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THE FOREST AROUND US

....This month marks my fifteenth year of writing about the forest around us for B.C. Lumberman. I have enjoyed it because I find the industry and the forests – and particularly the people involved – to be very interesting and sometimes fascin-ating.
....Canada is a country that depends on her forests for a good part of her economy – be it in the industry of pulp and paper making, or lumber, or tour-ism. Our forests are our number one bread-winner and the people who work at the varied businesses of those forests have some interesting stories to tell.
....We have an ideal climate for the fibre of softwoods, and all the steel and aluminum and plastic will only keep being a competitor to wood – and never a substitute.
....Our challenge for the future will be to properly look after these great areas of forest land. It will take some doing.
....But now if I may indulge myself (thank you, Ed.) I’d like to look back through the past years and remember some of the places and events – and especially the people that I have written about.
....December, 1970, was about New Year’s resolutions and went on to say “I am sure it’s fair to say the forest industry has come through one of the worst years in the past two decades.”
....Well really all there was in ’70 was falling lumber and plywood prices, a crippling towboat strike, long drawn out labor negotiations in the logging industry, and pulp mill strikes. Actually not a bad year when you think of the past few!
....July of ’71 was a happy event when these pages reported that Premier W.

believe that a great deal more should be done. Remember – Keep B.C. Clean – and Green. Back to the interesting people.
....And one I described in September of ’73 was Sam Parrish, a logging camp cook – short of stature and a bit on the round side. A delightful man of English vintage and from the old school of cookhouse cooks. The stories of Sam are legend and I wrote this one:
....Sam was serving up dinner to 200 loggers in ’26 when after only a few minutes one of the flunkies came running up to Sam wide-eyed and out of breath. He said, “Sam, You Got One!” Sam looked up from dishing the potatoes and said, “Wot you mean – I got One?”
....The flunky, ashen faced, said, “There’s a logger dead with his face in the carrots just a sittin at the table – you got, Sam!” It later turned out that the logger had died from a heart attack. But it became a good Sam Parrish story. A memorable chap.
....Allowable Waste. A term I took as unacceptable to express the fibre waste we leave in our forests. Oh, yes, I was told about the other terms such as “Economically unfeasible” and “but we’re getting better.” But the philo-sophy of waste was with us 10 years ago as it was 50 years ago – and unfortunately as it still is.
....I could go on and on about it. But, I said it in March of ’74 and it still goes, “What we leave behind causes other people in other lands to look upon us as wasteful and fat cats. What we leave behind causes us to be lazy with new ideas and allows our competitors to beat us to the customers’ dollars.”

A.C. Bennett officially proclaimed Log-ging Sports as the “Official Industry Sport of B.C. – Order in Council #712.” And we’ve never looked back.
....It was always fun to start an article with something like: “There are giant iron machines and people in the forest around us – and with apologies to the Great Traktor Company – I prefer the people.” Such a story in ’71 was “and Then There Was Monahan.” A friend to coastal loggers and one of the true great forest industry sales persons of an era of great sales people. We miss that twinkling man, that nice man.
....And we had journeys to forests in Finland, and we sat with production committees there, and we compared life in their woods to ours. Both good. Also in ’72 I reported on a Festival of Forestry trip to the Black Spruce Forests of Quebec with young fores-ters-to-be and some champion loggers. We put on sports demonstrations in Chicoutimi and Place Ville de Marie in Montreal and our eastern Canadians loved the loggers from Colombie Brittanique.
....In mid’73 the topic of debris on B.C.’s beautiful Salt Water Main Street was recorded. That’s our protected water avenue that brings us revenue, year in year out as the tugs and barges and tourist ships and fish boats and every form of water conveyance ply up and down our 600 mile waterway. Some work has been done over the past 10 years to clean up the lower water areas of the Gulf of Georgia, but I

....Jerk-wire whistle punks and a pulp mill town of 1,000 people that vanished (Swanson Bay) were columns in ’74. and we talked about the walking logger becoming rare.(They still are). But, a note to my dear Editor – the magazine was fat, oh great one, and the years were filled with fine fourth quarter reports.
....In January of ’75 I wrote of our logging fatals and accidents – as I have each year and will continue to do. Logging is a hazardous business and anyone who does not understand this meaning should not be in the business. That goes for executives and chokermen.
....We can and someday will teach the workforce that careless moments cause nearly all the sorrow. I believe the only way to better safety is by the dedicated real joint effort of union leaders and management leaders. Not just at the camp level, but up at the top.
....Later, in May of ’75, an article about “Teachers of the Trees” where the Festival of Forestry program for showing school teachers an intensive tour and look in at what is going on in our industry and our forests was described. These tours have now taken in hundreds of teachers and have exposed them to forestry across Canada. The letters of appreciation have been all the thanks wanted, for we feel that some of our children are getting a well balanced story of Canada’s forests.
....Then there was ’76 and “Heroes of the Hemlock.” Well we had fun with this one because it so happens that the writer is an old movie buff and likes nothing better than a game of trivia including old logging movies. Those Hollywood writers told it as it was – like:
“Edward Arnold would often play the role of the Timber Baron. At his side would be some nasty chap like Barton MacLean, who loved nothing better than roughing up young Hemlock Heroes such as William Lundigan or Fred MacMurray. Get a bunch of the boys together, Jake (always a mean foreman’s name) and head up for the Twin Pines Logging outfit and burn down the cookhouse! I’ll show that Jeb Goodly and his crippled daughter that they better pay the installment on the New Loci – or get out of the country.”
....Ah, the woes of the early loggers when caught in the web of the timber baron! The script writers of Hollywood succeeded quite well in misrepresenting a whole forest industry of the west –

American and Canadian. And some-where, tonight, those stories are still being unfolded on a screen. Ah, but I loved old logging movies.
....There was a very nice trip to the Fin- land forests reported in ’76 and the writer was once again dramatically shown that there need not be allowable waste.
....The year ’77 was a sort of fun writing year. Things like “Support Your Local Logger” didn’t change the image of a logger, but I hope it made some people realize that besides getting blamed for the demise of the fishing in-dustry and blamed for all the smoke pollution plus being an ornery sort of cuss, your local logger could use a little community support once in a while. Do it.
....Then there was the story about the “Good Ship,” the old CPR Maquinna coastal steamer that was hell on sea-sick loggers going back to their camps on the west coast of rugged Vancouver Island.
....We reported once again from Finland on the 17 nation Chain Saw Contest for Loggers. This was the first time a Canadian team had competed in Europe against a host of nations including Russia and all her bloc, Scandinavia, France and others. Our Champions – Ron Hartill, Owen Carney and Gord Hart – discovered that the Europeans are super chain saw operators. Ron won a gold medal in an Olympic style of games and we thought we were on our way to many more. But we learned better. In Norway, Oct ’80, Dick Herrling won a silver – but back in Finland in ’83, we drew a blank.
....By the way, dear reader, we are on our way to Sweden in late September with a team that is seasoned and well trained. Let’s see how it turns out. Go for it, Kanada!
....In ’78 we talked of “The Enemy – The Chainsaw” and it was certainly

noticed in writings and discussions from many places of a new emphasis on this dangerous but efficient tool that has caused so much grief in our industry.
....I did a three part series in that same year on “fifty Years of Contract Log-ging, a sort of history of the writer and my father’s life in the logging wilds of northern Vancouver Island. Hey, how does time go by so fast?
....November, ’79 will long be remem-bered in the travel industry for the manner in which loggers were told in an interview with the globetrotting bon vivant, Cornelius Burke, just where to vacation, etc. An excerpt from that memorable interview follows:
....Moore: Mr. Burke, what advice would you give to a young chap from one of our up-coast camps when he decides to spend his hard earned cash money on a trip somewhere in the world?
....Burke: Go back to camp!
....Moore: How does one say, “Did you get a lot of logs today, in Turkey?”
....Burke: Allah giveth – and Allah taketh away.
....In February, ’80 I wrote of the Forest Centre Project. A project that many in the forest business hope will be accomplished when we finally get this recession out of the way. Patience., patience.
....It has always been fun to write a Christmas story about the earlier days on the float camps. There are a few memories of those times yet to be recorded.
....Of all the stories about people (again with apologies to the Great Yellow Tractor Company), I think I liked “Max’s Story” in the March and April issues of ’82 the best. Here was a man who had been a logger, boat-builder, carpenter, and fisherman all his life in a tiny coastal community. He chopped his own wood, he built his own beautiful fish boat and he participated in the early days of logging. He asked nothing of his government except to be allowed to live on good Canadian soil. He paid his way.
....There are people and there are machines in the forest around us – and there are thousands of stories yet to be told. I’d like to do a few more.
....And do –

“Keep out of the bight!”

BRITISH COLUMBIA LUMBERMAN OCTOBER 1984 · 27