Kenny's Loggin' – Phillips Arm – Part 1

Dec 14, 2022 - 2 years ago

One day, I was flying in the “Sched”. We took off from the Tree Spit in Campbell River, and flew past my house in Painter-Barclay subdivision, over the pulp mill, and above the power lines at Seymour Narrows.

On the left, I could see my uncle building road at Elk Bay. Then we flew over the settings I had just logged on Sonora Island, and did a banked turn over the camp in Phillips Arm. Looking down, I could see a really steep setting right behind the camp. I thought, “I hope I’m not there tomorrow.”

After my bowl of oatmeal with Ken, Nories’ falling contractor, I got my caulk boots on and went looking for the foreman, Bill. “I’m going to send you with Harold and Lindsay to work on ‘The Beast’,” Bill said. The Beast was a yarding crane on the setting right behind camp. I played with Lindsay when we lived in Elk Bay Camp in the late fifties, he was Ken’s son. Harold was the son of Hillis Logging who Nories had bought the camp from. Another guy named Harold was operating the Beast and a guy named Paul was running the loader.

It took us about twenty minutes to get to the setting. The first turn we grabbed right behind the landing, two nice looking cedar logs, choked close to the ends, and sent to landing. Trouble is, there was no landing and I should’ve choked them with much longer ends. Took them quite awhile to unhook the chokers and send the rigging back. Somebody yelled down at us, “Hook longer ends, you stupid ass!”

Kenny's Loggin' – Phillips Arm – Part 1

Lindsay was wearing a torn shirt so Harold the hook tender nicknamed him “Rags”. The setting was so steep that we took our lunches down with us and at quitting time we just ran the one thousand feet down to camp. Bill couldn’t figure out why we were in camp so fast and no crummy.

After a few days on the Beast, Bill came to me and said, “Kenny, I’m going to put you hooking on a steel spar. This is Joe, he’ll be your rigging slinger, and Gary’s the operator.”

We had to rig the tower up and I (with not too much steel spar experience) was in charge of doing that. With lots of help from my crew, we managed to get the tower up and yarding some logs.

One morning, there was a meeting in the yard. Nories’ weren’t getting any production. Bill fired all the choker men and said to me, “You’ll be working in the landing do you want to stay?”

“I’ll stay,” I said. It wasn’t long before a couple of planes landed bringing in some more rigging men and to take out the fired guys.

One morning Bill said to me, “You go with Jerry and work on the tower.” Into the crummy and away we went. “Where’s the rest of the guys?” I asked. “Just you and me,” said Jerry. One month over one hundred rigging men were to come and go for four yarding sides. “How are we going to do this?” I asked. “Easy,” Jerry said, “you’re going to run the spar and I’ll be out in the bush.”

We got there and the spar was a hand jammer. Jerry showed me how to skin the rigging out and bring it in. We then made a runway log so I could use it to un-hook the chokers. This worked pretty good; one day we managed to get 25 logs.

Read part 2 here.

Ken Wilson worked in the logging industry on Vancouver island in B.C. for over 50 years. Ken is a regular contributor to Supply Post newspaper with his column “Kenny’s Loggin’”, and resides on Vancouver Island, B.C.