Growth of the Canadian Forest Industry

In the same way that a forest develops from microscopic beginnings, forest industry has developed over the centuries into a thriving industry, with primary and secondary commercial aspects. Let's take a look at the development of the forestry industry, by traveling backward in time to revisit the industry as it was more than a century ago.

Work in the Nineteenth-Century Forest Industry

Covering a large part of the country, the forest has played a major role in the lives of the inhabitants of Canada:

• Indians used its wood for shelter, and for making containers, tools and means of transportation.

• The forest is the home of many different animals that the native people hunted in order to feed and clothe themselves.

• The French, who settled in this country during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, relied on the forest to provide the furs needed to support the colony's principal source of economy - the fur trade. At this time, wood was exported only on a small scale; it mainly served local needs in shipbuilding, the construction of homes and heating.

The early part of the nineteenth century saw the decline of the fur trade and the beginning of a more intensive exploitation of the forest. Great Britain had been at war with France since 1793 and was in need of wood to rebuild her merchant marine and navy. As she was not able to supply her shipyards with pine and oak from regions near the Baltic Sea, due to a blockade, she turned to the forests of her North American colonies. For more than half a century, woodsmen entered the forests of Lower and Upper Canada (Quebec and Ontario), New Brunswick and even Maine in search of pine and oak. Usually the felled timber was hewn (shape with sharp instrument) on site, and the name given to the process, "squaring," reflects the characteristic shape it eventually took. This demand for square timber, coupled with bad forestry practices, had a detrimental effect on the tree species involved. The pine tree disappeared from New Brunswick around 1860 and from the Ottawa Valley at the end of the nineteenth century.

In addition to square timber (pine and oak), Canada produced boards, beams and parts for casks for the domestic and export markets. Shipbuilding developed in Canada in tandem with the growth of the wood trade, thus making it possible to hire thousands of shipwrights and giving birth to many secondary industries or stimulating their growth.

As Britain's demand for square timber began to fall off around the middle of the nineteenth century, the Canadian forest industry found a new outlet for its products in the form of sawtimber - a demand created by the growth of cities in the United States and Canada. This market eased some of the stress on the mature pine and oak stands, for beams and boards could be made from smaller trees and from other species such as spruce.

Lumber entrepreneurs penetrated into new areas. Many small sawmills were built at the mouths of rivers, and in 1851, Canada West had more than 1500 of them, Canada East (Ontario and Quebec) about 1000 and New Brunswick nearly 600. Some of them expanded and employed as many as 500 men around 1871.

At the end of the nineteenth century, technical progress introduced new materials such as brick, iron and steel into competition with sawtimber. However, just as the demand for lumber on the international market began to diminish, the market for pulp and paper increased.

Obviously, the first enterprises in this area were modest, producing mainly wood pulp, which was shippped in its raw state to be processed in the United States and Great Britain. However, after 1910 the spread of the sensationalist press and the development of advertising in the United States upped the demand for newsprint. In Canada, producers decided to make their own paper and built new paper mills, which by around 1920, were supplying about 80 percent of North American requirements.

Even today, the wood industry plays a key role in the Canadian economy, second only to agriculture in importance. The western part of the country, especially British Columbia, often outproduces the east, where forest resources are becoming rapidly exhausted, partly because new technology favours less selective cutting, and partly because reforestation is only a recent phenomenon and its benefits cannot yet be realized.

Work Force

The wood industry throughout the nineteenth century was quite labour intensive, since numerous steps were required to transform a tree into a finished product. In addition to the workers (shantymen) involved in cutting and transporting the logs, there were also the sawmill workers and the artisans, and as the wood industry became more mechanized, the factory workers.

The Shantymen

• Description - Although there had been workers in the forest industry since the early days of New France, it was not until the nineteenth century that their role took on considerable importance. The romantic idea of the lumberjack frequently to be found in literature and legend is well known; the reality, however, was different. Recruited from among the immigrants and settlers or from day labourers and farmers in search of extra wages, the lumberjacks would "go up to the shanty" around mid-October and many would not return until the end of spring.

• Living Conditions - Their camp often consisted only of a log cabin containing a single room crammed on all sides with bunks. In the centre there would be an open fire, which was replaced by a stove by the end of the century. The number of shantymen in a camp might vary from ten with a small outfit to more than sixty and even eighty with large companies at the end of the century.

• The Typical Work Day - The days were long; at six in the morning, the lumberjacks went to the felling areas; often up earlier were the teamsters who carted away the timber and who had to feed, water and harness the horses or oxen before breakfast. There were more men on square timber crews than on sawtimber gangs, because squaring timber also required notching and hewing after the tree had been felled, two functions demanding definite skills and experience. After the timber had been squared or the logs trimmed, the skidders took over. Using a team of horses or oxen, they dragged the "sticks" or logs to the rollway, which was located near a road; from there the wood was taken by cart to the landing on the river. Around six in the evening, the lumberjacks returned to the camp, whereas the teamsters seldom finished their day's work before eight. The work went on like this six days a week until the ice melted, signalling the beginning of the "drive" - the time at which logs were floated downriver. Some of the shantymen then became drivers, and others returned home or went to work in the sawmills, which went into production as soon as the rivers opened up. The drivers' work was often dangerous, especially when jams occurred and they had to work in the water. Unlike in the bush, men on the drive had to keep changing their encampment as they followed the logs downstream.

• Wages - Not much is known about the wages of the forest workers of the nineteenth century, aside from the fact that they were paid monthly and that wages varied only slightly from one region to another and considerably from one trade to another. In 1850, for example, in the Trent River valley in Canada West, a worker who notched and hewed wood into square timber received double the wage of one who simply felled and trimmed the trees. The monthly wage was usually calculated on the basis of twenty-six working days, from which were subtracted the days lost because of sickness, injury or bad weather. Purchases of such items as tea, tobacco and tools from the company store were also deducted from the worker's pay. It could thus happen that earnings of $40 for four months' work would be reduced to $10, and some lumbermen even found themselves in debt to the company upon completion of their contract of several months. If such cases were frequent, one wonders what drove these men up to the shanty.

• Meals - Throughout the nineteenth century, the food was extremely frugal; around 1850, for example, shanty men often had to be satisfied with hardtack or Boston crackers, baked beans, pea soup, salt pork, lard, pork, and of course the fish and game they were sometimes able to catch in the area. As a rule, vegetables, sugar, molasses and pastry did not appear on the menu until the end of the century.

• Recreation - The evenings were short, and entertainment was limited to songs and stories, and to games emphasizing skill and physical strength. Sundays were reserved for washing and grooming and for repairing and maintaining the equipment. One can easily imagine that during the months of isolation these men keenly missed their loved ones. Indeed, there were no women in the camps, except in the case of very small outfits, where they performed the duties of "mother" and cook.

• Consequences of Working in the Bush - Because they worked in small scattered groups far from the population centres and for only a few months a year, the shanty men did not participate in the union movement, which was developing and asserting itself in the nineteenth century. Their demands thus found other means of expression. It may well be that the desertions, days of absence and sickness, and the consumption of alcohol were their ways of reacting to the bad working conditions.

The Sawmill Workers

• Description - The mills were running by six in the morning and did not stop until six in the evening; the workers had scarcely an hour for eating at noon. In the small sawmills of the first half of the nineteenth century, work was seasonal - the mills operated mainly in the spring and the fall, taking advantage of the flow of the rivers swollen by melted snow and rain. Since most sawmills were equipped with only one or two vertical saws, they employed only a few workers who carried out several operations, such as selecting the logs, transporting them from the river to the mill and sawing them.

• Technological Advances - Working conditions changed around 1840, when major technological innovations transformed some mills into veritable factories. The use of turbines and steam lengthened the work season and stepped up the work pace. The introduction of circular saws and the increase in the number of vertical saws not only made it possible to improve production, but also made it necessary to concentrate workers in one place. This inevitably led to the division of the work into many small precisely defined tasks that had to be done at a regular rhythm, interrupted only by mechanical breakdown.

• Employment Opportunities - Some mills employed as many as 500 men, and it is said that it 1870, the six sawmills of the Chaudiere River, Quebec, kept 4 000 men busy. To ensure a ready supply of manpower, some mill owners created whole villages by purchasing land in the vicinity of their mills and building houses which they rented to their employees.

• Wages - Wages were paid not in money, but in tokens or vouchers that could only be exchanged at the company store. If an employee wanted to exchange a voucher or token for cash in order to buy goods elsewhere, he then lost 10 per cent of its value. Because the mill workers were paid only at the end of the month, families that were at all large had trouble making ends meet without going into debt.

The Artisans

• Description - Artisans who worked with wood were the largest group of tradespeople in the nineteenth century. Carpenters and joiners were busy building houses, barns and sheds; shipwrights worked at schooners, longboats and other types of vessels; cartwrights built coaches, carriages and carts; coopers made casks of all sizes; joiners worked at making furniture. Finally, sculptors produced works as varied as figureheads and church statues.

• Skilled Workers - In contrast to the forest and sawmill workers, craftsmen had to undergo a formal apprenticeship, which lasted on the average a little more than three years. The custom of apprenticeship was brought to North America by the Europeans in the seventeenth century and persisted into the twentieth, although not without adaptations and transformations. The transformations, which affected the working conditions of the craftsmen, were directly connected with the organization of production and labour.

• Work Place - Until the beginning of the nineteenth century in the cities and towns, and until much later in some rural regions, small-scale organization of production and labour prevailed. The manufacture of an article was the work of one artisan, either a master craftsman or a journeyman, who carried out every step, sometimes with the help of apprentices. He usually worked in a small shop, which was often attached to his dwelling, and he owned his own tools, which had changed but little over the centuries. The work was usually done to order. The major sources of energy were muscle power and water power, and the hand tool was still the principal means of shaping the raw material. Control of all stages of manufacture enabled the artisan to identify with his work and gave meaning to his activity. Under such a system, the work was defined more by close personal relationships and reciprocal rights and duties than by supply and demand, as later became the case. There were conflicts none the less. It must be borne in mind that the craftsmen worked six days a week and that the workday lasted from twelve to fifteen hours, depending on the trade and the season.

• Change in Production - Around 1830, a number of master craftsmen became retailer-manufacturers or small contractors and changed their mode of production to satisfy a growing local market and to compete with imported products. They mass produced and then sold by advertising. Some of them brought together a number of craftsmen under one roof, used machine tools, and divided the work into several tasks; they were thus able to employ unskilled workers. Apprentices were hired at a younger age and were retained longer so that maximum benefit could be derived from cheap labour. The traditional responsibilities of master craftsmen toward their apprentices (training, room and board, and moral and religious education) gradually became blurred and were replaced by a wage in money.

• Unified Work Force - The changes observed in the largest operations provoked considerable opposition on the part of the artisans, who feared unemployment and the degradation of their trade. This opposition manifested itself in the founding of associations, in disputes and even in strikes. Of course, strikes occurred first in sectors where there was a concentration of workers, such as shipbuilding and the construction industry. Demands first centred on wages, working hours and dismissals, and then were gradually extended to human relations, to mechanization and to the acceptance of unions, which was not won until 1872.

The Factory Workers

• Industrialization - After 1860, the use of the steam engine spread, and the manual work of the artisan took second place to mechanized work. The workers became subject to the machine, which imposed its rhythm on them; the autonomy characteristic of the artisan's work ceased to exist. This process of industrialization was accelerated by the introduction at the turn of the century of the gas engine and then the electric motor, which became more accessible to small firms.

• The Work Place - Working conditions in these factories were usually poor, since the workers were subject to the rule of the foreman, who obeyed only the regulations issued by the owners. Mechanization forced craftsmen to repeat the same operation in a constant rhythm to produce a standard product. Since the unions were still relatively weak, dismissals, fines for lateness and delayed payment of wages were common practices. The work week was sixty hours or more, and wages were hardly enough for an average family to live decently. Thus women and children often had to work so that the family could make ends meet. It is easy to imagine the misery that resulted when a breadwinner lost his job in an era that knew no social security of any kind, neither workmen's compensation nor unemployment insurance.

All trades, however, were not affected at the same time and at the same rate by this final stage of the industrial revolution. Construction workers, for example, by virtue of their direct action on the raw material, were among the few craftsmen to retain control of their work.

Past to Present

In summary, the Canadian Forest Industry began development in response to the demands of the British navy for long, square timbers. A lot of the wood cut had defects and could not be used and as a result, much of the wood was wasted. A period followed when people demanded only knot_free pine and spruce lumber. This meant only the best pine and spruce trees were cut, and only some of these were used. When pulpwood logging began, spruce, balsam and jackpine trees were cut and only smaller trees were used. The demand for lumber also meant a demand for workers in various areas of the industry.

The forest industry continues to develop and change. Today, all tree species are cut. Almost no wood is left in the bush; large logs are sent to sawmills for lumber and veneer and small logs are sent to pulp and paper mills. The waste from the trees is often used as biomass fuel. Areas of felled trees are replanted or reforested helping to ensure success of the forest for future generations and for the forest industry itself.

The forest industry remains a predominant sector in Canada's economy, directly providing 300,000 jobs and indirectly providing some 700,000 more. However, it still faces two dangers which have threatened it in the past:

1. Excessive dependence on foreign markets and foreign capital

The era of square timber and of shipbuilding was the era of the British, the era of sawtimber was the era of the Americans and secondarily of the British, and the present era, that of pulp and paper, is dominated by American capital. The development of the forest resources of eastern Canada has therefore been determined to a considerable extent by decisions taken abroad. Production has often been subject to the vagaries of international trade.

2. The exhaustion of resources

The main threat to the forest industry continues to be the exhaustion of resources. Subject to no control, entrepreneurs long considered only their immediate profit, giving no thought to the future. Even in 1889, the pamphleteer Arthur Buies raised the alarm about this waste of resources: Until now, many lumber merchants have practised not intelligent industry, but devastation of the forests, veritable pillaging, the blind, brutal, furious extermination of some of the most beautiful species of wood in the world.

It was not until the middle of the twentieth century, when forest exploitation shifted to western Canada, that conservation and reforestation policies came into being.