Canadian Forestry Journal, September, 'ipi6 72: 



With the Canadian Forestry Battalion 



An English Impression of Their Methods and Skill as Recorded by 



The London Times 



"If you would know the lumber- The men. who are drawn from all 



man of Canada and how he works, parts of the Dominion, have the 



go to the edg-e of Windsor Great bronzed, healthy look and the easy, 



Park, where the cross-road from confident swing which we have 



Virginia Water Station strikes the learned to look for in Canadians, 



main road between Egham and The khaki under their blue overalls 



Sunningdale. There, on the Clock proclaims them soldiers; they draw 



Case Plantation, you will see over military pay and they know the rudi- 



150 men of the 224th Canadian For- ments of military drill: but first and 



estry Battalion converting trees last they are woodsmen, with their 



into railway sleepers and boards at craft at their finger-tips. Every 



the rate of anything from 15,000 to man knows his task and does it with 



20.000 board feet a day. an enviable independence of orders 



"The plantation, which forms part or instructions ; yet from the first 



of the lands owned by the Crown stage to the last the work proceeds 



■and administered by the Commis- smoothly and harmoniously. Let 



sioners of Woods and Forests, in- us follow the process, under the 



eludes a considerable area covered guidance of the officer in charg-e and 



with spruce, fir, Scots pine, and the sergeant who is 'foreman of the 



larch, with an undergrowth of bush.' 



chestnut. Not very long ago a "Facing the main road stands the 



party of experts looked at the trees mill — 'home.' the men generally call 



with the dispassionate measuring it — flanked on the one side by piles 



eye of the undertaker .and gave it as of logs and on the other by stacks 



their opinion that from this wood it of sawn timber. \\^alk along the 



was possible to get 3.000,000 board winding track of a light railway, not 



feet of timber. To-day whole yet completed, which passes behind 



tracts of it have been swept clear the mill, until you come to a clear- 



hy the axe. and the quaint square ing, where burning heaps of 'brush' 



tower of the old royal lodge, which lopped from the tops of the fallen 



stands deep-set in the wood, and trees are filling the air with the re- 



which, so the story goes, by its re- freshing scent of the pine. Here 



semblance to the case of a grand- and there through the blue smoke 



father's clock gave the plantation its you catch a glimpse of a lumberman 



curious name, is visible from the in a picturesque slouch hat. A lit- 



Toadway for the first time, perhaps, tie further and you are among a 



in a hundred years. And still the g'ang of 'fallers.' Watch how they 



Canadian woodsmen go on. eating fell a tree. 70 inches or more thick 



their way through the wood with a at the base. 



thoroughness that knows no mercy. "A man with an axe kneels at its 



. .„ ^ ,. Tz . ^*^ot' ^""^ ^'^ith a few dexterous 



An All-Canadian ^ Venture. strokes cuts a deep notch in the 



'The lumber camp is all Canadian trunk a few inches from the ground. 



— men, machinery, and methods. Two others with a cross-cut saw 



