Lumbering in the Parry Sound Area - Part 3 "Operations" Continued
...In spring, once the break-up occurred, the logs, piled neatly on the riverbank, were pushed into the water to commence their journey to the mills. Logs would float down the rivers, coaxed along by the river drivers. Drivers had two particular jobs - to keep the logs moving, and to push those that became stranded on the riverbanks along the way back into the current. Pike poles and peaveys were used by the river drivers to keep the logs afloat.
Where the rivers connected to lakes, the current of the water naturally slowed, or stopped. In order to get the logs from one side of the lake to the other where it would continue its journey, the logs were collected in booms. Booms were logs chained together to form a sort of "necklace"; logs were collected inside the chain, and the ends of the boom were pulled, dragging the whole apparatus, with the logs gathered within, to the other end. Originally, horses turning a raft-mounted caps tan were used to pull the booms. In later years, steam-powered boats called "alligators" were used. The name of these boats came from the fact that they were designed to travel both on water and land. This way, the boats could be used on more than one lake - all they had to do was portage to the next.
Getting a drive of logs all the way to the sawmill depended on a continuous flow of water. The lumbermen kept the water as high as possible by building dams, and when the water started to lower, they would set times during the day when water behind the dams would be let out, to get the current, and the logs, moving again.
When the logs had reached their destination, which was usually the mouth of the river system, they had to be separated. Several companies used the same rivers to move their logs, and the logs had to be sent to the proper mill. Logs were identified by a stamp. Each company would have its own mark, which was cast in reverse on an iron hammer, and as the company took down a tree, it was stamped. At the mouth of a river, lumbermen on an apparatus called a sorting jack would collect logs from the individual companies, and send down the logs belonging to each of the mills.
If the sawmill was at the mouth of the river, the separating would simply direct the logs to the mill. However, if the logs had been sent down a river entering Georgian Bay, a distance from the mill, the logs of each mill would be gathered again in booms, and then transported to the individual mills.
At the mills, the logs were processed. Each log was placed on a carriage, operated by pulleys and cables, which carried it endwise into a saw which sliced it into lumber. The leftover wood, or trimmings, of which there was an abundance, in addition to fueling the fires of steam boilers, was used to build up the ground around the mill, and to make wharves for boats to dock. When all the building up that could be done was done, burners were built to eliminate slabs and sawdust. These were not the days of environmental responsibility.
Processed wood was piled by the docks to dry, then transported by boat to markets. Space was at a premium on the docks, and when the stacks would get to a certain height, a second story tramway would be built, so the stacking could continue upwards.
Ships would come from all over the Great Lakes to collect the dressed lumber. Ships from Owen Sound were numerous, as well as ships from Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Toronto, and many other locations. In later years, as the rail system grew, trains were also used to transport lumber and sawlogs.