Prior to the Depression, Canadian university professors commonly accepted that reasonable limits existed upon their academic freedom. It was generally deemed unwise to speak out on a "politically sensitive" issue, not only because it was understood to be below an academic's social standing to engage in pedestrian "mud-slinging," but also because such activities would not endear the university which employed the professor in question to the government upon which the institution depended for financial support.²

Clifton Durant Howe, dean of the University of Toronto's Forestry Faculty during the interwar years (1919-1941), wholeheartedly accepted these constraints on his behaviour. Although throughout his tenure it was commonly recognised that the Ontario government was doing little to manage the province's vast tracts of Crown woodlands, Howe dogmatically believed that academics - specifically members of his faculty - should never publicly criticise the state's anaemic forestry policy. This would only antagonise the politicians, thereby jeopardising the Faculty's funding and, more importantly, make it more difficult for Howe to place his graduates with the government's Department of Lands and Forests. In addition, he felt that it would retard the forestry movement's progress and further delay the day when the government would implement a sound silvicultural policy. For these reasons, Howe was profoundly committed to abiding by the contemporary parameters on his and his colleagues' behaviour, so much so that he orchestrated the firing in the early 1930s of one of his faculty members who refused to follow his example.³

Nevertheless, Howe recognised that accepting restrictions on his academic freedom did not preclude endeavouring to effect political change. He believed that the means to achieving this end entailed cultivating students in his faculty who would graduate not only as experts in their field but also as exemplary citizens. He was acutely aware that the politicians would dismiss his foresters' ideas for the immediate future, and his understudies would need to have the strength of character to return persistently to lobby for policy changes. Howe's ultimate hope was that his graduates would be both employed by the civil service (i.e., the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests) and so highly respected that they could not help but be promoted to upper levels of the bureaucracy from which they could implement fundamental policy improvements. Changing the system from the inside, instead of criticising it from the outside, was Howe's plan for circumventing the parameters on academic freedom.⁴

At first glance, the events of the late 1920s suggest that Howe was able to capitalise on a golden opportunity to achieve this end. A number of factors led the Ontario government to create a Forestry Board (with Howe as its chairman), whose raison d'être was to advise the politicians on silvicultural policy. During the Board's few active years (1927-1929), the ruling government in Ontario demonstrated an unprecedented willingness to execute forestry legislation, which seemingly reflected the influence Howe's Board wielded over policy formulation. Accounts of this period argue just that. Paul Pross contends that the Forestry Board was "an active and useful body" that had a critical hand in drafting the period's forestry statutes, and that it was only the advent of the Depression which caused these initiatives to collapse.⁵ While Bernard J. Sisam, Peter Gillis, Thomas R. Roach, and Peter Oliver concur, the latter author adds that these measures were largely attributable to the progressive tendencies of the reigning premier, G. Howard Ferguson.⁶

A re-examination of the Forestry Board's activities and the legislation that was enacted during its tenure, however, indicates that this interpretation is not tenable. Indeed, Howe was able to bridge the gap between the university and government bureaucracy, but that was practically all he achieved. The Forestry Board produced a series of reasonable and highly valuable recommendations which the provincial state could have implemented at very little expense and which would have gone a long way toward improving its management of the Crown forests. But the politicians virtually ignored the Board. Moreover, it had little to do with the major pieces of forestry legislation introduced during its tenure, and these statutes had even less to do with improving the government's silvicultural policy. In the end, Howe's hope that he could effect change by working within the system proved illusory.

When the Conservatives under Premier G. Howard Ferguson were returned to power in the 1926 Ontario election, conditions were ripe for improving the province's silvicultural policy. During the early 1920s, the fight over the pulpwood embargo had kept forestry affairs prominent in the national consciousness, and the Canadian Forestry Association had been waging an aggressive public relations campaign (culminating in the first national "Save the Forest Week" in 1926) aimed at raising forestry's status.⁷ The Ontario Tories, both before and after the 1926 election, had also publicly declared their commitment to implement "sane and modern methods of timber conservation" and "develop our forest wealth along lines of perpetuating its possibilities."⁸ Furthermore, senior foresters within Ontario's Department of Lands and Forests, such as E. J. Zavitz, were also lobbying for the province's politicians to take meaningful action. After all, this was a time when other governments in Canada which, like Ontario, were responsible for managing large swaths of publicly-held forest, had undertaken significant steps to improve their silvicultural practices.⁹ This spurred C. D. Howe, the dean of the University of Toronto's Forestry Faculty, to observe in early 1926 that "I can not see how Ontario can withstand the pressure of the advance made in forestry matters by her sister provinces."¹⁰ Moreover, Ontario's largest newsprint companies, Spanish River Pulp and Paper and Abitibi Power & Paper, had voluntarily implemented significant forestry initiatives on the pulpwood concessions they leased from the Crown, and they were eager to cooperate with the government in expanding the scope of their work.¹¹

In this regard, Ben Avery and Herman Schanche, Spanish River and Abitibi's respective chief foresters, sought rather modest goals. They both believed that "research for the purpose of constructive administration of Ontario's forests was a function of the government of Ontario," and their reasoning was as simple as it was logical. "Cutting regulations [which the government had been enforcing for decades] without some information of means of obtaining quality, quantity and distribution of reproduction," Avery asserted, "are a hit-or-miss proposition. They cannot be advisedly enforced by the Government, or practiced [sic] by pulp and paper companies, until there is definite information backed by demonstration upon which to base the practice."¹²

Howe fully supported Avery and Schanche's efforts. From Howe's neutral observation post in the Forestry Faculty, he had come to appreciate that it was the government which had to be coerced by industry into undertaking silvicultural initiatives, and not, as has commonly been argued, the other way round.¹³ Repeatedly during the mid-1920s, the Ontario government had rejected Spanish River's and Abitibi's requests for assistance in carrying out relatively minor forestry projects on their limits.¹⁴ As a result, Howe cautioned Avery that "the Government will have to be led gently and gradually on to the conception of managing the forests on a basis of continuous production. I fear they would shy at taking the whole dose at once."¹⁵ Moreover, Ellwood Wilson, a leading forester in Quebec, had warned Howe that when industry in that province had pushed the politicians too hard to implement effective forestry measures, the government had "immediately saddled the cost on the licensees."¹⁶ Wilson thus advised Howe that there was always the possibility that the elected officials could "make it so unpleasant for any company which tries to force them to do better work."¹⁷

Beginning in early 1925, Howe, Avery, and Schanche had begun seriously discussing how best to proceed. They had agreed that the critical first step in improving the management of Ontario's woodlands would be persuading the government to undertake research to determine the best silvicultural practices to implement.¹⁸ Their efforts paid off almost immediately, albeit in a limited way. In 1926, the Tories appointed Zavitz (a veteran forester with the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests) to the newly-created position of Deputy Minister of Forestry atop the Department's Forestry Branch. While his responsibilities still included reforestation in southern Ontario and forest fire protection in the north, he was now authorized to oversee the new realm of "forest research and investigation." Zavitz's impressive title belied the fact, however, that this bureaucratic re-organisation completely precluded the government's foresters in the Forestry Branch from influencing how the Conservatives managed the northern woodlands. Timber sales, supervision of logging operations, and implementing better forestry practices remained beyond the government foresters' jurisdiction.¹⁹

Howe, Avery, and Schanche received some good news in October 1926, however, when the Tories appointed William H. Finlayson as the new Minister of Lands and Forests. A veteran politician from Simcoe, he was Ernest H. Finlayson's half-brother. Ernest was Howe's good friend, and had been a forester with the Dominion Forestry Service for years and had acted as its titular head since 1925. To ensure that Finlayson the politician would be well-prepared for his new duties, Finlayson the forester had given his sibling an intensive crash-course in silviculture prior to the latter's appointment as minister. Ernest Finlayson later bragged of his pedagogical success, asserting that these lessons had "resulted in. . . [Minister Finlayson]. . . stepping into the job with, perhaps, a greater knowledge of the principles of forestry than has probably been the case with any other non-technical man who has occupied a Cabinet post."²⁰

Initially, it appeared as though William Finlayson's presence was the missing link which had heretofore fettered the forestry movement's progress in Ontario. In early 1927, he proclaimed that "‘[t]imber must be treated as a crop and not as a mine'" as he introduced The Forestry Act.²¹ The Act authorised cabinet to create a Forestry Board, a five-member committee to direct studies relating to "all questions in connection with the planting, growth, development, marketing and reproduction of pulpwoods on the Crown lands and on the lands of Crown lessees, licensees and concessionaires in the Province of Ontario." By June 1927, the government had appointed Howe, Avery, Schanche, Zavitz, and J. S. Gillies, one of Ontario's leading lumbermen, as the Board's inaugural (and only) members.²²

The genesis of the Forestry Act seemed to signal a fundamentally new departure for the formulation of forestry policy in Ontario. Prior to introducing the bill, and another related one, Finlayson had sought Howe's advice on them and incorporated his recommendations into the final versions of the statutes. These developments strongly suggested that the Forestry Board, which would soon begin sitting, would play a central role in shaping government policy.

When the Board first convened on June 28, 1927, a meeting during which Howe was elected its chairman, the Board members made it clear that they were interested in far more than simply finding ways to maximise the large forest companies' exploitation of the woodlands. Indeed, Howe stressed that the "aim of the Board is the permanency of the timber industry," and recommended studies be undertaken to determine the amount of timber available to the various industries, how to maintain these supplies in their most productive condition, and develop new markets and uses for all the available timber. But equally important investigations must also begin, he continued, into how the other activities which took place in the woodlands - sports, recreation, hunting and trapping - could be sustained and augmented. In addition, Howe declared that research was also needed into what he termed the "indirect" or environmental benefits of the forests (i.e., how the woodlands affected the climate, soil, and water table). The Board would coordinate this research and determine the topics to be studied, while the field work would be carried out by existing agencies, such as the government's Forestry Branch, the Faculty of Forestry, and, occasionally, industry.

The Board held several more meetings during the summer of 1927, after which it produced its first official list of recommendations for submission to Finlayson, the minister. These included a call for the government to begin a comprehensive "stock taking" of the province's woodlands and update it each year until "a reasonably accurate estimate of the forest resources of the Province can be established." The Board also stressed that a clear understanding of the size and nature of Crown lands unfit for agriculture and only suitable for forestry was needed, and that these latter areas - such as cutovers which had been repeatedly burned - should be replanted. To supply the stock for this work, the Board urged the government to follow the pulp and paper industry's lead and establish forest tree nurseries - even on an experimental basis - in northern Ontario. Complementing this recommendation, the Board requested that the Tories establish demonstration forests, like the one Spanish River had developed in the early 1920s, that could be used to study and develop cutting methods that would cause spruce (the most important pulpwood species) to regenerate naturally. Finally, the Board emphasised that a review of all silvicultural research in eastern Canada was needed (and J. H. White, a professor in the University of Toronto's Forestry Faculty, agreed to carry it out), as it could be used as a basis for recommending further investigation.²³

Among the Board's initial recommendations to the minister was a call for the government to take an holistic approach to rehabilitating what was labelled the "Ottawa-Huron" forest. Formerly a broad band of woodland stretching across central Ontario and containing some of the province's most valuable pine and hardwood stands, it had been decimated by decades of wanton harvesting and imprudent land clearing for settlement. The Board thus deemed it an ideal area in which to undertake a massive remedial project, and the first step towards realizing this goal had already begun. The government's Forestry Branch was surveying the region to delimit forest from agricultural lands, and the Board asked that the Conservatives set aside a number of townships as a Forest Reserve to be managed by professional foresters. These measures were recommended not merely to aid the parties whose major interest in the forest was harvesting it. Instead, the Board members recognised that in

By the end of 1927, Howe was optimistic about the present and future of forestry in Ontario. In his 1927 annual report to the University of Toronto, he crowed that the outstanding achievements of the past year were "the ennunciation [sic] of a definite forestry policy for the Province on the part of the Government and the publicly announced intention of seeking the cooperation of the Faculty of Forestry in carrying it out." Not only was he convinced that Finlayson was sincere in his efforts to facilitate the foresters' work, but Howe could point specifically to the establishment of the Forestry Board, his appointment as its chairman, and the employment of three of his fellow faculty members to carry out silvicultural research in cooperation with the government's Forestry Branch. Moreover, the politicians had "committed to making a survey of former pulpwood areas in the north country with the purpose of reforesting by planting where that is the only obvious procedure to rehabilitate such areas. While it is not yet thoroughly organized, the Board has succeeded in getting the government to undertake a forest research program. I think the outlook in Ontario is now very favourable," Howe prophesised to a colleague at Yale University. At the same time, Howe conceded that the forestry movement's old nemesis lurked in the background. Significant reforms would only be realized in the field, he recognised in the fall of 1927, "if the Forestry Board can survive any political storms that it may meet."²⁵

From that point forward, Howe was repeatedly reminded that the "political storms" the Board might meet need not be tempests in order to retard its progress. In January 1928, Professor J. H. White presented the Board with his summary of forestry research in eastern Canada. It revealed that the most important species for lumber (white pine) and newsprint (black and white spruce) were not naturally regenerating adequately after harvesting. For this reason, the Board recommended that the government establish "demonstration forests in cooperation with actual operators on licensed lands on a commercial scale with the object of determining what cutting methods will lead to the continuous production of the commercial species and still yield a profit to the operator." Howe advised that government control over harvesting was meaningless unless it was based upon the results derived from empirical investigations and that only by undertaking studies would it be possible to "devise any intelligent cutting regulations that will yield annual regeneration."²⁶

As the first step toward realising this end, the Board urged the government to carry out intensive studies into the silvics of the province's most important commercial species. It asked that the government establish a Forestry Research Section, staffed by representatives from industry, government, and the Forestry Faculty, within the Department of Lands and Forestry Branch and allocate $20,000 annually for this work. While the Department's timber revenues had totalled over $4,500,000 the previous year and its expenditures only just over one half this total, the Forestry Board's request for its nominal sum proved too much for Ferguson's Tories. They agreed to establish the new research section but provided it with merely $10,000, and offered no commitment that further funds would be forthcoming.²⁷

A short time later, the Conservatives again demonstrated their disinterest in granting the Board's wishes. The Board had recommended that the Tories establish a large nursery in northern Ontario to restock cut-over and burned-over tracts in the Crown's commercial forests. This request seemed reasonable considering that the government already operated a handful of nurseries in southern Ontario from which it distributed seedlings at no charge to landowners, and the province's two largest newsprint makers -- Spanish River and Abitibi - had already undertaken limited reforestation programmes. Finlayson, the minister, explained his perspective on the nursery matter to Howe in early February 1928, arguing that the key consideration in locating it was its proximity to the railways which would be used to distribute the seedlings. Almost as an afterthought and with complete disregard for a nursery's unique soil, labour, and climate requirements, Finlayson asserted that it had occurred to him that the new facility could be established on the surplus land at the government's prison farm at Burwash (south of Sudbury). He added that "this would have the considerable advantage of the fact that we can use prison labour in connection with the work at the Nursery."²⁸

The Board members were incensed at the minister's suggestion. In a candid but diplomatic reply to Finlayson, Howe presented a lengthy list of reasons why the minister's proposal was imprudent. Howe stressed that, inter alia, it may seem expensive to purchase a tract of high quality farmland for the nursery, but he pointed out that experience had proven that this approach guaranteed the lowest operating costs in the long run. Similarly, he argued that minimising costs also required paying special attention to the types of workers engaged on the project. Howe informed the minister that New Zealand had tried using prison labour to raise and plant trees, but three decades of failures had forced the government to abandon this scheme. "If we are going . . . to raise trees cheaply and economically on a large scale," Howe contended, "the quality of the labour involved should be very seriously considered." Pointing out that large numbers of workers would be required during peak periods such as the spring lift, Howe asked with a note of uncharacteristic condescension whether "there would be an opportunity to get such surplus labour at Burwash, and if it were available, would it work with ‘jail birds'?"²⁹

Howe's associates on the Board also commented on the low priority the government had assigned the project. C. R. "Charlie" Mills, the Board's secretary and a veteran forester with the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests, commented that the "nursery should be established to meet . . . [our] . . . demands, rather than the demands made to accommodate the nursery."³⁰ Avery's reflections were more poignant. He painfully reminded the Board members that, in the final analysis, they were still subordinate to the government and powerless to effect change without the politicians' support. As he stated, the critical issue was whether the government

While Finlayson eventually heeded the advice the Board offered him on the nursery, the matter temporarily drifted to the background as the Board turned its attention to formulating a reforestation policy for northern Ontario.³² In this regard, the Board benefited from reviewing an insightful report authored by Frank A. MacDougall, the Department's District Forester for Sault Ste. Marie and future deputy minister (1941-1967). MacDougall argued that, unequivocally, because the government owned the forest land, it should ensure that the forest regenerated adequately. Although he recognised that proper forest surveys were prerequisites to any long-term management plan, he stressed that the government should not use the lack of such information as an excuse for delaying action in the field. Even if mistakes were made initially, lessons would be learned and the forest would benefit as a result. In his district, for example, he described how he had already undertaken co-operative burning experiments with a local lumber company in an effort to foster natural regeneration of white and red pine. MacDougall emphasised, however, that areas that had repeatedly burned would need to be replanted with seedlings. As for the newsprint industry, MacDougall described how Spanish River was already reforesting burned-over areas on its timber limits. Arguing that the government should facilitate these efforts, he recommended that the "departmental policy should be to supply the seedlings for this work." In all, he envisioned a joint government-industry reforestation scheme in the Sault Ste. Marie District requiring roughly 2,000,000 seedlings annually.³³

In late 1928, the Board presented its own "Planting Policy for Ontario" to the minister. This strategy was premised on the notion that it would only be effective if it were carried out on a co-operative government-industry basis. To buttress the case for the government to allocate significant resources to the effort, the report declared that the "principle to be followed in the business of administering the forests is identical with that followed by any business endeavouring to sustain productivity, i.e., ‘plowing back' into the business a percentage of the annual proceeds from the business, sacrificing a part of present income in order to insure the owner of a continuing return." It then pointed out that the government had long reinvested Crown timber revenues in protecting tree stands from fire, and that spending on reforestation was akin to applying the same principle but in a different form. The Board thus argued that it would be prudent to spend relatively minor amounts annually to replant denuded northern areas and those unfit for agriculture as part of a long term rehabilitation programme of the public domain.³⁴

The Board's policy paper then dealt with specifics, beginning with the newsprint companies. It underscored that their concession agreements ran, at most, for two terms of twenty-one years, but that their mills would operate in perpetuity. It also stressed that the Ontario government owned the land and the timber crop on it, and the mills only leased cutting privileges. Consequently, secure tenure was the prerequisite to any planting programme by industry. "Provided that the concessionaire is given assurance of continuity of cutting rights, if provincial timber regulations are met," it explained that it would be "fair and reasonable" to demand that the companies submit five-year planting plans which would require the Department's approval prior to implementation. Because the cost of growing seedlings was roughly equal to the expense incurred in planting them, the report recommended that the government supply the trees and the concessionaire pay for the planting. For the Crown's investment of roughly $10 per 1,000 seedlings (i.e., the cost of growing the stock) in the present, the increased productivity of the forest would provide it - in approximately 60 years - with a return of between four and five times greater dues from the planted stand than from an untreated one. In the case of the lumbermen and small timber operators, the government would still provide all the stock, the licensees would be permitted to deduct the cost of the planting from the dues they paid the Crown for the wood they cut, and the government would own the replanted forest.³⁵

Notwithstanding the impressive, logical, and seemingly equitable nature of the Board's recommendations, the Tories took no steps to realise them. Apparently there was no significant "political storm" which derailed this effort, as the Board's planting policy was simply the casualty of inertia.

Reforestation was undoubtedly significant to the Forestry Board, but it had other, higher priorities. Near the top of its wish list was the goal of developing cutting methods that would foster natural regeneration of the desired species; when compared with treeplanting, this was seen as a faster, cheaper, and better method of sustaining woodlands. It has already been described how the Board had recommended that the government could achieve this aim by establishing demonstration forests in which different harvesting methods could be studied. At the same time, however, the Board knew full well that control over forestry policy rested with the elected officials, and that it could only improve cutting regulations if the politicians agreed to renounce their control over policy formulation. This would entail a "de-politicisation" of forestry policy, whereby decisions regarding if, how, and when the forest was harvested would be based upon silvicultural - not political - considerations.

Understandably, almost from the Board's inaugural gathering, it had directed most of its energy towards realizing this paramount goal. In fact, it had already recommended a shrewd plan to the minister to achieve this end. The first step involved convincing the government to undertake a province-wide survey to demarcate agricultural from forest lands. Next, the Board urged that "all essentially forest areas should be created Provincial Forests with adequate administration by the Forestry Branch." Once under foresters' jurisdiction, presumably there would be no room for politics to shape policy.³⁶

For a while it seemed as if the Board would actually achieve this aim. By early 1928, it had pushed Finlayson, the minister, into drafting the Provincial Forests Bill. This legislation committed the government, for the first time in Ontario, to manage Crown woodlands "for the purposes of securing a sustained yield of timber crops in perpetuity" and it declared that they "shall be placed under forest management." Howe declared in the fall of 1928 that the inclusion of this clause represented an extraordinary breakthrough, for it was an explicit public statement of "the Government's obligation to maintain continuous forest production."³⁷ Moreover, the areas affected by this legislation, which were to be called "Provincial Forests," would be "under the control and management of the Minister of Lands and Forests, and through him of the Forestry Branch." Gradually, as each region was cruised and the forest land indicated, the acreage of woodlands affected by this legislation would increase until all the timber areas of northern Ontario were being managed by foresters. While urbanites and the general public incorrectly believed treeplanting was the elixir for what ailed the province's forests, the Board believed that the principles expressed in this simple bill was the prescription needed to invigorate Ontario's anaemic forest policy.³⁸

But the Tories resolutely opposed the notion of renouncing their political control over Crown timber. While Finlayson agreed to discuss the matter with the Board members, he proved evasive when it came to promising that the Provincial Forests Bill would become law. The government also adamantly rejected the suggestion that each provincial forest would be managed by a forester.³⁹ Commenting on the Board's struggle during this period, Howe informed a veteran timber industry official from Fort Frances that the "essential step towards real forest management . . . is placing of the forests in charge of foresters and [it] is more difficult than permission to begin a big planting programme."⁴⁰

While Howe pleaded with Finlayson for action on this front throughout the first quarter of 1928, his efforts proved abortive. In an impassioned appeal on March 28, Howe expressed his hope "that the Provincial Forest [Bill] is not going to fall by the wayside. I am sure," he warned, "that all the members of the Forestry Board will be very disappointed if it does."⁴¹ Only three days later, Finlayson informed Howe that the legislative session had been suddenly terminated, and that the minister had been too busy with other matters to guide the legislation through. Howe lamented to one of his confidants the death of the Provincial Forests Bill, explaining that "we come up against a stone wall when we recommend certain things which we think are essential in any constructive forest policy."⁴²

To the Board, this defeat seemed to be further evidence that its appointment was simply a political ruse. During a highly-charged meeting in late November 1928, the Board members approved a motion by Ben Avery to deliver a strongly-worded recommendation to the minister. Avery's message recounted how the University of Toronto's Forestry Faculty had been operating for over two decades now, the Department's Forestry Branch had employed foresters for over one decade, and it presently engaged 35 of them. "In spite of these facts," Avery despondently declared, "the Province of Ontario cannot lay claim, in the administration of its timber lands, to the practice of forestry even in the crudest form."⁴³

A few days later, Howe sent a stern letter to Finlayson. Howe explained that the Tories had organised the Forestry Board eighteen months earlier, and that its members had interpreted its "Enabling Act to mean that the Board was created for the purpose of suggesting ways and means to the Government whereby the supplies of raw materials for the wood-using industries might be perpetuated, with special reference to the needs of the pulp and paper industry in order to place it upon a self sustaining and permanent basis." Howe pointed out that it had held five formal meetings so far and officially submitted seven recommendations to the minister. "Some of these recommendations," he reminded Finlayson, "have been in your hands for more than a year and as yet we do not know what is your attitude towards them. Some that we regard as the most essential and fundamental are lying quiescent and perhaps dead." Furthermore, the Board had been unsuccessful for over six months in its attempts to get Finlayson to attend its meetings because "[t]hree definite appointments have been made and each of them has been cancelled by you at the last moment." Deferentially emphasizing that "this is not said in any spirit of criticism" and recognising that Finlayson had many items on his agenda, Howe urged the minister to meet with the Board members because the problem was that "[a]t present the position of the Board in relation to the Government is not clear to its members. To use a slang expression: We don't know where we are at." On behalf of his fellow members, he asked Finlayson for "an expression of [Finlayson's] conception of the functions of the Board, especially in reference to its field of endeavor." Tellingly, Finlayson never delivered a formal response.⁴⁴

In fact, the next time the minister communicated with the Board, in March 1929, he shocked it with the news that the government had decided to implement two new pieces of forestry legislation. While the Board had tirelessly lobbied for the Tories to execute The Provincial Forests Act in 1928, the version which they promulgated in March 1929 bore little resemblance to the earlier draft. Instead of placing a forester in charge of each provincial forest, the Act gave the minister full control over the areas designated as provincial forests, and it was cabinet - not the Forestry Branch - which was to "make regulations for [their] protection, care and management." Furthermore, it was only at cabinet's discretion that a forester would be appointed, and he would not shape policy but simply carry out the regulations passed by cabinet. Ultimately, the only tangible gain resulting from this new legislation was the creation of a few new small provincial forests in central Ontario.⁴⁵

The government detonated an even bigger bombshell in March 1929 when it executed the Pulpwood Conservation Act. While previous accounts have argued that the Forestry Board had a hand in shaping this legislation, the evidence does not support this view.⁴⁶ Howe later admitted that the Board had had "practically nothing to do with the legislation," and just after J. A. Gillies, the lumbermen's representative on the Board, had been informed of the Act, he had explained that the statute "was not presented to the Forestry Board at any of its meetings."⁴⁷ Frederick Noad, who became Deputy Minister of Lands and Forests just after the 1934 provincial election, wrote on the eve of that contest that "Mr. Zavitz . . . and Dr. C. D. Howe . . . both being members of the ‘Forestry Board' told me, confidentially, that the [Pulpwood Conservation] bill was dropped on them with no explanation as to its source or its original sponsors. They tried to make it effective but their efforts were defeated."⁴⁸

The Forestry Board's lack of influence in framing the Act was abundantly clear from the statute's provisions. They included clauses which called for each company which utilised pulpwood in Ontario to provide the government with such non-silvicultural data as its authorised capital, its paid up capital, and the "particulars of all bond issues or debentures of the company." While the Tories were defending the statute in the Legislature, they openly admitted that the principal "‘object of the bill was control of the [newsprint] companies having pulp concessions in Ontario'."⁴⁹ The legislation would accomplish this goal by authorising the government to limit the quantity of pulpwood mills could harvest (and consequently the amount of newsprint they could produce) and extort significant financial penalties from them if they ignored the government's directives.⁵⁰

While a few provisions in the Pulpwood Conservation Act paid homage to the Forestry Board and the goals it had sought to achieve, ironically it was the Board members - the very persons whom the government had appointed to advise it on forestry matters - who protested loudest against the legislation. For example, the statute required each company that held a sizable pulpwood concession in the province to submit a detailed plan outlining how it intended to manage its fibre supply on "a sustained yield basis." The Department was also authorised to study these plans and to devise "some general plan to place the pulpwood supply of Ontario on a sustained yield basis so that the industry may have an assured source of supply." At the same time, the Board scathingly criticised the section of the Act which permitted cabinet to levy a 25¢ surcharge on each cord of pulpwood the companies harvested to pay for "the general expenses of the Department in the conservation of pulpwood and the carrying out of this Act." Spanish River was using over 400,000 cords of pulpwood per year in the late 1920s, which translated into a charge of well over $100,000 per year, or roughly two days' worth of newsprint production. Howe had long opposed silvicultural measures which would place Ontario's forest companies at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis their rivals (especially during the intense "newsprint war" which marked this period), and the Board had already cautioned the minister against instituting such taxes on industry.⁵¹ Avery personally beseeched the minister to delete this clause on the grounds that the owner of the land (i.e., the government) should pay this surcharge. "I object to a tax . . . being assessed the operating companies," he stated, "for the protection of forested lands over which they have no control and from which they have received no assurance that they will receive the benefit." The Tories were unmoved by these arguments, as they refused to delete or alter this provision.⁵²

Avery and others also objected to clause 8 of the Act, which stated that cabinet could designate sites it deemed "suitable and proper for the planting of nursery pulpwood stock and may require the company to plant a certain quantity of stock each and every year." Avery, whose company had voluntarily begun planting selected areas nearly five years earlier, protested against the provision's coercive element. While the Board had continually stressed that reforestation projects were far more likely to succeed if they were cooperative government-industry ventures, the Conservatives ignored its recommendation.

While government and industry foresters alike had long railed against the Province assuming arbitrary powers in administering the province's Crown woodlands, clause 6 of the Act embodied their worst fear. It authorised the minister, notwithstanding anything contained in a company's pulpwood concession agreement, "to fix the size and kind of trees and timber which may be cut by such company, and such authority may be exercised . . . for such time and on such terms and conditions as the Minister may direct." Considering the government had refused to fund adequately the research upon which such cutting regulations ought to have been based, it was understandable that this aspect of the Act elicited a swift reaction from the Board. Avery attacked it as superfluous and dangerous, pointing out that the statute already required the companies to submit working plans for managing their tracts on a sustained yield basis, and that the only time the minister should intercede was if the harvesting operations deviated from this plan. In Avery's words, it would be best to delete the Act's clause 6 to "avoid the sense of interference with private enterprize [sic] that this clause . . . now produces."⁵³ Again, the protests were to no avail.

If there was any doubt that the Pulpwood Conservation Act of 1929 had little to do with the either the Forestry Board or improving forestry in Ontario, the minister put it to rest shortly after his government executed the legislation. The Act stated that the Department "may" submit the companies' management plans, which were to be the very basis for sustained yield operations in the Crown's woodlands, "to the Forestry Board for approval or recommendation." While the Board was buoyed by this prospect, the Tories privately harboured no illusions that they would ignore this clause just as they had the Board itself. Finlayson made this clear in a letter to Walter Cain, his deputy minister, in May 1929, in which Finlayson indicated that politics would continue to dictate pulpwood policy. As the minister put it, the "fact that we propose to consult the Forestry Board or Forestry experts does not necessarily mean that the matter is to be transferred to the Forestry Department. I feel very strongly that you [i.e., Cain] have established a good business organization, and I feel that we should retain it in the business administration of pulp and paper matters."⁵⁴

While Howe and a string of other observers heralded these two pieces of legislation for their potential to improve forestry practices in Ontario, most insiders knew better than to exaggerate their importance. In 1929, Howe exuberantly remarked that they represented "the first time so far as I am aware that the expression ‘sustained yield' had been used in a legislative enactment anywhere in Canada." Similarly, the Canadian Society of Forest Engineers officially recognized Finlayson's contribution to promoting "measures leading to the better management of the Crown Land forests," and the Canadian Forestry Association's monthly magazine called it "the most progressive legislation yet enacted for placing forestry in Ontario on its feet."⁵⁵ Nevertheless, Howe recognised that he and the Board had made no real difference in how the government managed its woodlands. To a friend, he admitted that "[t]he test will come in the carrying out of these Acts." The Pulp and Paper Magazine of Canada agreed with Howe. With specific reference to the Pulpwood Act, it presciently editorialised that "[t]he eyes of all America will be watching Ontario to see what actual results accrue from this . . . piece of forest legislation."⁵⁶

As far as tangible gains were concerned, there was nothing to watch. While the Ontario government publicised its provincial forests and sustained yield legislation, neither produced substantive improvements in the field. One contemporary observer appositely described these statutes as being nothing but "window dressing."⁵⁷

The execution of the two pieces of legislation in March 1929 also signalled the end of the Forestry Board. It held only two more official meetings, one in 1930 and another four years later, neither of which produced any concrete results.⁵⁸ Moreover, in response to an earlier request from the Board, employees of the Ontario government's Forestry Branch had drawn up by the end of 1929 a series of enlightened suggestions for a wide range of badly needed silvicultural projects, covering everything from treeplanting on pulpwood and pine cut-overs to disposal of logging slash.⁵⁹ Within a short time, the onset of the Depression had churned out thousands of displaced, unemployed single men in the province, idle hands which the Ontario Tories could have been put to work on these labour-intensive forestry projects. While the government in the United States did exactly that, and thousands of acres were reforested as a result, Ontario did practically nothing in this regard. So while historians have argued that the Tories' forestry initiatives of the late 1920s accomplished little because of the economic dislocation in the early 1930s, this explanation is groundless; the Depression proved to be an unprecedented stimulus to forestry work south of the border. The plain truth was that the Conservatives never intended either the Forestry Board or the legislation passed during its tenure to be effective. It was not the Depression which killed them; they were stillborn.⁶⁰

In the end, the success of Howe's plan for circumventing the widely recognised limits on academic freedom can be gauged by assessing the Forestry Board's short-lived existence. It was true that, as the Board's chairman, Howe had become an ex officio member of the government's bureaucracy, and the ruling Tories had executed several highly publicised pieces of forestry legislation during the Board's tenure. Nevertheless, the government refused to relinquish its control over forestry policy to the foresters. In fact, the politicians had implemented the new legislation during the late 1920s to tighten their grip on the Crown woodlands and the industries dependent upon them. The Forestry Board proved to be little more than a transparent publicity stunt designed to shield a vulnerable government from public criticism. In the end, Howe's strategy to voluntarily refrain from expressing the sort of public criticism he was certainly qualified to voice, in the hope that he could achieve his aims through other means, turned out to be an utter failure. Although this experience clearly indicated that he might as well have exercised his academic freedom, Howe chose not to do so throughout the next decade, even though forestry in Ontario suffered through an intense attack from the Ontario government.⁶¹

Just after his appointment as chairman of the Forestry Board, Howe had told C. A. Schenck, his good friend and a fellow forestry professor in Germany, that "our one and great problem is to get sufficient natural regeneration as a result of logging operations. While I believe in artificial regeneration . . . our main problem is in the woods. If I can help to bring about the establishment of cutting regulations that will lead to adequate natural regeneration of spruce [for pulpwood] and white pine [for lumber] I will die content."⁶² While Howe had believed that this goal would be within his grasp if only he could penetrate the channels of government decision-making, this proved not to be the case.