Kenny's Loggin – Supervising the Supervisors

Jun 19, 2024 - one year ago

When I started at Menzies Bay, Ernie Venus was the manager, he had been a faller earlier on in his career. Ed Herman was the general foreman, who had done some high-rigging. There were seven different departments, each with two or three foremen, and a dedicated office within the main office.

Kenny's Loggin - Supervising the Supervisors — *L-R: Vic Bortolotto, Ike Enns, and Bill Stewart. Photo courtesy the Gordie Lee Collection.*

The “bull buckers” for the Falling department were Les Gerluck and Nick Beduik. The Hauling department had one foreman, Jack Walker, who was in charge of travel time. He would mark down the time all the buses would reach the marshalling yard. Back then, travel time was paid up to the minute. Union and companies later switched to “block” travel time. When I started in the Y&L department, the foremen were Vic Bortolotto, Harold Brownson, and Mario Galeazzi. Lyle McMurdo took over Mario’s spot when he retired.

M&B would send the foremen on training sessions, so they would select union men to fill in as charge hands when they were away. I had been on the Safety Committee and Lyle McMurdo selected me to fill in for him. The other two guys were Warren Gionet and Lorne Carson. Warren went to Iron River and would become a M&B foreman later on, and Lorne was in the Memekay area and I had the Salmon River. We marshalled the crew in the mornings, made crew changes, and collected time cards. Once the crews were gone I would load the pickup with supplies needed for the various crews, stuff from the warehouse, paper towel, grease, gear dope, and then I’d go over to the line shed for chokers, loading lines, and scissor lines for grapple yarder. Then I’d go down to the office to hand in the time cards and do some planning with the other foremen.

I was attending to my duties when I heard Ike Enns call for “FIRST AID!” A few moments later, someone asked for “radio silence”. The channel had to be left open for communication purposes. Not knowing what to do, I just parked and listened to the radio. It didn’t sound like things were going too good. Pretty soon someone came along and filled me in. Jake Epp, faller, was the senior man on the seniority list and he was retiring. For his last week, they took him off the saw and made him bull bucker. On July 18,1983 at 11:00 am he died from a heart attack.

With radio silence being observed, I was sent to South Main to tell the fallers what happened. When I got there and told the fallers what happened, one of them was really mad at me saying why didn’t you call us on the radio. I said, “radio silence” was being observed. When I left the area I’m thinking to myself, “call them, they aren’t supposed to be in the bus.”

This job was pretty cool, I was being paid hookers rate for 8 hours regular and 3 hours overtime every day. I spent three weeks in total on those duties. One weekend, I attended a B.C. Lions football game, when I got to work I was so hoarse I could barely talk! Lots of short answers came out of me that day.

One of the loader operators wanted to be a foreman in the worst way. When he heard about us three getting the temporary charge hand jobs, he tried to put in a grievance, but he was informed that he couldn’t grieve it by his union buddies. Loader operators were a key position and were hard to replace; the three of us were easily replaced.

My Dad and I discussed what a good job being a foreman would be. Down at the office, there was a board where the company had job postings up for all divisions. I talked to Lyle about it. He took me to the office and conducted a job interview with me. I would check the board every so often. Later, I learned that a guy wouldn’t necessarily get a posting in Menzies Bay. As I was pretty well locked into life in Campbell River, I wasn’t about to move to another town!

I figured out why Mario Galeazzi would spit snoose on your feet when he got out of the pickup. Because if you spit out the window it stuck to the side of the truck. That stuff was hard to wash off!

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.