HISTORY of VICTORIA COUNTY - PART 26
SKETCH OF MINING, FARMING AND
LUMBERING IN THE NORTH
(BY WATSON
KIRKCONNELL, M.A.)
(All Rights
Reserved)
(Continued from
last week)
Character Study of North Victoria
The block of territory
formed by the seven northern townships is thus seen to be a rugged tract of
glacial rock. The southern two-fifths
is made up of Paleozoic limestones of the Black River series, pitilessly
scraped and scoured by the Ice Age and even yet lacking more than a thin mantle
of soil, except in stream valleys. The
remaining three-fifths of North Victoria lies within that vast granite region,
which is known as the Laurentian peneplain, a low, table-land of primeval rock
on which streams have etched countless depressions and left innumerable rounded
hills and ridges. On this area Dr. A.P.
Coleman, the venerable Professor of Geology in the University of Toronto, has
rendered the following verdict: -- The combination of kames (hills of sand,
gravel, and boulders) with pure sand deposits, through which rise hills of the
harder Archaean rocks, makes a region entirely unsuited for agriculture and
useful only for forest growth. The
result of glacial action north of the Paleozoic rocks has been the formation of
poor soils deficient in lime and often in clayey constituents.
Not a Mining Country
The
forms of activity in which the people of North Victoria have sought to engage
are three: mining, farming, and
lumbering. It will be instructive to
take these industries one at a time and consider their past and their
prospective development.
Mining enterprises have always
colored the dreams of the settlers, but the dreams have never endured in
daylight. Laxton township once had its
gold rush and the ruins of an abandoned mine may still be seen on the west
shore of the Big Mud Turtle Lake, not far from Norland. Mineral rod men and amateur assayers also
vouched for gold on Lot 1, Concession XI, Somerville township, adjacent to the
Bobcaygeon road and four miles south of Kinmount. Still another gold strike was reported from Lot 25, Concession
XII, Dalton township, along the Black River, about six miles below Ragged
Rapids. Silver, nickel, iron, and
copper were likewise objects of faith which, among many backwoodsmen, remains
unshaken to this day.
For critical outsiders, however,
all debate was permanently set at rest by a survey made in 1892 by the Federal
Department of Mines. Iron pyrite was
found in great abundance but there was not even a trace of gold. Silver and copper were also utterly
lacking. Iron ore, occurring in granite
veins, was found in hundreds of places, especially in Digby and Dalton
townships. The highest deposits were near
Smudge Lake, in Digby. In no case,
however, were the findings sufficient to be of economic value. The presence of nickel in Somerville had
already been recognized and the abundance of pyrrhotite, its customary
concomitant in the great Sudbury deposits, had led to frequent comparisons of the
two areas. A careful examination of Somerville,
however, showed that no parallel existed.
The ores at Sudbury had occurred in great diorite intrusions near their
contact with granite or with the stratified rocks of the district, which were
of Huronian age, while those in Somerville occurred as impregnations in bands
of gneiss belonging to the Grenville series.
The two sets of deposits were thus quite different in mode of occurrence
and probably in age and what had been proved to be true of the former could not
be taken for granted in the latter.
Careful assays from every known deposit in the township confirmed this
conclusion. Nickel was present but in
such minute quantities as to be of no economic value. The most promising
discovery of the whole survey was a small vein of pure molybdenite in Digby on
Lot 16, Concession VII, four miles north of Head Lake. The somewhat rare mineral allanite was
located on Lot 25, Concession XII, Dalton township. In neither case, however, was commercial developments
warrantable.
The overwhelming conclusion to
be drawn from the report of the official survey is that little mineral
developments may ever be looked for in North Victoria.
Farming a Precarious Calling
The
status of farming in the granite area may be inferred from Professor Colemans
report on its soil. In the limestone
area conditions are slightly better, for the chemical composition of the soil
is more favorable, but there is seldom sufficient depth for crops except in the
flood-plains and terraces of the valleys of the Burnt River, Corben Creek, Gull
River, Talbot River, and Head River.
These more propitious settings are, however, very limited.
Most of those who took up land
in North Victoria were attracted by its forest resources more than by its
agricultural possibilities; and all depended on the forest for such temporary
prosperity as was theirs. Fully
seventy-five per cent of the lots were patented when the patentee had the right
to all timber including pine. The
potential wealth of this timber was considerable but when this disappeared the
settler had to fall back on farming on poor land. Even then, so long as lumbering thrived in nearby areas and
provided a home market for farm produce, the backwoods agriculturist could
raise enough potatoes, oats, hay, and meat to make a living. The final extinction of local lumbering
spelt failure for many farmers. A
region of non-agricultural soils was called on to compete, unaided, in more
distant markets for farm products, and much of the area could scarcely raise
enough to keep its inhabitants alive.
The results have been a slow
tragedy. Many of the younger and more
enterprising men moved out. Many others
would have followed, but could not, because of poverty. Even today the movement goes on and in 1920
a general migration from the Kinmount section to Kapuskasing, in New Ontario,
was planned. The population statistics
for the past thirty-five years is as follows: -
Townships 1886 1898 1901 1920
Somerville.
..1359 1873 1885 1499
Bexley.
. 795 798 871 637
Laxton, Digby, Longford.
.769
800 733 463
Carden.
..646 731 690 488
Dalton.
..468 495 512 382
____ ____ ____ ____
Totals
4037 4697 4691 3469
It will be noted that while
South Victoria reached its maximum population in the early eighties, North
Victoria being settled much later, did not attain the peak until about fifteen
years later. Since then it has declined
rapidly. The loss since 1901 has been
1222 or more than one-quarter of its population. Further, while in South Victoria the decrease in population has
meant a reduction not in the number of farms but in the number of people
occupying them, in North Victoria farms have been completely abandoned, often
without finding any purchaser.
The condition of those who have
remained is often pitiable. There are,
of course, occasional good farms along the valleys in the tr-at ranges, but in
some of the remoter sections the pressure of stark want is bringing about much
social degeneracy. Physical and mental
defectives are becoming commoner and moral disintegration often calls for the
intervention of the Childrens Aid Society.
The fault in these matters does not lie with the people but with the
conditions under which they attempt to secure a livelihood. The original settlers were an energetic,
hard-working, resourceful people, sprung from the finest pioneer stock in the
older countries of Ontario. But in many
cases they now face an impossible proposition:
The amount of energy expended in trying to make a living in this area
has been enormous and if applied under half-tolerable conditions would have
shamed by its achievements the self-satisfied prosperity of more favored
regions. The modern urban dweller with
his shortened hours and extended relaxations cannot imagine the dreary
hopelessness of trying to wring agricultural returns from soil that is good
only for forest. Even the hard-working
farmer of South Victoria would find it hard to realize the extremities endured
in the northern townships. As a minor
indication of conditions it may be mentioned that in one section of Somerville
the school tax alone, irrespective of all other levies, is 52.8 mills on the
dollar. When we remember that the school
tax in Lindsay is only 13.3 mills, we may realize how these northern farmers
are bleeding themselves white in an attempt to provide their children with
education. The simple truth is that the
land, treated as farming country, will not support them.
At the present time dairying is
the chief farm industry. In the granite
region the only crops are hay and oats and there is a struggle for each farmer
to get enough of these for his own use.
As the number of cattle that a man can winter is controlled by his
summer crop and as a dry season means poor crops on the shallow, sandy soil,
natural meadows and marshes are sought out and all available marsh hay
harvested. Rough grazing land is fairly
plentiful and is a distinct aid in dairying and ranching. Many farmers in South Victoria now pasture
their herds each summer on abandoned farms in North Victoria and bring them
home to winter on ensilage, a system which permits more extensive and
profitable farming in the south. The
dairying industry now supports two creameries, one at Coboconk and one at
Kinmount. Improved methods of farming,
such as more deliberate manuring of land and rotation of crops, would doubtless
better many parts of North Victoria, but by far the greater portion of the
region is utterly unsuited for agriculture.
An Era of Lumbering Now Past
Lumbering
was the supreme industry of earlier times but is now moribund through the sheer
blind improvidence of those who took part in it. The record of carelessness and wanton destructiveness left by many
who made their fortunes in North Victoria sixty years ago is a reproach to our
race, that will be hard to remove. It
can, however, be palliated by an intelligent administration of the ravaged
wilderness which has been left to our generation.
In 1850 all of North Victoria
was covered with primeval forest. Of
this original sylva, fully two-thirds was magnificent white pine and the other
one-third pure hardwood, chiefly maple and beech. From 1850 to 1880 the forest was slashed away in reckless
fashion. The coniferous areas
especially were cut practically clean in the process of lumbering, although
only the largest and choicest trees were utilized. The commercial output, even down through the seventies, ran into
tens of millions of feet in sawlogs and unrecorded harvests of square timber,
yet the potential value destroyed in the younger trees is probably far
greater. On the most glaringly
non-agricultural soils no thought was ever given to a future forest crop; no
saplings were left to replenish the region; and fires, kindled by carelessness
or ignorance, swept away even the seedlings that might have redeemed the
slaughter.
The results are very evident
today. Illuminating figures for
Somerville townships are on record in a survey report made by the Commission of
Conservation. Only 27.3% of the
township consists of cleared farm land; 61.9% is burnt-over land; and a scant
10.8% is forested. Of this latter
fraction, about one-ninth or 1.3% of the whole area is coniferous forest,
(cedar, balsam, swamp, spruce, and tamarack) and the other 9.5% is hardwood and
mixed forest. All of this wooded
remnant has been pitilessly culled over and little of real value left. No forest containing sawlogs remained.
For this northern region as a
whole the Commission reported that the white pine had been all but annihilated
and the other trees of the area more or less severely culled; and that the
pineries had been burnt over at least once and in most places several
times. Nearly two-thirds of the pine
grounds had been burnt over two or three times and were beyond natural
recuperation. The fire not only
consumed what scanty young growth had been left after lumbering. Where the soil was thin, especially along
the rok ridges, it destroyed the humus entirely. It also burnt up all seeds of the white pine and, as fortuitous
reseeding from adjacent pineries was limited to the distance that cones could
fall and roll, almost all natural reforestration had been established by
wind-blown, seed-catkins of poplars and birches. As a result, 57.3% of the present forested area was now poplar
and another 33% hardwoods.
Reforestration Needed
A definite policy of
reforestration would seem the part of wisdom.
We have already seen that mining has no future and agriculture a
precarious outlook in North Victoria.
In seven townships there are tracts comprising more than two hundred
square miles which have been classed as waste land, available for
reforestration. Much of this land will
be replanted by natural means, but with trees of inferior value. All areas, however, stand in constant danger
of fire, and unless the administration of such tracts is taken over on a large
scale, preferably under municipal management, no adequate fire protection can
be hoped for.
A more detailed discussion of
this problem will be undertaken in a later chapter. It will suffice here to suggest the value of profiting by past
mistakes and of seeking by prudent stewardship to re-establish the ruined
prosperity of half a county. There is
no reason why the bulk of these northern townships should not constitute forest
reserves that might be drawn on in perpetuity and add greatly to the permanent
wealth of the county.
A Resort for Recreation
Nor
is material gain the only argument in favor of a rehabilitation of North
Victoria. Because of the pace of modern
urban civilization the forests have become increasingly important as recreation
grounds and as sanitary and health resorts.
Even now our county affords a magnificent field for the sportsman and
camper to range over. There are some
sixty lakes in the Northern townships, varying in size from tarns of a few
acres in the Longford granite to the blue expanse of Balsam Lake, nine miles in
length and five in breadth. The
altitude, in no case less than 840 feet above sea-level, ensures cool summer
nights even when Toronto swelters most desperately. But under a system of forestration and forest protection, every
year would add to the beauty and healthfulness of these northern resorts, until
we could point with pride to what would be not only perennial sources of
revenue but regions of natural paradise where the ailing and the over-wrought
might find rest and healing.
Recapitulation
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