How Logging Camps Were Built

For a Century Many Men from the Kawarthas Headed North in November to Fell Trees for the Winter

From the mid nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century, most of the residents of the Kawarthas were farm families, and the largest off-farm industry was the export of forest produce. Early on, timbers were the most common product, then sawn lumber, then wooden manufactures. Once the ground started to freeze up, animals still needed to be cared for, domestic work was never ending, but field work became practically impossible. Many men would spend their winters working in the woods, whether it was clearing and making firewood on their own land or travelling to a logging camp for the winter. In the nineteenth century, local logging camps employed far more men than could be hired locally, and companies often recruited labourers from rural Quebec.

The first step in establishing a logging camp was to find a stand of timber that could be profitably cut, then floated downstream in spring. In early years, a lot of timber was cut on farm lots or in trespass, often on land owned by the Crown or absentee speculators. In the mid nineteenth century, standing timber was not particularly valuable as farmers sought to clear their lots, so companies just had to ensure that there was enough timber nearby to justify the cost of building a camp. If they misjudged, “all he had to do was increase the territory by cutting any timber that came handy on adjoining territory, and no one would probably be any the wiser.” By the late nineteenth century, when timber berths were selling for millions of dollars and it was becoming more difficult to cut in trespass, timber cruising became a much more exact science, because fortunes could be won or lost on correctly judging the quantity and quality of lumber in a tract.

In the 1850s, the government of Canada West (later Ontario) built Colonization Roads which were intended to open up a region that was called the Ottawa-Huron Tract—the edge of the Canadian Shield—for agricultural settlement. The Bobcaygeon Road (similar to modern day 49, 121 and 35 from Bobcaygeon to Dwight) was among the first and most used routes. The Burleigh Road ran north from Lakefield through Wilberforce. Though they were intended to facilitate agricultural settlement, they became throroughfares to access the forests on the edge of the Canadian Shield. Kinmount—the bridge on the Bobcaygeon Road over the Burnt River—became an important centre for the local forest industries, because a large portion of Haliburton County was tributary to the Burnt River. Lumberjacks and supplies would head up the Bobcaygeon Road, through Kinmount on their way to the logging camps. In this era when people travelled on foot or with horses, reaching a logging camp could take days, and the labourers would often stay at the hotels along the way.

The lumber companies had to build their own access roads—a large proportion of the labour that went into the season’s bush operations was spent on road building. In the nineteenth century, most roads were continuous strips where the tree stumps were cut low enough that the axle of a cart or wagon could pass. Once the mud holes froze and the tree stumps were covered with packed snow, they became much more passable. These roads were typically winding, often had many forks leading to different stands of timber and could be totally bewildering to anyone new to the camp. Road building was often underway by August, so that the camp could be ready for the annual trek north as the first snows fell.

In the nineteenth century, the shanties at logging camps were built in a similar style to the pioneer shanties that farming families inhabited, but could be much larger to accommodate beds for all the men working in camp—typically at least 20, commonly 30-60, perhaps up to 100. The crews building them would fell trees, notch and stack them to build the walls. Early roofs were often made of scoops—logs cut in half lengthwise, and scooped out to make a trough. The floors were logs, chipped flat with an adze or axe, that would not fit neatly together. Later on, some lumber might be cadged north to build the roof and sheet the gable ends. To the end of the nineteenth century, it would be unusual to go to the trouble of shingling the roof, instead they were often board and batten, which was not waterproof if it rained—but it didn’t often rain in the winter anyway. The men would use moss to chink between the logs to keep some of the wind and snow out. Early shanties might just have a hole in the roof to allow smoke from the fire to escape—perhaps with a wooden funnel to direct smoke towards the hole. These chimneys did not work well, and shanties were notoriously smoky, especially in damp, foggy weather.

One side of the shanty was typically filled with bunks, where the men would sleep two to a bunk. The cookery was often located in the centre—a pit filled with sand, which could be used for baking.  Shanties were located near a stream, which was the supply of ‘running water.’ Camps had privies, which were often filthy—long before the advent of toilet paper.  By the late nineteenth century, shanties might have a dry sink, but washing would be quite unusual—water from the creek would be scarcely above freezing. But the men who continued on to the river drive would be better washed: “Lost socks would often be discovered that way in the spring, the dirt on the men’s feet being so thick they would forget having put the socks on months before.”

It was a huge job to haul in all the supplies to a camp for winter. All of the men and the horses working in the camps needed to be fed, so companies would try to buy as much of the supplies locally as they could. Though the soils on the fringe of the Canadian Shield were not the best, farmers could easily sell hay and oats to logging companies. The typical fare was salt pork and beans, baked in sand with bread on top. Before railways reached Haliburton County, many teamsters cadged supplies up the colonization roads to build the logging camps, and keep them supplied for winter. The supplies would be kept in a storehouse, and there would be a stable to accommodate the horses. The horses were very much part of logging camp culture—they would have names, and the men would tell stories about what the horses did today.

Logging crews often arrived in late October or November, for their winter in the woods. The logging camps were an all-male world—if lumberjacks had a family, the company could forward their pay. The men who worked in the camps often had many happy memories of the times that they would share, sitting on benches around the cookery, eating pork and beans off a tin plate, smoking, chewing tobacco or drinking tea. Together they would tell terrifying tales, sing shanty songs, dance and play tricks on each other. Alcohol would not be allowed, but there might be a bottle hidden somewhere. If shanties had a distinctive smell, it was the combination of sweat, dirt, wood smoke, maple syrup (sweetener for pork and beans), green tea and tobacco. As the men began their journey north as the first snows fell, many looked forward to the adventures they would have together that winter.

Over the years the logging camps would become more comfortable. Once there were railways into Haliburton, it was far easier to move in supplies and the larger companies could buy rail cars of pork and beans to supply their operations. By the late nineteenth century, cook stoves and stove pipes were becoming the norm, making the shanties much less smoky. Separate dining areas became a norm, with tables and in the twentieth century, a common menu would be bacon, eggs and porridge for breakfast; then meat (typically pork or beef) and potatoes for lunch and supper. In the twentieth century, the workers might even be able to take the train home occasionally for a visit.

To the mid twentieth century, it was common for farmers to spend the winter cutting logs on their own property, making firewood, fence posts or pulp wood, which they would sell in spring. It was a way to earn a little money over the winter, when the ground was frozen and chickens were not laying many eggs. Local sawmillers would drive around the countryside buying logs and trucking them to their mills. By then, the log drives had ended, and to the 1940s and 1950s, some young men took the train north to work in the camps of the Muskokas or Haliburton. But once practically everyone had a car, and winter snowplowing became the norm, many farmers got off farm employment that might pay better than spending the winter hauling logs out of the woods. Not many young men that grew up in the postwar boom wanted to head north to spend winter in a primitive barracks in the woods felling trees—they had far more appealing prospects. An era had ended—for generations a large proportion of men headed to the woods for winter work, but by the mid twentieth century, in many communities, factories were now the largest employers.