THE FOREST WEALTH OF CANADA.
Having been accustomed to gardening all my life, I have taken great
pleasure in roaming the bush in search of botanical treasures of all
kinds, and have often thought that it would be easy to fill a large and
showy garden with the native plants of Canada alone.
But of course, her main vegetable wealth consists in the forests with
which the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario were formerly clothed. In the
country around the Georgian Bay, especially, abound the very finest
specimens of hardwood timber. Standing on a hill overlooking the River
Saugeen at the village of Durham, one sees for twenty miles round
scarcely a single pine tree in the whole prospect. The townships of
Arran and Derby, when first surveyed, were wonderfully studded with
noble trees. Oak, elm, beech, butternut, ash and maple, seemed to vie
with each other in the size of their stems and the spread of their
branches. In our own clearing in St. Vincent, the axemen considered that
five of these great forest kings would occupy an acre of ground, leaving
little space for younger trees or underbrush.
I once saw a white or wainscot oak that measured fully twelve feet in
circumference at the butt, and eighty feet clear of branches. This noble
tree must have contained somewhere about seven thousand square feet of
inch boarding, and would represent a value approaching one hundred and
thirty pounds sterling in the English market. White and black ash, black
birch, red beech, maple and even basswood or lime, are of little, if
any, less intrinsic worth. Rock elm is very valuable, competing as it
does with hickory for many purposes.
When residing in the city of Quebec, in the year 1859-60, I published a
series of articles in the Quebec _Advertiser_, descriptive of the
hardwoods of Ontario. The lumber merchants of that city held then, that
their correspondents in Liverpool was so wedded to old-fashioned ideas,
that they would not so much as look at any price-list except for pine
and the few other woods for which there was an assured demand. But I
know that my papers were transmitted home, and they may possibly have
converted some few readers, as, since then, our rock elm, our white ash,
and the black birch of Lower Canada, have been in increased demand, and
are regularly quoted at London and Liverpool. But even though old
country dealers should make light of our products, that is no reason why
we should undervalue them ourselves.
Not merely is our larger timber improvidently wasted, but the smaller
kinds, such as blue beech, ironwood or hornbeam, buttonwood or plane
tree, and red and white cedar, are swept away without a thought of their
great marketable value in the Old World.[7]
It seems absolute fatuity to allow this waste of our natural wealth to
go on unheeded. We send our pine across the Atlantic, as if it were the
most valuable wood that we have, instead of being, as it really is,
amongst the most inferior. From our eastern seaports white oak is
shipped in the form of staves chiefly, also some ash, birch and elm. So
far well. But what about the millions of tons of hardwood of all kinds
which we destroy annually for fuel, and which ought to realize, if
exported, four times as many millions of dollars?
Besides the plain, straight-grained timber which we heedlessly burn up
to get it out of the way, there are our ornamental woods--our beautiful
curled and bird's eye maple, our waved ash, our serviceable butternut
or yellow walnut, our comely cherry, and even our exquisite black
walnut, all doomed to the same perdition. Little of this waste would
occur if once the owners of land knew that a market could be got for
their timber. Cheese and butter factories for export, have already
spread over the land--why not furniture factories also? Why not warm
ourselves with the coal of Nova Scotia, of Manitoba, and, by-and-by, of
the Saskatchewan, and spare our forest treasures for nobler uses? Would
not this whole question be a fitting subject for the appointment of a
competent parliamentary commission?
To me these reflections are not the birth of to-day, but date from my
bush residence in the township of Nottawasaga. If I should succeed now
in bringing them effectively before my fellow Canadians ere it is too
late, I shall feel that I have neither thought nor written in vain.
[Footnote 7: I have myself, when a youth, sold red cedar in London at
sixpence sterling per square foot, inch thick. Lime (or basswood) was
sold at twopence, and ash and beech at about the same price. White or
yellow pine was then worth one penny, or just half the value of
basswood. These are retail prices. On referring to the London wholesale
quotations for July 1881, I find these statements fully borne out. It
will be news to most of my readers, that Canadian black birch has been
proved by test, under the authority of the British Admiralty, to be of
greater specific gravity than English oak, and therefore better fitted
for ships' flooring, for which purpose it is now extensively used. Also
for staircases in large mansions.]