Lumbering in the Parry Sound Area - Part 2 "Tools of the Trade" Continued
...There were some who were better at driving teams of horses, those who excelled at cutting solo or with another, and those who were relegated to the task of cutting trails and roads. With the advent of the tractor and electric chainsaw in the mid twentieth century the job of the lumberjack changed radically.
The felled logs were collected into piles called skidways, pulled there by a team of horses. There were several ways of stacking the logs on the skids. In the early day, two men, "senders" using "canthooks", would roll the logs up a pair of poles. A "decking line" was the next advancement in ways of piling. A horse pulled a chain that encircled a log, rolling it up onto the pile. In the later days of horse logging, an A-frame "jammer" was used. This was a sort of derrick that hoisted logs aboard a sleigh, using a cable pulled by horses.
In the Parry Sound area, there were many types of trees harvested. Pine was the most sought after, but hemlock, spruce, balsam, cedar, tamarack, maple, birch, aspen, beech, red oak and cherry were also cut, to be used for different purposes.