HISTORY of VICTORIA COUNTY - PART 26 - SKETCH OF MINING, FARMING AND LUMBERING IN THE NORTH

(BY WATSON KIRKCONNELL, M.A.)

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.

Farming a Precarious Calling

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

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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

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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 Children’s 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

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 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

Recapitulation

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