File:Canadian forest industries 1911 (1911) (20527707305).jpg

Title: Canadian forest industries 1911
Identifier: canadianforest1911donm (find matches)
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors:
Subjects: Lumbering; Forests and forestry; Forest products; Wood-pulp industry; Wood-using industries
Publisher: Don Mills, Ont. : Southam Business Publications
Contributing Library: Fisher - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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CANADA LUMBERMAN AND WOODWORKER 97 And come they did in a steady pour, for Old Ben was shov- ing 'em in, sending 'em down. A great driver, big Ben Macdonald. Soon a cap of logs covered the Devil's Tooth like a huge beaver house. Every fresh log that landed braced the skidway with its added weight and piled up fresh hold and lodgment for those that followed. Presently the breast was so high that downward was the course of least resistance, and under the overhanging and submerged skid ends great saw logs and square timbers, sweep- ings of the Quinze, which ordinarily swing clear and pitch drunk- enly over the Chute,, now caught, hesitated, and sucked by the pressure of the current, ducked under the skids and locked unseen against the solid rock. The crew gathering back at the bean hole for first lunch, made guesses as to how high she would climb before she grew top- heavy and fell over the falls. Beyond the reach of peavey, pike or bateau, separated by the racing rush of one-third the river's width at closest, the men could only surmise. No speculation, however, took into considedation that peelel pine butt log, or that crossed and interlocked pair of skids. Instead, therefore, of rearing higher, the jam now proceeded to build up-stream. Fresh logs pressed by the river from behind barred by a flush breastwork in front, ranged full length as if spiked, or sank to the rock. And so back along the bottom of the river and high above the current grew a long column of matted logs like a wharfr knitted and tied with traverses, held in place by the overwhelming weight of the Quinze. Round logs and timber poured freely down the split and divided river, but always a proportion of them struck the pier head, swung into place and bound like pins to a magnet. Back, back from the falls all morning it grew, a long, cribbed pier, square-ended to the flow of the current, finding foot- ing perhaps on the reef that out- crops at the pitch of the falls. When the men came crowd- ing back to the "grub pile" again at the noon hour the jam reach- ed back up the left centre of the river for a clear two hundred feet. "Well, Davey boys," said Joe Cassidy that day, as the men ranged, wet and hungry, around the pile of plates and pannikins, "how's the high-bankin'?" "Pretty good," said Davey. A "high-banker" is a man who shrinks from wading, and as Davey was wet past the waist, the question was obviously a jest. "How's the wee peavey?" continued Joe, with his mouth full. "Pretty good," said David, again without expression. "I'd like to borrow that hook of yours this afternoon," said Joe, with mock innocence, "un- less," he added- "you're going to use it yourself." Davey ate and said nothing, while the men laughed. "Dave's haw right," said the cook pork and bean." "Davey's young yet," said Joe, "young and limber Davew agin the champeen flap-jack eater of the world." "He ain't old enough to pack socks," retorted Davey, "or tur- pentine, neither." "You'll git down to it lad—if you stay on the Kah'z," returned Joe, who held rheumatism in wholesome horror. Davey grinned derisively and danced a step on a flat rock, a tea dish in one hand, a chunk of pork in the other. They remem- ber that little step yet when they tell of that day. His calks dug white pocks in the granite. "Min' out yer corks, now," Peter, his brother, had advised him, "You'll need dem dis afternoon." It was heavy,, cloud-darkened early June, and the flies were bad. It threatened rain that afternoon, and if only it rained enough
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Quick as a Flash David Tossed His Peuvy High on the Jam "He's de boy for drive de I'll back the river would rise. Perhaps then the jam would lift, loosen and come away. If it continued to grow like a pier it might get top- heavy with length and fall across the river. In that event the whole drive might hang for a year. The rapids for fifteen miles above were filled with logs. MacKenzie the bow foreman, who never indulged in banter or trivial conversation of any kind, had been eating beans with his knife steadily for three minutes that constituted his meal time. He rose, put his tin plate on the cook's pile, and lit a pipe. Quietly, without tone of authority, he distributed his men for the afternoon. He was afraid the pier would wing out, and block the river if al- lowed to build unchecked. Accordingly Dave Macdonald, Joe Cas- sidy and five others under Peter Macdonald, eldest but one of the brothers, were sent up above to string a boom, and set off over the portage presently, some with axes and rope, some with pike poles and augers, young David in the rear with his beloved peavey. Some boom chains had been left with a bateau at the upper land- ing- .>*;'*' . . Three miles up from the falls the river opens out into an ex- pansion of comparatively slack water. Here at a gravel point sev- eral hundred feet above the head of the rapids, at the narrowest place available, the men under Peter Macdonald's direction pro- ceeded to stretch a boom from bank to bank. It was no light business. A few boom sticks hung up from the green shore boom of the season before were ready to hand but not nearly enough of them to span the channel. Long logs had to be picked from the drive in the river and poled to shore, squared at the ends with an axe, and bored for the chains with a rusty auger. Soon, too, they ran short of boom chains and resort- ed to rope and twisted hay wire. Finally, late in the afternoon,, all material of every sort was ex- hausted save fifty feet of line left for towing. The lower end of the string was snubbed firmly to a pine stump on the green bank and the floating boom was straightened out along the rocks and (frowned cedars of the fore shore. The bateau had been left moored to the end of the por- tage, and the eight men climbed aboard. Snubbing their spare line at the upper end of the boom, they began to pole the boat out into deep water. The long stretch of logs chained end to end swung from the bank like a gate on its hinges. Out from the shore a short distance the men took to the sweeps, and the slight current catching the open- ing angle, the boom closed slow- ly and steadily across the river. Presently, however, it began to bag with the increasing weight of the current and of the running logs which came drifting against it. Gradually it grew harder and harder to move the bateau. Alex. Paulson, Joe Cassidy, the Irish Canadian from Matta- wa; Isadore Bonner, Dave Macdonald, Tom McBride and big Jim Hunter, from Tete du Lac, sat at the oars; Batiste Tremore squatted in the bow, with a pike pole; Peter Macdonald stood in the stern with a paddle. The line from the boom was passed over the sharp overhanging stern of the pointer and hitched to the first bench. It was growing dusk under the western hills, and the moored tail end of the boom was almost indistinguish- able in the shadow. Heading diagonally across and down the current so as to ease the weight of the tow, they gained perhaps three-quarters of the span to the eastern bank. Presently they found that the diagonal course was using up too much of their tether, so they headed now directly for the bank one hundred feet away, and strove to straighten out the slack. But the river had too big a grip. "Give it to her, boys!" cried Peter Macdonald. "Hooraw! Now pull!"

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