E.C. DRURY COULD SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES

FORMER PREMIER CELEBRATED FOR MAKING POSSIBLE THE BIRTH OF THE SIMCOE COUNTY FOREST

Visitors to Simcoe County in 1922 would have been greeted by a vastly different terrain than the one we know today.

Its surface was nearbarren and largely void of the abundant trees that now populate the landscape, the glaring absence of greenery a product of settlers having cleared the earth for timber and to make way for the farms to come.

"If we were standing on this spot 100 years ago, you would hardly see a tree anywhere near here," said Graeme Davis, Simcoe County forester. "We had tremendous problems with blowing sands, soil erosion, downstream flooding in the spring."

Davis was among those who recently assembled at a property in Oro-Medonte to celebrate the centennial of an initiative that would become a turning point for forestry in the county.

It was a century ago this month that then-Warden J.J. Banting gathered with provincial and municipal representatives to plant the first tree seedlings in the Hendrie Tract, giving root to what would become the Simcoe County Forest.

According to a newspaper account of that day, Banting "nestled an infant Scotch pine" on "a little knoll" near a small grove.

This significant moment would not have been

possible without the efforts of Oro-Medonte resident and then-Premier E.C. Drury.

It was Drury's commitment to establishing the

Agreement Forest program that enabled municipalities to work with the province to purchase marginalized wastelands for reforestation efforts.

"Thanks to the foresight of the council of the time, and early pioneer foresters, the County of Simcoe was the first municipality to take advantage of this program," Warden George Cornell said during the celebration event held at the E.C. Drury Cairn, erected 50 years ago along Old Barrie Road East to commemorate Drury's contributions.

The event included the planting of a red oak tree to honour the forestry program and to pay tribute to Drury and Edmund John Zavitz, Ontario's first provincial forester.

Among Drury's numerous descendants in attendance at the centennial celebration was Craig Drury, a great-grandson.

"We feel pretty privileged to be a part of this," he told Simcoe.com. "I think (E.C. Drury) would be pretty tickled."

The Simcoe County Forest today spans more than 33,000 acres across 150-plus properties and is the largest, and one of the most productive, municipal forest networks in Ontario.

Owned and managed by the county, it is a source of recreation and tourism and serves as an economic generator.

"We manage for timber products while maintaining the forest and growing it and keeping it healthy, and also keeping it available for recreational use, which has just grown exponentially the last few years, and especially because of COVID," Davis added.

From an environmental standpoint, forests provide "huge benefits" ranging from issues of soil stability, to air quality and protection of groundwater, he added "When you think back to when we had that desperate situation with the lack of forest cover, it really demonstrates why they are so important today," Davis added.