SECONDARY INDUSTRIES USING WOOD

During the British colonial period there were quite a number of secondary industries on the island that made use of wood or other forest products. I have not carried out a systematic search of the historical sources for these industries, and here I will only list them, along with a few comments on the material contained in the extracts. Each of these industries is deserving of a further separate investigation using other types of sources such as census data and business records, where they exrst.

Fuelwood use by secondary industries — Apart from providing fuel for heating homes and for cooking, the island’s forests also supplied the fuel required for a number of industrial processes, in the form of either wood or charcoal. The only one mentioned in the sources extracted here is the smoking of fish: John Stewart said that ”great quantities [of herring] might be smoaked, or cured red, for which there is a great demand in the United States”, adding that "the wood necessary will cost little more than the trouble of cutting it down and carrying it to the curing houses”.703 There is however no evidence that smoked herring ever became an important export, but even so, there must have been some smoking of fish, as

well as meat, for home consumption.

Large amounts of fuelwood would also have been required in the making of maple sugar, and it may be possible from the few estimates of the amount of sugar produced, to work out a rough idea of the amounts of fuel used.”4 Most of the sugar produced on the island seems to have been for home or local consumption, and sugar-making declined greatly with the end of the pioneer phase.

Since charcoal is only mentioned once in the island records collected here (Sutherland (1861) said that alder made ”very good charcoal”), it would appear not to have been extensively produced on the island for use in processes such as blacksmithing. Further investigation may reveal whether in the early colonial period coal or coke was imported for the purpose from the British Isles; certainly coal was being brought in for domestic use from Nova Scotia from at least the 1830s705, and we may

"’3 Stewart 1806.

70‘ See in Appendix 1 the section on the ‘Properties and uses' of

the maples.

’05 See footnote 51 o.

106

presume that it would also have been obtainable by the island's blacksmiths from at least that time. And though blacksmiths were also employed in the island’s ship-building industry, it should be noted that a lot of the larger iron objects required, such as the anchors, were imported as finished pieces from the British Isles rather than being produced on the island.

Other industries requiring either fuelwood or charcoal to produce their final product include those mentioned by McAskill (1987) in his article on the island’s forests: lobster canning, steam- powered saw mills, and the kilns that produced lime especially, but also bricks and pottery, and possibly glass. Up to now, little, if any, research has been carried out on the extent of any of these industries on the island, let alone their usage of the island’s fuelwood resources.706

I also do not know the extent to which wood was used as a fuel to run the locomotives of the Prince Edward Island Railway. Some of the early engines were wood-burningm, th0ugh, since imported coal was readily available in the 18705, it would seem more likely that this was the chief fuel. I also note that Dawson (1871), who had carried out a survey of the island's peat reserves, had recommended that peat be tried on the 'projected railroad’.

Carriage and sleigh making — As McAskill (1987) points out, the 1861 census records that 1,151 carriages and sleighs had been manufactured on the island in 1860. However, the only references to the industry in the sources collected here is Francis Bain's (1890) comment that yellow birch was used in carriage-building, while elm was used by wheel-wrights for the hubs of wheels.

Cabinet work and furniture making — The records collected here indicate that both white pine708 and a range of hardwoods were used in furniture- making and ’cabinet work’. The hardwoods comprise sugar maple709 and yellow birch71o in

706 There has been a recent article on the lobster canning industry

on the island (Gorveatt 2005).

707

Graham 2000, p. 21. 708 MacGregor 1828 mentions the use of white pine in "joiner- work", and Bain 1890 in “cabinet-work" and “wherever fine work is required". Benjamin Chappell (1775-1818) made use of ‘pine' (probably mostly white pine) in making tables, and in interior woodwork (see footnote 78 of Appendix 1).

"’9 The use of sugar maple in furniture making is mentioned by [Clark] (1779), Anon. (1808) and MacGregor (1828). Benjamin