Chapter I Going to Work
In May 1945 Germany surrendered and four months later after America dropped two atomic bombs on Japan the war “to end all wars” was over and the troops were coming home. I was still in a high school at the time and in order to save up enough money to help my mom and dad pay for my education I went to work for the summer months every year as soon as school was out.
In 1945 while the war in Japan was still on I spent the summer working as a bellhop in a summer hotel in a resort area south of Montreal. I’ll tell that story later. My dad grew up in northern Ontario and with his dad (my grandfather) managed a lumber camp so I listened to many stories over the dinner table of his exploits there. I wrote a letter of application to the Pineland Timber Company and mentioned my father as a reference and a few weeks later a letter arrived saying I was accepted.
In June 1946 as soon as school was out I packed clothes and books into a large duffel bag and boarded a train to Sudbury where from there I took a milk train that would take me to my destination. They called it a milk train because in those days it would travel very slowly and come to a halt every few miles to deliver milk, local passengers, and the mail. The billowing smoke from its stack and a choo choo sound from the steam engine announced it was coming around the bend. Finally a loud blast from its steam whistle would announce its imminent arrival and then a few minutes later its subsequent departure. Sometimes the train would stop at a little station and other times people simply appeared out of the woods at the side of the track. Now there are roads in the area so the milk trains are gone.
I remember the train from Montreal was filled with soldiers back from the war who boarded when I did. They had just arrived from a ship that had taken them from Europe and they were finally going home. They were a pretty happy lot and time on the train was party time with liquor flowing freely. It was an overnight trip to Sudbury and I remember it was hot and someone had opened the windows before dropping off to sleep. Trains in those days had steam engines and the train left a trailing cloud of smoke rising high above it from the burning coal. When their heads poked out in the morning from behind the curtains it looked like a minstrel show because their faces were coal black. The laughter didn’t stop despite the dirt being everywhere.
From Sudbury I boarded the milk train that after several hours of start/stopping arrived at a bleak opening in the forest where I was told I had arrived. At the same time they unloaded a few milk cans and boxes and told me to wait for someone who would soon arrive from the camp. I sat on my duffel bag for what seemed a very long time while being kept busy swatting away the clouds of black flies that came to greet me. I began wondering if anyone would ever come and considered walking to the camp although the porter on the train warned me not to try it because he knew of cases where the black flies had driven men crazy in the woods. Finally a man with a bushy beard and big belly arrived in a horse driven cart, asked me to help him load up the milk cans and packages and agreed to take me to the camp although no one had told him that they were expecting anyone. It was a short trip on a logging road through the woods and even though it was the middle of June I saw some snow amongst the trees. An opening in the woods appeared and I was at the camp. It was on the shore of a lake. The camp consisted of a collection of log cabins, a saw mill, a big barn and at the foot of the mill a huge boom of logs floating in the water. A boom is a ring of logs attached together end to end and encircling a huge number of freely floating logs from trees cut down and dragged into the water*. I was immediately taken to a small log cabin office and left with someone I assumed was the manager. I gave him a copy of the letter I had written to the company. He claimed he had never heard of me but they were short a few people and I was hired on the spot. I was told to expect a working day of 10 hours for 6 days a week with Sunday off. My pay was to be 45 cents an hour with 1 dollar and 30 cents per day deducted for room and board. Overtime would be paid at time and a half **. No additional benefits were offered. He bluntly observed that I was a skinny kid and said I would immediately be assigned to the cookhouse. My business career had begun.
*Later I would take part in a game to run across the logs to see how far you could go before falling in
**When I finally started working in the mill I discovered that a significant proportion of overtime happened when a lumberjack went into town and got drunk and didn’t show up for work. The sawmill ran day and night and the foreman would come into the bunk house and inform me that I had to work all night as well as the day shift I had just completed. I wasn’t asked, I was told.
In May 1945 Germany surrendered and four months later after America dropped two atomic bombs on Japan the war “to end all wars” was over and the troops were coming home. I was still in a high school at the time and in order to save up enough money to help my mom and dad pay for my education I went to work for the summer months every year as soon as school was out.
In 1945 while the war in Japan was still on I spent the summer working as a bellhop in a summer hotel in a resort area south of Montreal. I’ll tell that story later. My dad grew up in northern Ontario and with his dad (my grandfather) managed a lumber camp so I listened to many stories over the dinner table of his exploits there. I wrote a letter of application to the Pineland Timber Company and mentioned my father as a reference and a few weeks later a letter arrived saying I was accepted.
In June 1946 as soon as school was out I packed clothes and books into a large duffel bag and boarded a train to Sudbury where from there I took a milk train that would take me to my destination. They called it a milk train because in those days it would travel very slowly and come to a halt every few miles to deliver milk, local passengers, and the mail. The billowing smoke from its stack and a choo choo sound from the steam engine announced it was coming around the bend. Finally a loud blast from its steam whistle would announce its imminent arrival and then a few minutes later its subsequent departure. Sometimes the train would stop at a little station and other times people simply appeared out of the woods at the side of the track. Now there are roads in the area so the milk trains are gone.
I remember the train from Montreal was filled with soldiers back from the war who boarded when I did. They had just arrived from a ship that had taken them from Europe and they were finally going home. They were a pretty happy lot and time on the train was party time with liquor flowing freely. It was an overnight trip to Sudbury and I remember it was hot and someone had opened the windows before dropping off to sleep. Trains in those days had steam engines and the train left a trailing cloud of smoke rising high above it from the burning coal. When their heads poked out in the morning from behind the curtains it looked like a minstrel show because their faces were coal black. The laughter didn’t stop despite the dirt being everywhere.
From Sudbury I boarded the milk train that after several hours of start/stopping arrived at a bleak opening in the forest where I was told I had arrived. At the same time they unloaded a few milk cans and boxes and told me to wait for someone who would soon arrive from the camp. I sat on my duffel bag for what seemed a very long time while being kept busy swatting away the clouds of black flies that came to greet me. I began wondering if anyone would ever come and considered walking to the camp although the porter on the train warned me not to try it because he knew of cases where the black flies had driven men crazy in the woods. Finally a man with a bushy beard and big belly arrived in a horse driven cart, asked me to help him load up the milk cans and packages and agreed to take me to the camp although no one had told him that they were expecting anyone. It was a short trip on a logging road through the woods and even though it was the middle of June I saw some snow amongst the trees. An opening in the woods appeared and I was at the camp. It was on the shore of a lake. The camp consisted of a collection of log cabins, a saw mill, a big barn and at the foot of the mill a huge boom of logs floating in the water. A boom is a ring of logs attached together end to end and encircling a huge number of freely floating logs from trees cut down and dragged into the water*. I was immediately taken to a small log cabin office and left with someone I assumed was the manager. I gave him a copy of the letter I had written to the company. He claimed he had never heard of me but they were short a few people and I was hired on the spot. I was told to expect a working day of 10 hours for 6 days a week with Sunday off. My pay was to be 45 cents an hour with 1 dollar and 30 cents per day deducted for room and board. Overtime would be paid at time and a half **. No additional benefits were offered. He bluntly observed that I was a skinny kid and said I would immediately be assigned to the cookhouse. My business career had begun.
*Later I would take part in a game to run across the logs to see how far you could go before falling in
**When I finally started working in the mill I discovered that a significant proportion of overtime happened when a lumberjack went into town and got drunk and didn’t show up for work. The sawmill ran day and night and the foreman would come into the bunk house and inform me that I had to work all night as well as the day shift I had just completed. I wasn’t asked, I was told.
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