Up the Gatineau! Article

This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 15.

My Life And Times In The Bush

J. E. Boyle My grandfather, John Boyle, began bush work in the Gatineau in 1851, and worked at it until 1870. My father, Michael Boyle, went to the Gatineau in 1870, and spent the rest of his working days there. He was the resident manager for the W. C. Edwards Co. Ltd., the Riordan Company Ltd., the Gatineau Co. Ltd., and finally for the Canadian International Paper Company. As each company sold to the next one, he remained to manage the operation. He retired from the C. I. P. at the age of eighty-one, and began his own lumber company, and worked at that until his death in 1939, at the age of at eighty-nine.

I began working in the lumber trade at the age of sixteen when I spent two summers at the Edwards‘ sawmill at New Edinburgh (part of Ottawa). After I left McGill in 1923, I began working in the bush for the Gatineau Company, and I remained in forestry work until I sold the last of my companies, W. C. Edwards Co. Ltd., in 1968. Thus the Boyle family has enjoyed one hundred and seventeen consecutive years of bush work. I think that this is of some significance, and as I am the last of the family to carry on that type of work, I thought it might be of interest to my progeny if I recorded the story of those days.

The Sawmill Era

Grandfather Boyle's time was the sawmill era, and it was a rugged one. It preceded the papermill era, and although there was a considerable growth of pulpwood, only the large spruce trees were cut and used as saw-timber. Roads were primitive, and transportation to and from the camps and depots was done entirely by horses. The camps themselves were built in early autumn the year previous to the operation. Equipment and supplies had to be moved in on the ice during the winter before the cut. From the time camp building finished until the cutting season began, the camps were used as "keep-overs" to store the food, fodder, equipment, drugs, and "van" goods, that had been hauled in by portage teams. The following year, in the early autumn, the horses were brought in to do the timber cutting. They usually finished the “cut” before Christmas, and during the holiday season all necessary preparations were made for the "log-haul". Near the earliest date that ice was solid, usually in early January, the haul began. When conditions were good it was finished by the second week in March. The horses drew the saw-logs to the closest drivable water, be it a creek. or a river or lake, and piled them on the ice and on the banks.

In those days, the first upon the scene were the bush-rangers. They were a special breed of expert woodsmen, skilled especially in estimating timber volumes. Oddly enough, many of them were not formally educated, but they were entrusted with establishing the quantities and the quality of the wood, suitable campsites, suitable tote roads for the transportation of supplies and equipment, and main roads for the delivery of the logs to the nearest water route.

Following the rangers, the next to arrive at a chosen camp site was the building crew. These men had to be expert axemen, as the axe was the predominant tool in the building of camps. From timber cut at the site, they erected all the buildings necessary for the operation. These usually included two sleep camps measuring 40 x 50 feet, a cookery the same size, two stables, a large warehouse, a blacksmith's shop and one for the handyman, a root cellar and, of course, an office. The office housed the foreman, the cook, the clerk, his books, and his supply of van goods and drugs. With the rest of the crew the total usually came to about one hundred people.

After the cutting areas were blazed out they were assigned to cutting gangs. Each gang was usually made up of ten men and two teams of horses. There were two sawyers who felled the trees; four "swampers" — axemen who cut the trails for the horses; two "teamsters" who skidded the logs to the branch roads; and two “rollers” — cant-hook men who end-stamped the logs and decked them onto the skidways.

Besides axes, the tools used were cross-cut saws, steel wedges, cant-hooks, peaveys, skidding tongs, draught chains and decking lines. Ownership of the logs was established in either of two ways: one was a hammer mark, often a letter stamped on both ends of each log: the other was an axe mark such as "lX1" cut into the surface of each log. This marking not only established the ownership, but also assisted in sorting on the rivers where more than one company was driving. Later, “bark-marking" was discontinued in favor of daubs of coloured paint on both ends of every log. These marks were registered and each belonged to one company. Some continued to use the hammer mark.

Cross cutting the trunk of the tree was called “bucking”. Standard lengths were 16 ft. 6 inches. The additional six inches of wood was allowed by the government to compensate for damage in the river drive and was referred to as "broomage". Logs were also cut in sawmill operators to have as many of sixteen feet as possible. The minimum diameter at the top. in those days. was eight inches. so that a good-sized forest remained after the first cut.

Teamsters skidded the logs through trails. cut by the swampers, to the nearest branch road, where they were decked onto skidways and stamped with a log hammer. A good log cutter could make eighty or ninety logs a day, and a good skidding team could pile (skid) about two hundred in that time. Usually a winter's cut for a company camp was fifty to sixty thousand pine logs, depending on the size of the logs.

With the first appearance of zero Fahrenheit weather, "tanking", or sprinkling of the main road with water, began. It was necessary to build up a substantial ice bottom to carry the loads of nine to ten thousand board feet. These roads were to the company camp operator what a main street is to a city.

Feverish activity began with the start of the sleigh haul as all logs had to be transported to the water (lake or river) before the spring thaw. Using side loading "jammers", the men with cant-hooks were out before dawn loading log sleighs by torch light. So were the “bull rope“ men and the “road monkeys" or “chickadees" who cleaned the roadways or sanded any slight down-grades. During the hauling season, the original cutting crews were transferred to either loading the log sleighs or unloading them at the log dump. The extended working hours were essential: the winter days were short and it would be disastrous to leave logs in the bush from one season to another as they would be destroyed by boring beetles. Upon delivery of all the logs to the dump, the camps were all closed until open water in the spring. The operators tried to schedule their winter work to finish about the middle of March. Very often, their wishes regarding the log haul were not granted, as the vagaries of an ordinary Canadian winter are well known to all of us.

After the spring breakup in late April or early May, river driving began. A large crew of men, usually seventy or more, equipped with peaveys and pike poles, broke the log dumps and started the log drive down the river. This was arduous and often dangerous work. for the drivers‘ clothing was wet from daylight to dark, and they were plagued by mosquitoes and blackflies. It took experienced river hogs to withstand the hardships. They transported themselves by six-oared boats called “pointers” and lived under canvas. The driving season usually lasted from early May until some time in July.

Shanty life may sound romantic, but it was hard and tough. It was, however, a very healthy one. During the earlier years, the menu was limited. The men lived on fat salt pork, hard biscuits, tea and beans. Some time later the cooks were able to expand the menu to include bread, pies, fresh pork and sausages, and, of course, beef. Any man who lived in a lumber camp insists on talking about the marvellous baked beans. The beans, with a heavy content of fat pork, were left baking in a pot all night in a hot sand hole in the cambuse. Blackstrap molasses and prunes were also a must in the regular diet. The men slept well; they were in the cool clean air all day, and that helped them pass the night in sound slumber in the long building, with the red-hot stove in the centre. Steam rose from clothing, socks, towels, underwear, moccasins and boots, which were all hung up to dry beside the bunks.

Long black buildings in the cold light of dawn; the sound of teamsters and horses trampling around the stable by the dim light of two or three lanterns; log sleighs beginning to squeal along the hard snow road; a string of workmen hurrying down the trail to the cutting area, with frozen breath and smoke going straight up in the below zero weather, and soon the ring of the axe on frozen timber: this was how the day began.

The operators ran a tight ship and everything was supervised. There was no waste. The managers did most of their work right in the bush. If a river drive was sticking, the manager was personally responsible to take it out, if it appeared that logs were about to be left in the bush over the summer months he, again, was personally responsible and would quickly supervise any additional work necessary to complete the job.

The clothing worn by the men was very important because of the cold and the flies. Next to their skin they wore heavy wool long-johns: on their feet, usually, four pairs of wool socks and either deerskin or oil-tanned moccasins. On the outside they wore heavy, leg length trousers, wool shirts and ruggedly built “mackinaws" (short woollen coats). Snowshoes were worn in deep snow, such as on lakes. Skis appeared with the advent of Norwegian workers about 1926.

My First Experiences in the Bush

When I left McGill in 1923, after three years of medical school and with the need to earn a living, I obtained a temporary job as assistant log sealer with the Gatineau Company at the magnificent salary of fifty dollars per month, plus bed and keep. This was an entirely new life for me. I was assistant to David Eadie, a dour old Scot, and I was to learn the trade from him. He was a good log sealer and a good teacher.

Dave and I set out from Maniwaki for the Moose Lake country on a dull rainy day in October, with a team of driving horses and a buggy. The first day's drive took us to the Ignace Depot which was only 45 miles north. It was a long day's drive when one considered the condition of the roads; sometimes the buggy went up to the hubs in mud. We slept there and set out the next morning for Moose Lake. This was the site of a big company camp, whose foreman was a chap named Hector Lafrance.

The Moose Lake section covered about twenty square miles of white pine. At that time, the timber-cutting principle in effect was to have a company camp in the heart of the best stand of trees, and have "jobbers", large and small, to cut the sparser stands. After two years’ operation, the large camp was moved to another good stand elsewhere. The small jobbers with camps of twenty to twenty-five men stayed to clean up the more scattered stands that remained. A company camp, like Hector Lafrance's, employed about one hundred men. This method of working the forest was a very practical one. After a four-year cutting period, when the clean-up by the small jobbers was completed, the forest was left in a very healthy condition. Pine trees of less than twelve inches diameter at the first saw-cut were not removed so that a strong young forest remained, one which, if bugs or fire did not get into the trees in the interim, would renew itself, and be ready for another cut in fifteen or twenty years.

We scaled logs at Moose Lake for two months, then moved to the Eagle River section for another two months, and finally, on to the Sturgeon Depot for the rest of the season. The Sturgeon was on the upper part of the lower Gatineau River Valley. This moving around gave me a good overall view of the various districts. Men did not do much moving around at that time. They usually went to the bush in August or early September, and stayed there until spring. Later, it became the custom for virtually all the men to go home for Christmas and New Years. This was between seasons, the finishing of the cutting and the beginning of the log haul. The “Eagle” (Eagle River, a small tributary of the Gatineau River) country was really beautiful at that time, a different type of country from the “Moose”, and contained large stands of good red and white pine. It was a large district, and the depot was right in the heart of it. Furthermore, it was a well established camp with good sleeping quarters.

When working in a district like the Moose, log scalers always tried to make their headquarters at the company camp, if they were measuring at a jobber's camp within walking distance of the company site, they would walk there and back each day. Sealers had to lug all their gear including bedding from camp to camp. Eiderdowns were only in use by the forestry engineers and were an expensive item. In 1926, I went to the Woods Manufacturing. Co. in Hull. and asked if they could make an inexpensive sleeping bag. They came up with one costing $12.00 as opposed to $75.00 for a down one.

Company camps not only had the best pine, they also had the best men, the best supervision and the best control. Cutting gangs worked on a straight wage basis and the eventual grade of logs was of a high calibre. On the other hand, in the jobbers' camps, most of the cutting gangs worked on a “piece” or thousand-foot basis. This meant that their daily wages were reckoned strictly on what they produced. Their motto was to work as quickly as possible, not necessarily as well as possible.

Company camps were quite primitive, but compared with the small jobbers‘ camps, they were luxurious. A camp site was composed of six to ten buildings, depending on the number of men in it. First there was the main sleep camp, usually one large one-storey building capable of housing about one hundred men. The inside was one open space with upper and lower bunks down each side, without any partitions. At one end of the sleep-camp there was a compartment for washing blankets and clothing. This chore had to be performed by the person involved, and also, it had to be done on Sunday.

There was a large cookery occupying the same type of building where all the cooking was done: soups, meats, baking bread, pies, cakes and cookies. Cleanliness was the password, the place was always fresh and spotless. The staff consisted of the head cook, the cookee and a couple of chore-boys who hauled the wood for the fires, the water from the nearest stream, and did any other jobs that came up. There was, of course, no refrigeration so whatever had to be preserved was stored in a root house underground.

The other buildings to be found were, at least, a warehouse, a stable, a blacksmith shop and an office. The payroll, tally-cards and log specifications, as well as any other book-keeping records, were kept in the office. It had two other purposes, it was the company store, where the men could buy smoking or chewing tobacco, gum, chocolate, medicines or any other van goods: and it provided the sleeping quarters for the foremen, the clerk, the sealers, when they were measuring logs at that camp, as well as any other special guests, such as the agent or the government inspectors. Camp beds were constructed of cedar poles, on which cedar boughs were placed instead of mattresses to provide some softness.

Depending upon the season, there were fifty or sixty fine horses and up to eighty head of beef cattle to use for the table when needed, as well as a few live pigs. Beef and pork supplied the only fresh meat. There was plenty of barrelled salt pork, which could be cooked in a variety of ways. none of which had any attraction for me. However. meals were usually very good. There was good home-made bread and an abundance of cakes. pies and cookies. Breakfast was at 6 a.m. and dinner at 6 p.m. Lunch was always eaten in the bush, in the shelter of a large skidway of logs. even when the temperature was forty-five degrees Fahrenheit below zero. Often it consisted of frozen fat pork with not a smidgeon of lean on it dipped in molasses and eaten like a piece of buttered toast. It used to make me sick just to look at it. There were also frozen cakes and cookies. The tea, without benefit of milk or sugar, was boiled over a camp fire. I very seldom ate lunch, but I did enjoy the other meals.

There was no recreation. It was not very necessary as the days were long and the work was strenuous. As one would expect, on Sunday there was often a poker game. Stakes were always tobacco, as play for cash was forbidden and there was seldom any available. Some men would end the season with a very large supply of tobacco. Alcohol was strictly forbidden: I don't remember seeing booze of any form. Guns were forbidden and the law was strictly enforced; you were not allowed to shoot a deer or rap fur-bearing animals. Under the circumstances, the wild animals became quite tame and friendly.

All things are relative, and I think that it would serve some purpose to put wages, prices and other values into their proper perspective. In the middle 1920's wages were low, but so were the costs of the necessities of life. As an example, log makers were paid forty-five dollars a month; cooks, sixty dollars; foremen, one hundred dollars; sealers, one hundred; assistant scalers, fifty; blacksmiths and stable bosses, sixty; ordinary help, forty dollars per month. Provisions ran something like this: beef, by the quarter, seven cents a pound: potatoes, one half a cent a pound: apples, one dollar per barrel: pork, about ten cents a pound: flour, one dollar a hundred-pound bag; milk, seven cents a quart: and hay, eight dollars a ton. Rents for smaller houses in the villages ran from six to ten dollars monthly. It was a far cry from today's inflated world.

When the forestry engineers took over the complete administration of the woodlands for the Canadian International Paper Company in 1928, there was great criticism of the methods used by the earlier managers, but as one who worked for a considerable time during both eras, let me hurriedly assure you that the former proprietors were very competent.

The companies sold “stumpage” on a hit and miss, haphazard manner. Over a period of forty or fifty years, it was tragic to see birch die-back getting into a beautiful yellow birch forest at the "Hurdman", and to see the gorgeous white pine becoming over-mature on the Upper Coulonge. The same story applied in the case of bush machinery. There was an obvious lack of proper planning in the first approaches to forest machines. Forestry engineers laboured at everything: roads, stores, purchasing, statistics and the regulation of scaling, in fact outside their spheres of knowledge. New developments suffered from a lack of basic engineering data, and expensive experimentation on bush operating machinery fell into the hands of people who were not only incompetent, but had little or no training.

Horses and Mechanization

It seems to me that no story of the early bush days could be written without the mention of the main cog in the machine — horses. For the first one hundred and twenty-five years of logging, next to man himself, horses played the most important part in the action. The industry used them to forward and skid the logs: to haul them to the streams for driving; to portage all the food, fodder and equipment over the winter roads to the camps; to portage goods and equipment around the chutes and rapids; and to transport managers, supervisors, log sealers and men to and from their work.

In the early days of this century they used two types of horse: the draught horse and the smaller "driver". The draught horses did all the heavy work, and the weight of this type of horse ran as high as eighteen hundred pounds. Driving horses were a lot smaller and lighter and were used entirely for transportation purposes. They ranged in weight from about nine hundred to eleven hundred pounds. When I began, in 1923. horses were in their full fling; trucks, tractors and bulldozers had not yet appeared on the scene and were not to make an important invasion for another fifteen years.

The work horses were rigged up in tough, heavy leather harness. The teamsters always kept the harness in top condition. They coddled their horses and cared for them like babies. In my early clays I never saw a whip; they were never used on those beautiful animals and a teamster who even carried one was suspect.

In the logging camps, the horses were stabled in buildings each of which housed about fifty animals. If there were more horses a second stable was built. They were divided into twenty-live stalls, each holding two horses and open at the back end. There was a barn boss who was in complete control of that stable and who maintained law and order there. He was responsible for the cleanliness of the building and for the apportioning of the feed. The feed was mainly hay and oats with a small amount of barley sometimes. There was a supply of medicine and liniments for the horses.

A teamster usually rose at four o'clock in the morning, immediately went to the stable, fed his team, did any other necessary work and finally returned to the cookery for his own breakfast at six. He was back at the stable at six-thirty getting his team harnessed and ready for the day's work. In fall and winter he would arrive back from the bush at about half-past-five, get out a kerosene lantern and hang it on a pole above the stall and do his work caring for the horses. Each horse was given a quarter of a pail of water as soon as it arrived back from the bush and was then allowed to cool off. A couple of hours later it was given a pail and a half of water and food. After feeding, the team would be curried and bedded down for the night. During the busy season, a teamster worked about fifteen hours a day. He spent all his waking hours, either working with his horses or talking about them. It was, also, a matter of record that nearly every one of those old teamsters was a bachelor. He had no time for a wife when he had a team to look after. Some of the prominent teamsters that I can remember were: Dan Dunne, Jack McGoey, Sam McGoey, Red Carr, Jack Groulx, Toine Groulx and Tom Johnson.

In summertime, the Edwards‘ horses were pastured at their farms at Maniwaki, Bouchette, Eagle Depot, or at the “Sixes” Farm on the Gatineau. This was their leisure time, the time to get built up after a hard winter's work. The harness repair work, which was a colossal job, was always done during this period. The harness-makers came to the depots to spend the whole summer working at it. They would sew, renew, polish and do everything to have it in perfect shape to begin the following year's work. The harness-makers usually worked six weeks at Maniwaki, three weeks at the “Sixes,” and another three at the “Eagle”. There they finished their three months of solid work and returned to headquarters at Rockland. A few would work there for another three or four months. They were very well paid, so that they did not need to work again until the following year. They were craftsmen of the highest degree.

The same process applied to all other equipment: log sleighs, driving cutters, chain of all kinds, steel for sleigh runners and other winter vehicles of many descriptions. There were blacksmith shops in Maniwaki which could build and repair all of these things. The log sleighs were made of wood with steel runners and beams. The bunks were five and a half feet wide and were built to carry a huge load of logs. The driving cutters, which were of a more fragile nature, were also manufactured and repaired in the blacksmith shop. These shops could repair outboard motors for boats; and renew all types of chain used in logging and river drive operations. The blacksmith shops employed the so-called “handymen” who could fix virtually anything you gave them.

In 1923, the Edwards and Gilmour people used about 350 horses for their forestry work. Of these. about 25 were driving horses. The resident manager usually had two teams for his personal use and travelling. They were always fast driving horses which could “road” at 12 to 13 miles per hour. The agent also had two teams because his work entailed a great deal of long-distance trips from one district to the other. When he was making a trip from Maniwaki to Mishomas for instance, a distance of 75 miles each way, he would have a team in the stables at Maniwaki in reserve. He would thus have a fresh exercised team when he began the next week's trip. On his Mishomas trip he would drive to the Sturgeon Depot the first day, that was 55 miles.

My father drove about 150 miles a week. He always took his driver, Jimmy Hayes, with him on all his long trips: but he would always drive the horses himself. Father loved fast horses and he dearly loved to drive them. He was a well recognized authority of horseflesh. His groom, Pat McElroy, remained back in Maniwaki where he exercised and cared for the spare horses. There was a special small stable. which had four box stalls. Pat McElroy nursed those driving horses as though they were his own children.

Each log sealer had a single horse for the transportation of his assistant and himself. Of course, the scalers‘ horses were not of the same calibre as the manager's. Theirs‘ were just average driving horses. The log sealers were not as important, nor did they have such long distances to travel, usually just between jobbers‘ camps in the same district. It was one of the assistant scaler‘s duties to feed, harness and look after the scalers‘ horses.

These horses were well distributed throughout the districts so that they did not cause too much congestion at headquarters in Maniwaki. In the case of the principals who used driving horses, they had special drivers who travelled with them, who were responsible for the horses on the road, and stablemen who cared for these fragile beasts at the depots and at headquarters.

When preparations began for the large storage dams on the Gatineau, in 1925, the log footage volume suddenly greatly increased. This meant the employment of many more people on the log scaling staff, many more bush supervisors and cut-control staff, and with them many more small driving horses. At that time we had 125 in use. The working horses numbered about 800.

With the advent of the pulpwood business on a large scale, (after W.W. I), and the sudden increase in bush cut, the horse situation took another turn. The sous-jobbers from the Gaspé and Lac St. Jean began to come in, and with them the use of the single horse and the “bachanole”. This introduced a completely new concept to bush work in the Gatineau. With the pine logs, they had been accustomed to working with fine big draught horses, always in teams both for the skidding and the hauling. Now they began to see wiry, single horses, each one pulling this awful-looking contraption, the bachanole. However, it was effective and taught many new lessons to the Gatineau people about cutting and hauling pulpwood. It was useless on a long pulpwood haul and would only be used then when it was close to the stream. It was of no use with pine logs.

This was the beginning of the end for the heavy horses. They were still essential in some places, but for skidway piling and short hauls, they weren't needed. The Gatineau fellows were still inclined to work with fairly large horses, harnessed single. By now the work was beginning to be done by jobbers on1y. They had a tendency to rent horses, animals which they got from the local inhabitants. These were smaller, wiry little animals, and they were rented out to the jobber by the farmer on the job basis, that is, the teamster and the horse came as a unit. By this time the company (C. I. P.) carried on with about 100 larger animals of its own.

Driving horses became a rather important factor in bush work. Single driving horses were used mainly by district agents, supervisors and log sealers. These horses were not plentiful, most of them being brought from western Canada. Light harness was common, but it was difficult to purchase the small sleigh or cutter, so the C. I. P. began to manufacture cutters at Maniwaki. They built about 150 of them, and also performed all the necessary repairs. The cost of building one at that time was about $150. This phase of the transportation problem continued until the beginning of the depression in 1930.

My own companies continued to use heavy horses for many years. One of the disturbing features of this was the cost of their use. When the Eddy Co. bought J. E. Boyle Ltd. in 1965, they did not want horses which were considered too old-fashioned. When we sold, we had 50 left. The Eddy Co. proceeded to sell all of these horses, but shortly realized that they could not get along in that type of cut without them.

In the Gatineau area, the first move away from the use of horses for bush work took place in 1927 and 1928. This was the period after the completion of the big power storage dams on the river. During the construction period, the contractors used heavy machinery wherever feasible; money was no object. Speed in finishing the dam work was of the essence. When it was completed, the contractors had twelve large Linn tractors on hand that were turned over to the woodlands department to use. My father, who was the resident manager at the time, decided to try them out on a log-haul on the Eagle River watershed where the volume and the terrain were thought to be adaptable to this type of machinery. Each “Linn” was organized to haul three loads on conventional logging sleighs. It was the first time that tractors were used in such a haul and there was a great deal of trial and error, with headaches and heartaches for those in charge. The first calamity came when one of the tractors sank in Hobblety Lake. Believe me, they had a very difficult time raising it from the bottom. The “Linns" were used on the pine log-haul for two years, and by that time they were completely worn out. The company refused any suggestion that new tractors be purchased. It seems to me that was the time that bush automation could have begun. There was no further use of such machinery for hauling logs for more than ten years, and then it was for road building and maintenance.

My father built the first locally made snowmobile in 1929 from an old “Model T“ Ford car. He had his own ideas of how it should be done, and had considerable success with it. In a very short time Bombardier snowmobiles were in fairly common use, mainly by bush managers and superintendents, doctors, taxi people and the like. They were, originally, very frail machines, and were laid up for repairs much of the time.

The middle 1950's saw the influx of new bush machinery and the beginning of automation. A whole raft of cutting and skidding machinery arrived on the market: timber-jacks, tree-farmers and others. At long last, the eastern paper companies, becoming suddenly conscious of the need for bush automation, began to purchase new machines as quickly as they were available, only to find that in a few years they were inadequate; they became obsolete almost as soon as they arrived. Finally the huge harvesters were available. This, of course, caused the a sudden abandonment of the use of horses, but in a short time the operators found to their dismay that in certain terrain the new machines were not practical and horses had to be found. Unfortunately that was easier to say than do. since there were very few left in the country, and worse, the men who knew how to handle and take care of horses were just as scarce.

The new harvesters seem to be doing an efficient job, but they have a profound effect on the environment. The huge wheels have a tendency to tear down the smaller trees as they push and drag. More importantly, the increased efficiency means that entire hillsides are being cut down so that whole watersheds are unable to absorb the rainfall and the spring run-off. The unshaded snow melts faster, resulting in flooding and erosion.

Keep-overs

“Keep-over" was the term used for a small depot or storage site for supplies. One or two men were always left there all summer as watchmen or caretakers. These men were all "loners" and eccentrics. They had a great desire to keep away from society. There was, however, a provincial regulation that called for at least two men as custodians at each site. This had to be abrogated because it was almost impossible to hire two who would remain together without a serious disagreement, and with the ensuing disruption, would have to be replaced. Caretakers would sometimes spend three or four months alone in the bush not seeing a soul, and although they might be only sixty miles from Maniwaki they could as well have been in China, if one of these men were to have a serious accident or become ill, he would be finished. That was one of my main fears when I was travelling around doing inventory, to arrive at one of those out-of-the-way keep-overs and find a dead man on my hands.

On one occasion we had stopped at the Sturgeon Depot on the way to take inventory at the Notawissie “keep-over." It was fourteen miles from the depot, and of course we had to walk all the way. These guardians had to do their own cooking, including the bread baking. In this case Jim McAllister could not and would not even try, and as a result he used to walk the fourteen miles to Sturgeon Depot twice a month to get his bread. We were informed by the foreman that they had not seen him for more than a month. We were all worried that something had happened to him. As we walked the fourteen miles we were quite apprehensive as to what would confront us when we arrived. When we did, everything seemed deathly silent. We shouted, without answer; we pounded on the door of the little office, again without answer; and after some time deciding what to do, we heard a shout from inside "What do you want?” Eventually Jim opened the door to let us in. His story was that he had started walking to the Depot two weeks before for his bread, and when he was within half a mile from his destination, he had been confronted by a belligerent big bull moose. Jim turned in his tracks and ran the whole way back. He said that the moose had chased him all the way, a very unlikely story. He had locked himself in his cabin and had not dared to come out since that time.

Another time Hermany Merleau and I were going into Royal Lake, in the Tomasine district, for an inventory job. I was new and had never been there before. My companion knew the guardian and knew that he did not “have all his marbles.“ Hermany went out into the bush on some pretext, leaving me alone in the cabin with the old fellow. We were sitting together for a short while, when he said to me ‘Did you cross Desert Lake on the way up?“ I said “Yes”. " Did you see any soldiers?“ “No.” “That's funny, I was over there three weeks ago, and I saw three battalions of them drilling in canoes on the lake. They must have gone back to Montreal." Although it was not war-time he still had a bug about the military. I think that he had been scared silly by the First World War conscription issue.

Again, France Lafrenière and I were going into the Sautrelle, on the Rivière Diable, for inventory. It was in the off-season for hunting. There, on the keep-over clothesline, was a moose pelt, drying out. Old Joe was the guardian, and for him, hunting or any shooting was strictly against the law. He was a strange old fellow; he wore a suit of heavy long-johns without trousers. Around his middle he had a gun belt, with a gun on each hip. In addition he had a long white beard and long shoulder-length white hair. He was a man who desired to be left alone, and was known to take pot shots at transients. For all that, I found him to be a mild and gentle man.

A pair of keep-over brothers, Tom and Mick, did not work well together; both men were bachelors, and both were customers at Donovan's store. Jack Donovan looked after their banking while they were in the bush. Every month, when their cheques arrived from the Company, Jack would deposit them in the Bank of Nova Scotia. When Mick arrived down in the fall, he asked Jack for his money, some $437.60, and insisted upon having a cheque to prove it. He took it to-the Bank and the teller, realising that he was taking out all he had, thought that there was something wrong and called the manager, who, on asking Mick, was told that everything was all right, he just wanted to see his money. He counted it and put it back in the Bank. These fellows were all eccentrics but they were also good, kind people who enjoyed only their own company.

The depot and keep-over job entailed a great deal of walking. There were very few summer roads. A typical week's work was the Lepine Depot beat. We would leave Maniwaki at five in the morning with a team of driving horses and a buggy and would arrive at the depot that night. The distance was only fifty miles, but still it was a very long day's drive. We left on foot again early next morning for the Paugan keep-over. It was a thirty-three mile walk and took all day. We would get started on the inventory that same night, work on it all the next day, and sleep at the keep-over to be ready to walk back to Lepine the following day. The next trip was to the Sautrelle, which was on the Gens de Terre River some fifteen miles away: we would arrive there at noon, work all afternoon and evening and the next morning, and walk back that afternoon. On the seventh day we would return to Maniwaki, having thus walked a hundred miles during the week. Occasionally we would be able to travel by canoe, which was a lot less strenuous. I was usually away for two weeks, and then spent a week at home recording the inventories at the Maniwaki office.

On My Own

I continued in the supervisor's job until early 1928, by which time my salary had come up to $250.00 a month, plus keep. It was an excellent salary for a 27-year~old in those days. However I had a hankering to go into business for myself. One fact however struck me at the very beginning, that was that a limit-holder and operator could control literally thousands of square miles of forest, and employ many people including engineers, and yet operate the forest in a most uneconomical manner. When he was interested in pine he would cut nothing but pine; when he was interested in pulpwood he would cut spruce and balsam only; there was no effort to develop a pattern of utilisation that was logical. (This continued until the very last years of my forty-six in the bush.) It occurred to me that if these unused species were not being utilized, why not try to buy stumpage from the company myself and so capitalize on their shortcomings? So I decided to give up my good job and go into business for myself. The Canadian International Paper Co. was cutting predominantly pulpwood at the time. A small part of that wood was from local farmers, cut on their private woodlots (so- called “private lands” wood). This was generally bought from the owners by local merchants and delivered into the Gatineau River. The merchants used this business mainly as a trade catcher, and paid for it with stores. To me, the proper way to handle this type of wood was to buy it directly from the farmer, pay him with cash, and resell it to the companies.

The War Years

These were, perhaps, the most hectic years of my life. With the outbreak of war all sorts of other projects began, mostly orders from the Government for the War effort. These included an order for ten thousand cords of stove wood to reduce the dependence on oil and electricity. It was all green wood of mixed species. How it was ever burned I do not know. It cost a great deal to ship by rail to distant cities, since it was wet and heavy. This continued for two years before the authorities realized the futility of it. We were allowed only a very small profit.

We were still very much occupied with the production, care, and shipment of lumber from private lands cuts. The sawing of this wood required the use of portable sawmills. At one time there were six such mills in use, all rented from their owners, who also ran them and did the sawing. The basic mill consisted of the following machinery: a log carriage and track, one or two four-foot circular saws, an edger, a butting saw and a diesel power unit of seventy-five to one hundred and twenty-five horsepower. It was very difficult to get the mill placed on a solid foundation; often it would shift enough to produce very badly sawn lumber. The care of the sawn lumber included piling it, drying and sorting it. The lumber had to be piled on a solid site on 6 X 6 inch posts (bottoms), in such a way as to allow the rain to run off and keep the main pile dry; finally an accurate estimate of the quantity of wood was made. Most of this lumber was shipped via truck and rail to the Edwards Co. plant in Ottawa.

We still had a large operation going at the Tomasine with five hundred men working. By 1945 we were operating eighteen lumber yards on the Gatineau. The gross earnings were quite large, but taxes succeeded in reducing the excess profits to the average earned between 1936 and 1939. We got some of this back after the end of the War.

The Coulonge Years

After some years of working with the Eddy Co., supplying all their private lands pulpwood, I was approached by C. I. P. to transfer to them. We eventually worked out an arrangement to pool all the wood from that source between Eddy‘s and C. I. P. in an equitable way. Thus we became the only dealer to sell such wood to either company. In 1946 the C. I. P. informed me that they wished to change the arrangement again, by excluding all the poplar buying from the pooling agreement. I notified them that in that case we might as well terminate the whole agreement. They were surprised, but I was determined to move away from the C. I. P. country and start afresh. Now the problem was, where to utilise my large “bush plant” of men and sawmills. I travelled to the Coulonge River system, some fifty miles to the west, and walked some pine bush in the Schyan River Valley. This was within the Eddy limits, so I discussed the proposal with them. Their opinion was that the pine supply was spotty and sparse. They reluctantly agreed to sell, so we purchased stumpage in that district, and started twenty years of operations in the Coulonge watershed. Incidentally, we worked the Schyan for eight years, and extracted more than twenty-five million FBM of rather good pine.

Mr. Claude Marion, who had been chief sealer for C. I. P. on the Gatineau, decided to leave that Company and work for me. He was a native of Fort Coulonge, and had worked for J. R. Booth Co. Ltd., knew the country well, and took charge of our operations when we began the pine cutting on the Schyan and Black Rivers. These logs were cut at Black River and hauled by horses to the Black River. At the same time we built a portable sawmill at Chretien's Point on the Ottawa, a short distance down-river from the mouth of the Black. We cut and delivered the logs to the latter river, and drove them down without too much difficulty. In the spring of 1947 the mill was flooded by the high water of the Ottawa, and remained so for the first three weeks of prime sawing time. It was obvious that we had made a mistake about the site of the mill. We next chose a site on the Black River just above the town of Waltham. This was a pretty complete set-up for a semi-stationery mill, but because we were using circular saws instead of band saws, and saws were coarse, the loss in saw kerf (sawdust) was high. This probably caused a loss of about 15%. However, we were capable of sawing 65.000 FBM a day and doing a respectable job.

In the first year of production at the Waltham mill, we produced three million FBM from the Black River. At that time too, the Eddy Company asked whether there was a supply of pulpwood in the area that we had leased from them for the pine logs. We agreed to deliver 12,000 cords of spruce and balsam. Such stands were sparse, but in conjunction with the log operation it was feasible. At the same time Eddy‘s were cutting in a veritable garden of black spruce. This area produced twenty-five cords of pulp to the acre, and our area, only three to four. Hence it can be appreciated that combining the operations of logging and pulp cutting was very important. We had brought in crews of men from the Gatineau and Lièvre Rivers, who were experts in that field. Eddy's tried to use crews who were accustomed to cutting large saw-logs. One might have thought if you were good at one kind of cutting, you would be at another, but the techniques were different enough to reduce the efficiency of the crew.

After some years in that area, cutting more and more for Eddy‘s and up to 12,000,000 FBM per year for ourselves, we began to run out of even the sparser stands, and again we asked the company for another area to work. Also at that time, the authorities in Quebec started to demand that all species be cut, rather than just the desirable and economic ones. Our headquarters in that area were at the old J. R. Booth Co. operational base, the Schyan Depot. As the stand of pine diminished, we found a large number of “pine corners‘ where the topography of the country was difficult. The original operators had found that these areas were too costly for them to harvest. With the help of the “crazy wheel", however, we were able to get this choice timber out. The crazy wheel was a winch-like contraption to which a cable from the back of the bobsled was attached. It would control the descent of the loaded sleigh so that it would not slip down onto the horses‘ backs and perhaps kill them. We had to resort to portable mills again, since the area was not accessible to the Black River. We continued to clean up this area, even though our main effort had been switched.

With the approval of the Eddy Co., we moved to the Jim's Lake country on the upper Coulonge River, and began preparations to build a proper stationary mill there. At that time the Swedes were offering a new concept for gang saws, this was an ultra-modern saw with multiple blades, that were one thirty-second of an inch thinner than the standard Canadian or American ones. It promised, at least theoretically, a saving in the amount of kerf, and thus more merchantable lumber. These saws were quite expensive, but, jointly with the W. C. Edwards Co. of Ottawa we decided to purchase one. When the Jim’s Lake sawmill was completed, we were able to saw 75,000 FBM per day of well-sawn lumber.

We also built a village of some fifty homes. It was always my belief that one of the great deterrents in operating a bush division was one of the facts that men do not like to be away from their families for long periods. A lot of lost time resulted from weekends and other holidays, during which the machinery and horses were standing idle. Thus the answer, as far as I could see, was to bring the families to the bush. We had to build a school, chapel, service station, general store, restaurant and recreation hall. The houses were not mansions, but were modest comfortable dwellings, and as good accommodation as many of the people had had at home. Most of the men continued to make their home there during the life of the mill. The school had seventy-five students and two teachers, who were paid by J. E. Boyle Co., and not by the Government of Quebec. Father Harrington came from Sheenborough (some fifty miles south-east] for Mass on Sundays. We had lots of parties and entertainment in the recreation hall. The settlement became a good place to live. We built a smaller one at Schyan Depot for the employees there.

At this time we began a logging operation at St. Patrick's Lake at the north-west part of the Black River watershed. St. Patrick's Lake is a very large body of water, twenty-one miles long, and is surrounded by very rough terrain. The south side of the lake is situated on the E. B. Eddy limits, and the north side is on C. I. P. limits. When we began, there wasn't even a wagon road between the Schyan and St. Patrick's, only a trail. The body of pine on the Eddy Co. side was not large enough to warrant a long term operation, so we attempted to set up a good pine area by trying to purchase stumpage from C. I. P. On two occasions we thought we had good arrangements made with them, but on both, the negotiations broke down. Had we been successful it would have changed the whole concept of our work, and we could have operated there for many years.

With the initial lack of roads of any kind, we had to fly in all our light equipment, and all our food and fodder. We had to walk in our horses and cattle; the distance was twenty miles. Thus we were back to the modus operandi of forty years before. We were fortunate enough in that we had two light aeroplanes at our disposal, which were used mainly for the transportation of people, mail and small parcels. Perhaps the most important thing about the planes, was that we could get sick or injured men to a hospital quickly. For transportation of equipment, food and fodder, we used rented ten-seater Beaver aircraft. I could go up from Ottawa with the Beaver in the morning, work around St. Patrick's all day, and return at night. While I was busy in the bush, the plane would make as many as twenty trips from Cathill Lake, at the Schyan, to St. Patrick's, with equipment and food.

The St. Patrick's Lake log drive was a long, tough proposition. We had great difficulties obtaining sufficient water from the Quebec Streams Association, as the water was being jealously guarded for the Pembroke Electric Company. The result was that the log drive would arrive at the upper end of the Black River very late in the season, and since the Black is a very tortuous difficult stream to drive, arriving there late put an impossible pressure on the job. We struggled with this situation, and when we finally found that we would not be able to strike a bargain for stumpage on the north side of the lake, we were quite happy to bid Lake St. Patrick goodbye. The working conditions had not been too bad, but once winter set in there was no communication with the outside world except for the two light planes. Some of the important positive factors were that the quality of pine was excellent, and it gave us an extra nine million FBM to add to the depleted Black River stands. The following year we built a sawmill at Bob's Lake (named after my son), which was just south of Lake St. Patrick.

One of the significant factors about the whole Coulonge operation lay in the Government regulations for cutting. In the pine we were allowed to cut only trees with a diameter of thirteen inches or more at the first saw-cut. In other words if we felled a tree that was twelve and three-quarters inches or less in diameter, there was an automatic penalty of ten dollars a tree. It was a costly penalty, but an effective one. The Government cut-controller marked the undersized stump with a special red chalk mark. and made out an infraction slip for ten dollars. The result was that log makers, jobbers and sub-jobbers were careful not to cut undersized trees. Any tops of trees that would yield a twelve-foot pine log six inches in diameter at the top, had to be put on the pile. If this was not done, there was an infraction charge of three dollars. There was an inclination on the part of most people to leave those “tops” in the bush, as they were usually quite branchy, and there was considerable work trimming them. The guilty cutting gang was given two weeks to clean up their tops and pile them on skidways. In white spruce, the minimum stump diameter was ten inches, with the top regulation similar to pine. For black or swamp spruce and balsam, the regulation was five inches. These rules worked out splendidly until the advent of the huge wood harvesters. When they came along small growth was destroyed.

Within fifteen years of the time that we had finished cutting at the Schyan, the pine stands were better than those that we had been cutting there in 1946. It was amazing how quickly the smaller trees grew when the larger, older ones had been cleared out, thus giving them an opportunity to come along. One could readily notice the increase in the size of the annual growth rings. One hears a great deal about reforestation; it is my strong conviction that the main scourges of our bush lands are forest fires and insects.

In 1951, we found ourselves in a rather compromising position. We were permitted to cut more than two and a half million FBM of pine logs, and twenty thousand cords of pulpwood at Stubb's Lake. This lake was on the west side of the Coulonge River, and the banks were high and very steep for a considerable distance. We had no difficulty handling the pulpwood, as it only had to be hauled to the river, and water-driven to the Ottawa. The pine however, could not be delivered to our Jim's Lake mill, since we could not get across the river, and they had to be driven down the river with the pulpwood. We eventually sold the saw-logs to Gillies Bros. at Braeside. It was obvious that we needed a proper mill at the mouth of the Coulonge. James Davidson and Sons Limited had a sawmill there. At that time they were neither operating the mill nor the limit. The latter had no attraction to us, as the pine had all been cut. We eventually purchased the whole parcel for a reasonable price.

The Davidson sawmill was built about 1910, and while it was old in years, it was a very practical unit. We realized that we would have quite a refurbishing job to do, but were confident that it would not be too expensive. It was a huge building, and had more wheels, belts, pulleys, etc., under the mill than one might imagine could be found anywhere. On the main floor was the usual machinery to be found at a stationary sawmill. It was powered by three boilers, which could generate five hundred horse-power, and had a brick engine-room between the boiler-house and the sawmill proper. The largest flywheel I've ever seen was there, thirteen and a half feet in diameter. One day some years later, the governor refused to function and the wheel catapulted through the brick wall, destroying the whole end of the building. it was a miracle that no-one was injured.

It was brought to our attention that, after the many decades of driving saw-logs down the Ottawa and Coulonge Rivers, the sunken logs at the sorting and booming sites probably covered the floor of the river. In other words, there were millions of feet of lumber on the river bottom. We discussed the matter with the boom company and made arrangements to purchase these logs from the companies involved. The income from the stumpage was to be paid to the original owners and the ownership could be established from the hammer and bark-marks on them. We then hired skin-divers and gave them a contract to bring up the logs from the bottom of the river. This began in a very promising manner, as they were not too difficult to raise and pile on the shore, and since the price was right, we began to think that we had something going for us. We left them on skidways on shore for three months for drying. When we began sawing, we were shocked to find that many of the logs were full of "shake" and furthermore, infinitesimally small grains of sand had worked their way into the structure of the wood itself. They could not be seen by the naked eye, but when we began sawing, they mined our saws, making it a losing proposition. We had operated on a similar situated on the Eagle River ten years before, and it had been successful. The only difference was that the logs on the Eagle River bed had only been there a few years, but on the Coulonge, the logs had been there for several decades.

River Drives

Half the pulpwood east of the Rockies moves to mills by water, mainly through creeks, lakes and rivers. Each watershed presents its own particular problems: fast water, falls, rapids and lakes must be navigated. Hydro power dams must be by-passed: some of the routes are quite tortuous. The Black River, where we drove logs for several years, is a good example of a tortuous streams, sometimes running many miles to cover only one or two miles southward where the general direction would take it. The number of logs a stream can handle is determined by its size and by the volume of water during the spring thaw. By building dams along the course of several small streams, it is possible to store extra water, thus enabling them to carry large quantities of wood. In addition. flumes and sluices can be built to carry the logs past a difficult section. With various river-bank and river-bed changes, the driving conditions can be improved to prevent the beaching of wood on the shores. On lakes and large rivers where the natural flow is very small, booms are employed to direct the logs along, or even to tow them. Such booms are made of large logs tied together end to end with chains, to form a loop.

The true drive experts were the men who learned to use the available water with skill and care, the men who could work quickly and accurately to find the “key” log in a jam, who knew the proper use of dynamite and of driving water. The use of drive water must be governed by the proper disbursement of extra water from reserve dams. An expert could size up the water flow at the tail of a sweep, and accurately gauge how many dam drops it would take to raise the water at the tail of the sweep by a given amount for the required number of hours. It was a developed art, and was properly recognized as such. The sticking of a river drive can cost thousands of dollars. I was brought up in the old days when the management of the drive was emphasized. It was a delight to watch experienced river drivers go to work, determine the key log or logs in a jam, and almost immediately open up the whole jam. I remember one man in particular, Laurent Menard from Maniwaki, who had great ability for this phase of the drive. It was a very hazardous job but I never saw either death or injury resulting from it. They were all very quick of foot and had good reflexes.

For sizable jams, dynamite became important. It was seldom used in shallow water as it only resulted in destroying valuable timber; it was used as a last resort. Today, as soon as the smallest jams begin to form, the foreman often calls for the dynamite, and the destruction begins. It has become a significant cost in bush operations now.

The woodlands manager had to be a very experienced bush-man. He had a minimum of paper work and thus had the necessary time to oversee properly the actual working of the cut, the log haul and drive. He had a close personal association with his superintendents, foremen, and even with the loggers themselves. My father was a great bush-man and river driver. I was present on several occasions when he had to take quick direct action. I recall one spring on the Silver Lake drive, we went up to see how the drive was progressing. On the way we met the foreman and all his crew on their way back to Maniwaki, because they said that they had run out of driving water; that is, they had used up all the water from the storage dams and the drive was hung up. We all went back, and father took control himself. He had them build several “brush dams", and raised enough water to take out the drive.

My first two springs in the bush were spent on log drives as drive clerk on the Tomasine River. The position was not a pleasant one. The weather was cold and wet, we slept in tents, with mattresses or sleeping bags; the only softness was from the cut cedar boughs that we put on the ground. Rain during the season was a curse for all of us, with wet clothing all the time that took a long time to dry out. In my opinion, of all the miseries of those old bush clays the worst was continual rain. It was said that many old drivers developed rheumatism from the cold water and suffered for the rest of their days.

My clerking job was not an onerous one, in fact there was very little to do. I was time-keeper for ninety men. I therefore became the chore-boy for the cook and the foreman. There were twelve portages on the Tomasine drive. The cookery, stoves, machinery and supplies all had to be moved over the rapids and falls of the Desert River, to be set up again within easy reach of the crew. Six of the rapids could be “run” with all material on six-oared drive boats. On other portages it was necessary to use horses and wagons to carry the supplies around the fast water. When the time for a move came, great preparations had to be made. The sleep tent had to be set up at a new site, food had to be prepared. bread baked, beans had to be readied to bake in the hot sand, meat and potatoes cooked. and cakes and pies made.

In the spring, normally-small streams that barely wet the sand during the dry season became raging torrents. This unleashed power can be harnessed. The continuance of the extra run of water is aided by the fact that the streams are surrounded by trees that tend to hoard the snow and delay the melting. Dam building at the outlets of small lakes, and elsewhere along the course of the streams, doubles the length of time that one can use the flow, and large logs can be carried easily on the bosom of the swollen creek.

I have a particular reason to remember log drives. We were busy on the Black River in 1951 when the logs had all been cut on Lake St. Patrick and the drive was late. We had about eighty men in two groups at work. One group was along the river, and one was on the sweep itself. This river is a very tortuous stream and difficult to drive. We had to keep the water “up” and to watch for and avoid jams. The men along the river were spaced and posted in sites where a jam might be expected. We had trip booms at many points in an effort to prevent the potential jam from building too much. The men at these places were expected to close the boom as soon as the jam began, to give us a chance to get a crew to the site to clear it. The “watchers” had to be vigilant and dependable, otherwise the cost could be high and the danger to the men, great.

When we arrived at the mouth of Black Creek at the rapids the watcher was nowhere in sight. We tried to close the trip boom but did not succeed so we had to drive ten miles up river for the sweep gang and return as quickly as possible. This took a couple of hours, and by the time that we got back, the jam had become much larger. We got the gang to work, and after about an hour, the jam began to break up and all hands ran for shore. I was wearing rubber gumboots and not "the proper driving boots, and in the wild rush I slipped and fell into the river. By this time the jam was moving and I disappeared under it. I suppose I was under it for only a matter of seconds, but to me it seemed much longer. I went over the rapids under the logs, and miraculously the section over me lodged in a side jam and remained there. I was completely enveloped in logs.

An Indian chap, Edwin Johnson, got to me first and got my head above water for a few seconds and then he lost his balance and fell in. By this time the whole crew was there and began to extricate us using peavies and cant-hooks to clear a way. All I had as a result was a very bruised body that took me some time to recover from. Everyone, including myself, had thought that I was going to drown. My thoughts while under water were very curious ones, wondering whether my will was properly set up, and what a fool I was to die in the prime of life. I did make a solemn vow then and there that any drive directing that I did would be from a high river bank.

We had to make certain that we did not leave even one log that could be swept into the river. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, any log that was left was useless, even by the time the next drive went through. There seems to be a theory that even pulpwood can be left on the bank for a year without suffering any damage. Nobody can convince me of that. Pulp, like pine, will be full of worms and the fibre will be ruined. With pine logs the insect damage can be readily seen when the log comes to the ladder at the sawmill.

We had an experience with our 1964 Coulonge drive. There was not enough water due to a very dry spring and insufficient reserve dams, so that when the logs arrived at Ragged Chute we were out of drive water and we had to abandon many logs there. When we got most of the logs to the Davidson mill, we returned to the Chute with spraying equipment and sprayed the logs well. We put tractors to work and succeeded in floating more than seven thousand large logs as well as a quantity of pulp. At another time I sent a man to do a dozen spot checks along the course of the river to count the number of old logs still in the river. His survey was very sketchy but he found almost three hundred old and rotten logs on the banks. It is a sad thing to see such waste.

The Maniwaki Story

Maniwaki is a small town 150 km north of Canada's Capital. It was the terminal of all transportation routes leading to the north country. The Canadian Pacific Railway line ended there, and the highways to the north also ended there until about 40 years ago, when the highway to Grand Remous was extended to join the expressway from Montreal through the Abitibi country, and on to the Ontario border. At the confluence of two large rivers, the Gatineau and the Desert River and at the crossroads of a network from all directions, Maniwaki was the operating hub of everything in the district and was at the centre of tremendous water power. It had unlimited quantities of pulpwood, hardwood and pine timber, and there was to be found game of every description: beaver, otter, marten, mink, fisher, bear, moose, wolves and deer. It was surrounded by countless small rivers and lakes, the latter varying in size from very small to very large, some stretching 50-75 km in length.

The name Maniwaki is Algonquin for Maryland and first appeared on the map about 1845, although it was a Hudson's Bay Co. trading post before that. This property later became the farms of the McSheffrey brothers, Stephen and Emmanuel. The first individual to open a general store in the village was John Baches. From 1850 to about the tum of the century there were two merchants, Baches, and Charles Logue, although the latter continued in business until 1927, Foster Bennett established a general store in Rivière Désert (the neighbouring village) in 1893, and personally continued to operate it for fifty years.

Mr. Logue had three stores from which he served the whole community and the surrounding countryside. The Logue family was the most prominent and the wealthiest in the region. Charles Sr. was twice married and with his first wife, a Kennedy, he had one son. J. P. Logue. Following the death of his first wife, he married a Hendricks girl with whom he had a son and three daughters. Charles Sr. built a lovely stone house (ed. note: now being restored) on the banks of the Gatineau River near the mouth of the Desert. They employed a full staff of servants: a housekeeper and cook, upstairs and downstairs maids, a chore-boy, a coachman and a stableman for their fine driving horses. This wasn't too bad for the time and in a village where no one else even had indoor plumbing.

The Logues had a model farm on the other side of the river in Deleage and employed twenty-five people there during the busy season. Jerry Lawless was the farm manager for many years. The Logues owned timber limits on the upper part of the Lower Gatineau, as well as limits on Thirty-one Mile Lake. Politically, Charles was a prominent Tory, and during the latter part of Sir John A. MacDonald's tenure of office, Mr. Logue handled all the county's patronage. He was often referred to as “the King of the Gatineau.“

Foster Bennett was the first general merchant in the district to personally complete fifty years of store operation. Mr. Bennett took great pride in his huge, diversified stock of merchandise. One could purchase anything there, “from a needle to a ton of coal“; he even employed a milliner for several years. He took great pride in cleanliness and orderliness. A clerk who was guilty of slovenliness would be quickly dismissed. One gets the impression from this description of the Bennett premises, that the other local stores were untidy; not so, they were all first-class well-kept stores, but the Foster Bennett store was a very special one.

Sometime later came other important stores: Anastase and Arthur Roy, Cavanaugh Bros., Donovan Bros., M. Joanis and Fils, J. O. Hubert Ltée, and J. H. Poirier. All of those stores made their own special mark on the community. The only competition that they all had was the T. Eaton Co. mail-order business.

I was born in Maniwaki, or rather, in that part of the village known then as Rivière Désert, in 1901. Our family returned to Ottawa to live in 1908 although we used to come back to Maniwaki during the summers. I came back to stay in 1923 when I returned to work in the bush. Maniwaki proper then had a population of about six hundred people and was predominantly French-speaking with a spattering of Irish. There was one doctor, one lawyer, one shoemaker, one baker, in fact one of everything. Rivière Désert village had a population of about five hundred, and was mostly Anglophone and Protestant. There were two churches, a Presbyterian and an Anglican. The few Catholics in the village used the church a mile away in Maniwaki. The two lumber companies were based in Rivière Désert and most of the inhabitants worked for them. My father was manager (then called the "agent"} for W. C. Edwards Co., and Mr. J. Quaile was manager for Gilmour and Hughson Co.

Social life in such small villages was not very active. Working hours were so long, seven am. to six pm. However there were four regular places where everyone could meet from time to time. These were at the post office at mail time: at the railway station when the train arrived from Ottawa; at the steps of the church after Sunday service; and in winter, at the hockey rink. There was great rivalry between the two villages in sports, hockey and baseball. They also combined under the Maniwaki name to play other valley towns and teams from Ottawa. There was a good baseball field, and fairgrounds, and even as far back as 1907, a good indoor rink. The quality of hockey played during those years was very high. It is a notable fact that Billie and Suddie Gilmour had both played for the Ottawa Silver Seven, the world's champions for the day. In fact Maniwaki won the Championship for the Gatineau, beating Shawville, Pontiac champions, and then went on to meet the Brockville Magedomas, who were the champions of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Districts.

The town always had a good baseball team which included Peter Pigeon, a standout pitcher. In 1914 Maniwaki won the Upper Gatineau championship and played off with Kirks Ferry who had won the Lower Gatineau title. It was strictly a summer pastime, and many members of both teams were from Ottawa, people who were up in the country for the summer. The zenith of the Maniwaki baseball story came at the end of the 1914 season, when an all-star team was chosen from both Gatineau leagues and they had a playoff game with the City League champions at the old University of Ottawa oval, with the Gatineau team winning.

Each village had a post office. These were political appointments. The Maniwaki office was operated for many years by Notary Lacoursière; that at Rivière Désert seemed to change hands after every Government defeat. When the Liberals were in, Jack Donovan was postmaster, and when the Tories were in, Bill Ardies had the job, and operated it from his shoemaker’s shop. It was no fun ducking the horse collars when you were collecting the mail.

The town was noted for its many hotels, and for years it was “dry” due to the proximity to the Indian Reservation. Most of the hotels sold hard liquor illegally and were bothered very little by the authorities. A couple of good hotels catered to the travelling public with clean rooms and excellent food.

Virtually all travelling was done by train; the highways were poor, and there were very few cars. Two trains a day in and out. and three on Saturday, with only one on Sunday, provided a very good service. The daily morning train left Ottawa at 9 a.m. and arrived at Maniwaki at 1 p.m., then left for Ottawa again at 2 p.m. arriving back at 6 p.m. Every train carried freight and mail as well as passengers. The trip took four hours to go 85 miles; of course there were twenty-nine stops, including one at Patterson's cow crossing. These trips were legendary, and so were the crews. There was often one long party. Many a business deal was consummated aboard that train. The parties were often very boisterous whether the passengers were white collar or were lumberjacks. Quite often the train crews joined in. Meeting the train every evening was the big event of the day.

In writing about Maniwaki I think that I would be remiss in my duty if I failed to say a few words about the picturesque places which had a direct bearing on the life in the district. The first one that I would think of is the Sixes Farm which was located about thirteen miles south of the town. It was an Edwards Co. farm, and when the Company sold their timber holdings and sawmills in 1918, John A. Cameron, a major shareholder, reserved the farm for his personal use. His family continued to operate it until 1945, long after he died. The setting was just beautiful, on the Gatineau River just at the Sixes Rapids. It was a large rambling house with a screened verandah surrounding it. There were six bedrooms, a lovely large dining room, and a library. It was claimed that there were three thousand volumes in it, and it was always a worry lest the floor would not be strong enough to hold them. It was just a beautiful place to stay. I spent a great deal of time as a youngster at the Sixes Farm.

The farm, which covered about fifteen hundred acres, was largely forest, with only one hundred and fifty acres cultivated. In the summer season they employed forty or fifty people. John Roddick was the farm manager and a brother of Sir Thomas Roddick, who was the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at McGi1l University. John was an intellectual, and an avid reader. My father and he were good friends. The superintendent was Jim Thomas, and the housekeeper-cook was Miss Anna McArthur. In addition to the farm, there was a post office, with Mr. Roddick as post-master, a general store, a large warehouse and store-houses for the Edwards’ bush operations, as well as the usual farm buildings. Mr Edward Hamel was the farm foreman who supervised the pedigree stock: cattle, horses, sheep and swine. These were shown at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto and the Central Canada Exhibition in Ottawa. They won many ribbons and cups.

Four miles away, on the east side of the Gatineau River and on picturesque Roddick Lake, was the Gold Note Stock Farm, owned and operated by Mr. T. C. Bate of Ottawa. He bred and raised both running and jumping thoroughbred horses. Across the Gatineau from the Sixes Farm was also the Northfield Farm. It was owned by the Hastey family. Before the railway was built the Hastey family ran the horse-drawn stages from Ottawa to Maniwaki, and the farm was an overnight stopping place for the stage. Northfield itself was a small hamlet and farming settlement of people from Northern Ireland.

Glossary

Bachanole:	A sleigh-like implement used to harvest small pulpwood logs.
Birch die-back:	A disease that affected much of the yellow birch in this area resulting in death of the tree.
Broad axe:	A short-handled axe with a twelve-inch blade that is bevelled on one side like a chisel and was used for squaring timber.
Broomage :	The six inches allowed on logs for damage in transportation.
Buck:	To saw fallen trees into lengths
Bull rope:	A line attached at each end of a log with a hook to draw the log up onto the skidway pile.
Bush-ranger	The man who scouts a bush area to estimate the timber available. Often responsible for choosing the site of a camp. Bush-cruiser.
C. I. P.:	Canadian International Paper Co.
Cant-hook:	A tool with a three- or four-foot wooden handle fitted with a swinging hook and an iron tooth. Similar to a peavey. but of an earlier design.
Chickadee:	The person who cleans the winter roads of debris and horse manure. Road-monkey.
Cookee:	Assistant cook.
Crazy wheel:	A patented Barienger brake which is anchored at the top of a hill and with an endless cable running through a set of wheels and friction clamp. It was hitched to a sleigh to brake its speed going down a hill with a load of logs.
Cut:	A season's log Production.
Decking lines:	Chain run through a block and tackle with a hook at one end so that a horse can haul the log onto a skidway.
Draught chain:	Hauling chains.
Drivable water:	A stream or river that is suitable for log driving.
FBM:	Foot board measure. A method of expressing a quantity of lumber.
Jam:	A jam was caused when logs snagged and piled up on river drive. Often requiring to be pried or dynamited loose.
Jammer;	Block and tackle on a twenty-foot A-frame used to hoist logs.
Jobber:	A contractor who cut trees with his crew of men for a logging company.
Keep-over:	A simple building in which to store supplies over the summer.
Kerf:	The slit in a log or tree caused by the saw.
Limit:	A specified area, with known boundaries, in which a company may run logging operations.
Linn tractor:	One type of steam driven tractor first used in the bush in the 1920's.
Log-haul:	Hauling logs from the skidways in the bush to the banks of lakes or rivers.
Mackinaw:	Heavy woollen cloth used for shirts, jackets, and pants; first made by the Hudson's Bay Co. in 1912. Often the term used for the jacket itself.
Peavey:	A tool used for rolling logs with a swinging hook. See cant-hook.
Pike pole:	Twelve to sixteen-foot pole, with a pike or a gaff on the end, for prodding logs in the Water. A shorter four-foot version for handling pulpwood was called a picaroon.
Pine corner:	Small area that is isolated and rough, where previous lumbering activities could not be carried out because of the difficulty of operating there. Corner, also used to refer to other species.
Pointer:	A light, sharp-ended rowboat used on river drives.
Road-monkey	See chickadee.
Roller:	The man who end-stamps the logs for identification, and piles them onto skidways.
Sawyer:	The person who either operates the saw in a mill, or uses a cross-cut saw in the bush.
Scaler:	The man who measures, for the government or the company, the volume of wood cut.
Shake:	The condition of break-down of wood at the tops of tall trees, apparently the result of waving in heavy winds.
Skidder:	Machine or tractor that enters the bush to cut, limb, and pile wood. Trade name: timber jack.
Skidway:	Logs piled beside the main haul-road during the eastern cutting season to await the log-haul.
Stumpage:	The expression used when an area of forest that is rented for cutting of trees, reckoned at $ X per stump.
Swamper:	An unskilled lumber-jack, who cuts or swamps hauling roads or skidding trails.
Sweep:	To follow a log drive downstream to salvage logs snagged on the banks after the main drive had passed.
Tanking:	Spraying water on the road to give it a smooth icy surface.
Teamster:	He who drives horses.
Tote road:	Rough bush trail for portaging supplies to camp.
Van:	Rudimentary store, which dispenses clothing, tobacco, and odds and ends to men in the camp; from an Algonquin word, ‘wangan', for container of odds and ends. On river drives, the wangan boat was the cook boat. hence, ‘vangoods'.

---

Volume 15 table of content.

Return to List of articles