Logging

Logging has been and still is one of the mainstays of the Northern Ontario economy. For generations, the cutting of trees has resulted in much disagreement between those who see the economic potential in lumber and pulpwood, and those who look to the forests to provide a home for wildlife and a comforting vista for recreational enthusiasts. The arguments will probably never stop within any of our lifetimes, unless of course, the trees all get cut down.

The Temagami area was first settled in 1850 when the Hudson Bay Company set up a trading post on Temagami Island. The post was later moved to Bear Island. Early settlement was related to the fur trade and the community existed in relative isolation until 1880 when the Canadian Pacific Rail reached North Bay.

Direct access to Temagami was established in 1904 when the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway was built from North Bay to New Liskeard, touching the east end of the Northeast Arm of Lake Temagami. The year before, a steamship had been brought in by sled and a village soon grew up to serve the visitors coming off the railway and transferring to the steamship or canoes. At this time, the area was truly open for development. There were 4 full-service hotels on the lake as well as canoe camps and cottages. By 1906 private individuals were allowed to lease islands from the Crown for cottaging purposes.

During the late 1890’s and early 1900’s, concern increased about the impact of tourism and settlement activity on the previously untouched white pine forests surrounding Lake Temagami. The Temagami Forest Reserve was established to avoid the dangers associated with settlement, namely forest fire. No logging was permitted prior to 1924 except to salvage two minor burns. At that time, Provincial Authorities realized that the forest was reaching mature or over-mature conditions, and so the entire area was open for licensing. By 1926 seven companies were operating in the Temagami area

By the 1930’s there were as many as 10 steamships plying the waters of Lake Temagami. Commercial passenger service declined with the development of reliable, inexpensive outboard motors in the 1950’s and was killed by the opening of a public road to the hub of Lake Temagami in 1968. The economic importance of this recreational activity was noted in a 1949 Government of Ontario mining review publication which noted that tourism had been the mainstay of Temagami for 50 years and would likely to continue to be indefinitely.

By 1935, logging was becoming a problem, with pine stands being cut in close proximity to Lake Temagami. The beauty of the untouched shoreline had attracted early campers, and the local cottagers’ association was determined to see that it remained as pristine as they had found it. The association lobbied for timber extraction to be conducted in a responsible and non-destructive manner. The provincial government agreed to special restrictions being added to contracts, including the protection of shoreline and skyline reserves, which were later enshrined in the 1994 Tenets for Temagami. Through the late 1940s and 1950s, a large percentage of the province’s best pine originated in the Temagami forest.

In 1942, provincial legislation was passed allowing lease holders to obtain outright ownership of their islands, upon the removal of Lake Temagami’s 1,200 islands from the Temagami Provincial Forest. The provincial government had established it as the Temagami Forest Reserve in 1901 to set aside pine stands for future logging and to protect them from forest fires threatened by tourism. Mainland development was thereby forbidden, though the islands within the Reserve had been available for leasing since 1906.

A development freeze on the area was enacted in 1973 while an aboriginal land claim dispute was being debated. The freeze effectively kept mining out of the area for a good twenty years. In 1991, the NDP government set up the Temagami Forest Reserve, which covers 5,800 square kilometres of the area. Parts of the area were still being logged in the early '90's, but much of the old growth forest was not immediately threatened.

The Lake Temagami Plan for Land Use and Recreational Development (1973), states that the existence of the Temagami Forest Reserve (during the period of early land development) was certainly a major influence in preservation of a “sky-line” reserve on the mainland. A Skyline reserve was identified on the mainland in order to ensure that trees a certain distance from the shoreline were not cut down. This effectively prohibited mainland development. Islands had been removed from the Temagami Forest Reserve in 1905 because the threat of fire on land surrounded by water was minimal, and a pattern of “island-only” development began.

The logs that went into the construction of our Main Lodge were cut for us back in 1974 in the Obabika Inlet area of the lake by Wm. Milne & Sons, a logging and sawmill concern in Temagami. They are a mixture of red pine, jack pine and black spruce. These logs were cut about a mile inland from the shore, hauled by truck to the water’s edge, and then boomed to our island by their tug boat “Andy Milne”.

In the mid-1980s, the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) proposed an extension to the Red Squirrel Road, which runs east-west across the north end of the lake and connects to Hwy. 11 north of Temagami. The extension would intersect the Liskeard Lumber Rd., which runs north-south through the Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Wilderness Park. The purpose was to ease access and haulage of timber by area logging companies to a mill in Elk Lake and the Milne sawmill in Temagami. The proposal would soon turn the Temagami landscape into a battleground as conflicting resource users clashed.

The reaction of the native population, now known by its traditional Teme-Augama Anishinabe (TAA) name, to the government’s approval of road construction was to set up a blockade and encampment on the Red Squirrel at Sharp Rock Inlet. About 100 forestry workers and supporters, angered by these tactics to delay road construction, blocked the Lake Temagami Access Rd. near Hwy. 11 on the 1988 Labour Day weekend. A reported 300 OPP officers, including riot squad members, dispersed the crowd. Many believe the police presence was grossly overdone. After seven months of occupation, court orders ended the native blockade, but delayed road construction pending a land claim ruling.

In 1989, Temagami was the focus of the largest civil disobedience campaign in Ontario's history. Hundreds of protesters were arrested, including the soon-to-be Ontario Premier Bob Rae. The protests were aimed at preserving some of the last old growth red and white pine forest in Ontario. The forests of Temagami cover a 10,000 square kilometre area near North Bay. They subsist on a very thin layer of soil on bedrock, a very harsh environment for a tree. Environmentalists say the government's talk about "sustained development" in Temagami is misleading, since in reality, the forests will have a difficult time recovering from logging, if they can at all.

At the end of the intensive 1989 protests, then Premier Peterson agreed that the most sensitive sections of old growth forest, covering 40,000 hectares, could not be logged without the agreement of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai. The Teme-Augama, who were then in the middle of a land claim dispute over the area, said that they were not going to make any decisions until their claim was settled.

And the story continues to this day. Sometime in 2002 the Red Squirrel logging road west of Sandy Inlet was closed after a bridge was vandalized. Without the bridge, logging and logging-road construction have not been possible to the west. This has blocked two controversial logging projects: logging around the Spirit Rock, and the rebuilding of a road through a conservation reserve.

Liskeard Lumber has been unable to log the area between Sharp Rock Inlet of Lake Temagami and Obabika Lake (blocks containing old-growth jack pine, and adjoining the proposed Lake Temagami park). One block has been opposed because it will be on native sacred land.

In 2004 Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resource approved a logging plan for the next five years, heralding an assault on the wildlands of a magnitude that has not been seen in over a decade. The plan intends to increase logging four-fold over the last decade, re-open abandoned roads and drive new ones into roadless areas. The wildlands — areas around Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Wilderness Park, Lady Evelyn Lake and Lake Temagami — have been largely untouched since the environmental battles of the 1980s, but a number of factors have left the area vulnerable. Voracious sawmills to the north are running out of timber and pushing farther from their mills.

Approx. 75% of red areas will be logged over the next five years if MNR gets approval, and all of the yellow areas MNR has been accused of wanting to complete the transition of the wildlands into tree farms. And this time, there is no effective group defending the area as there was in the 1980s.