[i.e. Charlottetown]”, while the 108 acres was described by Robert Harris (later to become the famous artist, but at that time assistant to the surveyor Henry Cundall), as the best example of wilderness land anywhere on the island — this 108 acre forest, in fact, has to be the ”ancient forest” that Bain evocatively describes in 1882 in a front- page column in the Daily Examiner as ”the grand old forest of birches and silvery maples"94‘. Though both of these small parcels were, seemingly, among the last pieces of ’wilderness land’ in the whole region of the island’s capital, their value, to both the owner of the land and to the members of the Commission and to all those giving evidence on the matter, was measured only in terms of the monetary worth of the timber that could be cut down and sold on them - there was not a whisper of their value as the last examples of the ’primeval’ hardwood forest that had once covered the whole area.

We might ask why it was that no forested area on the island was ever set aside to be preserved as an example of the ’ancient’ forest, that not a single acre of land was left untouched by the axe. The answer is that, quite simply, this was an idea whose day had not yet arrived anywhere, let alone on Prince Edward Island.942 In fact, it would not be until one hundred years later, in the 19708, when after a further century of tree-felling and the damage caused by forest fires, that even a first inventory of the few remaining forested areas on the island deserving of potential protection would be carried out, and the initiative for this action would not come, even then, from within the island itself, but as a result of national and international initiatives and directives.943

For, in addition to the prevailing utilitarian attitude to the forest that we have already reviewed, there was another factor making any move to preserve any remnants of the island’s old-growth forests

9“ Land Commission 1875: evidence of Henry Douse and

others forthe 62 acres; and of Henry Cundall and Robert Harris for the 108 acres. [Bain] 1882.

942 The concept of the ‘preservation’ of areas of wilderness (including forests) in North America really only began with the writings of John Muir (b. 1838, d. 1914) in the 18705, the founder of the Sierra Club (see Nash 1967, pp. 122—40; and Williams 1989, p. 405), though it was to rapidly gain public acceptance in the United States and lead to the creation of the Adirondack State Park in New York between 1885 and 1894 and of the Yosemite National Park in 1890. In Canada an allied movement led to the creation of the Algonquin Park in Ontario in 1893 (MacKay 1985, p. 44).

9‘3 The initiative came from the International Biological Program — see the report of the inventory edited by Taschereau (1974).

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very difficult, if not impossible. This was the fact that virtually all of the remaining forest on the island was in private ownership — until 1876, a good part of it still belonging, in the form of large blocks of land, to the few remaining proprietors still hanging on, though by that date much of the remaining forest was found on small freehold or leasehold farms in units of about 100 acres.944 All such land, whether owned by a proprietor, or a small farmer, was in effect beyond any form of public intervention, for the nineteenth century was the era of the 'sacred and inviolate’ principle of private property.“5

in the British Isles wherever ancient woodland had been retained or enhanced, there had been no violation of this principle, for much of the woodland preservation there, was due to the attitudes and activities of the major aristocratic land-owners themselves, many of them having shifted, as we have noted“, from viewing woodland as useful only as a source of timber and wood, to viewing trees and woods as also having a value in themselves, especially in contributing aesthetically to the landscape of their estates. And, though scions of some of these wealthy land- owning families, as well as of those who aspired to become part of the ’new gentry' of the British Isles, had been granted (or had bought) large blocks of land on Prince Edward Island, and some of these persons on their visits to the island had

9“ The only exception to this statement is the unknown amount of ‘unoccupied’ land acquired by the government as a result of the purchase of the proprietors’ estates, which began in the 18503 with the Land Purchase Act of 1853, and culminated in the Land Purchase Act of 1875, which forced the sale of all of the remaining estates. I am not certain of the ultimate fate of such unoccupied land, but examination of Meacham’s Atlas (where such land is labelled as ‘Vacant', or else no owner’s name is given), suggests that by 1880 much of it had already been sold, or had been sub- divided in anticipation of its sale. I suspect that the land shown as undivided on the Meacham maps was the worst land, covered with unproductive types of ‘swamps’ and ‘barrens’. Such land occurs especially on very poor soils in the west of the island, such as in Lots 9 and 10, as well as in Lot 42 in the east.

9‘5 The prevailing contemporary attitude to private property was

firmly stated in 1853 by Edward Palmer, a Conservative member of the island’s House of Assembly, speaking in the Committee of the Assembly that was examining the imposition of an export duty on ‘juniper knees‘. Palmer said that “nothing ought to be held more sacred and inviolate by legislators" than the private property rights of individuals, and that “every man has a right to do with what is his own" — referring to this latter as “the political doctrine of the late Duke of Newcastle”. [Hazard's Gazette, 18 June 1853, p. 22.] It was this view of course that for years had stymied any attempts by the island's Assembly to escheat the land of those proprietors who had failed to pay the quitrents [i.e. property taxes] on their lands.

9‘6 See page 112, in the section on ‘The British background'.