Lumbering in the Kinmount Area

By Guy Scott

Kinmount was a lumber town. In fact, most villages and towns in our area were lumber towns. Farming was a precarious calling all over the Ottawa-Huron Tract, but the communities could always count on lumbering to provide some economic lift. The lumber industry had several strands. It provided direct employment via jobs in sawmills or jobs in the bush camps. The two were related; the sawmills operating almost exclusively during the summer and fall seasons. The lumber camps operated only during the fall and winter seasons. A separate career in the lumber industry was river driving, which occupied a short season in the spring. Workers often only participated in one or the other of these activities. The lumber industry also gave local farmers the opportunity to sell wood products off their properties to lumbermen big and small. Other settlers added to their income by cadging supplies with their horse teams. And any surplus produce for man or beast found a ready market among the lumbermen.

Kinmount as a lumber town, had a large “labouring” segment. Most of the workers were mill workers who worked in the several mills in and around the town. They would be employed for between 6 and 9 months and laid off during the height of the winter season. They could find employment cutting timber in the woods, but the jobs often overlapped. Most of the shantymen or lumberjacks who went to the camps were young, single men, often from farms. The mill workers usually had families and homes and didn’t want to disappear for four months in the winter. The river drivers were a subset all their own; mostly shantymen who took their log drive all the way to the mill. Not all shantymen accompanied the log drive; it took skill to drive logs.

The census of 1911 provides an interesting glimpse of Kinmount employment in the lumber industry. The census listed the occupations of Kinmount and area residents. The area contained 204 workers (excluding farmers). Of these workers, 127 earned a living in the lumber industry. The breakdown was as follows:

Shantymen or workers at the lumber camps: 67

Sawmill workers: 42

River Drivers: 14

Mill owners and managers: 6

The different occupations were clearly separated on the census. Kinmount was a lumber town!

The lumber industry in the Ottawa-Huron Tract of Ontario had several distinct eras. The first era lasted from about 1850 to 1880. Before 1850, the lumber industry was concentrated in Southern Ontario. There was plenty of fine timber easily available south of the Kawartha Lakes. The Ottawa-Huron Tract was let undisturbed because its resources were not needed (yet) and it was not accessible. Logs could be floated south on our many waterways easily enough, but to operate successfully, the big lumber operations needed roads. To supply an average shanty for one season, between 100 and 200 wagon/sleigh loads of supplies were needed. These supplies ranged from food for man and beast to hardware of many sorts. And they all had to be “cadged” in by road or trail. Cading required at least superficial trials from the supply centers such as Bobcaygeon or Fenelon Falls that were accessible by boat, to the shanties that were set deep in the bush. Shanties were located as close as possible to the trees, not the cadge roads.

The Bobcaygeon Road was a direct arterial road, running from Bobcaygeon deep into Haliburton County. The road reached Kinmount in 1858 and Minden one year later. All along its route, side or secondary roads branched off both east and west to new settlements or depot farms. From the end of these roads, the true cadge road led to the actual lumber shanty, deep in the woods. These last roads were very primitive, often only a cleared trail through the bush. Since the shanty only lasted 2 or 3 years, the cadge roads were quickly abandoned. The perfect time for cadging was late fall; when mud was frozen, but the snow not too deep. Sleighs could be used, but wagons were preferred.

The lumber companies used prodigious numbers of horses, wagons and teamsters in the cadging business, let alone during the actual logging. Some of the cadge teams were company owned, but most were hired contractors. Local farmers and livery stables earned extra cash by cadging shanty supplies. It was said the Bobcaygeon Road was alive with cadgers from October to January. The lumber companies tried to buy supplies as close to their shanty as possible to cut costs, so the local settlers found ready buyers for any surplus they could produce. There is no doubt the lumber companies had buyers stationed in Kinmount to purchase such staples as pork, potatoes, beef, flour, oats, hay and root vegetables for their shanties. These buyers were often the local storekeepers who would barter with local pioneer farmers and wholesale to the lumbermen.

But in the early pioneer period, food surpluses were rare and hay was even harder to acquire. The local farmers needed most of what they could produce to feed their own families and livestock. But such supplies were readily available in southern Victoria County and thus the cadge teams rolled on. It was an 18-mile trip to Kinmount from Bobcaygeon, and cadge teams were not know for their speed. Add in bad roads often mired in mud and the trip Bobcaygeon north lasted at least 2 days and often 5-6 days!

Accommodation for man and beast was needed and thus a hotel or inn was placed every 5 or so miles along the Bobcaygeon Road. That’s why Kinmount had so many hotels! All the shanty boys also had to be trucked north up the road. Most walked or (if lucky) could hitch a ride with a teamster. Due to the horrid condition of the road, it was likely easier to walk. Since most of the shanty boys were “short on cash,” the famous Boyd Company of Bobcaygeon actually had a depot in Kinmount. The northward bound shantymen was expected to walk to Kinmount from Bobcaygeon in one day, and free board was provided for the night. The shantyman could also purchase some luxuries, such as tobacco, at the B&B in town on credit; due at the end of the season. The author has seen bills from this Kinmount depot in the Boyd Papers, but its location still remains unidentified. The next stage after Kinmount was Minden or maybe Haliburton or numerous sites beyond deep in the bush. Mossom Boyd purchased timber “limits” or cutting rights in Snowdon, Glamorgan, Monmouth and Somerville Townships, plus the entire 9 townships of Dysart et al in Haliburton County. Most of the timber cut from these limits was floated down the Burnt River system through Kinmount. The rest was brought down the Gull River. Almost all the supplies for these camps were cadged up the Bobcaygeon Road before 1876, and then switched to rail after the rails reached Haliburton. No wonder the Kinmount blacksmiths were kept busy!

This system worked well until the mid-1870s, when the Victora Railway arrived in the area. Now supplies and shantymen could arrive by railway much closer to their destination. The railway certainly cut costs, especially in the cadging field. But it also led to a drop in price of foodstuffs sold by locals. Supplies could be easily shipped in from down south and prices plummeted in Kinmount. The supplies still had to be cadged into the shanties, but fewer cadgers now plied the Bobcaygeon Road. In fact, the inns south of Kinmount went out of business as the railway displaced commerce and travel. Silver Lake, bypassed by the railway, became a ghost town, while Burnt River, founded as a rail stop, flourished.

The 1870s also witnessed a change in the sawmill industry. Before the railway, all timber was sent south to Bobcaygeon or Fenelon Falls or Coboconk via the rivers to be sawn. From these “ports,” the timber could be shipped via boat to outside markets. A lot of timber actually went further down the Kawartha Lakes to Peterborough and Trenton! When the ribbon of steel reached closer to the sources of timber, the sawmills could follow. Villages with both rail access and water access now prospered as sawmill centres. Kinmount fit this bill perfectly. It was smack-dab on the Burnt River and had easily railway access. The village had contained a sawmill since its founding (1859), but the mill catered only to local markets; it was too expensive to cadge lumber south by horse and wagon. This all changed with the advent of the railway. By the 1870s, it was no longer necessary to have water power for a sawmill. It was now possible to run the mill by steam power. Of the 6 or so mills in the village, only the Craig and Austin mill used water power. The others used steam engines. The big lumber companies still drove their logs south along the rivers because it was too expensive to build new mills closer to the timber. So the river drives continued for a while. But the best timber was long gone, and the big companies gradually disappeared to be replaced by the myriad of smaller companies situated closer to the action. The types of forest products also changed. The early days of lumbering harvested only the finest pine, primarily white pine. These kings of the forest produced the finest saw logs (for lumber) and squared timbers for shipment to Europe and even spars and masts for sailing ships. But the best timber was becoming exhausted by 1880, and lesser trees came into demand.

Hardwood had no value before the railroads. It did not float, so it could not be driven down the rivers. But with a sawmill in every small town, it was not practical to cadge the hardwood to the nearest mill, saw it and ship out the product by rail. Likewise, cedar fence posts, railway ties, cedar shingles and other sawn wood products could now be milled and shipped by rail. Wooden barrel staves were also a profitable venture for the local mills. Kinmount had a huge stave factory that produced at least 1 railway car of (disassembled) barrel staves parts every week. Thanks to the railway access, these products could be produced at any of the local mills and loaded directly onto rail cars for easy transport to market. The Kinmount sawmills could cut the timber themselves: Craig and Austin always had a shanty somewhere in the bush to supply raw logs for their mill. Or the wood could be purchased from local farmers. Many a settler earned extra income by selling cedar blocks for shingles, or fence posts or any logs to the local mills. Tan bark was another wood product with value. It was the bark of the hemlock tree that was used in the tanning of hides. Hemlock swamps were plentiful in the Kinmount area; all the farmer had to do was peel off the bark and cadge it to Kinmount where it was shipped out by rail. In later years, cord wood or firewood also had value. It was shipped by rail to heat the growing cities. But before trucks, railway transport was the only practical way of getting firewood to market.

The earliest lumber shanties in the Kinmount area dated from the 1850s. The census of 1861 listed 7 shanties in Somerville Township alone. As the lumbermen moved further north in search of the white pine, the shanties moved north as well. The earliest shanties were very primate.