Kenny's Loggin – Log Loading on Salt Spring Island, BC in the 1950s

Sep 21, 2022 - 3 years ago

In the early 1950s my dad, Dennis Wilson, had an 8mm movie camera. Being the Woods Foreman for Phil Whittaker on Saltspring Island and Norie Bros. Logging at Elk Bay and Port Neville, he was in a position to record most phases of logging methods back in those days.

I’ve put together a video of loading logs. The first part of the video is on Saltspring Island close to Burgoyne Bay. One labour-intensive method was the use of L-Hooks. The loading engineer would lower the hooks to two men on the ground, one at each end, they placed the hooks on the logs and the operator lifted the logs and swung them onto the truck. If he dropped them just right the hooks would pop out or the men would have to pry the hooks out of the logs. This method was used at the “spar tree.”

At the cat logging section of this logging show they used “tongs.” Same as the L-hooks two men on the ground and on the truck to unhook if the operator didn’t drop them just right.

Next, we move to Elk Bay. Loggers were always looking for ways to improve production. Air-tongs were one way of less labour-intensive methods to load logs. Nories had some air-tongs which got rid of a couple of men on the ground.

Some logs were big enough that the tongs wouldn’t grab the log, so the workers would use a choker or strap to lift these logs. The loader didn’t have enough power to lift these on their own. In the video, you can see loading some big logs using a “block purchase” which doubled your lifting power.

Apparently, Phil Whittaker trained many men in the logging industry. He was also a champion Logger Sports participant. He toured the Pacific Northwest engaging in these events. My dad, mom and me (only 3) would go with him. While on these trips they would visit other logging companies to check out their logging methods, to see if they could use some of these innovations in their operations.

On one trip Phil talked to the “head saw filer” for Weyerhaeuser’s hand buckers. This guy filed saws for the competitors of the Logger Sports. They went and had a look at some of Weyerhaeuser’s operations, checking out their new reloading system for loading logging truck loads onto rail cars and watching a log loader load some logs off the road right of way and loading out of a spar tree. Loggers were starting to use shovels for loading instead of the winches at the spar tree. That way you could load logs without using the winches so you could keep yarding logs. They also looked at some “felled and bucked” settings over by Mt. St. Helen’s.

Around this time, loggers had figured out a self-opening and closing style of log loading grapple using a shovel with winches. They hung a cable to the top of the grapple, when you went ahead on this winch the grapple would lift up, opening it. The other cable went through the top of the grapple down around a sheave and back up to the top of the grapple. Going ahead on this winch would close the grapple and lift the log.

Today, cable loading of logs is pretty rare. Some companies use a machine called a “super snorkel” to yard and load logs. Most log loaders are hydraulic now.

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.