Working in the Mines - Summers 1948/49/50

 Chapter IV - When I wasn't working

 

Sudbury

Sudbury was still a sort of frontier town in 1948. It had wooden sidewalks along the main street and the landscape looked like a moonscape because of the poisonous fumes emanating from the smelters' chimneys killing all vegetation and covering the area with a continuous rain of sulfurous dust that turned to acid when it rained. The area was a Moonscape, in fact astronauts came there to test some of their space vehicles.  A few caring citizens carted in fresh earth from miles away to enjoy a brief season of flowers and greenness for the season. My boarding house was directly across from the jail so my view from the porch was the men walking about in the yard in their pyjama like suits.  

 There was a lot of racial tension at the time because newcomers were arriving from northern and eastern Europe. Many came with good a education but at that time were required by the Canadian Government to serve time in remote parts of Canada before going down to the cities, My three Finnish friends were a good example; two would work for a year in the mines on a rotational basis to finance the university education of the other. They didn't much care for the work rules set by the the militant Communist Union ( Int'l Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers) , and they had a reputation for working harder to maximize their bonuses. The company naturally took advantage of this by raising bonus standards thus angering the mining population. Some fighting took place in town over this.

My main meal each day was at a large workman's restaurant on the main street. I recall its name was something like Klutajats. It had two or three long tables, and no menu. We jammed in one of the long rows of settings and ate the meal they served, and it changed every day. I recall the food was always fresh and tasty with plenty of meat, potatoes and vegetables, lots of bread and usually a pie or cake. The restaurant was always packed so they were doing a good business. 

How I used my leisure time depended on the shift I was working, The day shift left me with the normal late afternoon when I often went to the beach at Ramsay Lake that bordered the town and where I could swim and meet some friends. I also remember endless walks back and forth along the main street mostly for watching and often saying hello to girls who were doing the same thing. We didn't spend much money because we had to save up enough for our school tuition and books. On a few occasions I took my landlady's daughter, Iris or a girl I met on my walks to a movie and then ended up having a few beers or a stop at a soda fountain  before heading back to the boarding house. Iris was a bit dull but a convenient friend to pass a limited amount of time with. Her mom was always there at the door waiting for her when we returned,

On the afternoon shift, work finished at midnight and I didn't go right to bed but went out with friends for something to eat till about two in the morning before going off to sleep until about 9 AM. A big lunch at Klutajats and then off to work again, The grave yard shift from midnight to early morning was better because I could sleep to about two in the afternoon and then had the rest of the day free until midnight. I'm not sure how years of facing weekly rotations like this affects the health of these shift workers. It ransacks your bodily functions, disrupts the rhythm of sleeping and your meals.  

 

  Rouyn-Noranda

In Noranda the following year the shift changes were much the same as in Sudbury. It is always night in the mine so down there it didn't make much difference. Working days left the evening free and it was quite different than in Sudbury. Noranda was more of a middle class town with many miners having modest homes and invariably a summer camp by a lake not too far away. I soon met up with friends from the town at the tennis club. I played regularly with Dollard St Laurent whose brother was the coach there. He was just learning tennis for the first time but was soon beating me regularly, The second year I was in Noranda he joined the the Montreal Canadians and became a star defense man between 1950 and 1958. I also met with many student friends working in the mines and girls that were home for the summer from universities and nursing schools.

 

One girl that I met at the club, Lenore McLean, became a steady friend that I subsequently dated off and on later in Montreal up until I finished university.  Her father had come to Noranda in 1923 as a canoe man for Ed Horne who played an important role in in the discovery and formation of the Horne Mine that later became Noranda Mines. Mr Mclean had the first dollar he was paid by Horne in a frame on his living room wall. He was by then a very rich man and co-owner of a heating and ventilating company that was dominant in Northern Quebec and Ontario at the time.  He and his wife treated me like family and seemed pleased that I was spending time with their oldest daughter who was about my age. He generously offered to have a select number of young university students who worked in the mines to feel free to enjoy Sundays at his summer home by Lake Dufault. a few kilometers away. A similar number of the young women from the tennis club arrived as well so every Sunday a good time of swimming, canoeing and barbecuing was had by all. Students were generally welcomed in the homes of many families of the business and professional class who had daughters home from school for the summer.

Marriages and engagements resulted from theses events including three eventual marriages I recall between three mining engineering students and the Mayor, Mine Manager Mine Superintendent's daughters. Clearly the managers and business owners and their wives in the town engineered and kept a watchful eye on these events to ensure that their eligible daughters would meet acceptable suitors. 

 Looking back on it you can say that this was a snooty way to isolate the daughters of professional and managerial families from the sons of the common miners. you might say a mining town parallel of the coming out parties of the wealthy families in large cities. I was always contemptuous of those events among the rich in Montreal but most of the young students I worked with were broke like I was and saving every penny to go back to school, so we set aside our conscious and enjoyed this generosity.

 

 

In Noranda the students and many of the foreign workers (we called them DP's meaning displaced persons) boarded in the company bunkhouse, an ugly barracks with a canteen with tolerable food. I made many friends with the DP's and learned a lot about their terrible lives during the war, particularly in Eastern Europe. Surprisingly to me at the time these men took pride in their musical ability and could form instant choirs often accompanied by one or more accordions. When there was a marriage their wedding celebrations went on for days. Everyone was welcome  and it was a rotation from the ceremonies to work and then back to the party again. The bride and groom were soon long gone but that didn't stop anything.

We led a double social life! There was the social life I described in the above and then there were those visits to the hotel bars late in the evening in Rouyn, the adjacent town. We sometimes went there with our student friends to have a few beers and to watch the lively action in progress. The bar was always filled at that hour with many single men from the town and from the remote and isolated lumber and mining camps in the region.

 

The 'ladies of the night' were waiting for them and a thriving business was taking place with the stairs and elevators kept very busy. These ladies knew we had no interest or need for their services and some viewed us as friends to sit and chat with while taking a tea break from their strenuous activities. My observation was that most of them had little education, came from an unsettled background  and had made a choice to escape unemployment or a lowly paid job in a laundry or diner by working as prostitutes in the hotel either full or part time. For most it was just a job until something better came along or until they were too old to continue. Some ending up marrying one of their clients and I often saw them accompanied going to the movies or out dining somewhere. Frankly I saw them as providing a much needed service to the many lonely single men working throughout the region. It wasn't legal but it was run like a legal business in the hotel and the police stayed away if there wasn't any trouble from drunken behaviour. The Salvation Army volunteers were always silently there and the ladies and their patrons knowing the help they had given to less fortunate friends, gave generously.  

 

My Great Victory

Nothern Quebec held a track meet in Noranda during the second summer I was there. Aspiring athletes arrived from the surrounding area dressed in their shorts, running shoes and numbered sweat shirts. I came with friends from the tennis club just to watch. I was particularly interested in watching the high jump. I quickly observed while they practiced that despite their fancy outfits  they were a lousy bunch of jumpers using the scissor kick so I asked an official if I could participate. He said yes but they were about to start so I had no time to change and get my running shoes. I simply kicked off my shoes, rolled up my pant legs and to my surprise in my bare feet won the event. I recall using the Western Roll. I only jumped 5 feet 6 inches but that was enough. My inspiration came from my cheering section from the tennis club. A happy moment.

 

 

 

Working in the Mines I - Summers 1948/49/50

Chapter I – Passing the Medical and Starting Work

At the end of my first year of University in May I decided along with three close friends (Ted MacDonald, Maury Katz and Bob Barrow) to head north to work in the mines instead of another season in the lumber camps. The pay was more than twice what I had been earning in the camps, a sum sufficient to pay for my university fees and to help my parents with additional living expenses. An added incentive was the leisurely 54 hours work week instead of the basic 60 hours I had to endure in the camps.   

In early June I took the train to Sudbury and went immediately to the employment office of  The International Nickel Company that had several mines and a smelter in the area. After filling in the application forms I was sent to their medical office. Part of the medical examination was a weighing in, and I was dismayed to learn that at 133 pounds I failed to meet their minimum weight requirement of 140 pounds for students. I was devastated and as I was leaving the clinic the doctor, to soften the blow, promised that if I gained some weight at a later date the employment offer was still open. I certainly wasn’t going to gain that much weight overnight and this meant leaving my friends and taking a train farther north to spend another summer in the lumber camps.

Before heading north I joined with my friends in a bar to commiserate and say my good byes. Bob Barrow asked, “Have you thought about loading up on water and then going back to the medical office to get weighed again?”

I said, “Are you crazy? Seven pounds of water equals 112 ounces or about nine 12 ounce bottles of this Pepsi we are drinking - and the doctor would never believe me anyway.” 

Bob replied, “Well you have nothing to lose so let’s keep going; you are on your second bottle now and you have just finished eating a hot dog and chips so let’s switch to water and aim for just six or seven more.”

I had nothing to lose, other than blowing up, so we asked the bar maid for two large glasses of water. When she watched me quickly down these and gasp for air while my friends cheered me on she grinned nervously and asked. “What are you guys doing? Is this some sort of bet? “  

“No this is very serious”. Bob replied, and without adding an explanation, asked for two more glasses. 

"Well I don't know if I should, and this is the last time because I don't want to get in trouble." She served two more up.  

Turning to me Bob said, “Well if you finish those two glasses that makes six or about four and a half pounds; add the hot dog and chips and we are closer to five pounds so we are almost there."

"I can't." I said. 

"Shut up and drink." he replied, so taking a deep breath I downed the two glasses of water. "Great now you have only 3 glasses to go, and miss, three more glasses please. And have pity on this guy, because if you won't serve it he won't get a job in the mine here because he doesn't weigh enough and will have to leave Sudbury to find work."

By now I could hardly breathe but as an act of bravado I gasped out to change that order to just two more glass and another order of chips and a hot dog to wash it down.

" Well okay, but I'm really scared now, this is dangerous,  but I will do it - and don't tell my boss if he blows up." she said.

Bob phoned for a cab because there was no time to lose; I was bursting. I downed the last glass of water and staggered out to the cab with my hot dog in hand and my belt undone. In ten minutes we were at the medical centre and I raced in and God must have been with me because the doctor was still there.

I calmly said, “I have gained those pounds so please weigh me” He looked at me amused and replied. “Don’t be ridiculous. You are probably carrying stones or a brick.” 

“No,” I said, “I have really gained this weight. I didn't eat anything on the train coming up from Montreal and didn’t drink much but I’m back to my normal weight now.” 

“OK , but I don’t believe you, but you can take off all your clothes and I will weigh you again”

I stepped on the scales and when he saw the weight gain he laughed and said in amazement. “Holy Cow!, I don’t know what you did, but I guess I have to sign off so that you can get that job!” At that moment I was ready to explode and asked to leave the room and raced down the hall  for the wash room. I just made it and with a sense of relief quickly lost most of those extra pounds. That was probably the happiest pee I ever had. And I was hired.

I think the doctor knew what I had done and I learned later from Ted MacDonald that management picked up on this story and were much amused. 

I visited Bob Barrow for the last time in Ottawa two years ago. He was dying but still had the strength and sense of humour to share our memories of this event from many years ago. 

The last story about being hired is about the old foreman at the Murray mine who had the new recruits lined up for inspection before being assigned. There were about a dozen of us. He looked us over and made some cynical comments about how green we looked and how we needed toughening up. Then he asked us to show him the palms of our hands and walked up and down to feel our biceps. I was probably the skinniest and youngest in that line up but he singled me out and said, “kid I can see you have done some hard work;” I guess that lumbering experience had paid off.

Boy! Was I proud.

Working in Lumber Camps V - Summers 1946/47

Chapter V - The men who came to work in the Lumber Camps

Who were the men that worked in the lumber camps? There were of course a small core of skilled workers who operated the saws, graded the lumber, acted as foreman over the workers in the mill and out in the lumber yard, an office clerk, the blacksmith and the all important camp cook. Many of these men had a wife and children living in a nearby cabin or in a town somewhere. The balance of workers were quite a mixed bag including I recall a trapper escaping from the woods during the summer months, other men with a history dating back to the Great Depression of hitching onto freight cars in search of menial jobs wherever they could find them, displaced people – the DP’s we called them – that had begun the migration from Europe that followed the end of WWII, Canadian men of Japanese origin and a few students, like myself and my friend Dick Fleming, who came up from the cities to work for the summer.

Let me tell you something about these men.

The trappers: These men lived in the forests year round. I have a picture of one of them that I took with my box camera when I worked in the camp. His name was Henri Levesque. In the summer when the black flies, mosquitoes and other biting insects arrived Henri would escape from the forest and find work in the Lumber Camps. In early October he would return to trapping. This meant returning to his camp on the banks of a river deep in the woods.. It was a simple log cabin with the clay mud from the riverbank placed in the cracks between the logs to keep out the cold. He was a skilled carpenter and using only his axe had cut the logs and planed them to make rough boards for the door, table, and shelves. From the camp he would set up trap lines in the woods to trap beavers and otters for their pelts. Before leaving for his camp he would drop into the local Indian reserve to pick up a strong Indian woman who had accompanied him for many years. She was his partner and helped him to set up and then look after the camp, kept a fire going because the temperatures would commonly drop to -20 C degrees or more, fish and gutted the animals he brought back to roast, cooked his meals, and skinned and hung out the animal pelts to dry. At night they would lie close together under blankets and furs to keep warm.

Henri was semi-literate, spoke French, English and a local Indian dialect and kept track of his money. I recall he had about one or two years of formal schooling. His worldly interest seemed to be limited to the forest and the wild life around him. I think he was a happy man in control of his life. He loved to talk with us about his experiences and adventures in the woods and these conversations were invariably filled with his good humour. He possessed the many skills required to survive and make a good living alone in the woods. He was a true entrepreneur. He could do anything with his axe and I recall while in the camp he made for us in a few minutes oars for the long boat and then hollowed out a dug out canoe. When it was hot at night in the lumber camp he would take his blankets and sleep outside, despite the swarming insects, rather than put up with the snoring and musty air in the bunkhouse. He wasn’t a drinker like most of the men I worked with, and managed to build up savings in the bank from selling his pelts and the money he earned in the camp. His dream for retirement was to go off with one of his Indian women and own a cabin not far from a town

He was clearly very intelligent and I wonder what kind of life he would have had if he had grown up in a middle class home and gone to school.

The Japanese: When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941 and joined with Germany to fight against the Allies the Canadian Government interned Japanese Canadians living in British Columbia because they were worried that they would become an internal threat to National Security. They were interned in work camps and their livelihood destroyed. These Canadians of Japanese descent were an industrious people and owned fishing boats, small farms and grocery stores and all of this was taken away from them and sold off at a fraction of its value. Many non Japanese Canadians benefited from this theft. The fact is they were exceptionally loyal Canadians and never at any time proved to be a threat to National Security. This is a disgraceful and criminal event in Canadian history that you must read about some day.

In 1946 and 1947 I met up with some of these Japanese who were working in the lumber camp after being released from internment. The men I met had been fishermen and owned boats on the West Coast. They were a quiet and relatively well-educated group who kept to themselves and were intent on working hard at bonus paying jobs to earn enough money to take up life again with their families somewhere in Canada.

One had been a judo instructor on the West Coast. He was a small wiry man, a few inches above five feet. One day a tall and tough looking man arrived in the camp and claimed he was Boston Blackie, a well known boxer. Actually radio had a detective series about Boston Blackie between 1944 and 1950 and this is where he probably picked up the name. Judging from the scars on his face and flattened nose he probably had been a boxer of sorts. In any case he was hired and joined a group of several men whose job was to peel the bark off logs that were to become railway ties, It was the highest paying bonus jobs in the camp.

Boston Blackie soon informed his fellow workers that they should pay him a share of their earnings or he would deal with them with his fists. This went on for several days because the men were afraid of him. Finally the Japanese man asked the men to let him look after it. He quietly went up to BB and told him bluntly that the men weren’t going to pay him anything. Boston took a mighty swing at the little Japanese who avoided the blow and then went to work on the big man with judo chops. In seconds Boston Blackie was unconscious and placed onto a passing box car resting for a few minutes on a railway siding. And that is how he left the camp never to be heard from again. I guess he never picked up his pay check and I wonder what became of him..

The Drifters: The largest group of men in the camp was between 40 and 55 and had a history of at best temporary work. Many had lived through the Depression years before World War II when millions of men in Canada were unemployed. They told me stories about hitching rides on freight trains and traveling across Canada looking for work wherever they could find it; sometimes during the harvests, or on road gangs from British Columbia to Nova Scotia and here in the lumber camps. Many would arrive with not much more than paper bags or a dilapidated suit case that carried their few worldly possessions. Some told me about a girl friend or wife and kids from long ago but with the life they were leading and without any money these were left behind and only dimly remembered. Many couldn’t read and count money. When they bought something they just handed someone money and took whatever change that was given back. I was even asked the question about where Europe is and asked if it was south of the camp somewhere.

They lived from paycheck to paycheck saving just enough to go into the nearest town to drink and look for a woman to spend time with. Many of them in a drunken state got into fights in town, usually about money or women, and the police would put them into the jail to sober up. It was a cycle I’m sure they repeated hundreds of times; it was a life of disappointment without hope and expectations. Listening to them talk on the front porch after work I learned that many of the men they fought with or stole from were their friends and they laughed about their jail time. They had few job skills other than what they had learned in these temporary jobs.

They were generally quiet and well behaved in the camp. The behaviour code of the camps was that you didn’t talk at the table, didn’t fight and get into arguments, or steal from each other while in the camp. If anyone stepped out of line they took justice into their own hands and it was rare that anyone did. I had a little experience with this. I was carrying in my wallet the picture of a girl I had been dating in Montreal. Another young man about my age looked into my wallet and paraded the picture around the camp as his girlfriend. When I confronted this young man some men nearby overheard our heated discussion and their response was, “Kid, I guess you are going to have to fight him to get it back”. He wasn’t any bigger than me so we fought and he returned the picture. Later we went fishing after work together.

Could they be violent? I guess the camp manager thought so because one day he entered the dining room when the men were eating. He said he had a simple message. “My teenage daughter will be staying with me for the summer. If any man crosses over the railway track to the side my house is on, for any reason, I will shoot him dead on site and I am a good shot.” He then went out and someone said, with heads nodding “Wow! I think he really means it.”

Dick Fleming and I saw one incident that led us to believe they shared an underlying potential for violence. One day we were working on the railway siding dragging railway ties into a box car. A rabbit appeared and one of the men threw his cant hook (a stick with a hook at the end that we used for dragging logs) at the rabbit and broke its leg. The men thought this was hilarious and in seconds we observed a group of man roaring with laughter as they beat the poor rabbit to death. You hear about how soldiers running amok have committed terrible crimes in Iraq and Vietnam and I often think back about that helpless rabbit.

The Students – We were treated like the others and if anything were tolerated as rookies who had a lot to learn. In that sense the trapper and some of the older men were quite fatherly and helpful to us. Our education didn’t count for much. Two students I recall were studying medicine and planned to commit their early career to working on the icebreaking ships that went into the Artic harbours. (I have a picture of one of these men carrying a log with me with us pointing in opposite directions). The Frontier college volunteer and ex Spitfire pilot I mentioned in Chapter V when he took charge when that poor worker was cut in two. I think he was a med student from Western. He worked full shifts like everyone else but in the evenings he sat around helping people to read and handle money. After a while I would help him One thing you had to be careful about was opening your big mouth and using your book knowledge, uninvited, to show off some things you knew about the world or even worse to correct someone who was passing on inaccurate information. Invariably you would be accused of being a liar. You will find in any work group someone they go to for answers even though they know nothing.

The DP’s (displaced people). The war in Europe and the Far East was over and millions wanted to leave their war torn regions to start a new life in a Canada. They were warmly welcomed and several million arrived in the years that followed. At that time the rule was that they had to serve some time for about two years away from the cities so they began to arrive in the mines and lumber camps. Many, if not most, had acquired skills like tradesmen, accountants and even having completed courses that would lead to professional degrees so they were just serving their time until they could return to the cities. Most were young and very hard workers. We saw just the early trickle of a few arrivals in the camps with the big migration happening later when I was working the following years in the mines.


How did we spend our time when we weren’t working?

The basic work week was 6 days a week and 10 hours a day. There was overtime too. I recall two occasions where I was ordered (not asked) to work both the day and night shifts – 36 hours without sleep working near whirling saws - because the night worker was drunk in town and didn’t show up. When night fell most workers behaved like birds and went to sleep. Nine o’clock in the evening and the snoring started in the bunkhouse.

I recall that many just sat on the porch after work, didn’t talk to anyone and just stared out over the lake. I guess they occasionally saw something swimming in the lake like a moose escaping from the insects, a fish jumping or a couple of busy loons fishing. Sometimes when dusk settled in the Northern Lights would take over and light up the sky with a brilliant emerald and shimmering glow that flashed across the sky in waves. I remember commenting once to some nearby workers sitting there “ Wow! Just look at that” They looked up and said, “I don’t see anything”. I guess you can get accustomed to anything.

I read a lot. My mother would load up my bags with many books that she liked (I wasn’t consulted) that included heavy reading like works from Henry James, James Joyce, Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, Joyce Carey, Victor Hugo, Pushkin and something light like a Hemingway or an Agatha Christie. I had no choice; there was no television, I don’t recall any radio or even newspapers, so I read books. I read what she gave me but looking back I am forever grateful.

I remember as well Dick Fleming and I going out to the railway track to watch the transcontinental train racing by because it kept us in touch with the city world we had left. We would see the people sitting in the dining cars and sometimes people standing on the platform between cars looking clean and well dressed. On occasion some young ones would shout out insultingly,’ Beaver!!’ which was a reference to our shabby work clothes and unshaven faces.

Fishing was a great pastime in my first year at the camps because we bordered a 50km long lake teeming with fish: pickerel, pike, bass and even the occasional muskie (muskellunge). We went out in the longboat that could take about six men. We brought a big pan in the boat to collect the live fish rather than letting them die. We built a stone wall around an inlet in the lake (we called it the crib) near the camp and dumped the live fish in there. Twice or three times a week the cook had us to go down to the crib to collect enough fish for the 40 or so men in the camp. The cook was always worried that the bears would get to the fish before we did and sometime this happened, but not while I was there. I guess the raw garbage at the end of the camp kept their bellies full.

Another big event for the men was the happy berry picking on Sundays. Happy women arrived by train and were greeted by happy men and with their baskets, picnic food and blankets they soon marched off to the woods and logging roads nearby. My impression at the time this was serious berry picking event to collect whatever the seasons provided: mainly blueberries and raspberries. Sure enough a few hours later they happily came out of the woods with their baskets full. It was agreed that the camp cook could take about half of it. When the milk train finally arrived late in the day, the women climbed aboard with their baskets after much fussing and goodbyes with the men. Later I was advised by some of the men that there was much more to this event than berry picking but I was young and innocent at the time and looking back it was just as well.

Working in Lumber Camps III - Summers 1946/47

Chapter III Working in the Cook House


Here I was sitting on the floor peeling potatoes beside another guy who was old enough to be my grandfather. A large pile of potatoes lay before us and 40 hungry men would be expecting them before noon. I was pretty glum. I had signed on at the camp to be a lumberjack and here I was relegated to the lowly role of Cookie. I had arrived in the lumber camp the day before and the camp manager took one look at my skinny frame and had decided this is where I belonged.

The cook who was my boss at first seemed dangerous. He was a large heavy set man with a ruddy complexion and threatened to skin me alive if I didn’t stop cutting off so much of the potatoes while peeling them. After several days I realized he really wasn’t going to skin me and besides I was getting better with the peeler.

It was a long day in the cookhouse, ten hours (and 6 days a week), the same as for the lumberjacks and mill workers except my day was broken up. The workers arrived for breakfast at 6 AM so I had to be up at 4:30AM to light the fire in the iron stove; This was followed by assisting the cook in preparing the porridge, mixing the pancake batter, preparing the tea and coffee and cutting up the bread and slices of fruit and setting the table before they arrived. And all of this while the chef kept threatening to have me boiled alive or cut up in the stew if I failed in any of my assignments.

Then just before they men arrived we prepared scrambled eggs, pancakes and fried bacon. The tradition in lumber camps was that there should never be any bare space on the table so that in addition to the things we prepared, the table spread also included pies and cakes from yesterday, jams, jellies and syrups, and cold meats. What they didn’t eat at the table was packaged up for a mid morning snack. A strict rule in all lumber camps was that there was to be no talking at the table; they ate in silence. I was told that the reason for this rule of silence was because discussions could result in fights breaking out. In any case, we in the kitchen liked the rule because they came in and ate and in twenty minutes they were out again and we could get on with clearing the table and washing the dishes. By 7:30 AM I was finished and had time off until 10:30AM when it was time to prepare lunch. All the meals were the same: huge, because the men faced 10 hours of hard work every day and burned up a lot of calories. The lunch period required 4 hours because peeling vegetables for lunch and dinner were part of it. Then another break until 4:30PM and finally ending my day by 7:30PM.

Time off for me was usually spent swimming, running across the logs in the log boom in the lake, fishing and reading. My partner, the old cookie, usually just sat and smoked or went off for a snooze. A nice thing happened on my first morning. I picked up a fishing line that was lying on the dock and lowered the line in the water just to see how deep it was before diving in for a swim. There was a sudden violent yank on the line and a mill worker seeing my struggle came running over to help me battle with a nine and a half pound pike. The men were impressed. I caught a lot of fish after that but this was the biggest and best.

My boss, the cook, had been a chef in a Hotel in London Ontario. He was an alcoholic and had decided to spend the summer at the camp to sober up. The problem was that the Cookies were instructed to collect any fruit juice and wild fruit and store it in a barrel to ferment. About once a week he would drink from this raw and bubbling brew and get roaring eyed drunk. He would then lie on a cot outside the kitchen and watch through the screen and sing and shout out his crude and violent thoughts. We liked him because he was actually kindly and gentle although when drunk he would do crazy things. For example he would often throw the slops out the door and deliberately splash someone walking by. He would then rush out and profusely apologize as though it was an accident. The men knew it was a game and forgave him because he was famous in the north for his cooking and for many of the men the food was more important than the money they earned.

After about ten days in the kitchen the cook became weary of my complaining about working in the kitchen and arranged with the foreman to have me transferred to the mill. I was delighted to start my new career.

Just an observation: I can't recall ever seeing a fat man in a lumber camp. Despite eating three large meals a day the physical demands of  a lumberjack's  way of life burned off all the calories. Compare that with today's sedentary way of life with machine aided work and hours spent in front of television and computer screens while consuming copious quantities of junk foods.