Chapter 17
Back To The North Country

That fall I went from Lillian's up to Mistatim, where Charlie and Hazel lived, for a day or two visit. On arriving there I learned of a new logging camp being established north of Bannock, that's east of Tisdale. well over towards Hudson Bay Junction. Charlie and Hazel had three small children, Carleen being the oldest, probably eight or nine years old, Lyle and Ray were younger, although Lyle may have started school. Their buildings were very poor and it looked as if they were still having economic problems.

I soon boarded a train for Bannock which was only a siding and box car station. A tractor and wagon train was being loaded with supplies for the logging camp and I, along with a few other job applicants had a ride to the camp about ten miles through the bush. The day I was hired was the 6th of October and I was 29 years old.

An office was one of the first buildings much needed and a small place for a few men to sleep. There probably were not more than ten men working there at this time. If I remember right, the first item of work was to work on what was to be the kitchen and dining room. It was to be T-shaped, the small stem was the kitchen. There were some huge logs, maybe 40 feet long to lay floor on. I also don't remember if the walls were logs or lumber, but I believe they were lumber. This building went up fairly fast. As men arrived, some of them slept there for a week or so. When the dining room was roofed, we immediately started on a sleeping hut. We were to build three of these, each one to accommodate 50 to 60 men. These were built of ginpoles, set on end, a rough board floor and roofed with boards. I believe they were 50 or 60 feet long. They were heated by drum type stoves, two 45 gallon drums welded end to end made a good sized fire pot. Four foot split logs were used for fuel. A couple of saw crews were taken out to a black spruce swamp where the trees were thick and straight. We cut six to eight inch trees by the hundreds. They were eight foot lengths. I hadn't been in camp very many days when a crew was dispatched to dig a root cellar, which was beside the dining hall. I was digging away, looking over the other men in the crew and I thought, gee, I should know that guy. We kept looking at each other and I finally asked "Do you know me?" He said, "Yeh, are you Clarence Truman?" "Well", I said, "I'm sure I've seen you, but where?". He said, "I'm Tony Preiner. I worked for old Man Hodgen." Imagine that, I already had a pal and hadn't been there even a week. Tony was much more used to camp life, having been in similar circumstances before. We spent our spare time and soon made a bargain that we would bunk together when we moved into one of the bunk houses. He had two friends with him from Saskatoon and they worked together on a saw crew when we started sawing big timber for the saw mill. His two friends slept in the top bunk, Tony and I slept below. We had one of the bunks right inside the door, Tony was clean and we tried to keep our area clean, even washing our bedding when we knew we could get it dry in one day. His friends were also clean and very decent kind of fellows.

It seemed to take weeks and weeks to do all the building. Besides the cook and eat shack, the bunk houses, there was still the blacksmith shop, the caterpillar shed and even a small barn. There were no horses used for skidding or hauling, but they were used on the jammers and as cross haul teams. I got to know one of the teamsters that drove a cross haul team. His first name was Bill (McClure). He supervised the building of the jammers and even showed the blacksmith how to make some of the hardware used on the jammer. For those of you who don't know logging jargon, a jammer was a high derrick, built on long logs for stability and strength, and by means of a cable and pulleys, logs were decked as high 8 or 10 feet, maybe higher. It was a long time ago. The jammers were also used to load the big logging sleighs that hauled to the railroad. The logging sleighs were big and hauled in 4 or 5 loads in tandem, pulled by big caterpillar tractors on iced roads. The timber we worked in was green and clean, not fire killed stuff like I worked in north of Big River in 1936-37.

Bill McClure was over 60 years old and I dare say he had a job because he was an experienced man. He drove a big team of white horses which indicates they weren't young either.

The caterpillar shed was a huge building, I believe it was kind of round with two big doors and a place for a big fire in the centre, partitioned off from the tractors which were driven in facing the centre. The building had an attendant, night and day, mostly to take care of the fire. There of course had to be dry wood, a lot of it was tamarack or jack pine, when it could be found. It must have taken a good saw crew to find and cut enough wood to keep the camp going. There were two stoves in each of the three bunk houses, the kitchen stove, the dining hall heater, the blacksmith shop and the caterpillar shed, perhaps a few others, for instance the bosses' bunkhouses. We may have started cutting logs just before Christmas. When the camp was full there were in excess of 150 common laborers, besides teamsters, cat skinners, blacksmith, etc. They had separate premises. The foreman of the camp was a short fellow, by the name of Jack McKay, the stump boss was Bert Lund. I didn't ever get to know McKay that well, but Lund being the timber boss, he more or less was in touch with the saw crews almost every day. He was obviously a Scandinavian. It seems there were five or six saw crews, consisting of four men to a crew. One would wonder where 150 men were kept busy, with saw crews, skid way crews, teamsters, cat skidders, choker men (they put cables on the logs for the skidders), ice road maintenance crew, wood cutters, cook, helper "bull cook" (helped to keep wood for the cook, maybe water too.)

The saw crew that I worked with didn't change that much, and neither did Tony's crew. I really didn't know much about the other crews. Our under cutter's name was Steve Kozak. He was Polish and didn't talk very good English, but he was a good worker and knew his job. I had one change of saw partner, as the first one I sawed with quit and went to ThePas in Manitoba. The young fellow that had been swamping for us whose name was Adam, I don't remember the rest of it, was asked to saw with me and also another swamper was found for us. Adam and I worked together as long as we were both in camp. One day the stump boss, Bert, asked me if we could cut as many logs a day as Tony's crew did. Well, I said, "I don't know, aren't we making enough?" We were cutting 90 to 110 a day. Tony's crew were getting 110 to 120, the other crews were all cutting slightly less. Bert didn't seem anxious to push his luck, as I knew from what Tony had been telling in the evenings that they were working in better timber and it even made sense that the best crew would likely get the best timber to work in. I said carefully, "you give us the same kind of timber to work in as they have and we'll soon see." He never said a word about "How many logs a day can you cut" afterward.

When the saw crews were working steady and all other crews had logs to handle, we all knew where we were to work each day. We left camp in the morning at seven o'clock and unless we had more than a mile to work we were out in the timber, ready to go to work before daylight. Unless we were within a mile of the camp, dinner was brought out to us. We would assemble at some point fairly convenient and eat dinner in a group. If there was a group working a couple miles distant, a separate supply was brought to them. Dinners were hauled out on sleighs with horses. Four to five o'clock in the afternoon was a difficult time of day, and we would be tired, hungry, and in cold weather it wasn't a bit funny. We were warned to time our arrival at Camp not before five o'clock. More than once we would come on to a group a quarter of a mile from camp, just killing time before walking into camp. Eating dinner out in the bush was no picnic when it was 10 to 20 below zero. The dinner was hot on arrival but the beans cooled fast on the edge of a tin plate. So we ate fast and went back to work. Supper was quiet, most everybody was hungry and we ate and went back to our bunk house. It was kind of noisy till 8:30 or 9:00, then a few retired and lights were supposed to be out by lO:OO.

Saturday night was different, as quite a few men would sit up all night and play cards. Thankfully for those who were sleeping, the card players were quiet. Most of us never left camp from the time we went to work until we quit and left for good. But there seemed to be a few coming all the time and just as many leaving. If there were any workers having problems the bosses would move them from one crew to another, and if they couldn't work agreeably they were asked to move on. This was not an every day event. I thought the crew bosses were not unreasonable, the food was good, we were able to stay clean and there was very little sickness all the time I was there. Occasionally someone went out to see a doctor, a few came back, many didn't. Hudson Bay Junction and Tisdale were the nearest points where one could see a doctor.

It took quite a long time to build an ice road ten miles to the Bannock siding. This road had to be wide enough to accommodate sleighs with runners eight feet apart and deep enough to cut grooves for the runners. I'm not sure but I believe once it was in use there was a water tank kept busy, night and day, and it had to be regrooved occasionally as well. They would start hauling soon after the first of January and it would continue well into March. The logs were hauled by rail flat cars to the mill at Crooked River. A spur was laid on the ice when it was strong enough and the logs were unloaded on the ice.

I rather enjoyed working in the timber, it was clean work and the snow didn't get more than knee deep. It took a while to learn what kind of foot wear was most suitable, as my feet were always cold. It was a problem for me to find felt socks large enough. I had endless problems finding footwear large enough, especially for winter, since tight foot wear and cold weather do not go well together. I bought size 12 felt socks and got along quite well. We all tried to dry our footwear at night and you can imagine the variety of sizes of socks that were hung near the stoves at night. One thing we appreciated was the lack of wind. We only noticed wind when walking to or from work on some of the wide roads cut out for traffic. Walking home to camp when it was 20 below zero was the coldest experience of all. Our mitts were damp, and one of the sawers carried a 6 or 7 foot saw and the other carried our axe and wedges. Sometimes the cats that were skidding would be just ahead of us and the exhaust seemed about 12 feet high and just froze there. We knew then it was cold.

I haven't mentioned what the pay was because it was so insignificant it is hardly worth mentioning. I think we were getting $1.25 a day and I can't remember if we were charged for board if we didn't work, for whatever reason. It seems that we were charged board on Sunday at the rate of $1.00 a day. That meant that we worked most of Monday to pay for Sunday board, which leaves one with five days of earning a week. But one must remember this was a time of low employment and we considered ourselves fortunate to not be on welfare.

Early in February I was very tired of camp life, I wanted to go home. I had to think of some scheme to convince the time keeper that I was needed at home. If we quit before the logging job was done we would be expected to settle for "jumpers" wages, I don't know what the discount was but it was too much regardless. So I wrote home to brother Earl and asked him to write me a letter stating that some one at home needed me, and by hook or crook, I got my full pay and headed for home.

I rode the log train to Crooked River and stopped one day at Charlie and Hazel's house. It seems I went to Nipawin to say hello to brother John and loafed there one day. By the time I bought my train ticket home, I doubt if I had more than $50 left. Of course I had bought all my winter work clothes at the camp supply store and I dare say that cost $35 or $40. I'm more or less guessing at the figure but its impossible to compare the cost of clothing in 1939 with today's prices. And so I arrived home at Midale smelling of wood smoke and spruce trees.