8 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



booms and other works being greater than the revenue resulting from 

 them, they were handed over to a corporation — ^the "Trent Slide 

 Committee" — ^which was to keep them in repair by means of tolls on 

 the timber floated. Between the years 1841 and 1867 the amount 

 expended by the Committee amounted to $492,486, but something 

 over $47,000 of this was spent on roads and bridges so that the outlay 

 on the waterway for that period may be put at $445,269. This amount , 

 together with the $177,592 expended prior to 1841, makes a total 

 expenditure of $622,861 up to the year 1867. 



During the early 'sixties' a great movement to secure the timber 

 limits on this watershed took place, and, by 1865, about 1000 square 

 miles, the pine area, had been alienated, mostly without or with only 

 a nominal bonus paid to the provincial government, which also built 

 locks and dams here and there, to aid the lumber industry. In 1870, 

 a flood destroyed many of these works, which were then, in part, aban- 

 doned. 



Some feeble attempts were made by some of the lumbermen to 

 revive the canal project, but they were unsuccessful, although by 1872 

 there were twenty lumber firms in operation and producing considerably 

 over 100 million feet of pine lumber. However, the water stored by 

 the dams that had been constructed continued to be available for 

 logging purposes. 



Further progress in canal building was made in the years 1883-88, 

 but not until 1896 was the "driblet" policy abandoned and the pro- 

 position taken up seriously, with yearly appropriations of several 

 hxmdred thousand dollars, which in 1909-10 were increased to a mil- 

 lion, in 1911 to $1,750,000, aiid in 1912 to $1,938,136.48. 



In the Canal Superintendent's report for 1892 we find the first 

 recognition of the need of water control for the canal. He writes : 

 "Owing to the immense country drained becoming cleared, and to the 

 fact that the lumbermen's dams, which formerly checked the flow, are 

 being abandoned, there is a liability, until some provision is made to 

 counteract it, of the heavy spring freshets damaging the several struc- 

 tures along the route. Need of control of the upper reservoirs becomes 

 every year a more serious question to those interested in navigation 

 and water-power." This need was not supplied, nor was this incon- 

 gruity of control removed until 1905, when by Order in Council the 

 province ceded aU the works in the back lakes and the water surfaces 

 of all rivers, streams and lakes, tributary to the Trent river north of 

 Peterborough, excepting the Crow River basin, to the Dominion Gov- 

 ernment, and also agreed to sell to the Dominion unpatented lands 

 along the water surfaces at 50 cents per acre. Two thousand acres 

 have, so far, been acquired by the Dominion imder this provision. 



