Canadian Forestry Journal, September, ipij. 



191 



A COLONY OF FAKE SETTLERS 



When visitors to Canada are 

 shown the natural wonders of Que- 

 bec Province, the fertile fields, rich 

 forests and lisheries, it is to be re- 

 gretted that the experience could not 

 be spiced by a day's journey through 

 Boyer and Campbell and a few other 

 townships traversed by the railway 

 from Montreal to Mont Laurier. 



The condition which has won for 

 Boyer township the notoriety of 

 harboring the greatest number of 

 fake settlers of any township in the 

 province was brought about by a 

 combination of causes, some of them 

 obvious, and not a few obscure. 

 Against the wrongs which have been 

 perpetrated in Boyer the Canadian 

 Forestry Journal offers a whole- 

 hearted protest in the belief that 

 when the actual facts are ascertained 

 by the authorities at Quebec a stop 

 will be put to an indefensible prac- 

 tice. 



A Soil of Gravel and Boulder. 



The Secretary of the Association 

 made an examination of Boyer dur- 

 ing the past month and saw parts 

 of other townships involved in the 

 same charge. Settlers are pouring 

 into the newly-opened districts very 

 rapidly. They are filling up the lots 

 along the new government roads, 

 bringing their families with them, 

 building log cabins and preparing 

 for a thorough-going picnic on the 

 timber resources about them. There 

 exists practically no agricultural 

 soil, certainly in no such quantity as 

 would justify an unbroken line of 

 land farmers devoting their lives to 

 developing field crops. Information, 

 as much as is available, indicates 

 that reports on the township, made 

 by soil experts, condemned it abso- 

 lutely as a farming proposition and 

 advised that it be held under timber 

 for all time to come. Any one with 

 average eyesight will ' recognize 

 these experts reports as decidedly 



conservative. Farm after farm, seen 

 by the writer, presented a picture of 

 gravelly, boulder-strewn soil, on 

 which rank weeds could barely ob- 

 tain nourishment. Some clearings 

 showed considerably more area of 

 rock than earth. On others a patch 

 of wheat had been sown in a pocket 

 and left there to reproduce each 

 season and supply 'evidence' that the 

 occupant was a real farmer and not 

 a timber grafter. Abandoned cabins 

 were frequent. In their vicinity lay 

 shattered remnants of one-story 

 barns and for a radius of hundreds 

 of yards rocks and more rocks and 

 still more rocks told of an acreage 

 useful under timber and absolutely 

 valueless in a cleared state. 



An Unchecked Abuse. 



Practically all the timber lands in 

 Boyer are under license to lumber 

 firms. They have been paying rents 

 upon them to the Quebec Govern- 

 ment. If the soil were adaptable to 

 agriculture, no reasonable objection 

 could be offered to the cutting of 

 timber and sowing crops. But there 

 can be no compromise whatever on 

 the necessity of holding rocky, 

 sandy soil for the one purpose de- 

 signed by Nature — the growing of 

 trees. No doubt this is the official 

 point of view of the Quebec Gov- 

 ernment, but for some reason the 

 abuse of common sense in Boyer 

 township has been allowed to go on 

 year after year. 



The fake settler is not usually the 

 misguided person outlined by sym- 

 pathetic observers. He is part of a 

 'system' which has as its object the 

 procuring of free, or nearly free, 

 timber. The owner of a small saw- 

 mill finds that a road has been 

 driven through a belt of particularly 

 inviting growth. He locates his mill 

 in the district and by direct or in- 

 direct encouragement brings to his 

 neighborhood scores of home- 



