Logging Lore - Gord Barney | Lives & Legends S2 E11

[Music] when did you first go in the woods March from 1960 to 62 15 years old Dean welcome you sir so young yeah John Gurley kicked me out she got kicked a nice yeah was over they were there I was always up in the bush with a 22 huntin hooter grossie okay and then finally said if you want to come to school anymore kid don't don't come okay so then I had to go home and tell my parents the old man said well you're not sitting around here he said you better go down to the training company gave yourself a pair of boots and get a job so uh down to see Darrell Rodgers and he got me a pair of boots my first pair of boots and Rick Curley got me a job working over the west coast of Moore and Whittington logging when I started out blowing whistle xing-ke Missal pav so why don't she is a whistle Punk well you're gonna have whistles to make the the Riggin move up and down and whatever and in those days but when they had the electronic whistle they had court just like extension court and you had that wrapped around your neck about 500 lines and then as you went out you just kept putting it out and then you blew the whistle so as the Riggins coming out the rigging slinger hole hey you blow one it stopped and then they'd go and separate the chokers and then they say slacker down and then you blow a bunch of short slack it down then they'd set two chokers and even they'd say go ahead you both beat me beat three to go ahead determine whether this was a way of communicating with the yarder so the yarder guy knew exactly what you wanted to do a well that sounds be a very responsible job if you did something right oh yeah you kill the whole crew yeah I almost killed Rick Curley actually one time he was bucking a log and I the turn and I would watch in it and I figured he's you know and finally the loader blew the whistle and the order stopped and then he hollered to me why didn't you stop well I said the order guy could see it and I can see it why didn't he stop but he kept going and it would have run the turn right over so the signals were one day you stop and the old days it was one that's thought one to go and that's how they killed some money in the 30s and 40s and then somebody had the bright idea well let's have three did go and one to stop okay and two to come back and three to go ahead so when you're Rick in the West Coast where use pretty steep slopes yeah but a huge Cedars so be the size of this room tremendous Cedars it was knitting that Lake is wherever you're at an old logger told me one time loggers are the smartest people on earth for the simple reason is you give them some cable a winch and some power behind it and they can move just about anything by putting blocks on it you take any average guy that comes off the street and put him in it and try to get him to move couldn't move those in a hundred years and some of those guys were fantastic and and mentality and how they learned how to move some of that stuff well how did you guys learn like from an older guy not older guys as it started out here a lot of thin people came to Ladysmith as you well know and at one time but a lot of Italians and stuff to come to the mind well the Finns came here because they used to be riggers on the sailing ships and they had the mass so they knew all about that rigging they were rigging all the time so when they come in maybe they're on a ship that come in the Ladysmith harbor to get coal and somebody said how much you make it oh I make $20 a month come to the woods we'll pay you 200 two months they're doing the same thing so they just jumped ship and go to work at Copper Canyon or novel likes and a lot of the old-timers that I work with we're all old phimka guising someone that could hardly speak English but knew their business when it come to rigging in and stuff like that any climbing trees and going up those I had lots of chances you want to get in the past chained kid and go up the tree oh not for me but there thank you very much I'll stay on the ground well I worked in I'm River Copper Canyon and then when I worked for Comox I worked at knitting at and know I'm a lace but the trouble is with then i'm alexi had so much seniority you get laid off at the end of September October you wouldn't see another work until you know March or April so everybody there had 40 years nobody quit so you never move up the laughs well then I just left and went somewhere else you get a little experience move to the next camp get a little more experience move to the next camp till you work your way up I worked on a lot of tough shows actually but there was there was one over there and then I'm O'Lakes they called it suicide Bluff they more guys got hurt on that I mean it was just like that but it was good tipper growing off it for some reason my brother worked on there he never got hurt but some of them did but I mean it was rocked rolling down and chunks and you never knew what was coming you might be down here and some chunk come some way from the back end well you know you don't stand a chance I had a few close calls when I worked on the Riggin too but a lot of it was cockiness and young and doing get out of the way you know get all the way you're gonna catch one did you get hurt did you know I never did no I was very very lucky and it was fast enough to be able to get out of the way and I didn't go to work drunk I didn't go to work stoned because I figured I needed all my faculties when I was out there because it was enough there was I mean I injured and sprained an ankle and pull the muscle or two but but no not like some guys they really got well the guys got smashed boy I know a guy that he he got a lot of rolled well he was standing by the truck and this log roll down the back small log and he didn't he had a pickup truck there or company and he didn't want it to hit the truck and put a dent in it so he put his foot up to stop it and I just roll right up his leg oven nap-nap snaps that snap ah yeah and lots of power saw cuts guys were always cutting himself they're getting kicked back some power saws but the old power started they were gear driven a not like the new ones and these are all direct ride a but those gear dry I remember my dad he was afar you come home I can remember his leg sometimes from from here to his ankle would be black and blue from the sock kickin back he well I did hit and then it would turn black all the way down and you always had to use your your hand or your use your knee to support the sock there were big saws in those days they with that big timber yeah and I remember in his one knee his left knee he had a boat five scars across it from him saws kickin back and over his knee and then now they got all padded pants and everything and it was a guy up there LCB at that time too when I was working the river he went to work drunk and there was two in Falls like this and there was a tree going up to the middle and he would instead it what he should have done is bucked all four windfalls first and he didn't know he just figured you go in there and they blow it then it would flip over well it fell all right pinned him right in there and killed when you go to fall and that thing drops out of there and it hits you and you're you made your way from will yeah and that's basically what a Widowmaker is it couldn't be a broken off chump or it could be just a limb and when you're falling that's the first thing and I did some falling but not a lot first thing you do is you make sure you look up and check that tree up really good to make sure there's nothing hanging up there this broke off that's gonna come down and get you little barber chair barber chair is another one because you if it's got too heavy of a lien on it and you cut it and instead of cutting it properly it's got too much strain on it it just looks like a chair it breaks off and then splinters up high and then it comes up like this and kicks over you can keep backing into you it could be yeah but most of the time it doesn't it it's like the back of a chair okay the back of the knee and what other things are real dangers when you're falling well mostly it's limbs and and not clearing a pathway to get out of the way and get out of there don't stand at the tree stump as it starts to go get out of there because whatever is coming it's coming right where you're standing as soon as that tree starts to go if you watch anything about falling you shut yourself and get out of there because if something breaks off or a piece of bark comes down or you know I mean a robin's egg falling from 70 feet in the air put an awful dent in your hardhat what were the other dangers that you would really face in other aspects of the woods when you're rigging when you're in the lobby falling down whatever I know guys help at a camp I worked in so excellent rock wall rocks movement because it's all uneven Glacial ground a with trees out on how the trees evening on there but I guess because of the glacier it's good materially but the trees going up to the rocks so then they're going in and they're falling then we'll Lenny when you go to yard a moat that rocks they're always moving because they're like a slight one time you're in Tobin Inlet and the boss came up and I was running in the grapple yarder and he wanted to stop me and they had to sign these forms that you knew what your job was a safety job safety breakdown they call so anyway I stopped the yarding and we were logging and you know what a snow chute is no lay it goes right up the top of a mountain in a V and all the snow was packed in there over the winter and it probably forty feet deep fifty feet deep in there well it in the spring is thawing and pieces that junk are falling down there and you never end rocks come down there sometime but anyway the foreman came up and he gave me these papers and I signed him and my crew signed him and then he said okay I'm gonna get out of here so he drove down past we started right on the edge of the snow chute too long well he went down past the snow chute and sat down there and all of a sudden he said I heard him I started the yard and I heard him say did you see that and I looked over my right shoulder and there was a rock the size of this house came down bouncing down that snow chute hit the culvert went right over top of his pickup and went down below now if I would have hit him have been just like stepping on a wood but yeah yeah and he'd come out of there and he was just as white as a sheet but it just wasn't his day to go now you talked about a lot of different nationalities working in the woods you say there was two pins and Italians sweet Swedes were the followers Finn's with the rigors yeah there was different were there many First Nations yeah they worked in there too a lot of them they were mostly rigging guys but I knew a guy a couple of the canyon were log loader operator when did you start seeing women in the middle 60s late 60s they started especially Karl's Ella back had some of their the superintendent's daughters were working there I can't remember their names now what were they doing funky I was a few but they they kind of ruined it for other women because they weren't doing the job they just don't have the upper-body strength to do the Riggin no I'm not saying a woman couldn't run a log loader or drive a long ago what's they do they're doing that today but in those days to get up there you have to do all those different steps you gotta start as a choker man and then you chase her and I've seen a woman in the landing you know doing the chasing and stuff like that but I mean you got to be on that sauce steady and when you put the saw down your other bucket chokers and from there you're hooking up trailer and then you're stamping logs or maybe painting them too and and you're doing this places of the wires and piston dumb marine and desert rain and snow on what woman want to be out there some of them dead but there wasn't that Manny so your 40-plus years working Billy in the woods what made it really interesting for you what was it that kept you in the industry because you want you said isn't money I made lots of money I made more money there than they're gonna meet anywhere else with that money I mean I had a great education looking how could I go I mean it was either chemainus sawmill and I didn't think that much I like the woods because I had all summer off because it was usually fire season and had all winter off because there was so much snow so yeah you know you got the summer and winter off and then you worked a spring in the fall made good money I made enough in six months three months in the spring three months in the fall to pretty well do me for the next winter that's something that I remember as a kid being laid out for summer fair season and snow you don't hear that anymore yeah they do but they they're in second growth now too and a lot of it's what they call mechanical there's no falling or anything like well they're falling but they got a but it's all done with machinery so there's not cables the cables are running on the logs that's what causes your fires you know in the winter time or at night time we still log at night you look at those blocks with the cables run through their sparks coming out from both sides of them block blocks five feet so you get they're just coming out in the daytime too but you can't see it you never know what yeah all the sparks come out of there just like using an angle grinder on a piece of steel because it's steel on steel they mm-hmm or you see through the night lines slapped together there just be a shower of sparks go up the cables that you can see that at nighttime when you're working a ship I remember people slapping yeah so I put together yeah I love that night ship flogging that was more fun to anything that's flying it out of the lights and owls flying by it well we had a good time out there we got more logs a night shift they did on day shift and then they command a ship they had lots of logs ready to load in the morning [Music] I was the oldest guy on the crew and I was 21 running the yarder and there was night at a 19 year old chaser and a 19 year old hooktender you said that you were there for the money that did you have any other reason why was fun to do it when we were young start noting I mean you've got lots a tangia and you'll need to get logs and you can brake to everybody in the bar and how many loads you got and how many logs you gotten and you know it was lots of fun and camaraderie of the guys it was just amazing some of the guys some of the stories [Music]

Channel: Ladysmith Historical Society

Views: 27,563

Keywords: iLogging, foresty, loggers, ladysmith, history, heritage, gord barney, widow makers, barber chair, trees, fallers, whiste punks, nanaimo lakes

Id: y46DvR3ZoZg

Length: 16min 27sec (987 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 03 2019