SEVEN GUYS IN A ROW
I tried to imagine the camp in operation. The lumberjacks lived permanently in the bush all winter. It was hard to tell how many men used to live here, but it was probably around two dozen or so. The lumber camp consisted of about a dozen buildings in various stages of disrepair.
Our cabin was on high ground on a bit of a point slightly isolated from the rest of the camp. It must have been the timber bosses who lived in it when the camp was in operation. It had been well-built and it was the only structure that was not dilapidated.
There were a couple of bunkhouses constructed from two by fours and one inch planks and covered by tarpaper. The barn for the horses was the largest building in the camp. It was hard to tell now, but there had probably been room for six to eight horses in it. This building was also the tallest with its loft for hay.
There was also a blacksmith’s shop, a building that looked like it
could have been a woodworking shop and a few other structures. The
long outhouse was in remarkable shape – it stood firm and level.
Seven guys could sit in a row; I guess privacy was not so important back
then.
Diamond Lake is in the shield country and there is a lot of exposed granite in the form of large knolls and sheer rock walls. In the summer when we had paddled the lake, we would often go swimming. The water was so clear you could see several meters down.
There were lots of good swimming sites. With the steep rock
walls, we could easily find a good place for diving and there was no
danger of hitting the bottom. The water was clean – we never had
any hesitation about drinking right out of the lake.
Many of the pines surrounding Diamond Lake were huge. A single person could not reach around the trunks of these red pines, and some of the white pines required at least two people to encircle their circumference. I could just imagine what the area looked like before the lumberjacks arrived; all the trees had probably been huge.
The commonest trees were the two pines – white and red. How many years had they reigned in this area? Pines can grow to be several hundred years old. They tend to be fire-resistant once they reach a certain height because the flames cannot reach their crowns.
If a ground fire did burn through an area, it might leave fire scars
near the root flare. These scars heal as new bark grows and slowly
covers over the old scars. Just like you can age a tree by counting
growth rings, you can also reconstruct the fire history of an area by
noting the number of fire scars and counting the growth rings of the scar
tissue.
Countless generations of Ojibwa would have paddled on the lakes surrounded my majestic pines, and the early explorers would have found this area completely covered with pines. But after the Second World War, the pines surrounding Diamond Lake became economical to harvest.
Remote lumber camps were established on many of the large lakes in the Temagami area and the lumberjacks stayed in the bush for most of the winter. Trees were cut down by hand using large crosscut saws handled by two men.
The logs were hauled down to the lakeshore using special skids pulled by horses; the butt end of the log rested on the simple sled and a single horse would haul the log out. The logs were piled up near the shore or even out on the lake ice.
In the spring at break-up, the log drive would take place. The logs on Diamond Lake were floated over to the east end and then dragged up a jack-ladder and into Lake Temagami.
Horses were also used here, as Temagami is above Diamond. In
Temagami, the logs would have been collected into large rafts to be
floated all the way to the town of Temagami where they were cut into
lumber at the sawmill. From there, the lumber was shipped south by
train.
Behind the camp about fifty skids still stood, leaning up against each other. Although they were still in good shape, birch and spruce trees had grown up around them and some had managed to squeeze between the skids. There were certainly more sleds than there would have been horses in the camp.
Maybe the cutters would have loaded a new log onto a skid while
another team was returning from the lakeside. The horse could then
have been unhitched from the empty skid and re-hitched to the waiting skid
in order to haul it down to the lake. It was hard to tell exactly
how the operation was carried out.
There were two giant piles of logs that were now black and rotting. There must have been a hundred or so of these logs neatly piled up. As these logs had holes in their ends, they were probably used to make the boom.
The boom was made from logs chained together end to end to encircle
the cut logs and keep them together in the water. Funny that these
logs had been left behind. Now the logs lay there under a good metre
of snow.
Nowadays, with expansive clear-cuts, buffer strips are left around the lakes, rivers and streams serving as a facade. If you peek through the trees, you can see the devastation. You might think that expansive virgin forests surround you, but don’t be fooled – it’s all a facade.