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Land, Indigenous peoples, settlers, and today’s communities.

Since time immemorial, Ancestors of the people called K’ómoks today consisting of the Pentlatch, Ieeksan (eye-ick-sun), Sasitla (sa-seet-la), Xa’xe (ha-hey) and Sathloot (sath-loot) people have been the caretakers of this land, which they called the “Land of Plenty.” This Land of Plenty stretched from what is known today as Kelsey Bay in the north, down to Hornby and Denman Island in the south, and included the watershed and estuary of the Puntledge River, also acknowledging that these boundaries and place names are colonial constructs.

The K’ómoks First Nation refer to the lands between the bays of Comox and the Beaufort mountain range as the path between, it was a travel and trade route to the Alberni corridor and a connection to the indigenous communities on the western side of the island.

Land agreements included the 1884 Settlement Act stripped these lands for its caretakers. At the Museum we acknowledge that we are a colonial created institution, and I would like to thank Charlene Everson, Emily Shopland and Violet Williams for guiding the museum in early discussion on what reconciliation could mean for our organization and how we could create actionable steps; in maintaining a positive dialogue with a forward focus, sharing contemporary K’omoks narratives, and incorporating First Nation languages where they felt it appropriate. Their time and guidance helped us gain insight and learn how to best support their voice in our museum’s walls. This is an ongoing process and we have so much more to learn.

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Story • 14 Min read
Forestry

From Might to Mill

Forestry Technology

Learn about the evolution of technology used to bring down these towering old growth trees, taking from might to mill.

Coastal Douglas Fir dominated the Vancouver Island landscape. Its dense forests cling to coastal and lakeside canyons, rising from ravines and river gorges and sprawling across mountainsides and lowlands.

These natural evergreen giants can grow to heights of nearly a hundred meters, making them one of the tallest species of tree, with diameters of up to five and a half meters.

Their tight, strong grain, girth, and straight vertical growth make Douglas Fir a choice option. It provides timber for an array of industries, from shipping to mining to industrial construction.

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Choker cable around log (985.046.018)

Staunchly sprouting from the steep banks of the coast and lakes, many of the forest giants could be felled directly into the water with minimal equipment. As the industry progressed, so did the technology.

Logging equipment evolved from swinging heavy axes for days on end to electric chainsaws that could buzz through trunks in minutes; from dragging a couple of tons of timber behind a yoke of oxen for a week to hauling thousands of tons daily by truck.

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Grant & Mounce sawmill (983.133.008)

Fallers Pick Me

It’s 1891. Back in Ottawa, John Abbot has just been elected Prime Minister of Canada, yet here the sun isn’t quite up yet on this cold, crisp fall day on Vancouver Island.

With your team of two others, a fellow feller and a bucker, the three of you are known in the industry as a 'set', you grab your axe, a crosscut saw, and a pair of springboards and head into the evergreen jungle. Once you’ve trapped through the rough bush to your 'chance'—the section of forest assigned to you by the foreman, usually measuring 100 metres wide by two kilometres long—you’ve finally reached the base of a towering coastal Douglas fir.

You grab your double-bit axe, checking its sharpness with your rough, calloused finger, it’s sharp and proper, ready to do its job. Before the double-bit ax, you’d had to carry multiple axes in with different heads. With immense strength and stamina, you and your fellow faller chop an undercut in a large wedge shape, like a piece of cheese. This gives the tree a direction to fall. It’s time to position the springboards you’ve hauled in. Chiseling out two slots above the swell of the butt, you cut into the thick bark on either side of the tree. Once the boards are securely wedged into position, you and your partner balance on boards set more than eight feet off the ground and position the 16-foot (5-metre) saw. Time for the final stage: the felling cut.

Rhythmically you pull the crosscut saw back and forth. You’re thankful for the cool morning air as this is hard work. Sweat beads off your brow and your shirt clings to your back, each draw bringing you a little closer to calling out those famed words all loggers long to shout…

'TIMBER!'

The bucker takes the lead on this one, removing all the limbs (branches) of the tree with a limbing axe, and, depending on size and weight, slicing the giant trunk into shorter lengths. While he’s doing his job you and your partner tackle another tree and repeat the process over and over, dulling several crosscut saw blades, until it gets too dark to work.

It's another good day in the forest. No 'widowmaker' limbs have fallen, and your team has survived unscathed. It's time to gather tools and face the long hike back out to Camp, where a hot meal awaits you. It may be the same as last night and the night before, but you’re famished and exhausted, ready for food, a beer, and a bed.

The Power of the Saw

Then and Now

Lumberjacks working the forests surrounding Comox Lake used double-bit axes and crosscut saws.

The first chainsaws were initially developed as hand tools to help surgeons in the operating room. Soon after their efficiency in cutting human bone was recognized, other industrial applications, including in forestry, were developed..

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Saw Blade (980.483.001)

The 1920s witnessed the first gas chainsaws being produced.

Operated by two men, they resembled a traditional crosscut saw with an engine strapped to one end. Although they made bucking significantly easier, their unwieldiness initially made them little use to the fallers.

Early chainsaws were temperamental, breaking down regularly. The earliest models weighed a staggering 130 pounds!

By 1936 chainsaws were being widely used in BC coastal operations. The melodic swing and thud of axes on wood was replaced by the roar of power saws echoing across the cut block.

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Electric saw at Comox Logging Co. in Ladysmith (NA-07972)

By 1936 chainsaws were being widely used in BC coastal operations. The melodic swing and thud of axes on wood was replaced by the roar of power saws echoing across the cut block.

Gas saws evolved from the heavy duty two person saws, to lighter, more powerful tools that could be wielded by one person. By 1959 the weight had been reduced to twenty-six pounds.

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chainsaw (995.10.1)

Power-saws increased harvesting operations significantly in BC, driving production levels up. Better efficiency actually decreased employment opportunities as fewer men were needed to do the same job. One man operating a power saw replaced two fallers and a bucker. Many men were shown the door to find employment elsewhere.

Gas saws are much lighter now, weighing a mere 8 pounds. There are battery and electric options depending on the job. Power saws continue to be a key piece of equipment for loggers and remain iconic in the forestry industry today.

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Dominion Dragsaw and Zed Motor (988.16.1-2)

Technology has advanced dramatically, and now, large heavy duty machines are used in some logging operations.

Feller-bunchers were introduced in BC in the 1990s and early 2000s. These enormous machines are capable of cutting, debarking, bucking, and moving a tree all within minutes! A chance that would once have taken a month or more to harvest can now be done in just a day's work, by one man.

However, they are not practical everywhere. Their extreme size makes them impractical and dangerous to use on steep or rough terrain. Hand-falling remains a prominent method of choice in BC coastal logging operations due to the terrain, while Feller-bunchers are more commonly seen in the Interior of BC.

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Drott Feller-Buncher Giesbrecht Logging (H-04513)

Hauling

Back to the forests of the early 1900s. It's time to get these giants to the mill!

In early logging, trees were felled straight into the water and floated to the mill—simple. As high-quality timber became scarce, companies looked inland for trees.

However, hauling it out was a whole new challenge.

An arduous journey awaits…

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Hauling logs by oxen (NA-06524)

Together with your crew, you shackle your logs behind a yoke of fourteen oxen. Five logs is the maximum load the oxen can haul per trip.

Large chains and shackles are used. ‘Chokers’, ropes that tighten with tension, are placed on each log to prevent them from sliding off while hauling. The ‘pigman’, the fella in charge of tying the timbers on, takes the lead. After a lengthy and backbreaking ordeal of attaching the load, it's time to get these beasts moving!

As the oxen march steadily onwards, the skid greaser is frantically at work ahead. Smaller greased logs from species with no commercial value are embedded into the road. It’s a common-practice in the Pacific Northwest. The logs need to be greased so that the timber can slide smoothly over them.

Today it's fish oil. Last week it was animal fat. In the right mix the “skid road” enables the timbers to glide across the greased logs effortlessly. In the heat of summer the smell fills your lungs, the putrid stench of rotting fish hanging in the air.

With your bull puncher stick, you spur the stubborn oxen on. Slowly, the logs start to move, you make it down to the water's edge where the logs can be rolled into the water, sorted by size, and towed down to the mill. Tug boats do the work here.

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Oxen pulling log (985.140.)

The Age of Horsepower

Then and Now.

In the late nineteenth century, oxen were replaced by horses. Horses were smarter, stronger and more nimble animals, increasing the hauling capacity of teams and improving productivity levels. The record for a single-horse-log pull is 73 tonnes. Impressive, considering a single logging truck today carries about 14 tonnes of wood.

With technological advancements sweeping through the forestry industry in the late 19th and early 20th century, methods of hauling timber changed dramatically.

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Horse logging mill with workers at Royston Lumber (987.062.011)

The 'Steam Donkey'- a steam-powered winch—replaced horsepower, significantly improving the efficiency of coastal logging operations in the early 1900s.

Using a cable with a choker on its end, the steam donkey could haul logs faster, cheaper, and more reliably than using animals. Loggers could harvest previously inaccessible trees on steep inclines that would have been impossible to harvest.

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Donkey engine and spar (980.1114)

A "high rigger", also called a "high climber" is responsible for choosing a suitable spar tree at the log depot in Camp. The spar tree is used as the highest anchor point on the job site. The selected tree is chosen based on location and strength as it has to withstand a lot of weight and pressure. Once it is limbed and topped, it is rigged with cables and pulleys. The steam donkey hoists the timber up to the spar tree, and gently lowers it onto a flatbed rail car.

Logging Tongs
tongs, skidding (2010.002.001)

Railways revolutionized transportation. They could transport end to end, straight from the cut block to the mill for processing. By the 1920s, 1100 kilometers of railway tracks had been laid in B.C. Logging operators either built their own network or negotiated an operating lease to use or piggyback on track owned by other carriers. Royston Lumber Mill and Comox Logging and Railway Co. shared tracks with Canadian Collieries (Dunsmuir) Limited.

Laying railroads was expensive and challenging, and as time passed, building logging roads seemed an easy venture in comparison, and was significantly cheaper.

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Crown Zellerbach train on trestle (997.023.002)

In the 1930s pneumatic tires and more powerful truck engines were developed. Trucks became the primary mode of hauling timber. Railway lines were limited by 5% grades and large turning radiuses. Logging truck roads could be built using switchbacks over steeper terrain and could be built on 20% grades.

By the 1950s, a mere sixteen logging railways were left in B.C. By the 1970s, just two. As fast as they roared into the logging industry, they crashed out of it.

Today, logging trucks remain the primary source of haulage for forestry operators, and logging roads are spread extensively throughout BC and across Vancouver Island.

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Logging truck at Royston Mill (2016.065.013)

Sawmills

Felling and hauling are only part of the logging process. Once the trees were delivered to the sawmills, milling these enormous logs was a challenge.

You’ve landed the job as the sawyer. The noise is deafening and sawdust swirls around you. You’re the backbone of this mill, with the quality and quantity of output from each tree resting on your shoulders. Each giant log approaches via a carriage, resting atop it. Shouting to your helper through the roar of the mill you instruct him to roll it so that the less desirable sections of the log are in as few boards as possible.

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Interior of the Trautman & Garraway sawmill at Deep Creek (NA-08839)

In the bigger mills there’s a steam powered mechanism, known as a ‘Simonson Turner’ that can do this, but in our small mill on the outskirts of Union, soon to be Cumberland, it’s done by hand.

After turning the timber into position you start the carriage forward to make the first cut. Just a little bit at first…Returning the carriage to its cutting position for the second cut, known as ‘gigging’ it back, you jump off the cutting platform and inspect the first cut. Perfect, the grain of the timber is fantastic, with a grin, you throw up two fingers to the setterman, indicating two inches, for the thickness of the boards.

This process is repeated on all four sides of the timber, stacking the boards and then periodically turning the log on the carriage until there is a symmetrical central piece of timber left, resembling a long and thick wooden post.

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Mill operation at Royston (987.062.09)

Cutting in Process

Then and Now.

Early nineteenth-century sawmills were basic.

Cheaply built, a single reciprocating blade was used, with the timber moved into place by manpower alone. Most mills provided wood products for local consumption.

The larger mills that did export timber used slightly more advanced technology. Equipped with gang saws and basic ancillary machinery, a large mill could produce 25,000 board feet (7,500 metres) per day, barring complications or work stoppages for retooling/sharpening blades. A drop in the ocean compared to what later mills would produce.

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Clark’s Sawmill at Spruce Creek, Atlin (NA-03893)

As timber demand exploded in the mid-nineteenth century, sawmill technology experienced dramatic and rapid improvements that far outstripped the steps forward in the industry's felling and hauling sector.

By the time Cumberland was emerging, most sawmills in the region were using steam engines to power the sawmills. Steam power increased productivity, and their location was no longer restricted by the need to be next to a large water source.

R. Grant and Company in Cumberland milled pit props for the coal mines and lumber for local housing. It was tough and dangerous work. At its peak, Grant & Company produced 10,000 board feet of lumber per day!

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Georgetown Sawmill (NA-04352)

The large circular saws operated by sawyers and their helpers easily made a square beam from a log. Many more types of saws and machines, like trimmers, edgers, and planers, transformed the square beam into finished products, which were dried inside a kiln.

The saws and other machines that worked in tandem with them needed operators: labourers, engineers, saw filers, blacksmiths and all sorts of workers that contributed to operating, repairing, and maintaining the machines. Managers, timekeepers, foremen and many more made sure the operation ran smoothly.

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Cut-off saw at Royston Sawmill (2011.076.002)

Over the years, innovations piled up to make the sawmills more productive and safer.

Electrical lights made the night shift possible, extending the number of hours of production and making the work safer. In the 1960s and 1970s, circular saws were largely replaced by bandsaws. These were thinner, so less material was wasted at each cut.

With electronics becoming smaller and more affordable in the 1980s, the automation of many parts of the sawmill tasks made the work safer.

Wood Plane
plane, jack (993.040.009)

From Man to Machine, logging altered our natural landscapes, the introduction of technology changed employment opportunities and the workforce irrevocably. Jobs that once took teams of men days, or sometimes even weeks, to achieve in the early years of logging can now be done in a fraction of the time, by an operator and the most recent technology.

Manpower has been replaced by machinery, with much, if not all, of the heavy lifting now being done by feats of engineering workers of the late nineteenth century couldn’t even dream of.

While technology unquestionably improved efficiency of production throughout its year of gradual introduction, it cut working opportunities for many. Less and less men were needed in the industry and although production rates increased, employment in forestry has steadily dwindled in the years since the end of the Second World War in 1945.

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Mr. Tomihiro walking lumber piles at Royston Lumber Co. (2011.076.001)