Kenny’s Loggin’ – Summers at the Elk Bay Logging Camp

Apr 21, 2022 - 3 years ago

I was about four or five years old, standing on seaplane dock in Campbell River. “What’s that?” I said. “Bull kelp,” said Mom. We got on the plane and flew to Elk Bay. Dad was being interviewed for a woods foreman job for Norie Brothers Logging Company. We flew to the camp to check it out. Elk Bay was an old railroad camp in the forties. Nories bought it to do some truck logging. Some bunkhouses, a shop, cookhouse and married houses were there.

Kennys Logging - Summers at the Elk Bay Logging Camp

The next thing I know, we are in our ‘54 Monarch with a trailer behind, leaving Duncan for Elk Bay. We would go for a ten-day shift and then back to Duncan for four days. It was a four to five hour drive to camp. We would stop for gas at the Parksville Chevron. We would get supper at the Holiday Inn there. Chinese food or half dozen fried oysters. Another place we would stop was Dels’ Burgers in Campbell River. Going north from Campbell River, past Menzies Bay turning off at the Browns’ Bay Road. A rough logging road went for about ten miles to Elk Bay — up one steep hill, down, and up again. Through a gate down another hill around the lake past the gravel pit to the beach and camp. One time going into camp, the road was covered with frogs that had just hatched. A mother cougar and her three cubs were licking these frogs up. They weren’t going to let us drive by. We finally got by.

There were three houses in the married quarters. Owner Frank Norie and wife Faye plus two kids had one, falling contractor Ken Chatterton wife Cleo plus three kids, foreman Dennis Wilson, wife Joyce, plus three kids stayed in another. The oldest kids were about eight with the youngest being two and three. The house we were in is the middle one.

There was lots to do for kids. Crabs on the beach, bullhead fishing, picking blackberries with Mom and a bear. I thought I was talking to Mom on the other side of the blackberry bush. I glanced down the road and there was Mom fifty yards away! I won my first fifty yard dash!! The ocean was too cold to swim. We tried building a pool in the creek but that was unsuccessful. Mom would go across the bridge to the cookhouse for coffee. Celia the cook still used a wood stove for cooking. She had the two biggest cats I’ve ever seen.

There was an old pontoon from an Otter seaplane on the beach. We used to put a kid in it, lock him in and throw rocks at it. One day we even forgot about him and had to go looking for him at supper time.

We went into the bunkhouses and collected all the empty beer bottles. We filled our trailer took them to town, cashed them in and bought a swimming pool. Also in the bunkhouses’ were lots of dead hummingbirds. I recall putting them on a log, went to get Mom to show her. Got back they were gone. The seagulls ate them.

The logging trucks had no mufflers. You could hear them coming for miles. The tide would go out and the loads piled up at the dump. It was fun watching and waiting for the tide to come in and break the log jam.

A couple of years later after the new highway was built to Port Hardy, Nories pushed the road out to Roberts Lake. They shut the cookhouse down and went to a five and two shift. We moved to Campbell River and Dad would drive to work every day. A crummy was supplied for the crew.

One weekend Dad and our family and my Uncle Ray and his family went to Stella Lake, two km. inland from Elk Bay. Dad got the TD15 dozer and made a small road down to the lake. We made a campsite and camped there for the weekend. This would later become a Provincial campsite. This was about the time that the big box office attraction “Lawrence of Arabia” was showing.

At Elk Bay every couple of years, Nories would clean out the booming grounds. To do this, Uncle Bert would bring the D9 down to the beach. Dad would get the D8. At low tide together they would push the mud, silt, bark, and stuff up onto the breakwater. Once the tide came in, we would go swimming in the big hole they had created. It was kind of dirty and stuff but it was warm for ocean water.

Nories would have some more camps. I would put in a few years in school before I was old or big enough to work at Easter or in the summer holidays.

Ken Wilson worked in the logging industry 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.