Wayback Wednesday, sponsored by Jamie Lockwood, broker/owner of Sutton Group Muskoka Realty!
These photos, courtesy of Gord Brown, are of the last log drive on the Black River, which started at Wren Lake, south of Dorset. They were taken by his mother at what was known as the Hindon Shute about 3-4 kilometres north of where Highway 118 crosses the river. Brown believes it took place in the spring of 1943.
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This is the kind of job I would have dreamed of as a little kid, I mean who would not like to send logs down a river….
On the other hand, you get older, maybe smarter, for sure more cautious as you know more about what could go wrong and you have to think, “are these guys crazy”? Those logs are big, random, pushed by freezing water and one wrong move and your wet at best, killed at worst.
Good thing there were no occupational health people around in those days.
These photos show a log jam where there was too much timber, too fast. These were the kind of jam ups that got people injured or killed. Big East River drives were finish after 1934. Chain saws, Linn skidders and even log trucks were becoming reliable enough to replace horses and river driving.
The jam up shown includes both hard and softwood logs. The hardwood needed to be peeled so it would dry enough over the winter to make it float. Hard to believe that there were contractors at the time who would peel the birch, maple and beech. You can see peeled logs in the second picture.
In 1879, after the Ontario government had built the dam and canal at the Locks, river drivers floated about 35,000 pieces of timber down the Muskoka River and over the new dam, heading for mills further downstream. Too much and too fast. The river jammed for a couple of hundred yards.
The logs plugged the river, acting big a big dam. The rush of water carried gravel and silt over the river bank and into the new canal. It was a couple of months before it was all picked loose and the canal cleared so the steamer Northern could run north into Huntsville again.
There were always ‘peavey’ and pike men working the river and shore line to keep the logs moving during a drive. Situations did arise. But a river boss who ended up with a jack-straw mess like the one in the photo might be looking into another line of work.
There’s some labour for ya! Difficult and dangerous.