ships and boats, such as cars, handspikesm, spars and such, who may have worked apart from the ship—building yards.722 John MacGregor said that white ash was made into oars and handspikes and Benjamin Chappell records that he used ash for the oars of a boat he was making in 1801.723

Wooden canoes — l have come across four different references to the use of ‘wooden canoes’ as a mode of transport, two of which mention that they were made from ’pine' (presumably white pine).724 These were presumably large dugout canoes, and it would be of interest to know how common they were on the island, and who the craftsmen were who made them.

OTHER FOREST PRODUCTS

Hemlock bark — Four recorders state that hemlock bark was used in tanning leatherm, though, apart from the fact that the author of the True Guide said that there was only one tanner on the island in 1808, none of the other extracts in this source- book give any idea of the extent of the trade. The only other record on the topic that l have come across is a newspaper report of an inquest into the drowning of a man from the Pinette area who had ’Ioaded’ a shallop with ”hemlock bark” and taken

it to Charlottetown on 10 August 1866, but was drowned on the return voyage.726

Clearly, there is scope for further research on this subject, and for this there are two possible approaches. One is to determine the extent of the tanning industry on the island in the nineteenth century by looking at the number and location of tanneries and their production (as contained, for

72‘ See footnote 626.

722 Macphail (1939) (p. 7, not extracted) said that sparmakers

worked on their own. ’23 MacGregor 1828; Chappell 1775-1818.

72“ Selkirk 1803; Johnstone 1822; Seymour 1840; [Lawson] 1877-1878. It is Seymour and Lawson who mention pine. See footnote 83 of Appendix 1 for some further details.

"5 Patterson (1774) said simply that hemlock bark was “used for tanning leather", while Stewart (1806) said that it was “excellent" for the process, and Hill (1839) that it was "valuable" for it. Bain (1890) implies that it was the only bark used for tanning — though I note that Sutherland (1861) said alder bark was “valuable" for the process.

726 The Examiner, 1 October 1866, p. 3 — as reprinted in the Newsletter of the PE]. Genealogical Society, Sept, 1999, Vol. 23.

No, 3, p. 22,

108

example, in census data, newspaper records, in the 1863 Lake map or the maps of 'Meacham’s Atlas’m). The other is through a study of the published literature on the tanning process and industry elsewhere, which may give an idea of the amount of hemlock bark required for the process. In terms of the effect of the collection of hemlock bark on the forest, it is of importance to know whether hemlock trees were ever felled simply for their bark, leaving the wood to rot on the ground, as was the practice at times in Pennsylvaniam, and also for the western hemlock in British Columbiam, or whether it was only ever collected as a by-product of the harvesting of hemlock trees

for their wood.730

Birch bark — As we have seen, the bark of white birch was used to form a roof covering on the first temporary log houses. It was also used as a water-proofing layer under the clapboards and shingles of the frame houses that replaced the log house, in order to give additional protection to the boards and the frame.731 Though this latter usage is mentioned only by Selkirk (1803) and Bain (1890), and Bain said that by his day tarpaper had replaced the use of bark, the practice is confirmed from the examination of early nineteenth century houses that still Survive. As was so for hemlock, there is the question of whether the bark was stripped from living trees for the purpose, with the trees being left to die, or whether it was only collected for this purpose whenever birch trees were being harvested for other uses, such as firewood.

727

I note that Clark (1959) (p. 118) states that in 1860 there were 55 tanneries scattered all over the island, and that these had processed 143,083 pounds of leather in that year, half of which had been produced by the eight tanneries located in Charlottetown. (This data was presumably collected by the census of 1861.)

’28 Cox et al. 1985, p. 166. 729 According to MacKay (1985, p. 27), in British Columbia in the late nineteenth century some 10,000 acres of western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) were felled each year for their bark alone. the trees being left to rot.

73” McAskill (1987) (p. 24) says that there were individuals who made a living collecting hemlock bark to sell to the local tannery.

73‘ The knowledge of the water-proofing properties of birch bark must have come ultimately from the Mi‘kmaq, who throughout the period covered by this report continued to use it in the traditional manner on the island for their summer wigwams, as is evident from

photographs and drawings from the late nineteenth century (eg. see The Island Magazine (1977) No. 3, p. 15, for a sketch by Robert Harris).