Rarity of Wood
“Why is high‑quality wood getting harder to find? After a cross‑Canada road trip and years of working with lumber, I’ve seen firsthand how younger forests and industry changes have reshaped the wood we build with. This story explores why old‑growth wood is rare — and why it matters.”
Read Time: ~7 minutes
Back in 2022 my wife and I took a drive from Winnipeg to Cape Breton Island and back. The road was long and filled with traffic; some stretches were remote and others were multi‑laned, fast‑moving highways. We cut through Canadian Shield, mountainous regions, and farmland. We had blue skies, rainy skies, and even snow. We saw Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. It was a great drive.
This was October, and we saw trees everywhere. The sparsest stretch was the first forty minutes driving east of Winnipeg through open prairie country. Once we hit the treeline, the trees were unending. That may sound strange to some, but I’m a Winnipeg prairie boy — trees aren’t common where I’m from. Out here, a single shelterbelt can feel like a forest. Lots of corn fields though.
We loved seeing all those fall colours. But as a woodworker, I wasn’t just seeing trees. I was seeing an endless supply of wood. We could smell the forests in every province. We saw logging trucks in every province except PEI, and even there they were cutting storm‑fallen trees for firewood.
And yet high‑quality wood keeps getting harder to find — and more expensive when we do find it.
So why is that? I literally saw billions of trees on that trip, and that was just eastern Canada.
But what I didn’t see were old stands of trees. Not the 200‑year‑plus giants in huge numbers. I’m not saying they don’t exist — I have some old bur oaks on my own property that I can’t wrap my arms around. But that’s four trees. What I saw were younger forests with a few big trees mixed in. The only places where the trees truly felt old were in protected forests like Algonquin Park — reminders of what this country once had.
I’m not a forester, but I work with wood every day, and what I saw on that trip matched what I feel in the lumber pile: the forest is full, but the wood is young.
This same issue echoes across North America. We consume mature wood as fast as it grows.
I’ve seen a trend with the lumber that arrives in my shop. The boards are narrower, with less heartwood and bigger knots. The wood simply comes from younger forests, and the high‑quality material our grandfathers built with has become rare. And if we’re not cutting the forests, fire, bugs, and disease are consuming them anyway. A spruce can live 200 years, but that’s rare. They usually get forty to seventy years until harvest — and they can easily burn before they ever reach that age.
Now, I’m a woodworker, and I appreciate good quality wood. If you’ve been reading my blog, maybe you’ve seen the story Old Cedar. I tore our old cedar decks out — close to fifty years old now. We salvaged as many boards as we could, and we found cedar better than any I’ve ever built with. Tight‑grained, minimal knots, and many of the boards felt heavier than what I’m used to when working with cedar. A few were undeniably cedar but so heavy I questioned it. I was amazed this wood had been used for a deck — it was such high quality.
But changes in the industry happen slowly, and we don’t notice them right away. By the time we do, the change has already moved on. I wasn’t buying lumber fifty years ago — I was four years old. So I don’t know the quality of the wood back then until I salvage something like my old deck and stand back in the shop thinking, Damn, that’s nice wood.
Today, most of us have never worked with old growth. We don’t know what it looked like, how it felt in the hand, or how it behaved. And after working with that old cedar, I can’t help but wonder what other species looked and felt like just fifty years ago.
Now, I can still get some amazing wood — I’m not saying it’s gone. But the memory of a grandfather can’t tell me what it was like in his era. What looks like good wood to me might not have impressed him. He’s not here to tell me.
One place here in Winnipeg that’s selling big‑growth elm is Urban Lumber. Winnipeg is home to the largest urban forest of elms anywhere. But Dutch elm disease claims many trees each year, and for decades those trees were simply incinerated once infected to control the spread. Today Urban Lumber has a contract with the city to mill them. The disease lives in the bark, so that’s the part that needs to be disposed of. These trees have been growing in town for over a hundred years in some cases. They’re big. I’d call some of them old growth in size and character. Tight grain and heavy. And only sold here in Winnipeg.
So the rarity of wood isn’t about running out of trees. It’s about high‑quality wood becoming rare. There’s no shortage of pallet wood, particleboard, or pulpwood for paper.
Before I close off here, I’d like to leave you with a thought. A few years ago, I was at the MCC thrift shop that sells furniture. I found a Seth Thomas long‑pendulum school clock built around 1895. I paid forty dollars for it. My dad, a retired watchmaker, repaired the movement and got it running. I repaired the oak case, and I sent it to Western Paint for stain, clear coat, and preservation of the interior decals.
This clock hangs proudly in my living room today. In fact, I’ve been listening to its tick‑tock while writing every story on this website. I look at its tight‑grained, quarter‑sawn oak case, and I think it’s very likely made from an old‑growth tree that could have been 250 to 300 years old, possibly older. The clock was made in 1895 — that’s 131 years ago. If the tree was 300 years old at the time, it started life in 1595. That’s a long time ago.
But if a new tree germinated in 1895, it’s only 131 years old today. Will that tree ever see 300 years? That’s 169 years from now — the year 2195.
That’s one tree.
That’s old growth.
If that oak began life in 1595, it has seen more of this world than any of us ever will. And the trees growing today may never reach that age again. That’s the real rarity of wood — not the boards we buy, but the time it takes to make them.
If you’d like more stories about wood, craft, and the history hidden in everyday materials, you can join my mailing list below. I send new Shop Rambles as they’re finished.
“The 1895 Seth Thomas school clock movement running before the dial was installed. This mechanism has been ticking for more than a century, and its steady beat is the sound behind every story written on this site.”
Written by David Flather, Red Seal cabinetmaker and founder of Knotty Dave’s Fine Woodworking — a Manitoba shop rooted in heritage restoration, storytelling, and real craft.
All photos shot by David Flather — in the shop, on the road, and in the places where craft and story meet.
Related rambles: UNDERSTANDING WOOD, OLD CEDAR
