beyond the proposal stage. In 1733 a man signing himself ‘de la Boulaye’, who seems to have been an official in the department of the Marine at Paris, penned a lengthy proposal106 that had as its basis the wildly optimistic premise that the island was in a position to supply all of the timber and other naval requirements (i.e. pitch and tar) for the French navy (and even the Spanish) for fifty years — though he presents no evidence at all in support of this claim. He goes on to outline a transparently naive scheme for the immediate exploitation of the island’s timber which would have involved putting 300 men — half of the Louisbourg garrison — to work indefinitely in the forests of tie Saint-Jean. However, his proposal seems to have died a quiet death in the department and word of it seems never to have reached the ears of the officials at either Louisbourg or lle Saint-Jean. Despite its naivety, an analysis of Boulaye’s scheme (see Appendix 4) gives us an insight into many of the factors that had to be considered in any attempt to exploit the timber resources of the island, or anywhere else in New France for that matter.

Exploitation of the forest fauna — Although when describing the island’s fauna there is a tendency for recorders to concentrate on game and fur animals (see Appendix 2), there is little explicit evidence of the actual utilisation of such animals for food or fur during the French regime.107 We have a number of anecdotal comments with respect to the hunting of food animals, three of which have a Mi’kmaq association: the caribou of Denys (1672), the partridges of Gotteville (1720), and the muskrats and otters of Pichon (1760). For fur animals we have one clear-cut example in the wolf pelt sent by La Ronde (1721) to France, and we have as well Roma's (1750) and Franquet's (1751) lists of the animals useful for pe/leterie: both list the fox, marten, and lynx, while Roma also has the otter and Franquet the mink.

‘°° Boulaye1733. "’7 For what it is worth, I note that the Company of lle Saint-Jean stipulated that the inhabitants of the island were required to sell any furs (pelleten'e) only to the Company. [Source: Margry (1876- 77) (Vol. 1, p. 50) — taken in turn from evidence in a court case: M. le comte de St, Pierre contre les négociants de St. Malo et autres: Mémoire sur la concession des Isles St. Jean et autres a M. le

comte de St. Pierre (communique a Mss Ies dépulés, Ie 20 sept 1724]

22

FOREST FIRES

One of the most significant effects on the forests of particular parts of the island during the French period was fire. There appear to have been two major forest fires — in 1736 and 1742 — both of which seem to have occurred in the north-eastern part of the island, which included the major settlement area of havre Saint—Pierre (St. Peters Bay], though there may well have been other smaller fires that went unrecorded. Unfortunately the surviving records do not enable us to distinguish between the effects of the two fires.

All that we know of the fire of 1736 is that it caused great damage on the lands of the settlers: it destroyed the entire grain crop of most of them for that year leaving them short of food and without seed for the following year“. Food provisions had to be supplied from the garrison stores at Port La-Joie, and twenty hogshead of seed (presumably wheat) were sent from Quebec for the following year’s crop‘°9. We are told nothing else about the fire — neither its location nor the time of year when it occurred — Harvey (1926) says the ‘early autumn’, but this may be his own inference based on the loss of the seed crop in the fire. As for its location, a fire that destroyed most of the crops must have included the major settlement areas: five of the eight settlements named in a comprehensive census of the island in 1735 (containing 55 of the 76 farming households) were in, or overlapped with, areas in the north—east which later records indicate to have been burned 11°.

We know a little more about the location and date of the second fire. It happened in June 1742111 and entered the contemporary records primarily because it caused the death of thirteen112 or fourteen113 persons (the records differ) belonging to two separate families at Saint-Pierre. We are

1°“ Duchambon 1738.

109

Le Normant 1736; 1737.

11° The five settlements are: Riviere de la Port Ia Joye [the Hillsborough River], Tracadie, Havre St. Pierre [St. Peters Bay], Havre /’angui//e [Savage Harbour], and Pointe de l'Est [East Point]. The other three settlements, for which there is no evidence of fire. were Port La Joye, Trois Riviéres. and Malpec. [Source: the 1735 census as presented on The Island Register, P.E,I, Genealogical

Society web-site: www.islandregister.com.] ‘” Duchambon 1742. “2 Duchambon 1742.

“3 Bigot 1742.