“The Forest Commandos” was a 1946 Technicolor short distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, directed by Van Campen Heilnerand “and filmed with the co-operation of the Forest Protection Service of the Department of Lands and Forests, Ontario, Canada.” (It was renamed the Ministry of Natural Resources Ontario in 1972). The forest commandos of the title are the Ontario fire rangers who, with the aide of their bush pilot comrades, keep watch over Ontario’s forests. The film is specifically dedicated to the work of the bush pilots flying floatplanes, such as those manufactured by the Stinson Aircraft Company, in support of forest fire suppression crews.
Mark 01:00 introduces viewers to Major Jack Leach, who served with the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force in World War I and was one of the original members of the Ontario Provincial Air Service, before moving on to “today’s” pilots charged with protecting the “timber empire” of Canada. The film cautions against human carelessness — one of the greatest causes of forest fires — and at mark 03:30 we see a man thoughtless tossing a lit cigarette from his car window, resulting in a conflagration. Mark 04:50 begins a series of scenes involving the Ontario Provincial Air Service in flight and from watch towers, and at mark 07:57 shows a ranger uncovering an illegal trap left by a poacher. Later, at mark 09:18, a watcher spots smoke — “the ominous signal flag of threatened disaster — and viewers see them fight a large forest fire that threatens the small village of Gogama.”The planes circle the seething inferno” at mark 12:13 as ground crews work below. By mark 18:00, a newspaper headline offers viewers the good news: “Rangers and Rain Save Gogama.”
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