Dynamic Forest. Malcolm F. Squires
stands. The thinning removed excess tree saplings, while selected desirable saplings were left standing at as near as practical to two-metrespacing. The thinning recovered no merchantable wood and therefore yielded no immediate cash return. That type of thinning is today called “spacing,” or “cleaning.” In 1970, after improving labour productivity and thus the cost of the thinning, we began expanding the program, with both federal and provincial help, to over a thousand hectares per year.
As part of my responsibilities, and as an interested tourist, I travelled widely in Canada, parts of the United States, and New Zealand, familiarizing myself with other companies’ and various governments’ policies and practices. I visited the forestry operations of numerous companies in various provinces and states, including, among others, the clear-cutmountain terrain of MacMillan Bloedel’s business in the Vancouver Island rain forests; Proctor & Gamble’s operations at Grande Prairie, Alberta, and its clear-cuttingin the lodgepole pine forest of the Rockies’ foothills; Weyerhaeuser‘s Douglas fir plantations near Mount St. Helen’s in Washington State; California’s redwoods; New Zealand Forest Products (NZFP)’s intensively managed radiata pine plantations on North Island, New Zealand; J.D. Irving’s operations in New Brunswick, with its extensive black spruce plantations situated on former clear-cutsthat had been prepared for planting with heavy vegetation crushers; and Spruce Falls Power and Paper’s fill-inplantations on the clay belt forests of northeastern Ontario.
In almost every case, to the best of my knowledge, the forests were being managed according to the current laws of each jurisdiction that, compared to today’s laws, were rather lax. Except for Spruce Falls Power and Paper, companies that were practising the more intensive forest management, at that time, put their greatest effort into their private land.
Throughout my career, I was sometimes assigned to lead bush tours for Canadian and foreign politicians, stock analysts, buyers, and executives of international newspapers who were our current or potential customers. Conversations during those tours exposed me to the politics of world trade and investment and gave me some insight into the complexity of satisfying customer demands. To my surprise, puzzlement, and gratitude, one newspaper executive wrote our CEO giving me credit for his paper’s large newsprint order.
In 1974, Abitibi Paper Company acquired Price Brothers Limited, and the combined companies were later renamed Abitibi-PriceInc. Philip Mathias’s book, Takeover, provides a detailed and intriguing replay of events leading up to and during the high-stakesboardroom, stock market, and financial manoeuvring that occurred at the time.3In 1978, I was temporarily transferred to head office to work with Duncan Naysmith and Frank Robinson of Abitibi-Priceas they negotiated Forest Management Agreements (FMA), first with Manitoba and then with Ontario. The first FMA negotiated in Ontario, for Abitibi’s Iroquois Falls Division, became the trend-setterfor two additional agreements for Abitibi, and subsequent FMAs that followed with all other companies in Ontario. FMAs transferred responsibility for stand renewal after disturbance and follow-upstand management from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) to the industry. That exhilarating experience culminated with Bill Johnston, the vice president of woodlands for the company, challenging me, “You have helped negotiate FMAs, now make one work.”
I was made accountable for forest management of the Spruce River FMA, miscellaneous licences, and Abitibi-Price’s developing forestry program on its two thousand square kilometres of private land northwest of Thunder Bay, Ontario.
With the exception of approximately one year working for Forestry Canada and a summer job with Parks Canada, all of my employment between 1956 and 1997 was with Canadian forest-industrycompanies. I left Abitibi-Pricein 1997 to become an independent forestry consultant. For the next eight years, under short-termcontracts, I supervised forest renewal, advised on forest silvicultural and urban forestry projects, was lead auditor on two independent forest-managementaudits,4 and assisted the successful bidder when what had since become Abitibi-Consolidatedsold its private land.
During my career, various persons provocatively challenged me with, “How can you, a professional forester, promote industrial forestry and not be ashamed?”
My answer was always the same. “I am proud of what I am doing with the forest industry.” And then I’d proceed to explain why to anyone willing to listen. The remainder of this book is my expanded answer to the question.
The Forest Is More than Its Trees
As a teenager, I often travelled along the numerous fens, muskegs, and barrens of my Newfoundland home, where less than 50 percent of the landscape is closed forest. The fens at valley bottoms, muskegs, and rock barrens on the ridge tops and some slopes, support few trees.
During my work there, I used those open spaces as travel corridors, particularly in winter when they offered unimpeded snowshoe, ski, and snowmobile travel on the wind-packedsnow. I would stand gazing up from the side of a fen or down from a ridge top at the opposite hillside, studying the layout of the tree cover, its species content, and relative tree sizes and stand volumes.
Over the years, those images converged in my mind with numeric cruise data collected along parallel lines through the forest and I could give increasingly accurate ocular estimates for portions of a stand. By examining aerial photographs, I could then extend the estimate to a whole watershed. I was unaware that a mix of forest and open spaces was being burned forever into my psyche.
When I was transferred at middle age to Ontario, I initially felt uncomfortable in the boreal forest of this new place, and that bothered and puzzled me. More than ever, I was enjoying being on large clear-cuts, and one day, during my second year in my new job, while kneeling and examining some newly planted spruce seedlings, a sudden realization came that I was missing the open spaces that I so enjoyed.
I, a forester, was embarrassingly claustrophobic in Ontario’s relatively unbroken forest, where even the fens and some of the muskegs tend to be treed. I realized that the clear-cutand burned areas had become surrogate fens, muskegs, and rock barrens, and views from them were now adding to my understanding of the local standing forest. I was also appreciating clear-cutsfor their open space and I could now even see their beauty.
Clear-cutsand burns, which in my youth had offended me as eyesores, had evolved in my mind into places of wonder and what was initially stark beauty, into increasingly appealing panoramic scenes and smaller scenes of vivid colour and form.
Clear-cutsand burns became subjects of my expanding visual-artshobby and small business. I admit that it takes a stretch to see beauty during the first couple of years after any forest disturbance, but by the third year, the new growth of the remaining trees is accompanied by flowering herbs and shrubs, and a wider variety of mushrooms begins to appear.
As a student, I worked one summer with a scientist who developed one of Canada’s earliest ecological forest-siteclassifications, and with him examined several hundred small sample plots of the forest floor.5Throughout my career, I used similar plots from which to gather information that enabled objective analysis of various forest dynamics. Forest ecology didn’t become my life vocation but I did learn that the forest is more than just its trees.
The number of species of trees in a stand is a small fraction of the total number of plant species. During much of my time in the forest, I have been on my knees and even lying face-downwhile examining the diversity of life on a few square centimetres of forest floor. Photographing or drawing, collecting, and identifying as many plant species as I could find was an early hobby, and as a forester I often recorded and collected for my learning and research, and research by others.
I have accumulated a large library of photographs of fascinating rock patterns and colours, lichens on rocks and wood, mosses, ferns and grasses, dew-coveredspider webs, intriguing arrangements of rotting wood, bark, and fungus, and, yes, wildlife, including insects, birds, frogs, snakes, turtles, hares, grouse, porcupines, foxes, lynx, wolves, coyotes, bears, moose, and caribou — practically all in clear-cutsand burns of differing ages. Yes, beauty can be found anywhere but it takes the right attitude and focus on the here and now — and it helps to forget our biases.
Plants are the base of all other boreal forest life, providing food and shelter to wildlife, and food, medicine, tools, shelter material, industrial