Lumbering in the Parry Sound Area - Part 4 "The Life of the Lumberjack" Continued
...Log camps , designed to last about five years, were erected before the arrival of the lumbermen. There were one or two sleeping camps , plus stables for the horses, a kitchen for cooking food, a room for eating, and a blacksmith shop. Camps were designed to house anywhere up to 125 men.
There were many different jobs for men who were working in a lumber camp: loggers, fellers (or axemen) who chopped down trees with axes; toploaders who loaded the logs onto the skids; rollers, who rolled the logs up the piled skids, became "senders" with the advent of the "decking line", became "bull-ropers" with the advent of the "jammer"; sandpipers who would heat sand and lay it down on a part of the ice road that descended a hill; "chickadees", young men who kept the ice roads clear of debris and "gipers", older men preforming the same tasks; "buck beavers" who chopped logs at ground level to clear a path for the haul roads; river drivers who followed the path of the logs as they floated down the rivers; plus of course the horses, an essential part of the logging team.
Young men, as young as 14 years old, sometimes worked for the lumber companies. They mainly worked at cutting trails - brushing out paths over which the teamsters dragged logs from tree stump to skidway. However, boys who showed aptitude quickly graduated to driving teams, and felling trees.
At the camps , there was the blacksmith; the cook and his helpers, the foreman (who would also be found in the bush); and chore boys who tended to the camps when the loggers were out cutting through the days.
When the work in the bush was complete, some of the men found work at the lumber mills.
The pine logging and river driving days ended about 1925. By then the lumbermen had turned their attention to other species of trees, and instead of a few large mills, countless smaller ones took their place. As mechanization took over, the lumber camps became smaller and eventually disappeared as commuting took over. Horse gave way to tractor and trucks by 1950. Although radically changed from earlier times, lumbering continues to be carried on in Parry Sound's constantly renewing forest.
Many, many thanks to Mr. John Macfie, who was instrumental in teaching me about logging days. Mr. Macfie not only has several books from which I gleaned most of my information, but was also kind enough to come into the Library to help me figure out what I needed to know. Mr. Macfie's books, Logging Days, Parry Sound Old Times and several others are available at the Parry Sound Public Library.