Conifers of Canada 2: Using Wood

Tom Wood, Area Ranger on Dartmoor, has been awarded this year’s National Trust Ranger Travel Bursary which has facilitated a trip to Canada to learn more about his favourite subject – trees. He has written a series of five blogs about his trip and how it relates to his knowledge of, and work at, Fingle Woods.In Fingle Woods much of our conservation work results in wood products of some kind, and we do our best to ensure that the wood goes to a good use; construction timber, furniture, fencing, firewood or biomass. One of the things that has struck me since arriving in Canada is how unimaginative or perhaps unambitious we are as a nation about our use of wood. In Canada it's everywhere.Of course in Canada most houses outside major cities are constructed primarily of timber, a huge market on the forest doorstep if you will, but there are also some beautiful (and very large) agricultural buildings entirely of wood with wooden roof shingles. Fences tend to wooden construction rather than post and wire, both sawn and cleft timber. Firewood is the number one fuel and beautiful stacks are displayed in yards and gardens.On visiting Fort Langley, birthplace of British Columbia as a British Colony (done very much in haste to prevent the Americans getting their hand on the province after the gold rush on the Fraser River), everything is wooden, and the fort includes one of the oldest buildings in the province. Its construction wouldn’t look out of place in the area today and it is cleverly constructed so as to enable the building to be easily taken apart and moved to a new location before rebuilding.One of the most amazing things is the use of forest products by First Nations people, often done without felling any trees at all. A walk in the woods yields signs of birch and cedar bark gathering even today, and their uses and associated skills are still being handed down amongst the people who have inhabited the land for centuries.I met a stunning lady called Hazel who has worked hard to relearn many of the skills her forefathers would have been familiar with. She sports a beautiful hat made of woven western red cedar bark and explains that red cedar comes from the lowlands, and white cedar from the mountains - the tree is the same species but the wood changes colour and properties with altitude.First she gathers the bark in spring when the sap is rising, when the bark comes away easily and the tree has most chance to recover from its wounds. She then hangs it in her basement for six months, then starts pounding it in water to soften it and break up the fibres, and she works on the bark from November onwards. Once the bark has been softened she can weave it into ropes, hats or just about anything. Birch bark is similarly collected and used for anything from drinking vessels to canoes.I definitely feel like I for one need to be more ambitious and imaginative on the uses to which I put wood and forest products.Words and photos from Tom Wood