LOANED FOR A SEASON

Entrusted To My Care
Copyright 1966 Western Producer Prairie Books
243 pages,
ISBN 0-88833-175-4.

Much of the achievement in rapid development of North American resources was at a high price in waste. Nobody can condone waste and extravagance in resources, even though reckless haste may enlarge the immediate dividends. Canadians saw irretrievable waste in various fields of resource exploitation but in a period of enthusiastic expansion, the voice of the conservationist was lost. Men in a hurry to recover fortunes saw no wrong in slashing forests, flaring gas from oil wells and selling birds by the barrel; and others in the new land were so overwhelmed by a false concept of inexhaustibility that they remained silent.

The fact is that every year since the white man forced his ways upon a simple but lasting Indian order on this continent, there has been some shrinking in the "bank account" of resources, even the renewable kinds for which nothing less than production on a sustained yield basis should be demanded.

Little wonder that the aged Indian at Sault Ste Marie had strong feelings when he watched white men rushing to hIS part of the country to stake uranium claims. "White man," he was reported as saying in amazement, "come long ago and take all the beaver furs and other furs; come back and build sawmill and take all the big trees; come back still later and build a pUlp mill and take all the small trees; now, he comes again to take the rocks."

There is a moral side to it. Indeed, conservation is largely a matter of morals. It is agreed that the man who deliberately contributes to human hardship and poverty by any means is an immoral fellow, a knave and sinner. Is he less the sinner if he makes it difficult for his fellow humans of a generation hence-or five generations hence? Are the horse thieves any more guilty than men, who by greed or carelessness, would take bread from the mouths of grandchildren or deprive them of trees or natural gas or whooping cranes or clean water or some natural landscape?

For that matter, are the horse thieves guilty of any more serious crimes than those people who would pass on to future generations huge burdens of public debt with less of resources from which to make the payments?

Perhaps man's highest purpose is in the role of guardian or caretaker of Nature's gifts, "loaned for a season." Ruskin seemed to agree, saying: "God has lent us the earth for our life. It is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who come after as to us and we have no right, by anything we do or neglect, to involve them in any unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefit which was in our power to bequeath."

The principle is the same as that which guided one of the conscientious pioneers in Canadian agriculture. His highest worldly purpose, he confessed, was to try by all the means in his power to leave things better than he found them. If that proved impossible, he would at least leave everything entrusted to his care with the very minimum of deterioration. That was the way he conducted his farming and used his fields. When asked: "What hast thou done with the land I loaned thee for a season?" he would be able to reply that after using his fields for most of a lifetime, they were as productive as when he grew his first homestead crops. His guiding purpose-striving to leave things better than he found them-was close to the Golden Rule.

The cause of conservation is not exciting or glamorous, like guiding rockets through the unknown reaches of space but, for the human family, it may be more important than winning the race to the moon. It invites the support of intelligent and reasonable people. If certain of the tragedies which overtook a score of ancient nations are to be avoided in the western world, a philosophy of wise and conscientious use of soil and other resources must be adopted and followed-before it is too late.

In opening the Resources For Tomorrow Conference in Montreal in October, 1961, Hon. Walter Dinsdale, Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources, said: "Man, because of his egocentricity, is inclined to take a short-sighted view of things. To use the vernacular, 'he wants what he wants when he wants it.' Yet, here we have a group of Canadian leaders deeply concerned about the future. Surely, this is an encouraging development in the Canadian body politic for, in the final analysis, conservation is a moral issue, as all issues are moral issues.

"It is a particularly significant development in a country like Canada where, up until recently, we have been motivated by a frontier philosophy in our exploitation of resources. In North America, there have always been new worlds to conquer, whereas, the truth of the matter is that we are now well on the way to occupying our last frontier, the huge, vast territory 'North of Sixty.' Perhaps it is this new northern orientation which, for the first time, has made us aware that, even in God's own country, the natural endowment is neither inexhaustible nor indestructible."