We old Rangers were few and far between and everything in our equipment was painted red. So I likened us fellows to the old British Army formation, “ The thin red line.”

The fire tower system of spotting fire by intersection came out of the First World War. There was a descendant of Exzeba Fronsway, Mose by name, who served in the Canadian Army in France. He came to the Raglan fire tower one day. He told us that our setup there was the same as they used in France to spot targets behind the German lines for the artillery.

The modern Ranger has no phone lines now. He has the two way radio which came out of the Second World War. He also has a network of bulldozed roads, and four wheel drive trucks, and snowmobiles, and the big tyred vehicles. I wonder if perhaps the modern Ranger might forget how to walk.

When I was there I sure didn’t forget how to walk. I put blisters on my feet, both winter and summer, with long, hard marches. I have had sore feet from all day tramps by snowshoe. Even now it is a good idea to take the snowshoes on the snowmobile, for if it breaks down miles in the bush and in two feet of snow, the snowshoes will come in handy.

I remember well the uproar at the time of the Hepburn Government, when all the Conservative Rangers were fired. Hazen Crosbie, the District Forester at Tweed, went up to Toronto. He told them there that, “ Politics was no damn good to fight forest fires,” and that he wanted his old experienced Rangers back on the job. He got a few of his old Rangers back on, including me. But Tom Bronson was not one of them. So that’s when Tom’s days in the Forestry service ended.

When John McKenzie and I retired, the salary was $3.00 an hour. Shortly afterwards it jumped to $6.00 an hour. I said to John, “ You and I were born too soon. We should have arrived a few years later and got in on that big pay. It would have doubled our pension.”

John said,  “ No, I am glad I was born when I was for in those days the people were at least half sane and not completely crazy the way they are now-a-days.”

Mitch Hepburn

Elected at 37, Liberal leader Mitch Hepburn became the youngest Premier in Ontario in 1934. An onion farmer, he ruled during the depression into the WW2 years. Hepburn created a volunteer police force – “Hepburn’s Hussars” – known by some as “Sons of Mitches” – as strike breakers, a strategy that failed. During an election campaign he found himself with a group of farmers out standing in a field. Looking for a vantage point from which to speak he spotted a manure spreader. Promptly climbing aboard to overlook the gathering he announced that he had never before stood on a Conservative platform. To which a witty farmer responded: “Give it to them Mitch. You can spread it with the best of them.”

Recently, I learned that quip was first uttered by our first Prime Minister, John A. MacDonald.