Canada: NOVA SCOTIA: The Big Burn

A party of fishermen had camped in the Red River country near Cape Breton Highlands National Park. When they moved out, they committed the worst crime in the woodsman’s book: they failed to put out their fire. From its embers sprang a blaze that soon fired the summer-dry brush nearby. Volunteers came running and quickly had the burning brush under control—or so they thought until a rising wind undid their work. Soon a white mushroom of smoke hung over Cape Breton’s heartland.

The billowing fire raced through tall stands of spruce, pine, oak and birch, cut westward across the brow of thickly timbered Mackenzie Mountain until it reached the little fishing hamlet of Pleasant Bay. Some of the 250 villagers escaped along famed Cabot Trail. Fishing boats, summoned before communications were cut, saved the rest. But Pleasant Bay’s homes and shops, a church and hospital were ashes.

The fire turned inland and fanned out across the narrow peninsula. Offshore, watchers saw soft. flames above the treetops. On land, hundreds of begrimed and weary men fought the fire. In its first six days, the fire (one of more than 50 burning in Canada last week) blackened more than 20 square miles of forest. It was already one of the worst forest fires in Nova Scotia’s history. At week’s end, veteran rangers despondently thought that only a 48-hour downpour would stop it.

Not all Canada’s forests were going up in smoke. In Toronto last week, Forestry Expert Howard Kennedy reported to Premier George Drew on a 15-month survey of Ontario’s timber resources. He told of appalling waste from helter-skelter cutting, which left many a fallen tree to rot. Unless something drastic is done, said Expert Kennedy, Ontario’s lumber industry “will continue to diminish in importance to such an extent that before 25 years it will be classed as a minor industry.”