(1806) viewpoint summed up in a statement which more or less epitomises the whole European view towards the forest: ”every tree which is cut down in the forest opens to the Sun a new spot of earth, which, with cultivation, will produce food for man and beast”. Within such a view there was no role for forest conservation.

This is not to say that many persons, including those responsible for the governance of the island, had not been appalled by the wanton destruction of forest and timber caused by the ubiquitous forest fires connected with settlement, and, as we have seen, laws had been passed and proclamations made on the matter — even if largely ineffective — in an attempt to give the forests some official protection from fire. It should be stressed however that their concern, like that of Dawson, was not for the forest per se, but for the loss of the resources that the forest contained — above all the valuable timber that was seen going up in smoke every year, and so would not be available in future for export, ship-building or other uses.

Apart from Dawson, the only other person who makes a case for the conservation of the island’s forests, and again it is a utilitarian one, comes at the very end of our period: the man is Father Alfred Burke, and his case was made in a paper presented to the Canadian Forestry Association in 1902. Burke advocated the protection of the remaining forests of the island so that they would continue to provide wood and fuel for the local population, as well as giving some protection to the water catchment areas”. He went on to make specific proposals on how this might be achieved, which are in line with the general thinking in Canadian forestry of the day:

we will ask the government to name a commission of patriotic men . [who] will visit the 16,000 acres of provincial lands, and wherever suitable erect them into reserves, where they will either grow up naturally in trees, or be afforested. We also propose to encourage private individuals in the preservation and extension of their present wood plots and in the reafforestation of the denuded places on their holdings ..; in the setting out of plantations for economic

that not all of the land was cultivable, was more evident to the men on the ground, such as the small farmers giving evidence to the Land Commissions of 1860 and 1875, and before this, also to some of the proprietors (i.e. Proprietors 1837; Seymour 1840).

935 See page 51 of this report for Burke's view on the effect of forest removal on the water cycle.

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purposes; in protecting stream—heads with forest growth and in the placing of windbreaks and shade trees

generally about the steadings.937

These proposals, which are not a far cry from the forest policy of the provincial government more than a century later, were incorporated into an act passed by the island’s legislature that created an advisory Forestry Commission in 1903, though it was to be another fifty years before any of Burke’s proposals would begin to be put into effect with the formation of the first provincial Forestry Division in 1951.938

THE ATTITUDE T0 FOREST PRESERVATION

Apart from the concern of Dawson and Burke for forest protection on utilitarian grounds, I have not come across anyone advocating the preservation of any of the remnants of old-growth forest on account of their intrinsic value — such areas by the 18705 must have been few and scattered. Not even Francis Bain makes any reference — at least in the writings that l have come across — to the need for the preservation of any such sites. Though he might extol the almost transcendental experience of a visit to one of the last remnants of the ”ancient forest" on the Wiltshire Road”, or deplore the undesirable changes to the water cycle caused by the clearance of the ”primitive forest” from the rear of the Howard farm near North Riverg‘w, Bain makes no mention of the need, or even the desire, to conserve or protect any of these remnants.

And this lack of concern for the preservation of the pre-settlement forest is also evident from the records of the Land Commission of 1875, when two small pieces of ”wilderness land” — one of 108 acres, and the other of only 62 acres, both in the North Wiltshire area, were brought to its attention. The 62 acres was described as the ”only block of such woodland so near the town

93’ Burke 1902,

938 Crosskill (1904) notes the creation of the Commission. The fact that the wording of the act of 1903 (III Edward Vll, C. VI) seems to largely reflect the proposals that Burke made in his speech to the Canadian Forestry Association, is presumably a reflection of Burke's influence. See Gaudet (1979) (pp. 46 ff.) and McAskill (1987) (pp. 27-28) for a review of some of the developments in island forestry in the twentieth century.

939

[Bain] 1882.

940

Bain 1868-1884 (in 1879).