CNR 2110 crossing the Cowichan River Bridge in Lake Cowichan, BC
Forests, History

Behind Every Great Timber Fortune…?

“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” — Honoré de Balzac

On the 21st of January 2022, a notice appeared in Cortes Tideline, from Mosaic (a “forest management corporation” which handles logistics for TimberWest and Island Timberlands). The gist of it was captured in one sentence: “As we have now been able to spend some time becoming familiar with our private managed forest lands on Cortes Island, we would like to share details of our draft three-year plan with those interested from communities on Cortes Island.”

Mosaic was careful to include the important word “private” in their announcement — a reminder that some 9 percent of Cortes forest land is still owned by private timber companies (not Crown land), and that (since 2003 at least) “privately managed forest lands” are a different kettle of fish.

Most coastal residents are aware, on some level, that vast tracts of BC are privately owned by timber companies, whereas other tracts of land are “Crown land” where logging takes place under licence. Few, however, are aware of how that situation — and the inconsistent policies and rules governing the two different land types — came about.

Ford logging truck from 1952 posted by born1945 on Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)

Back in 1871, BC joined the Canadian Confederation. At the time, rail was the dominant mode of land transport and essential to the prosperity of the resource extraction zone which comprised the entire coastal region. Mining and forestry in particular relied on rail transport to get goods to market. Clause II of the Terms of Union gave the federal government a huge swath of provincial land along proposed BC rail lines — locally, about 20 percent of Vancouver island.

A goodly chunk of these acres shortly afterwards became the infamous Esquimalt and Nanaimo (E&N) land grant (known to many as the Great Land Grab). This history should not be forgotten: it underlies today’s conflicts over land rights as well as forestry impacts and practise. Coincidentally or not, the land grant region coincides with the best Douglas Fir habitat on the island. How did a railway company get hold of such an enormous landbase full of the most valuable timber?

In order to “connect the seaboard of BC with the railway system of Canada,” the federal government agreed in the 1870’s to contribute $100,000 annually towards the construction of a railway. BC then agreed to grant about 800,000 acres of land, plus $750,000, to any company that would construct a railroad on Vancouver Island. Needless to say, this enormous carrot mostly benefited the wealthiest in the land: the man who scooped up the extraordinary sweetheart deal was none other than Robert Dunsmuir, the coal baron. (see End Notes)

Dunsmuir wasn’t really interested in railroads, but he could see the value of this vast acreage of land; ownership implied not only timber, but control of coal and other mining rights — within 20 miles each side of the line, according to some sources. Like all barons of industry in his day, Dunsmuir was well-connected politically; he managed to secure the contract.

Immediately, his newly-founded Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway Company started subdividing the huge land grant into parcels and selling it off, vastly increasing his wealth. (This one agreement effectively privatised a third of the traditional territory of the Hul-quimi’num, who to this day continue to contest the legality of land sales within the grant area.)

Work on the railway also proceeded. “Based on an average value of $10 per acre for the land the E&N received, it cost the government $626,660 per mile to build the railway, which, when complete, was in private hands. The railway was given a massive amount of old-growth forests. Proceeds from the land grants helped build Craigdarroch Castle. The [initial] grant amounted to almost 10% of Vancouver Island and included mineral rights and all known coal deposits.” (Wikipedia)

Subsequent land grants to the E&N Railway Company ended up — by 1925 — encompassing the entire two million acres (or 20% of Vancouver Island). The grants were written to protect the surface rights of Anglo settlers and squatters — but not, of course, those of First Nations.

Robert Dunsmuir

Dunsmuir never made good on the original agreement; the tracks his company built stopped at Courtenay and never reached the promised terminus in Campbell River. Dunsmuir and his company were also required by the terms of the agreement to run a passenger train every day in both directions, seven days a week, “in perpetuity.” Needless to say, he and his investors also reneged on that part of the contract.

Dunsmuir sold the railway to CPR in 1905. After a brief period of buildup and extension, the line started to decline; by the 70’s, competition from highways was cutting into freight traffic. In 1999 the line was sold to an American company, RailAmerica. Passenger service had dwindled and freight traffic was also much reduced. The privately owned line did not enjoy the subsidies accorded to highways; as mills closed [see below, consequences of PMFLA], the amount of freight diminished further. Passenger service withered away to an intermittent seasonal tourist train. “Perpetuity” did not last very long: in 2011, all passenger service was suspended due to the deterioration of the inadequately maintained tracks. (see End Notes)

E&N, while not markedly successful in delivering reliable rail service for very long, was not slow to sell large chunks of the land grant to forestry companies. Many parcels have changed hands several times over the decades. Some have been “logged and flogged” (clearcut for timber, then flipped to developers on the outskirts of growing communities). Some have been replanted and turned into tree farms. But all of them were privatised on the basis of a shady deal and a broken contract, over a century ago.

Today, Island Timberlands and TimberWest hold more than a half-million hectares of forest lands on Vancouver Island thanks to that shady long-ago deal. But that isn’t the end of the sad story.

“The logging these […] companies are engaged in is not what the architects of provincial forest policy had in mind three quarters of a century ago when a Royal Commission created a new forest tenure known as Forest Management Licences (later known as Tree Farm Licences). The new licences allowed companies to apply for rights to log publicly owned or ‘Crown’ forest, in exchange for bundling their private lands with public lands and managing them as one. Companies then agreed to limits on logging known as ‘allowable annual cuts’. They also agreed to not convert the forest lands to other uses.” [Parfitt, Ekers, and Van Wagner, Policynote.ca]

That was how things stood until 2003, when the provincial government rewrote the rules with the Private Managed Forest Lands Act or PMFLA. Older readers may recall that in 2001, Gordon Campbell’s Liberal Party had won a resounding victory over the scandal-plagued NDP, and began pushing BC public policy rightwards with a pro-business, pro-extraction strategy. The PMFLA is one part of that push.

Parfitt et al sum it up: “The Act drastically reduced government oversight by removing limits on the number of trees that could be logged on private lands. It also lifted restrictions on where companies were required to process timber. To no one’s surprise, companies responded by yanking their private lands out of their Tree Farm Licences, accelerating their logging, and disenfranchising communities, especially Indigenous groups, along the way.

“In the most recent ten years, Island Timberlands has been the most aggressive of the ‘big three,’ cutting 1.9 million cubic metres of trees annually. TimberWest has been close behind, falling just shy of 1.8 million cubic metres annually, while Western Forest Products, has harvested nearly 290,000 cubic metres of timber per year over the same ten years.”

Island Timberlands is the company that now owns 9 percent of Cortes forest land, and is represented by Mosaic (their logistics and public relations agent).

Island Timberlands private holdings on Cortes Island

End notes:

Robert Dunsmuir: Yes, the same Robert Dunsmuir who short-changed Chinese labourers, broke strikes, and maintained a unusually lethal safety standard in his Nanaimo mines — even for the 19th century — where child labour and deadly accidents were commonplace. The same nouveau-riche robber baron who built the ponderously ostentatious Craigdarroch Castle. That guy.

Decline of railways: For perspective, all of this should probably be considered in the light of Gordon Campbell’s clear pre-election intent to privatise (sell off) BC Rail, his subsequent campaign promise never to sell BC Rail, then (after election with a comfortable majority) his controversial decision to sell BC Rail after all — to CN, a major campaign contributor. The scandal still reverberates. Real estate is a dirty business.

Further mysteries: (from Bruce Ellingsen, personal correspondence) “The only tidbit that I could add would be from the mouth of Dan Campbell, Social Credit Minister of Municipal Affairs in the late Sixties-early Seventies (originator of the Regional District layer of Government […]) when he told my Dad and I that CPR had offered the E&N lands to the Socred Premier, W.A.C. Bennett  in the late Fifties for $106 Million but that Bennett had decided they were better left in private hands.” While this sounds very much like Wacky Bennett and quite believable, this author has not been able to discover any documentation of the alleged offer from CPR, If anyone can confirm or deny, please drop me a line.

Sources and Further Reading:

This story was originally posted on February 22nd and republished Feb 26th to accompany the Saturday Round-up.

Image Credits:

Banner image Image from ENCRHA archive; First Van Isl map from ResearchGate: second Van Isl map from Yellow Point Ecological Society; Cortes Island Map from the Times Colonist: “Cortes Island Logging Alarms Petitioners”. Robert Dunsmuir from Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

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