Airborne with Sitka Spruce

Strong, light and flexible, Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) was instrumental in taking the war to the skies. Its traditional uses by indigenous people included ropes, fishing spears and even vitamin C, but during the Great War the wood’s long, tough fibres made it ideal for airplane construction. And perhaps more importantly, Sitka spruce didn’t splinter when struck by a bullet. The Allies’ demand for spruce exceeded supply, and as British airplane losses mounted, Harvey Reginald MacMillan was called upon to marshal the British Columbia harvest, much of it from the Queen Charlotte Islands/Haida Gwaii. The Yale-educated MacMillan was a rising star, who by age twenty-seven was BC’s first chief forester. As the late Ken Drushka wrote in his prize-winning biography, H.R. MacMillan rose to this new challenge and far exceeded expectations.

His task was to secure vast quantities of airplane quality spruce as quickly as possible, and to do this he had to “organize from scratch” what Drushka describes as “the biggest logging show anyone ever attempted to put together.” A tentative objective of three million board feet per month was reached in July 1918, and this had been tripled by the end of the war.

Even today some people on the Queen Charlottes/Haida Gwaii lament the “slash and dash” measures used to harvest these trees.

After the war H.R. MacMillan built one of the country’s biggest lumber companies and again served as an administrator during World War II. (Sitka spruce was also used during this war to build the famous Mosquito bomber or “Wooden Wonder.”) The industrialist and philanthropist was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his wartime contributions, followed by the Order of Canada. Sitka spruceis still prized for construction, fine interior finishes, masts and decking; the wood has strong acoustical properties, which also makes it popular for building guitars, violins and pianos.

The ninety-six-metre Carmanah Giant on Vancouver Island is four hundred years old and identified as the tallest tree in the country.

May this Sitka spruce stand tall for centuries yet.

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