How much wood...? - Glimpses of the Past with Karen Webster
Before the arrival of European settlers, the woods were made up of towering giants of trees. Huron County had a great variety of tree specimens including oak, yellow birch pine, cedar, sugar maple, swamp elm, beech, black elm, red elm, viscous elm, walnut, white ash, butternut and cherry trees. So high and so dense were these specimens that little light penetrated to the forest floor. To quote a Gordon Lightfoot lyric “the deep dark forest was too silent to be real”. Early settlers tended to stay close to their property lest they became lost.
A majority of settlers chose to farm the land that they had selected and to them, trees were a hindrance. Malcolm Lamont, born in 1857 in Turnberry Township west of Wingham recorded his childhood memories. He recalled felling a pine tree that made a log 120 feet in length. Many of the trees found in the area were free of branches in the first 50 to 60 feet from the ground. In the mid-1800s, wood was the primary building material for houses, barns and businesses. And what was the chief material for heating those homes and factories? Wood, of course.
Manufacturing took its toll of the trees of the area as well. Let’s look at some of the local early industries. Brussels in the period of up to 1900 was home to a furniture factory, two pump factories (upper parts made of pine and lower parts of tamarack logs), undertakers (who built their own wooden coffins), Cardiff Brothers (implements), Wynns’ wagon shop, roller mills as well as Scott and Williams cutters and sleighs. In Wingham, wood was the raw material at a sash and door factory, a factory making staves for barrels, Scott and Bell furniture factory on the site of 2026 Cruickshank Park and Ritchie carriage works.
Lucknow, too, had industries that relied on a constant supply of lumber such as the furniture factory.
With the advent of railways coming to the local area, more wood was required, first of all for the ties on which to lay the rails.
Most parts of railway cars except the engine were made of wood, including the uncomfortable seats. Copious amounts of wood required to fire the steam engines In Wingham in 1873, the year after the rail line came to the town, 500 bush cords (4x8x4 feet) of hardwood were cut and piled ready for next season. The railroad paid $1.85/cord,
Underlying Huron County is a huge bed of salt that is part of the Michigan Salt Basin. Entrepreneurs in Goderich, Wingham, Clinton, Blyth and Seaforth, to name a few, drilled down to the salt deposits. Water was directed down to dissolve the salt and the resulting brine was pumped to the surface to be evaporated in flat pans. This process required copious amounts of wood to heat the brine. In one winter alone, Blyth area farmers brought in 6,000 bush cords of wood to fire the evaporating pans.
One product that southern Ontario was famous for over a century ago was apples. Since apples are perishable, evaporators were employed to preserve them. The apples were sliced, then spread on large flat pans to dry aided by wood fires underneath them. The dried fruit had a much longer shelf-life.
Of course, products like salt and apples as well as numerous other goods needed to be shipped. The container of choice in the mid to late 19th Century was the barrel. With its solid rounded shape, it could be tipped on its side and then rolled to its destination. This was quite a handy feature in the days before forklifts. Most small places had their own cooperages for producing these barrels. In Auburn, in 1907 there were 11,000 to 12,000 barrels made. And remember, these barrels did not get returned to be refilled. This industry had an enormous appetite for wood. And farmers anxious to clear their land to produce more cropland were only too willing to oblige.
Add all of these factors, and others as well, together and the percentage of land covered by forests was greatly diminished. European immigrants had cut down the vast majority of old growth forests throughout southern Ontario. Old growth forests have typical characteristics: the presence of older trees, minimal signs of human disturbance, mixed-age stands, presence of canopy openings due to tree falls, pit-and-mound topography, downed wood in various stages of decay, standing snags (dead trees), multilayered canopies and intact soils. Canada, Russia and Brazil are cited as the areas in the world of most old growth forests. In Ontario, three main areas where these stands can be found are in Temagami, north of Sault Ste. Marie and in parts of Algonquin Park. The lure of logging these areas for short-term profit gain are a danger to the survival of these areas.
In the past few years, a survey of the largest and/or oldest of the main species of trees in the province has taken place. Several of these specimens were located in Huron County in the 1970s and 1980s. They were a Eastern White cedar in the Falls Reserve Conservation area. a Slippery Elm in Bayfield and a Staghorn Sumac on the Bluffs in Goderich. A look at the website of the Huron Stewardship Council (https://www.huronstewardship.ca) will bring up an honour roll of significant trees in our local area. Another group of note is the Huron Perth Chapter of the Woodlot Association which bring together people dedicated to managing their woodlots in a sustainable manner. Huron County has its own bylaws that exist to protect existing woodlands. It has been estimated that approximately 15 percent of Huron County is now forested, and much of that is the result of later conservation efforts.
Trees offer so many benefits to our planet: a cooling shade; oxygen production; air filtration and reduction of soil erosion to name a just a few. Let’s all make an effort to protect what we have and also plant more trees to carry on the legacy of forests.