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Loggers Creek, where character and careers were built

Squamish’s John Drenka has seen a lifetime of change in the logging industry

A thick overcast blankets much of Howe Sound, obscuring the mountain peaks above the Sea to Sky Highway. Maybe it was a morning like this some 50 odd years ago when, after viewing the timber above Loggers Creek from a boat off Brunswick Beach, Angus Monk ran a skyline cable to rig logs from a spar tree down to the waterfront.

Today rusted cable curls over the bank of an old logging road above Lions Bay and snakes through spindly evergreen saplings before disappearing into the earth. Higher up the mountain, looking at the two and a half inch skyline cable twisting through the undergrowth near a logging spur, one can only wonder at the hardships of working up here.

Further up the highway in the offices of Squamish Mills Ltd., a logging company located in a light industrial area of Squamish, there are more signs of logging in the Sea to Sky corridor. A faded colour photograph of the waterfront shows grown-over clear cuts from logging that shadowed the outskirts of Squamish city limits and stretched up the flanks of Mount Garibaldi.

"Now you can’t even tell," Steve Buritt, a hauling contractor who has lived in Squamish since 1962 says, viewing the photograph.

Down the hall in a clean bright office, John Drenka, owner of Squamish Mills says, pulls a chair up to his desk.

"We’re operating but its nip and tuck," he says.

In early July, Drenka’s logging operation up near Pemberton was shut down because of the risk of fire. His crews are working again now but there’s a lot of uncertainty.

"It’s very dangerous so we’re taking all the precautions we can possibly take," Drenka says. "Our season is so damn short anyway, we gotta’ get in every day we can."

Drenka, who has lived in Squamish since 1939, has experienced most of the challenges of logging in Howe Sound. He remembers early loggers like Angus Monk, the legendary high rigger on the south coast, who ran the skyline up to the 2,500-foot elevation above Loggers Creek. Monk climbed the mountain before there were trails to look the timber over.

"He would go up there and figure out how much he could put it in the water for and then he would look at the sales prices and the stumpage prices and determine whether it was a good deal or not," Drenka says.

After two short years, Monk left Loggers Creek. Today the cable beside the road above Lions Bay is all that’s left of Monk’s early 1950s logging operation.

Starting early

Drenka was only 15 years old when he started splitting shake bolts and peeling telephone poles in the bush at Steelhead, a community that consisted of a post office and a small grocery store between Mission and Stave Falls in the Fraser Valley. In 1936 the Drenka family moved to Squamish and the family has been logging ever since. One of Drenka’s sons is vice president of Squamish Mills Ltd. Another son is a contractor for the company.

Now 88, John Drenka is still active in the forest industry, going into his office five days a week. He’s done well but he’s never forgotten the hardships of logging in the ’50s when there was no road up Howe Sound and loggers commuted by boat to work from Horseshoe Bay. The crew just went into shore near Brunswick Beach and pulled their gas- or diesel-powered donkey engine off a steel scow.

"You tied your scow up good and tight," Drenka says. "You found a stump and set your riggin’ and just pulled yourself right off the scow."

The donkey powered the logging operation, but before the crew could start work they had to get the 25-ton machine up the mountainside.

"You pulled a block up with a lighter line and attached it to a stump," Drenka explains. "Then you would pull the end of the main line back to the donkey and hook it on a sleigh. Now you’re equipped with a block purchase so, you just pull yourself up to that stump. And then you did it again. It would have been damn near up to 2,500 feet anyway."

For the next two or three days the crew struggled with that donkey hiking at the end of each day back down to the water to catch a boat back to Horseshoe Bay. Starting again early the next morning the crew would reset the rigging, picking their route over felled timber and logs hauling the donkey further up the mountain. They’d get so far up the hillside, unhook the cable and go at it again.

"You wouldn’t get the donkey leaning too much or you’d put it into a canyon or whatever the hell it was," Drenka continues. "They had to tie up on steep ground because the donkey would slide right back down the mountain."

The crew dragged all their rigging up with them including 1,500 feet of 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 inch thick Skyline

"All the blocks and rigging and guy lines and shackles and Christ knows how much stuff," Drenka says. "It was steep and it was tough."

Sometimes people quit. Sometimes they were fired.

"In the logging business, not so much now but years ago, men used to come and go all the time," Drenka says.

Drenka remembers being fired after an altercation with a cook.

"I got some worms in my lettuce in a sandwich and raised hell with the cook," he says.

Drenka didn’t know the cook and the superintendent of the camp were close friends.

"The next morning, he saw me and said, ‘you go to town!’" Drenka recounts. "He got mad and fired the whole crew."

Once the donkey was set up above Loggers Creek the work didn’t get any easier, but at least by the early ’50s safety standards in the woods had improved. In the late ’30s and early ’40s the working conditions were treacherous. Drenka remembers working in a camp at Rock Bay near Campbell River on Vancouver Island when a chokerman was crushed to death by a stump.

A haul back line that went through a block was hung onto the back of the stump where the chokerman was standing.

"The stump pulled so that the roots came up," Drenka recounts. "He fell in the hole and then the line slipped and the stump fell back and down on top of him."

There was a string of maybe 15 or 20 skeleton cars loaded with logs near the logging operation. The crew took the man out on a stretcher and put him on the last empty skeleton car. The logging operation didn’t cease that day just because somebody got killed.

"As soon as we got the stump pulled out of the way and the body out and on a stretcher, we took him out to the railway car and then away we went loggin’ again," Drenka says. "He stayed there until the loady took the logs in."

Drenka was pretty young and green at the time but the accident didn’t have much of an effect on him.

"Jobs were so god damned hard to get you were gonna’ be that much more careful," he says.

Loggers were being hurt by axes and saw cuts and falling limbs. A two or three foot limb falling from 150 feet could impale a man, killing him instantly.

"At that time there was no such thing as a hard hat," Drinka continues.

Or a tree could "barber chair," split up the middle at the stump and hurl a man into the woods.

"Riggin’ was dangerous, settin’ chokers was dangerous," Drenka says. "There was nothing safe about logging in those days."

Even today there’s little sympathy for a logger who should have known better.

Finding a spar

An hour after seeing the skyline cable at the side of the logging road, I listen to the wind and rushing stream water in the amphitheatre of mountain peaks above Loggers Creek. Vivid green balsam and fir trees rise like a standing ovation before snowfields and alpine meadows on one side of the road. Behind me, against a backdrop of black, fire-scorched rock tree snags stick up like porcupine quills on a side hill that was logged decades ago. Getting the donkey set up at this elevation was just one part of the operation. Before logging could begin a spar tree had to be found and the skyline rigged up. At least this part of the operation wasn’t so hard.

"Up there it was pretty good timber so it wouldn’t be too hard to find a good back spar," Drenka says.

The wooden spar tree had to be 100 to 150 feet high and lined up with the waterfront where the logs were dropped off. Rigging a 150-foot spar tree required skill and a lot of nerve.

"A high rigger got his climbers on and climbed up and chopped all the limbs off," Drenka begins. "Then he picked a spot about 16 inches in diameter and chopped the top of the tree off."

The rigger came down about 10 feet on the topped tree and barked all around the stem to prepare the spar for hanging the guy lines to hold the spare up.

"We cut a groove in the tree and hooked a plate in there and then we’d spike it to the tree and hang the guy lines on that so they wouldn’t slide down," Drenka explains.

A 40-pound pass line block was attached to the top of the tree.

"The rigger would climb up with a small line or sometimes a rope," Drenka continues. "When he got to the top of the tree, he’d hook the rope over the top and pull the block up. Once you got the block up there you were free to pull all the little things up you wanted."

A jack was pulled up with the skyline already through it. Some skyline went out as far as 2,000 feet. But skyline was usually between 1,200 and 1,600 feet because the crew had to keep the wire off the ground. The crew pulled a straw line, a 3/8 th inch steel cable, all the way up the hill and fed it through a block and attached the end to a bigger cable and then pulled that up.

"I got my end out 50 feet and guys came behind me and kept pullin’," Drenka says. "We got to a certain point where we couldn’t walk and pull so we stood still and pulled a bunch and then moved up and pulled a bunch more."

The crew wore leather gloves when hauling cable but gloves didn’t prevent metal jaggers – broken pieces of wire on the cable – from injuring their hands.

"That’s the one thing that was bad," remembers Drenka. "The jaggers went through the leather like a shot into your skin."

A crewmember couldn’t stop hauling the cable just to deal with the pain.

"You had to suck the blood out so as not to get blood poisoning," Drenka says. "You got all the bad stuff out right away and it just healed up.

Being a high rigger was a unique position in the woods. Vancouver Tent and Awning, a legendary outdoor recreation and outfitting store in Vancouver, used to supply sail canvas to the tall ships that carried huge yellow cedar beams to markets in China. Some of the high riggers who worked on those ships were the first high riggers in the woods on B.C.’s south coast.

The spar tree was key to any logging operation. If the wooden spar tree broke the operation would shut down. There might be no money to pay the crew and maybe no food. When hydraulically raised steel spar trees were brought into the woods the loggers’ jobs got a lot easier.

"What used to take a day and a half to three days to rig a tree, now you can do it in four or five hours," Drenka says.

The fallers were a different breed. Fallers climbed to the job every morning carrying six and eight foot, 30 and 35 pound falling and bucking saws over their shoulders. Drenka remembers the first power saws that were used in the woods around Squamish. These were two man saws with a handle bar on one end and a handle at the end of the chain. The saws weighed close to 100 pounds and carrying the saw up the steep terrain of Howe Sound was a formidable task.

"Oh it was terrible," Drenka recalls.

The Swedes and the Finns impressed Drenka.

"They just seemed to go steady all day long," he says. "Just back and forth with that saw."

Falling a tree four feet at the butt took perhaps two hours.

"They put down five or six trees a day but they weren’t all four footers," Drenka says.

Some trees were only a foot and a half in diameter. There were also trees six feet in diameter.

"I guess it was tough over in their country," says Drenka, who was setting chokers where the Europeans were falling, "and when they got here the wages were good, the food was good and they just worked like hell."

A curious thing about logging was that the crews kept to themselves according to their jobs. The fallers and rigging crews were segregated in the logging camps. And in the cookhouse the crews often ate in silence, grateful for the luxury of a meal. But whether from Sweden or Finland or Squamish everyone was equal in the woods.

"Everyone worked hard or they weren’t there, Drenka says flatly.

The work was far too dangerous for day dreaming or trying to prove yourself.

"There was no way of getting impressed about anything," Drenka says. "That’s the way it was."

Starting at eight in the morning and quitting around 4:30 in the afternoon the top men earned eight or 10 dollars a day. The low guys would be down around six dollars a day. Those weren’t bad wages.

"It wasn’t too bad because everything was cheap," Drenka recounts. "Now, holy Christ, you used to pay maybe 12 bucks for a pair of cork boots. Now they’re over a hundred."

Working the steep slopes of the Howe Sound mountains was extreme logging.

"But it was good timber," Drenka concludes, "and, I guess that offset the toughness."

All there was

Squamish was pretty much born and raised a logger’s town.

"That’s all there was," Drenka continues, remembering the 1950s. "Loggers and railroaders and Indians."

When Drenka started working there weren’t a lot of options.

"There was nothing," he says. "I had three choices; fishing, mining or logging. I hated the salt chuck. I didn’t want to go underground. I had no choice."

Logging camps, which have never been confused with summer camps, were very rudimentary when Drenka started logging.

"At one time, we had to carry our own blankets," Drenka says. "Later on there was none of that. There was a commissary where you could buy stuff. And the food was usually damn good in the camps."

But the wages remained low.

"Jesus Christ, I remember getting’ something like five-fifty or six dollars a day!" Drenka exclaims.

That was in the late ’40s when Drenka earned 45, 50 and 60 cents an hour. Wages were even lower in the railroad camp at Rock Bay where a chokerman made 40 cents an hour.

Slowly, as the economy recovered following the Second World War, logging re-emerged as a main industry on the south coast of B.C. As the industry grew it also evolved. Loggers started to organize, and one of the most important changes they forced was in the area of safety. When Drenka started in the woods there was no such thing as a safety committee or a union. And the kind of stuff that was going on was shocking.

"Going back before the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s safety was sure as hell the big issue," Jack Munro, who was president of the International Woodworkers of America from 1973 until 1992, says. "If a logger was killed they would just kind of move his body over to the side of the quarter where he was working and then when the crew came out at night they would bring his body down."

When employers discovered that safety practices would save them money they started to get involved with mandatory safety committees and first aid stations. But even then there often wasn’t a lot of respect between the workers and the company.

"It was just a place where you could get a bandage or a splint put on a broken leg so you could get out," Drenka says of the first aid stations.

Trying to organize a union was another tough challenge. Organizers had to hide in the bush and try and organize camps at night.

"The employers sure as hell didn’t want them in their camps at night," Munro says.

The foreman or camp manager or bull bucker – whomever was around – was usually waiting for anyone who showed up in camp. There were fights but the workers had the majority.

"The employer did whatever was required to make sure they weren’t there," Munro continues. "And there were tough strikes. In 1937, ’39 in Blubber Bay they killed a god damned guy on strike there."

Munro is proud of the work the IWA did helping forestry workers get better wages, negotiating the 1972 pension plan and improving working conditions but there are two outstanding issues that still make his blood boil. One is exporting raw logs.

"It’s crazy that we export logs," he remarks. "There is no doubt that when you export a log you export a bloody job!"

Drenka exports raw logs when he has to. But the only logs he exports are the local logs that the mills don’t want.

"In any event to stay in business, pay the wages, pay the taxes, keep everything going sometimes the local markets wouldn’t let you survive without some export," he maintains.

The other issue is logging in parks. Munro sites the mountain pine beetle infestation that is showing no signs of slowing down. Several years ago when the beetle invaded Bowron Lakes Provincial Park in central B.C. a decision was made to log the infected area and log it quickly.

"They logged it and stopped the pine beetle," Munro says. "Now the replanted trees are 50 feet high."

Ten or 12 years ago the pine beetle infestation might have been partly arrested if roads had been permitted in B.C. parks so the infested wood could be logged or burned off.

"It was so goddamn stupid they wouldn’t allow a road to be built to stop the bloody pine beetle," Munro maintains. "And it’s just cost us billions of dollars."

Drenka is particularly concerned about the pine beetle infestation.

"They’ve got to log it and put in a new forest or they’re going to lose everything," he says.

Several years ago the mountain pine beetle infestation had swept into the forest above D’arcy. Now the infestation is south of Whistler.

"I saw it the last time I was up there," Drenka says. "It’s right into the fir timber."

Drenka believes there’s room for the forest industry and tourism in provincial parks if there is selective logging.

"If they are just going in and thinning and taking bad trees out and cleaning up, I think that’s a good thing," he says.

The compatibility of forestry and tourism in parks is still very much open to debate, but just putting the words together in the same sentence is an indication of the scope of change John Drenka has seen in his time in the forest industry. Most of that change has been for the better, but in Drenka’s mind the character of the old time loggers still sets them apart.

"We had some pretty damn good men in those days," he says.

 

 

cutlines:

pic 1. A broken wooden spar tree on an operation above Squamish. "The guy lines were too slack," John Drenka says. Rigging a wooden spar tree could take three days. Rigging a steel spar takes five hours. Photo courtesy Squamish Mills.

pics 2,3. A logging crew spent three days hauling a 25-ton steam donkey up to the 2,500- foot elevation above Loggers Creek on the Sea to Sky highway.

pics 4,5. Angus Monk viewed the marketable timber above Loggers Creek from a boat in Howe Sound more than 50 years ago.

pics 6,7. Hundreds of feet of two and a half inch skyline cable used to rig logs from the 2,500-foot elevation above Lions Bay down to sea level was left behind when the loggers pulled out in the early ’50s.

pic 8. Cable like this possibly used to haul the donkey up the mountain could snap and take a man’s legs off.

pic 9. A fire that blackened a partly logged off area visible from Howe Sound could have been caused by a lightning strike or slash burning that got away.

pic 10. Looking towards Harvey Pass up to an elevation of 4,500 feet that was logged decades ago.

pics 11,12. John Drenka owner of Squamish Mills Ltd. The Drenka family has been active in logging in the Squamish area since the early 1940s.

pics 13-16. At 88, John Drenka is still active in logging. He remembers when first aid stations were set up near logging operations. "It was just a place where you could get a splint put on a broken leg so you could get out," he says.



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