Chapter IV: Starting Work in the Mill and the Terrible Accident of a Man Cut in Two by the Circular Saw!!!
I had finally escaped from the cookhouse and now I could sleep in until 6AM. Unfortunately the pit beneath the 10 hole outhouse had filled up and a new hole had to be dug. It had to be deep; about 7 feet, and the digging was through clay, roots and rocks and the rain didn’t help. The new men in the camp took turns with this miserable assignment so I had to do this for two miserable days. The yard foreman would appear at the top of the hole every once in a while with a big grin and each time he would ask the same dumb question, “Hey city kid, what’s taking you so long?” I just smiled back because I knew I would get out of this in two days and I didn’t want to give him any satisfaction. Actually he wasn’t a bad guy; big and tough but some sort of minister on his days off. A few days later the hole was completed, men and horses dragged the big outhouse on top of the hole, earth from the new hole covered over the old location and it was ready for service.
A sawmill's basic operation today is much like those of hundreds of years ago; a log enters on one end and lumber exits on the other end.
In the mills I worked in 1946/47 logs were taken out of the forest on horse drawn wagons and dumped into rivers and a lake where they were placed inside a boom of logs* and dragged by a diesel barge to the sawmill.
The first step when the log arrived in the mill was to slide the log onto a cradle to feed the big circular saw that sliced it into slabs for further processing. The cradle was on rails and slid back and forth with each pass of the big saw. A man stood beside the log and for each pass fastened it into position. He was called a Dogger. He was a quiet and friendly young man who was in the camp with his brother to save enough to buy some farmland in Quebec.
A few times during the season a log that had been part of the log boom and still had a spike in it went through the saw and it sounded like a war was on as the saws big teeth went flying through the air making holes in the roof and the walls of the mill. We all hit the floor when that happened and fortunately no one was injured.
A set of rollers carried the cut slabs over to the edger that was a flat table with rollers and a gang of saws that trimmed the slabs into lumber and bark. My job that first summer was to stand behind the Edger to receive the slabs from the circular saw that were typically 16 to 18 foot long. I waited until about half the length had cleared the edging table and holding the end firmly in one movement bounced the plank and flipped it over to a side table where a man was waiting with a trim saw to cut off the ends. Doing this for ten hours a day for two months added a lot of muscle onto my skinny frame.
My work station was facing the big circular saw that was only about twenty five feet away
At noon on my first day a seaplane was landing in the lake outside the mill. This happened often as mineral prospectors and foresters, who had heard about the great cook we had, decided to drop in for lunch. The Dogger by the circular saw was looking out the window at the plane when the cradle moved forward to the big whirling saw. He slipped and fell across the log; he probably shouted to the Sawyer but the screaming of the saws drowned out his voice and he wasn’t heard in time to stop the whirling saw. His last move was to desperately use his arms to push away but it was his last move as the saw cut him in two. (Here is a picture of him when we were out fishing a few days before the accident)
It was the worst thing I ever saw and 63 years later the horror of this image is still with me. I was in a state of shock and with the other men who saw it, panicked and ran out of the mill. Once outside I felt sick and just slumped down; others were retching. There was one man who was calm through it all. He was a student from Western University who had come up to the camp as part of a Frontier College volunteer program to teach many of these men to read and count. He had been a Spitfire pilot during the war so he had seen a lot. He went back into the mill and gave the man his last rites and then phoned the provincial authorities and organized some men to keep busy making a pine box for the body.
Another day off as police and other authorities kept the managers busy and then it was back at work again. The manager advised us that we had to work extra hard to catch up for the lost time. He was always announcing new production records being met so presumably it had something to do with his bonus objectives.
* A log boom is made up a string of logs fastened at each end with spikes and a chain between them. The boom encircles a large number of floating logs.
I had finally escaped from the cookhouse and now I could sleep in until 6AM. Unfortunately the pit beneath the 10 hole outhouse had filled up and a new hole had to be dug. It had to be deep; about 7 feet, and the digging was through clay, roots and rocks and the rain didn’t help. The new men in the camp took turns with this miserable assignment so I had to do this for two miserable days. The yard foreman would appear at the top of the hole every once in a while with a big grin and each time he would ask the same dumb question, “Hey city kid, what’s taking you so long?” I just smiled back because I knew I would get out of this in two days and I didn’t want to give him any satisfaction. Actually he wasn’t a bad guy; big and tough but some sort of minister on his days off. A few days later the hole was completed, men and horses dragged the big outhouse on top of the hole, earth from the new hole covered over the old location and it was ready for service.
A sawmill's basic operation today is much like those of hundreds of years ago; a log enters on one end and lumber exits on the other end.
In the mills I worked in 1946/47 logs were taken out of the forest on horse drawn wagons and dumped into rivers and a lake where they were placed inside a boom of logs* and dragged by a diesel barge to the sawmill.
The first step when the log arrived in the mill was to slide the log onto a cradle to feed the big circular saw that sliced it into slabs for further processing. The cradle was on rails and slid back and forth with each pass of the big saw. A man stood beside the log and for each pass fastened it into position. He was called a Dogger. He was a quiet and friendly young man who was in the camp with his brother to save enough to buy some farmland in Quebec.
A few times during the season a log that had been part of the log boom and still had a spike in it went through the saw and it sounded like a war was on as the saws big teeth went flying through the air making holes in the roof and the walls of the mill. We all hit the floor when that happened and fortunately no one was injured.
A set of rollers carried the cut slabs over to the edger that was a flat table with rollers and a gang of saws that trimmed the slabs into lumber and bark. My job that first summer was to stand behind the Edger to receive the slabs from the circular saw that were typically 16 to 18 foot long. I waited until about half the length had cleared the edging table and holding the end firmly in one movement bounced the plank and flipped it over to a side table where a man was waiting with a trim saw to cut off the ends. Doing this for ten hours a day for two months added a lot of muscle onto my skinny frame.
My work station was facing the big circular saw that was only about twenty five feet away
It was the worst thing I ever saw and 63 years later the horror of this image is still with me. I was in a state of shock and with the other men who saw it, panicked and ran out of the mill. Once outside I felt sick and just slumped down; others were retching. There was one man who was calm through it all. He was a student from Western University who had come up to the camp as part of a Frontier College volunteer program to teach many of these men to read and count. He had been a Spitfire pilot during the war so he had seen a lot. He went back into the mill and gave the man his last rites and then phoned the provincial authorities and organized some men to keep busy making a pine box for the body.
Another day off as police and other authorities kept the managers busy and then it was back at work again. The manager advised us that we had to work extra hard to catch up for the lost time. He was always announcing new production records being met so presumably it had something to do with his bonus objectives.
* A log boom is made up a string of logs fastened at each end with spikes and a chain between them. The boom encircles a large number of floating logs.
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