James Lawler, “Historical Review of Canada’s Timber Industry”, Sept. 1916

CONDITIONS DURING THE FRENCH REGIME

The country was taken for the king of France by JACQUES CARTIER in 1534, but it was over a century later before anything began to be heard about the timber as an asset. The first timber regulations, as appears from a grant of land made in 1863, were made in regard to the reservation of oak to build the King’s ships. The remainder of the timber was of not consequence. In fact, as the first need of the colonists was food, the endeavour was to get cultivated land upon which crops might be raised, and the forest was deemed an enemy to be conquered and obliterated. […]

The determination of the pioneer settlers to get rid of the trees which encumbered their hands and their use of fire for this purpose was later felt in the shortage of timber for fuel in the immediate neighbourhood of centres of population, so that by 1720 stringent laws were passed against trespassing by the inhabitants of towns and villages on the lands of their neighbours to cut fuel.

NEW REGULATIONS WITH BRITISH OCCUPATION

When the British took possession of New France in 1763 their solicitude, like that of the French, was to secure timber for the building and repairing of the royal navy – oak […] for hulls and pine […] for masts. But their views went a step further than those of their predecessors. They desired not only to secure existing stands of oak and pine, but also deemed it advisable that any areas particularly suited to the growing of these species should be set apart and protected so that they might supply timber in perpetuity. […]

The trade in timber for the British navy began practically with the British occupation of the country. The commercial trade followed in the wake of this business. In fact it was begun by the contractors who received licenses to cut timber for the navy. This commercial trade, however, grew very slowly, chiefly owing to the opposition of British builders who claimed that timber from the Baltic region was much superior to that from Canada.

During and after the Napoleonic wars, however, the British government imposed heavy duties to pay for those wars, and in these duties gave substantial preference to the colonies. […]

In the early years of the nineteenth century, timber was imported from the United States into Canada, but only for the purpose of shipping out again to Britain in order to take advantage of the preference granted for colonial timber. Duties on such timber coming into Canada were imposed by an Act passed by the British Parliament in 1820. Shortly after this Canada began to export lumber to the eastern United States and from that time onward the trade grew very rapidly, until in 1867, the year when the British North American colonies were confederated into the Dominion of Canada […]

GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF CANADIAN TIMBER REGULATIONS

[…]

The practice is now prevalent of bringing the mills as close as possible to the forest and shipping out only the finished product, but in the early days the mills were located at lumber centres on the great rivers and the logs were formed into rafts and these rafts were floated down the rivers, run over rapids and towed across lakes to the mill. For many years the export trade consisted largely of square timber, that is timber squared by the axe in the woods. This trade, which employed many hundred sailing ships, had its centre at the port of Quebec, where sometimes as many as three hundred ships were to be seen loading at one time. It reached its highest point about 1870 and since that, owing to the wastefulness of the trade and the dangerous condition in which it left the woods, owing to the chips and debris, it has been attacked from both the commercial and legislative sides and had dwindled away to almost nothing.

Nowadays the steamer, schooner or barge carries the sawn lumber from the lake port or river town to the seaport where it is loaded on ocean-going ships. […] This water transportation feature with the risks and dangers attending the “driving” of the logs down the small streams and, attending the “booming” and “rafting” and “shooting” of rapids and running of “log-chutes”, has bred up a hardy, adventurous class of men equally skilful in the use of the axe, the pikepole and the paddle […]