Friday 23 March 2018

Foestry Is...


FORESTRY IS…

The Weekly Report , District of Geraldton

Ontario Department of Lands and Forests

October 20th, 1966

Adapted from the Prince George Progress.

Forestry is the raw material of beauty, of tourism, and of industry.  It is a full lunch bucket and coins jingling in pockets.

Forestry is tree growing and tree managing. Forestry in Canada is 5 billion dollars a year. (1966)

Yes, forestry is many things.

It is the whine of a powersaw and the moment of suspense when a faller’s tree hangs between heaven and earth.  It is a “cat” carving a trail to a new stand of timber and a drawing board where a bridge is designed.

  It is  30 tons of logs piled on a growling truck, and dollar-earning newsprint spinning off the rollers at half a mile a minute.

Forestry is the patient probing of the secrets of genetics and a quest for bigger, better, faster growing trees.  It is 60 million seedlings a year in Ontario hand planted on thousands of acres of logged-off land.  It is a ranger patrolling timber from  a river boat and a sweat backed stevedore loading lumber on a foreign ship.

Forestry is still flapjacks and bacon and eggs fried potatoes for breakfast, but it is mechanical harvesters that have made horses almost extinct in the woods.  It is a spreading population of deer and moose and a vast province being gradually opened for the traveller’s delight.  It is tree pruning, and sod-busting and fat cattle grazing within smelling distance of a slash burn.

It is stereoscopics and data-processing machines and a hand-axe and a back-packed water pump trekked over a hill.

Forestry is scarlet flames roaring through a fir stand, and infestation of budworm, but it is wind whispering through a pine grove and s singing trout stream and deer feasting with pleasant malevolence on tender young trees.

In spring it is greenery and growth and awakening;  in autumn it is a surrealistic masterpiece in green and gold and yellow painted by the greatest Master of them all.

 Forestry is the life blood of our economy.

G.E. MacKinnon, District Forester

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