AFR: I subscribe to Atlantic Forestry Review and read your article in the latest issue about “Greater trees!” on page 31. New Brunswick has been doing an awesome job documenting their large trees.

I manage a project called “Giants of Nova Scotia,” started three years ago to raise awareness about the recently discovered hemlock bug (HWA).

I’ve always meant to get around to documenting large trees in Nova Scotia, and it finally came together this year. I’m using iNaturalist, which is where people can add their “Giants” to the project.

We’ve had good support so far, and the latest bunch of additions were an unexpected and welcome twist. A teacher took her class out into the forest to measure trees. Each student had their own tree, and now they are all part of the collection. I contacted the teacher, and she said the students had a blast! Get to them early to develop a lifelong love of trees!

My intention is to setup a “leaderboard” for the largest of each species, so people have a benchmark, and the more competitive ones can seek out the next, bigger giant.

The project can be found at inaturalist.ca/projects/giants-of-nova-scotia.

Tom Rogers

Wentzells Lake, N.S.

AFR: I am wondering how one can make a forestry business case of all that fir that grows up when too much overstory is removed. Many stands today are almost pure fir, and so thick that one is unable to walk through it.

Lumber mills tend to require only a percentage of fir. Early in the clearcut days, woodlot owners were quick to see the advantage of converting the land into a Christmas tree plantation, which gave maximum value per acre. That opportunity has mostly passed, long ago. Given the higher value of spruce, one can thin out enough fir to enhance the more valuable, longer-life trees if enough are available on site. But that is often not the case. I have about a dozen acres of Acadian forest that I lost in a timber theft in the 1960s. It grew back in almost pure fir that has not done much ever since. What is the best way to get that mess back to an Acadian forest?

This appears to be a fact of life in Nova Scotia, wherever one goes. What is there of value in a pure fir stand? I hope someone out there has the answer.
Charles Jess

Yarmouth, N.S.

Good question, Charles! I think most readers would agree that this type of stand is not very desirable, from a timber perspective. It does not lend itself well to conventional silviculture treatments, and is often relegated to repeated clearcutting, contributing to “borealization” of the Acadian forest. But maybe the key point here is your description of the stand as “almost” pure fir. If there are more diverse seed sources nearby, sometimes it’s surprising what comes up in the understory, even as the fir is declining. You might have something to work with. Of course, I would defer to an expert. Let’s see if we can get some good advice on this. DL

AFR: Although I have contributed a verse about the spring stream drive of logs before, I have not sent in this one. It speaks of some of the actual men from this region who worked the stream drive in days gone by, and for whom I’d like to do my small part in ensuring they are not forgotten.

Spring drive – or stream drive, as it was usually called – was the emotional apex and climactic conclusion to a long, hard winter’s work in the woods. The Little Tobique River, the Mamozekel River, the Sisson Branch, and the Right Hand Branch all came together at “the Forks,” and from there the drive continued down the Tobique River to Plaster Rock. As Wendell Crawford put it in an April 1999 story, “... so the men who worked like horses to drive the logs to the mill will not be forgotten” – men mostly now gone to that “big log-drive in the sky,” but definitely not forgotten.

And in those days, going on the log drive was by far a man’s job. Men like Crawford, whose first drive at age 17 was in April 1937. Or Lorne Diamond, the best axeman on the Tobique, of whom Clyde McAskill said, “And when the stream drive came along, was like a blackbird on a log.” And Harry Giberson, who my father said was the best teamster on the Tobique. Hiram Knox, a Tobique poet, was nicknamed “Bullet-Head.” Charlie McCarty told me himself that he was actually at the woods camp on Two Brooks in 1928 when Knox thought up the verses that gained him that epithet, a couple lines of which were, “The master and the flunkie were early on the hoof / And blithely ordered bullet-head to open up the roof.” Knox Mountain is named for him!

Yet, it wasn’t all work. In evenings and during storms, they’d sit or lie around and tell tall tales, with the “talker” taking the Deacon’s Seat – a split log on legs used by the travelling preachers who’d visit the camps and preach The Word. Men like Ray Boone, of the Shantyman’s Christian Association of Canada.

Stream drive in its heyday – this was “Atlantic forestry!” Long hours, hard work, good food, and the telling of tall tales – sometimes remembered and put to verse.

D.C. Butterfield

Kilburn N.B.