Canadian Forestry Journal, October, ipi6 



765 



Resources of the Upper Ottawa 



By R. O. Sweezey 



This is neither the "boost" of a "spu- 

 rious optimist" nor the wail of a morbid 

 pessimist (both of which classes we are 

 more or less afflicted with), but is a 

 plain, unvarnished statement of a few 

 facts taken from the writer's field note 

 book. 



Great as are the better known re- 

 sources, in timber and water powers, 

 of the Lower Ottawa region, com- 

 prised within the area drained below 

 Lake Temiskaming, they do not excell 

 the 10,000 square miles of undeveloped 

 country in the Upper Ottawa region, 

 extending from Lake Temiskaming to 

 the Grand Lake Victorian Basin. 



Whilst the Lower Ottawa has for 

 generations been pouring out its 

 wealth of pine timber to the world's 

 markets the Upper Ottawa has remain- 

 ed untouched because spruce and not 

 white pine has always been the pre- 

 dominant forest there. To-day there 

 remains very little white pine in the 

 Lower Ottawa, or indeed anywhere in 

 Canada. Spruce there remains in 



abundance, but in localities where pine 

 has been so plentiful, as in the Lower 

 Ottawa, the spruce is naturally not 

 growing in such pure luxurious stands 

 as in the regions where pine has never 

 predominated. 



Rich Virgin Spruce. 



Thus we find to-day the Upper Ot- 

 tawa Valley, which was never much of 

 a pine country, a rich virgin spruce for- 

 est abounding in water powers, great 

 and small, and ready to offer up its re- 

 sources at a time when the pulp and 

 paper industry is preparing to take a 

 world lead in Canada. 



To anyone who has not cruised in- 

 land from the rivers of the Upper Ot- 

 tawa the wealth of spruce is unbeliev- 

 able. Casual observers of the morbid 

 pessimist class have been known here 

 as elsewhere to cry calamitously, like 

 the car window observer, because the 

 whole timber wealth of the region did 

 not roll out to the river banks for in- 



(Courtesy Grand Trunk Railway System.) 

 ON THE MAGANETAWAN RIVER, ONTARIO. 



