The Life of a Lumberman
Wikipedia says:
"…The term lumberjack is of Canadian derivation. The first attested use of the word comes from an 1831 letter to the Cobourg Star and General Advertiser in the following passage: "...my misfortunes have been brought upon me chiefly by an incorrigible, though perhaps useful, race of mortals called LUMBERJACKS, whom, however, I would name the Cossack's of Upper Canada, who, having been reared among the oaks and pines of the wild forest, have never been subjected to the salutary restraint of laws." - Tyler Rudd Putman. 2012-06-05. Retrieved2013-05-12"
Chapter One
Late Fall, 1884
"Viens! Se dépêcher!" 'Taureau' Charbonneau's booming voice was yelling "move it!" for other men to get up there and help quickly. William Murdoch knew that sort of order only meant one thing, so he tore up the ridge as fast as his boots could take him through the thick underbrush, dodging fallen branches and stumps on his way, fighting his fears as he went. The foreman was pulling on one end of what looked to be part of a tree, too large to shift single handedly with one branch buried perpendicularly in the ground like a great ship's anchor. William stood beside him and heaved mightily, feeling the tear and stretch of his shoulders and back under the burden. Daniel and Martin joined in right behind him with their tools as levers, allowing the four of them to wrest the log off of a prone figure dressed in a traditional capote.
Tremblay! Everyone knew that coat made from a Bay blanket belonged to Jean Tremblay, the camp's steam engine mechanic. The men turned him over and William was the first to reach under the coat's cowl and feel for a pulse of life at the neck. Nothing. William looked up into the anxious eyes of his fellows and shook his head.
"Mort," he told them simply-but they already knew. Tremblay's body was flaccid and his usually ruddy face was pale. William made the sign of the cross along with the other men standing over the body, and rose off his knees, seeing that a few others had joined the scene. He looked up at the space through which the huge branch had carved wreckage in the forest canopy, sending a prayer heavenward for the man's immortal soul.
"Will, go to the barn and get the stretcher," Daniel asked in English. "We'll bring him down together."
William looked to Charbonneau who nodded in agreement, then made his way through thick trees over to the trail to make his way down the hill into main camp, reminding himself he needed to find his own tools and get them sorted before it was too dark to find them.
Just another day on the mountain.
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William ate at his usual place along the central wooden table, trying to stuff as much food into himself as he could in the silent fifteen minutes allowed for their morning meal-the pungent smell of wet wool, unwashed bodies and smoke doing nothing to curb his appetite. He needed fuel for the job, so he systematically chewed and swallowed – quick meals left little time to appreciate any taste. In the dim lantern light he saw his fellow lumberjacks were no more pleased with the icy conditions howling outside the log walls than he, but no one voiced any complaints.
William glanced at his companions shoveling their own food down. There were no old lumberjacks. The job required the ability of one man to do the work of three (and eat for three), from five in the morning to well after dark, six days a week, for up to four months a year in very tough winter conditions, all for the business of cutting and hauling trees down off the northern Canadian Shield. Every man at the table was taller than average in order to effectively use axe and saw, and was well-muscled from hard physical labour. William's twenty-one year-old body matched theirs, just like all the farmers and farmer's sons who joined the trade each winter.
William's third Fall as a lumberjack was going well now that he was no longer a latrine-digging bull-cock, which is what all new general-labour men were called until they found their place in a crew: 'tested until trusted.' He beat out several other men for the job of high - climber this season because of his experience as a lopper and agility at quickly and accurately attaching the pulleys and rigging to the trees.
Anything to get out of digging. Today he was not so smug about that. Be careful what you wish for, his mother often told him. High - climbing was going to be ugly today, but there was nothing for it. The final crew-members of their logging camp having arrived earlier in the week, meant that today, Saturday, must be the last day of set up before the serious business of winter tree-felling commenced,
His spoon scraped the last of his breakfast just as the crew chief, a giant of a man named Blanchard, called: "Allez!"
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"Descends, nous partons!" William flew down the hillside to the steam whistle blow, never so happy to hear foreman Charbonneau announce the end of a work day. His legs traversed the hard uneven ground and his arms and shoulders bore the heavy tools of his trade. The ice, coating every tree and surface, was finally so bad it was too dangerous even for a high-baller crew like theirs to continue. He was soaked through, frozen stiff, with hands so numb the cold no longer burned when he wrestled the chains with bare hands.
A line of shivering men snaked a path back to camp and he joined their clouds of breath, forming some sort of French-speaking dragon disappearing into the forest. Daniel, his bunkmate and the only other Anglais in the whole camp, fell into place besides him. "We start cuttin' tomorrow, Will. Some of the last of the original white pine is here, a hundred and fifty or more feet high, five feet across. You know I think it'll be a shame when it is all gone," the older man said. Daniel Beecham was, at thirty-nine, a fifteen year veteran as a lumberjack and among the most experienced men on the crew. He worked nearly year 'round as a surveyor in summer, a faller in the winter and a draveur on the water come spring.
"Ah, Daniel. How can it ever be all gone?" William asked anyway, slipping on some ice. "Millions of acres and only a handful of men."
"Seems to me that half the men in the whole country take a turn or two up here-even book-worms," Daniel poked at William good naturedly. "The shipwrights, railroads and paper mills have a larger appetite than even Blanchard," he laughed. "And the government has a bottomless greed for the licensing revenue. It'll outlast me, and maybe you if you can take it, but soon… all this will be gone. We have already driven the Algonquin, the Mi'kmaq…so many others away. No—it'll all change. Mark my words, Will." Daniel's grey eyes squinted against the stinging ice which was still coming down in earnest. "Ending early today means we can give Tremblay his funeral. His brother-in-law, François Gagnon, says he has no other family so we will bury him here rather than send him home to his wife, and since he was not Catholic, we won't need the priest."
William considered the dead man. He had learned about the workings of the steam engine from Jean Tremblay, but did not like him, in large part because he tortured William with name calling his first year, calling him Merde-eau instead of Murdoch until William put a stop to it.
William gave a perfect imitation of the Gallic shrug. "Father Campeau never seems to mind—the only thing he will not abide is communion. He would lay Tremblay to rest, but he will not arrive until tomorrow morning with the mail." Many working-men were buried beside the great achievements of 'Man' - along the railroads, the canals, dams and bridges of old and modern times, including up here in lumber country. Imagining making a grave in the ice-crusted cold earth and knotted root systems of the forest, William found himself thinking he was glad he was not digging that particular hole, before recognizing he was being callous. "We will have a service and prayers before supper I assume."
Daniel laughed and slapped William on the back. "Food! Will you're a true lumberjack if you can think of food above all. Cook will not have it ready until the usual time and you know the Company will dock us half a day today," Daniel said without hard feelings. "On the other hand we have all night to ourselves and all day tomorrow to sleep!"
Back at the shanty, William cleaned and sorted his gear with care since failing to do so would cost more than a portion of his pay-badly maintained equipment could get him killed. He checked on the rigging, axes and crosscut saw he and Daniel would be using Monday and took the blades to Old Gavin for a sharpening. Listening to the whine of metal on stone, William looked forward to the start of logging on Monday.
He struck up a conversation with the filer about weather, a perennial subject of conversation amongst all lumbermen everywhere, and the man surprised him by asking if he was going to talk to Charbonneau about taking over Tremblay's job. William actually had been vaguely entertaining the notion of proposing himself as fill-in steam engineer at least in the short run. "No, Gavin," he continued in French. "I am still young and strong and happy with my lot here."
"And I am old and only fit for this!" Gavin motioned to his grinding wheel. Age and injury eventually took all men out or moved them to less physically demanding aspects of the job unless they were outright killed.
William smiled. "If I am asked I will help of course but I want the higher pay!" Both men chuckled, since money was the other constant on every man's mind.
"I worry about your future Guillaume…. To be a man is to be forged and sharpened like these blades, no? Too much time with your books and too much time with your priest will make you soft!"
William accepted the criticism, since he'd been thinking more or less the same things recently. He figured that while he was young and strong he might make a go of it in logging considering nothing else up to this point had worked out-ranch hand, railroad worker, clerking and even a stint at house-building failed to capture his attention sufficiently. Life in a Québécois lumber-shanty was, in some ways, similar to a priestly vocation or his time at St. Ignatius. A predominately Roman Catholic, isolated, all-male communal life: up before dawn, long hours, strict discipline, silent meals and many prayers. All of that felt natural to him, even if he missed intellectual stimulation. But that is what those books are for, he told himself.
"Gavin, can I tell you something? Please do not let on to anyone, but I am already going to ask if I can stay on all year."
Gavin rewarded him with a gap-toothed smile of encouragement. "You are with Beecham this year, lucky dog. He's as good as any man was back in my day and he will teach you to be safe and wise, Guillaume, if you pay attention to him."
"That is true." William was very pleased he was going to be partnered up with Daniel this season, planning to prove himself worthy of another promotion. He could not have named it, and would have denied it were it brought to his attention, but underneath it all William was seeking a place for himself where he felt he could belong.
Once he was satisfied the blades were sharp, he thanked Gavin and put them away with the rest of their gear. Most of the remaining workers were doing likewise before retreating to their log bunkhouses to warm up and try to get dry.
"Ici, Guillaume. Prenez du thé et réchauffer. Vous ressemblez à un lapin noyé!"
"Merci." William accepted the offered mug of hot tea with pleasure upon entering his bunkhouse. Traditionally, the men made sure to wash or mend their clothing and grease their boots (or take a Saturday night wash up if they were going to go so far as that) so that Sunday was a true day of rest. No one wanted to do that yet, not until Tremblay was six feet under. Steam rose from his cup and from the assembled men, most of whom had shed layers of stinking clothing which now festooned the rafters, making the air uncomfortably thick and moist. Their camp was French-speaking, so morbid jokes and teasing flew in rapid patois.
William drained his tea and closed his eyes, sinking down on the so-called deacon bench, a long split-log which served as bunkhouse seating, enveloped in blessed warmth. He never knew he'd drifted off until Blanchard cuffed him sideways.
"Guillaume! Allez! Beecham vous veut." Blanchard gestured outside with a thumb. "Le hangar de glace."
The ice house? William scrubbed his whiskered face and looked out the small window. There was no apparent let-up in the ice-storm. Blanchard inform him: "Nous mettrons Tremblay dans le sol en trente minutes, Dieu le benisse." Half an hour until the funeral. It will be a short affair, given the weather, William thought. He rose to find Daniel.
William walked across the camp to the ice house where Tremblay's body was stored. There was a light coming through a crack under the door, and he was startled to find Daniel inside with Tremblay's body partially unwrapped from its shroud. "Daniel! Good Lord! What are you doing?"
"Look here, William. D'you see this?" he asked as he raised the lantern higher. "We found Tremblay crushed under that tree - I helped you pick up that bitch off his back. But something bothered me all day about it after we carried him down, so I came in here t'see for m'self. His body doesn't seem to have any broken bones." Daniel turned the corpse's head further to the left. "The back of his head is stove in. I don't think the tree was what killed him."
"Why are you telling me? Is that not something for Charbonneau or someone from the Company?" William asked reasonably. Rideau River Camp Number Six was set up twelve miles from the nearest depot, much farther than that from official law enforcement. He thought highly of the foreman, whose position out here in the forest made him a powerful combination of village mayor, sole banker and town judge.
"Charbonneau wasn't overly fond of Tremblay—we all know he tolerated him and paid him so well because he was the only one who could fix the engines when they crapped out. Tremblay had no business being up there on the mountain to have a tree fall on him and it was Charbonneau who found him, Will. What if it was Charbonneau who killed him?"
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To any native French-speaking readers—(JuliaJoyBell particularly) - I humbly apologize for relying on Google translation since my French is execrable despite taking it for ten friggin' years. If Google does to English to French translation anything close what it does to French to English translation, I am grateful you even bother to slog through it my stories when I insist on murdering your mother language- Merci!
