Lost Initiatives (PDF)

"This thoroughly referenced book reveals the importance of the development of forest resources to Canadian social and economic existence. Rather than presenting just a compilation of facts and figures, the authors synthesize the information to make interesting observations. History is revealed as a series of interactive movements by various industrial, social, and political groups. ... Highly recommended for college and university collections that include forest history, forest policy, Canadian history, and conservation history."-Choice "Lost Initiatives surveys Canadian forestry policy since the early nineteenth century, and particularly between the second American Forestry Congress, held in Montreal in 1882, and 1939. The authors achieve a Canada-wide perspective by including separate chapters on New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia, and offering an extensive account of federal forestry policy. The latter, which derives from archival research, is the most original of the book's contributions. . . Indeed, the book has considerable relevance to those interested in the development of professions in Canada. . . the book can be warmly recommended as a well-documented, genuinely national study that provides numerous points of departure and of context, whether for a comprehensive history of Canadian forests and forest policy or for analyses of parts of a very large subject. And the eloquent concluding chapter, on the last forty years of forest policy, could well serve as a call to arms even for those not persuaded that the previous chapters tell the real story of how we got here."-The Canadian Historical Review