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The Lumberjacks
Short-listed for the 1978 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction
The 19th century spawned a unique breed of men who took pride in their woodsmen skills and rough codes of conduct. They called themselves lumberers, shantymen, timber beasts, les bucherons – and, more recently, lumberjacks, working in the vast forests of eastern Canada and British Columbia.
Across the country, farm boys would go to the woods, lumbering being the only winter work available. Immigrants – Swedes and Finns more often than not – resumed the trades they had learned so well in the forests of northern Europe. They broke the cold, hard monotony of camp life with songs, tall tales and card games.
Within these pages, author Donald MacKay allows us a glimpse into that moment in our heritage when men entered the virgin forest to carve out an industry from the seemingly endless array of pine, spruce, maple and balsam fir found there.
The 19th century spawned a unique breed of men who took pride in their woodsmen skills and rough codes of conduct. They called themselves lumberers, shantymen, timber beasts, les bucherons – and, more recently, lumberjacks, working in the vast forests of eastern Canada and British Columbia.
Across the country, farm boys would go to the woods, lumbering being the only winter work available. Immigrants – Swedes and Finns more often than not – resumed the trades they had learned so well in the forests of northern Europe. They broke the cold, hard monotony of camp life with songs, tall tales and card games.
Within these pages, author Donald MacKay allows us a glimpse into that moment in our heritage when men entered the virgin forest to carve out an industry from the seemingly endless array of pine, spruce, maple and balsam fir found there.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
320 pages, Paperback
First published June 15, 2002
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June 28, 2017
Interesting history that I mostly never knew. Had no idea that logs were floated down the Riviere des Prairies, less than a mile from where I grew up or that the first guy to do it (c.1800) was the founder of what is now "Gatineau" (but was for many decades Hull) and that *he* came from Woburn, Mass, which is now a suburb of Boston. Pretty fascinating. Also fascinating? Nearly 100 years ago, people in the timber industry realized that they were harvesting trees at an unsustainable rate.
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