagement of the jniblic in- 

 terest. Although there exists much 

 virgin forest, the cutting in other sec- 

 tions has been severe, and a combina- 

 tion of preventible causes has resulted 

 in bad fires, leaving considerable 

 tracts in wrecked condition. Unless 

 tliese various forces which are head- 

 ing the forests for destruction can be 

 offset by comprehensive and intelli- 

 gent action, the water powers of the 

 whole region must sooner or later be 

 wiped from the list of assets. The 

 condition of the denuded areas is 



closely matched by the poverty of 

 much of the human population. Hun- 

 dreds of families have been permitted 

 by an almost criminal indiftVrence to 

 take up homesteads on land absolutely 

 unfitted for growing crops. One 

 would think that by this time, Cana- 

 dian provinces had witnessed enough 

 pitiful evidences of the folly of giving 

 non-agricultural land to applicant 

 farmers, but the exact duplicate of a 

 thousand past warnings may be seen 

 to-day all through this great water- 

 shed. 



WJiat Experts Suggest. 



It is generally agreed that to re- 

 forest on cleared land where close 

 l)lanting would be necessary, would 

 demand too much expense, in the pres- 

 ent state of public opinion. One ex- 

 pert recently pointed out the proper 

 course would be to hold this central 

 plateau as it is at present and possibly 

 even to reforest some partly cleared or 

 cut-over districts, to limit the cutting 

 of timber to ripe trees and under 

 Crown supervision, to guard carefully 

 fi'om fire, and to create a system of 

 storages for water near the source of 

 the various rivers mentioned. Lakes 

 already exist in abundance. All that 

 is needed is the construction of inex- 

 pensive dams and to carefully manage 

 them with the single object of a uni- 

 form flow of Avater. Not only would 

 such a system provide a source of 

 from 200.000 to 300.000 horsepower, 

 representing at least 1.500.000 tons of 

 coal a year, but would build up an 

 extensive forest district from what is 

 now mostly useless land, producing 

 high public revenues and supporting 

 many industries. 



"When an Ontario river is "out of 

 hand," as far as uniform service is 

 concerned, the forest somewhere be- 

 yond is usually also "out of hand." 



(*This article by the Secretary of 

 the Canadian Forestry Association 

 appeared recently in "The Monetary 

 Times.") 



