The
Roadbuilding
logger
....“You
give any boy a pile of sand and a toy dump truck when he’s
three or four years old and he’ll play with it. I suspect
that I’m still playing with toys, only now they cost
half a million dollars – and I can build real roads.
Hell, there’s very few people in the world who enjoy
their work as much as I do!”
....That is the simple credo
of Delmore |
Pratt, resident
at this time at the Wes-tern Forest Products logging camp
of Holberg on the north end of Vancouver Island.
....I’ve known Del for
20 years and felt his work and his thoughts about affairs
in this forest around us might be as interesting to you as
they have been to me.
....First off, he’s an
enthusiast, and knows his subject – building roads and
bridges. And teaching the newcomers – and, yes, a few
oldtimers – how to do the job the right way. He has
very definite ideas about all subjects to do with the logging
industry on the coast of British Columbia.
....“If we are going to
be the highest paid woodworkers in the world then we’ve
got to be the best producing woodworkers in the world!”
....For the past 30 years Del
has been employed by Western Forest Products or its predecessor,
Rayonier Canada. He learned his trade first as a foot logger
at Gordon River, and after a few years got into road-building
as a bulldozer operator at the same camp. He liked the woods
and fit into any amount of jobs.
....“I always thought that
working in any logging camp was a privilege.”
....Today Del is road foreman
at the Holberg operation of WPF and his duties include building
32 to 37 kilo-meters of road a year, constructing some pretty
lengthy bridge spans on three major river systems, and supervising
a crew of owner-operator, contractor, company employees totaling
about 30. The operation produces about 225,000 cubic metres
of hemlock, cedar, spruce and balsam a year.
....“Culverts and ditches
– ditches and culverts – that’s the guts
and feathers of road-building up here. And we never forget
it!”
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drill,
or backhoe operators who only know hoes. They have never run
a spread Cat or backed a gravel truck up a thousand feet of
steep hill. ‘Cause if they did, they would bloody well
build more turnouts!”
....After about 10 years of working
at Gordon River, Del became itchy to get into the IWA and
do some things he felt |
| needed doing.
He asked for and recei-ved leave of absence from his employ-ers
and served on the Duncan Local 1-80, then presided over by
Weldon Jubenville.“I had a couple of axes to grind with
the industry and I figured the best way to get it off my chest
was to dive right in.”
....And dive in he did. A vacancy
in the IWA Regional Council No. 1 came up and Del was appointed
as second vice- president of that council. Jack Moore was
president and their union territory stretched from the Pacific
to Manitoba.
He was determined the loggers should have travel time.
....“To be gone logging
for 12 hours to get eight hours pay just didn’t make
sense to me!”
....He helped negotiate the first
travel time agreement with the industry – as represented
by Forest Industrial Rela-tions and as he says, opened the
door to today’s travel time pay.
....Fred Fieber, who was the
secretary of the regional council, and Del went to work on
an apprenticeship program for the logging industry. They went
to FIR who were receptive to the program.
....“John Billings, Keith
Bennett and Wally Cook could see the writing on the wall and
they, like we, knew that the old type handyman – blacksmith
– mechanic had to be upgraded if the industry was going
to keep on bringing in this modern heavy duty equipment.”
....They had to start from scratch
with little to base their ideas on except common sense. The
two parties would agree on an approach and then take it to
the provincial Department of Labor’s apprenticeship
branch. That was where the heavy going took place.
....They hadn’t known,
for instance, that a welder was not regarded as a tradesman,
but rather as a skill. Coming up with the raise in pay for
all the trades was well fought out.
They agreed on
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....The
area of operations stretches for 80 kilometres across the
island and has two distinct types of road-building. One, the
large flat valleys have no rock for ballast, but deep overburden
and saturated soil. Here you may have to haul quarried rock
five or six kilometers. It’s expensive.
....The side hills – up
to about 600 metres – are a different story. Cats and
drills and backhoes. There’s lots of rock, mostly quite
workable, and Del makes sure there is always a good mix in
his road-building program. That is, some action in the valleys
and some on the hills.
....We visited the logging site
of he Cox Logging Co. at Koprino Harbour. Here it was broken
up ground – constant rock drilling – and teams
of backhoes, wagon drills and bulldozers pushing the logging
roads through some very difficult terrain. The Cox Company
does the logging and hauling and Del’s crew look after
the road-building. Loads of logs from this operation are dumped
into the salt water of Quatsino Sound at WFP’s Koprino
dump.
....As we started back from Koprino
in his pickup, I asked Del if road crews had changed much
with the advent of so many new ways to build road. As it was
for the entire day that we traveled about the large logging
claim, his radio was constantly full of various messages and
logger talk.
....“The type of man hasn’t
changed, but what has changed is the fact that we are not
giving road crews all around training anymore. This is because
of the owner-operator or contractor who stays on his own machine,
be it a Cat or a hoe or whatever. I see too many specialized
people on the road gangs, like drillers, who have never done
anything else but
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