Plz excuse the tongue twister, I couldn't resist.
I too, am quite new to timberframing. I,ve been doing alot of research on the net for the last couple of years. I have two of Benson's books. A very good read.
Being located in northeastern Ontario, I have access to eastern white cedar, black spruce, poplar, jackpine, birch, white pine(with permit)very expensive, balsam, and redpine(with permit)

What species to use, considering all the requirements in a timberframe building. I'm concerned about many things, including twist, shrinkage, checking, workability, shake, to name a few. Of course there's the engineering side of things, stress loads, joinery I think you see what I'm getting at.
If anyone can offer a good web site, or their personal ideas on what to use it would be much appreciated.
In advance, thanks

Paul,
I've used white, red and jack pine. White is easiest to cut but the weakest of the 3. Jack and red are stronger but heavier and more prone to bigger checks, especially red pine. All are harder to work dry. Built a timber framed cedar deck which looked great but was harder to work. Stucturally weaker than the rest. Balsam is easy to work green as is poplar but haven't seen any in new frames yet. I intend to use poplar for a building later this year. Balsam is similar to spruce in strength but personally I wouldn't use it for anything but posts unless it was really big and sound. As a sawyer I've seen quiet a bit of ring check in it around these parts. Wood Handbook pages has lots of info on different properties
Hope this helps.
Mark