Kenny's Loggin' – Engineering at Menzies Bay

May 23, 2024 - one year ago

At Menzies, I found working on the rigging was kind of boring. Once I figured out there were other special jobs, I was on the lookout for them. I was usually one of the first guys at the marshalling yard in the mornings. First thing to do was check the bulletin boards for information.

Kenny's Loggin' - Engineering at Menzies Bay — *Dump machine and booming ground. Photo courtesy Gordie Lee Collection.*

Safety news, union news, company news, and job postings were here. I saw that there was a posting up for a temporary crewman in the engineering department. I asked Vic Bortolotto, woods foreman, what it was all about. His answer was that’s the department he started in when he first started for M&B. “Put your name in, you might like it,” Vic said. “You will help with the layout of roads and settings.” So I put my name in.

A few days later Vic said, “You got the posting. I’ll take you down to the office when we finish marshalling the crew.”

The office had several departments, managers, foreman, secretaries, accountants, and engineering. Vic introduced me to Arnold Ennick, the head engineer. Other men there were Dale Dannel, Rollie Hack, Bo Ferguson, Allie Gibson, and Bob Cooper. I was to become Rollie’s partner, working in the Memekay area; the rest of the crew were mostly in Iron River.

The first thing we did was have a safety meeting. We did a “Job Safety Breakdown” reviewing procedures about the job.

The union guy (being me) had to drive the crummy and we had what we called a cattle car.

I went with Rollie Hack to layout a setting in the Cooper Creek area. We spent the first couple of days just walking around, identifying key positions in the area. For instance, a large cedar tree on the bank of a small creek which empties into a larger creek. Then back to the office were we would look at arial photographs with 3D glasses.

Then, we would go back out into the field and establish some blazed trails running north/south and east/west. Once this was done, we would layout the roads and settings.

Sometimes, we would have a weiner roast. One time we put out the fire and went on with our work. A few days later we came back to the same spot and somebody had put engineering tape around a good size area which we could see was burnt. Looks like we never put out the fire good enough!

At the end of the day, we made sure we were back in the crummy to listen to the Dennis Rennie Show. He was the shop foreman and he was on the radio lining up work for the afternoon shift mechanics. It was pretty funny and entertaining.

Once Rollie and I finished this project, I got to be Dale Dannel’s helper. He was building a bridge in Iron River and I was to drive the Hiab truck, hauling loads of planks and timbers to the bridge site. He was frustrating to work with, trying to lift too much weight at one time. If he had left me alone, I could have done it in half the time!

It was three days of hauling stuff down to Iron River. In the end, I think I hauled more stuff back to the yard than he used!

Dale didn’t like doing layout. He was assigned to do a windfall setting. It took us a whole week to do what could have been done in about a day. Boring. This job ended with the winter shut down.

At the marshalling shack one morning, one of the foreman says, “Hang back this morning Ken, we got something else for you today.”

After the crew was dispatched, down to the dump we go. Ross, the dump man, was going on holidays, and I was going to run the dump machine for a week.

This was a “key” job. You got to greet all the drivers when they brought the load slips up to the cab to be put into the computer. Using weigh scale, some of the loads were identified as check scale loads and had to be marked with fluorescent ribbon.

What a great week I had, sitting up in the cab watching the boom men, truckers, and ocean going traffic going by Menzies Bay and dumping an occasional load.

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.