Russ, most likely at a McFadden lumber camp near Owen Sound.
The ride to the work site could be wild on the ice roads, kept slippery by water sprinkled from large horse-drawn tanks. Younger boys, nicknamed “chickadees,” walked the roads, scraping horse droppings from the ice so sleigh runners would skate smoothly along the ice roads. Traversing hills could be treacherous. With a full load, the horses took running starts to pull loads up the sides of slippery hills. Reaching the crest, the sleigh would perch for an instant before suddenly starting downwards. Sand, hay, or brush placed on the lee side of hills was meant to slow the descent, but if there was not enough sand or the hill was steep, the sleigh would hurtle downhill with the men hanging on white-knuckled, the horses galloping for their lives to avoid being crushed.
The men were lucky if there were packed trails from the road where they unloaded to their allotted sections of land. If not, they might have to wade through waist-deep snow. The lumberjacks worked near enough to one another to hear the sounds of saws and axes and the crash of trees hitting the ground. It provided each man a measure of his progress to hear those working nearby.
Most of the rough-barked white pine trees were two to three feet in diameter, a few monsters as much as four feet across. After a tree was felled and cut into lengths, horses pulled the logs through the snow to the roadside. The logs were loaded on sleighs and hauled to frozen lakes and rivers, where they waited to be floated to the sawmill after the ice broke up in the spring.
Russ listened as each tree was felled, the cracking and popping of the hinge of wood breaking at the base of the stem sounding like gunshots, branches snapping as each falling giant gained speed and brushed against neighbouring trees. Finally there came the thunderous “Whoompf!” as the tree hit the ground with explosive force.
It was dangerous job. Frostbite was an ever-present risk, and cuts from the sharp axes were commonplace. But the falling trees themselves presented the greatest danger. They weighed many tons and stood up to a hundred feet tall. The men were forced to stay on the narrow paths of trodden snow or be trapped in the deep snow as the hulks hurtled to the ground. Magnifying the danger was the fact the nearest doctor was in Blind River and medical help in the camp was practically nonexistent.
While everyone knew the work was dangerous, it was still jarring when one of the men was seriously injured. Russ could hear nearby men chopping and sawing at trees. He listened as another lumberjack’s tree began falling. But the snapping and scraping sounds of the falling tree stopped prematurely, leaving an eerie hush in the bush, except for the sound of a man cursing. Perhaps the other lumberjack was careless and left too much wood in the hinge, or perhaps he was nervous when the tree looked like it might fall and hadn’t gone deep enough with his backcut. Regardless of the cause, the tree was hung up, leaning, threatening to fall.
The leaning tree placed tremendous pressure on the remaining wood in the hinge, with thousands of pounds of force pushing on it. The man waited for it to fall, willed it to do so, but it would not break on its own. He would have to release it by cutting into the hinge. It was a dangerous operation, since the weight of the tree leaning on the hinge made it unstable and unpredictable. Russ listened and waited, the sweat leaving a cold trail down his back.
Cursing, the lumberjack approached the tree. Suddenly the hinge cracked, and in one massive release of energy, it snapped free at its base. The butt of the tree kicked back with abrupt explosive force, hitting the man squarely in the chest. It lifted him off his feet, tossing him onto the snow, where he lay limply.
Not able to see the other lumberjack, Russ called out. When no answer came, Russ dropped his axe and ran back up the trail, winding his way through the trees. He found the man lying in the snow, conscious but moaning and unable to move. Other lumberjacks came running through the undergrowth.
The injured man’s screams echoed among the trees as he was carried to the road, his cracked and broken ribs grating together. One of the lumberjacks ran for a sleigh to take him to camp. But since the only help was in Blind River, all they could do was give him rum from the camp stores to help numb the pain for the long ride to town. As the sleigh carried him away, his cries grew faint. No one asked his fate, and no one coming from town brought news. Perhaps it was out of superstition or to avoid showing weakness.
Harvesting and hauling logs continued through the long winter. The melting of the ice roads and spring ice break-up on the rivers and lakes signalled the end of the cutting season and the start of the river drive. The camp foreman asked Russ to stay for the coming river drive. Russ agreed. The extra weeks of work would be easier than the bush work, he thought, and at three dollars a day, the pay was double what he’d earned as a lumberjack. The idea of easy work did not last long.
In the turbulent water, clearing logjams amid the floating river ice, often soaked to the waist in icy water, was far more dangerous than bush work. There was no training for Russ, who simply walked out on the wet, rolling, icy logs, spiked boots providing traction, manhandling the logs to break up jams using only a peevie, a wooden pole with a steel hook and a hinged jaw on the end.
The work required strength to move the logs and agility to balance on their slippery surfaces as they bobbed and rolled. Falling would send a man into the freezing water with tons of floating logs.
Russ was working with several other drivers to free a jam, when one of the men lost his balance and fell among the logs into the near freezing river, dropping his peevie. Russ and other men raced across the logs to help.
“Leave that man — save the peevie!” yelled the foreman, seeing what was happening.
The man was trapped in the water among the floating logs, unable to pull himself out. With his head just at the surface of the water, he was in danger of being crushed between the massive trees or drowning if he ducked his head and the solid mass of logs closed above him. Ignoring the yelling foreman, Russ helped pull the soaking man out of the water. As the foreman cursed them in the foulest language, one of the river drivers threw the peevie he had rescued from the water at the foreman’s feet. Turning his back, the driver went back out onto the logs to resume work. Russ quit the river drive that day in disgust.
Emerging from the bush, he was glad to be heading home. It had been a long winter, with scant news of the outside world reaching camp in the half year he had been there. From infrequent newspapers he knew little had happened in the war, neither side mounting a strong offensive. It seemed as though the dire expectations might have been wrong.
Arriving in Owen Sound in April, Russ was rehired to do summer maintenance on the rail lines for the Canadian National Railway. One person glad to see him was Jack MacLeod. Jack immediately approached him to invite him to the lacrosse team’s coming practice. Later, when Russ arrived at the arena wearing an old practice sweater, Jack came to talk to him.
“Where’s my lacrosse sweater?” Jack asked, surprised Russ was not wearing the team jersey.
Russ hesitated, surprised by Jack’s question. “Your sweater? But you gave it to me. I wore it all winter up north. By spring, it was full of holes and falling apart, so I burned it in the fire.”
Jack could not believe what Russ had said. When Jack’s father, Jim, heard what had happened, he told Russ he would have to replace the sweater. Russ felt this was unfair. The team charged admission to games, Russ played for free, and he refused to buy another sweater.
When the team was selected and Russ was chosen to it, he continued wearing his old practice sweater to their games. He was the only player without a team sweater bearing the Georgians name. Had Jim MacLeod selected the team, the dispute over the sweater might have caused Russ to be excluded. However, the players were selected by the Georgians’ new player-coach, Gerry Johnson. Gerry had been recruited by Jim and came from Hamilton with his wife Marge and their three young children. They had arrived before April to meet the league’s requirement allowing only town residents to play. In return for