Forestry is

FORESTRY IS…

The Weekly Report , District of Geraldton

Ontario Department of Lands and Forests

October 20^th, 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