Kenny's Loggin – Making Connections

Jul 19, 2023 - 2 years ago

When my dad, Dennis passed in 2019, he left us with quite a collection of old 8mm films and several thousand slides. Brother Barry had them in his storage and asked us brothers if we wanted them. I spoke up and said I could probably find a use for them.

Kenny's Loggin' – Making Connections — *Getting a load ready on Salt Spring Island*

As I was not a computer expert, I went looking for some help. I had been using a local tech company, but they weren’t doing the job. I went to London Drugs and asked them, they gave me a number of a guy who worked for “Apple Support” and we connected.

Dad had some of his 8mm stuff transferred to digital to make a one hour and 45 minute video called The Day At The Farm. This video had old 8mm stuff of the family farm from the early 1940s taken by my grandmother Barbara.

As near as I can tell, Dad got his 8mm camera when I was about three years old, as there were no movies of me before that. This video was all about my Dad’s side of the family, me and my 3 brothers at Christmas, and lots of birthday parties.

I’m not sure what happened with Kodak in the early sixties, I think they started the Super 8 system, which required a new camera and projector, the film was bigger. So Dad took a photography course from Don McIvor and started taking slides.

My computer guy installed Handbrake to transfer from cd to digital.

The next step was to get an Epson V600 scanner installed, as there were upwards of 7,000 slides plus 1,500 of my own. I spent some time learning how to transfer slides to my computer.

Next I bought an 8mm movie digitizer, and learned how to transfer the movies. Once I got these done I asked my Computer Guy, “I want to be able to cut, copy and paste these movies.”

“No problem,” he said, and installed the iMovie app.

My son Clayton was trying to make some money on YouTube by showing some of these old logging movies which were proving to be really popular. Then another connection was made.

Excerpt from the Supply Post newspaper, August 2021, page 4:
Supply Post would like to introduce our newest column, "Kenny's Loggin'". We found a fascinating video on YouTube recently; a digitized version of an old, scratchy 8mm film of logging in action, with a descriptive narration. We were intrigued, and had to know more about it. We caught up with Ken Wilson, whose father Dennis recorded the film, and Ken’s son Clayton who uploaded it to YouTube. By Linda Horn and Ken Wilson.

This is the first story we did.

Some of the movies I knew lots about them as I had worked at the places, but I had a thirty minute video I knew nothing about. We had posted some videos and one day in the comments I received a comment from a Jim Whittaker. He said, “I can remember when your dad Dennis worked for my Dad Phil Whittaker as foreman, and can remember Dennis taking these movies.”

I connected with Jim got his phone number. Jim was able to supply information about this movie. He was about fourteen he remembered logging on Salt Spring Island and travelling around to the various loggers sports and logging operations. Jim is in the Loggers Sports video showing his chopping skills. He was in a blue jacket. [Supply Post newspaper, September 2021, page 31]

These are just some of most important connections I’ve made recently. It has been a steep learning curve and really fun making the connections. This whole experience has been wonderful and rewarding.

Talking To Jim
I saw it was Jim Whittaker’s birthday on Facebook so I gave him a call. I wanted some information about the logging videos of Salt Spring Island.

My dad Dennis started right out of school with Phil Whittaker. In the early 1950s, he was logging some of Salt Spring Island. Dennis showed a lot of promise and enthusiasm, so Phil trained him as a logging foreman. He soon learned how to run all the equipment that was on the claim.

They logged for a few years on the island starting up at the north end and eventually ending up around Burgoyne Bay.

Jim said that they had several donkeys — powered by gas Ford engines. Lots of war surplus stuff. I asked him what they did for fuel as the Cats and trucks were diesel and the donkeys and welders took gas. The biggest war surplus items were 45 gallon barrels. They would load the landing barge with 45 gallon drums, fuel them up and take them to the logging show where they were distributed as needed. At some point they would have to be man-handled and the fuel pumped by hand. Jim mentioned that the fuel was dirty lots of times, always had lots of spare filters standing by.

Some places they loaded trucks and dumped into the water and other places hauled right onto the beach with the Cat and arch, where the logs were bucked and pushed out to the booms at high tide. Some of the roads they hauled logs on are now public highways.

They would run crew boats to the closest tie-up places from their logging. Randells Point, which was at Cherry Point, Maple Bay, and Cowichan Bay. Howard Randell had a wharf and boat launch; they would haul the boats up to scrape the barnacles off. Jim said this was one of his first jobs. Scraping barnacles was ok for the first day or so but once the barnacles died there was a whole lot of stinking going on. Howard Randell had two sons Ray and Billy and they owned the landing barge and boat seen in the video. They were kept pretty busy servicing the logging going on in the vicinity. They were always delivering barrels of fuel. Apparently, they would back the Cat and arch down to the landing barge and hook up to a dozen barrels with the chokers on the arch and up the hill to the machines (lots of spillage).

Jim lives in Cowichan Bay right down by the water. He spent lots of years in Squamish just moving back recently. Jim still has some antique equipment which he is donating to loggers museums. Thanks Jim.

Next I start my career at M&B Menzies Bay Division.

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.