The Unexploited West / A Compilation of all of the authentic information available at the present time as to the Natural Resources of the Unexploited Regions of Northern Canada

by Ernest J. Chambers

The Mackenzie has no rapids suitable for waterpower, but the streams flowing into it must have.

Mr. Preble says of the black spruce (Picea Mariana):—“The black spruce extends northward to the limit of the forest, but is confined mainly to the muskegs, seldom growing on the alluvial bottom lands, where the white spruce attains its perfection. It furnishes a poorer quality of lumber than the white spruce, and is put to fewer uses. I noted it in places all along the main route to the mouth of the Mackenzie and on my canoe route to the eastward, nearly to Great Bear lake.”

Mr. McConnell (Geol. Survey Report 1887-88) reports that along part of the reach of the Mackenzie below Fort Good Hope the banks are low, and the bordering plains are covered with a scattered growth of willow, spruce and tamarack, with here and there patches of aspen on the drier ridges. The spruce along part of this reach presents a remarkably stunted and dwarfish appearance, but this is due more to the marshy character of the ground than to climatic severity, as the same tree, straight and well grown, was found much farther north.

Below Fort Good Hope.

Mr. McConnell reports that the Mackenzie below the site of old Fort Good Hope, where the stream takes a sharp turn to the west-south west, as far as the mouth of Red river, is bordered by wooded plains. Groves of white spruce were seen along this reach, containing trees measuring over fifteen inches in diameter, but the average tree does not exceed six inches. Mr. Stewart says that on an island near Fort Good Hope very good spruce timber is cut into lumber by whipsaws. Below this the timber seems to get poorer, although it improves again farther north. Mr. Stewart says that below Fort Good Hope the timber is smaller although some of it has been made into flooring and lumber is made from the timber there. There is a large supply of spruce suitable for pulp.

Northeast of Fort Good Hope, through a chain of lakes to the headwaters of Iroquois river, R. MacFarlane (Canadian Record of Science, vol. IV.) says that the country appeared to be well timbered in every direction with pines, juniper, several species of willow, and a few small groves of poplar and birch.

On the Mackenzie itself the forest continues to within a comparatively short distance from the Arctic ocean. The following extract is from Sir John Richardson’s journal in 1848:—“The agency of man is working a change in the aspect of the forest even in the thinly peopled north. The woods are wasted by extensive fires, kindled accidentally or intentionally, which spread with rapidity over a wide extent of country, and continue to burn until they are extinguished by heavy rains. These conflagrations consume even the soil of the drier tracts, and the bare and whitened rocks testify for centuries to the havoc that has been made. A new growth of timber, however, sooner or later springs up, and the soil, when not wholly consumed, being saturated with alkali, gives birth to a thicket of aspen instead of the aboriginal spruce.”

Within the Arctic Circle.

Mr. Elihu Stewart explained before the Senate committee of 1907 that spruce suitable for commercial purposes grows to Arctic sea. He was astonished to find that the limit of tree growth extended as far north as it does. He thought it extended probably ten degrees, or nearly seven hundred miles farther north in this district than in Labrador. The different kinds of trees that we have in Mackenzie basin include white spruce, black spruce, the larch or tamarack, which is found as far north as the spruce, the jackpine and the balsam. Mr. Stewart did not see any balsam in the Arctic circle, but aspen, white poplar, balm of Gilead and birch are all found down as far as Fort McPherson near the delta of the Mackenzie.

Mr. Ogilvie states in his report:—“On the lower Mackenzie, the timber large enough for commercial or manufacturing purposes is all in the river valley. On the plains above, the trees are small and unfit for anything except for fuel or the few uses to which trees six to seven inches in diameter can be applied. There is some fine material for lumber on some of the islands in the river, but many are bare, with the exception of a few willows.”