Kenny's Loggin' — First Day at M&B

Aug 23, 2023 - 2 years ago

One morning arriving at the steel spars Nories were running overlooking Elk Bay, Sammy said that they were only going to run one spar from now on. We called Bill the supervisor and got him up to the yarders.

Kenny's Loggin' – First Day at M & B — *Tower, Mack truck, and L324 log loader*

“What’s going on?” we asked.

“Nories’ are only going to run one yarder from now on,” said Bill. “Sammy wants only five guys.”

I wasn’t on the list! Sammy had forgot to tell us the day before. He said I was a good hooker, but a bit lazy, so he kept another guy who worked his ass off but wasn’t too smart. I was surprised, as I’d worked for Nories since childhood.

So sitting at home, Dad found some salvage work for our skidder at Bear Lake Logging, owned by our neighbours Bob Craig and George Davis. My brother Rodney was running the skidder and slipped getting back on the machine and re-broke his leg. That was the end of that.

I went to the Canada Manpower Center (as it was called at the time) and registered. It was a hiring agency with job boards and you applied for Unemployment Insurance there. Some days later I got a phone call from Norm Webb, who was from Manpower in charge of hiring loggers. He told me to go out to Menzies Bay, M&B were looking for experienced loggers. Me and my youngest brother Stacy went out to their office. I’d already been there and filled out an application. While Stacy was doing that, I went for an interview with the personnel manager.

A few days later I got a call to come to work at Menzies Bay. I was introduced to Vic Bortolotto, one of the woods foremen. I grabbed my caulk boots and tin hardhat and jumped in the pickup. We chatted about my logging experience as we went. We got to a steel spar crew that was rigging up.

“How long does it take to rig up around here?” I asked.

“Anywhere from half a day to a day and a half,” said Vic.

I was stunned. Old Sammy would be going nuts if we took more than a couple of hours to rig up and get back logging!

Over to the South Fork Mainline we went, where another spar was working down by the south fork of the Salmon River. We put our boots on and walked by the yarder and loader. Gary Macmillan was operating the hydraulic loader (#107), Chester Watkins, operated the steel spar (#48), and Rick was the landing man. The rigging crew were down by the river. I was introduced to Roger Wright the hooker, Lorne Carson the rigging slinger, and Kevin Yardley was the choker man.

It was getting pretty hot, so Vic wanted Roger to get one of the choker men to help pack the fire pump down to the back end in case of fire.

“Roger, Roger, Roger don’t send it out on the rigging, you know old Chester is a bit spontaneous running yarder and we don’t want him to drop it,” said Vic. Around the corner went Vic in his pickup and three long whistles sounded and a couple of minutes later, out on the rigging came the fire pump. I was astounded! Where I’d previously worked, you always did what the boss told you, with no questions asked.

After lunch we got the pump running and had a bit of a water fight for a while. I was sitting waiting for the rigging to come back when Roger said, “try some of this chewing tobacco.” It was a plug and he cut me a piece with his knife. The rigging came back, I stood up and felt kind of dizzy. Brute, the rigging slinger, laughed when he saw this and said, “It’s ok we’ll get this one, sit it out.” I chewed for over thirty years. What a disgusting habit! That was my first day at M&B Menzies Bay Division, thirty-eight years to follow!

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.