“Perfect cooperation”: Taking the campaign against the spruce budworm in Ontario to new heights, 1927–29
2014
Kuhlberg, Mark
Canada’s federalist system has often been cited as a stumbling block to progress in many fields, particularly when a private interest endeavours to realize its aims by playing the national government against one – or some – of its provincial counterparts. Fortunately, our history has witnessed at least a few of those rare occasions on which all parties were able to work together to achieve common goals. This is the story of one of those unique instances. During the late 1920s, two branches of the federal bureaucracy combined forces with the Ontario government and one of Canada’s leading paper makers to undertake a truly pioneering experiment. It involved carrying out a large scale campaign to combat a spruce budworm infestation using chemical dusts dropped from an aircraft. Although the effort proved highly problematic, the remarkable synergy that defined it speaks volumes about the extraordinary potential for unofficial collaboration to solve the challenges that we face in administering our woodlands.
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