If you have any doubt that our forests are a fraction of their former selves, I challenge you to visit Kentville Ravine in the Annapolis Valley, Hemlock Hill on the St Mary’s River, or Lone Shieling amid the Cape Breton Highlands. These places remind us of the ancient ecosystems which once dominated much of our province, before settling fires, axes, chainsaws and now mechanised forestry ran their unabated courses, leaving us with the young, thin, abused and fruitless forests which today define the public lands of Nova Scotia. It’s an incredible loss … one worth mourning.