In the early 1970's I worked for Abitibi Paper Company in Camp 40, and for the Forest Engineering Office in Iriquois Falls. Camp 40 was located southwest of Cochrane, at that time there was no highway between Timmins and Driftwood. In fact I worked on the survey for some of the bridges on what became that highway, and worked for several months buiding bridges as part of a bridge crew. During the year and a half I spent working for Abitibi I was a labourer, lumberjack, machine operator, and a river driver. Once the engineering department found out I could read write and type in both French and English I was a sort of jack of all trades, working with forest engineers on road location, surveys, tree inventories, and just about anything they could think up. The story below is my first musing, and an accurate account of life in a company bush camp, where when I arrived some of the men hadn't been out of the camp in 15 years. The names, except for mine, are fictional.

The ever present bass hum of the huge cat diesel generators was interuppted by Jimmy coughing in the next bunk. I peered at the alarm and pulled my aching body out of bed. Five a.m. and the alarm would go off soon anyway. I could hear some of the other workers moving about, getting ready to head down to breakfast in the dining hall. I walked barefoot on the cold floor to the 'dry'. Hanging in that overheated room were the clothes we wore for work, hanging stiffly in the dry heat. It was probably 90 degrees F in there and row on row of sweat stained dirty lumberjacks gear hung on hooks, boots standing like soldiers on racks under the clothing. I sat on the bench and pulled on my clothes, the smell of balsam fir and sweaty bodies permeating the air. A tshirt, a turtle neck, a felt shirt, long underwear, a down vest, and then pull up the suspenders on the pants. I made sure that there was enough space around my shirt so it wouldn't pull up and stay up, but fall back down inside the pants. The worst thing at minus forty was to have your back exposed, even under the heavy green hydro parka you wore. No need for mitts yet, but I tucked them under my arm and went back to my room, throwing them and my touque on the bedside table. I pulled up the covers and made the bed. Jimmy and Stan were waking up, muttering to each other, brothers who needed to say little to say a lot.

"Eh", Jimmy said to me, about as much as you ever got. I laughed at this, "hey'd" him back and headed to the doors.

Down the corridor was a double set of doors made sure that the wind didn't whip into the bunkhouse, you had to let one go to open the other outer door, etched all around with hore frost. I found out when we put up a new camp that the wind really blew less than 2 percent of the time from the east, so the door faced east to keep as much wind out as possible. The mind numbing cold killed any sleep left in me. I peered at the thermometer on the outside post, -47F. At -55 we'd have the day off, but this was cold enough to be 'good' as we said. I headed to the cookhouse, the snow crunching under my feet, the sun not yet hinting at rising. The vapour from the tops of the buildings went stright up into the night sky, something most people south of here never see. The remanents of the northern lights flickered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

The cookhouse was about half full, but there was no lineup for food. The cookery smelled of fresh baked bread, bacon, ham, and toast. I got a plate of meat, 10 or so rashers of bacon, 5 pieces of ham, a dozen sausages and another plate of eggs, 4 pieces of toast, 2 glasses of orange juice, and went and sat with the older guys at the back. The chatter was french canadian slang or joual, and I took a few shots about being a squarehead, standard fare for that group. I gave back in french as good as they gave me, causing some laughter. Marcel told everyone within ear shot that he'd lost 10 bucks 'cause I've managed to stay for a month. "The professor," he said, " has just got some easy bush, he's gonna quit soon". To a man the whole camp thought I'd never make it. All the workers were 'non' english canadian, a few french speaking portegese, a german, and 2 finlanders. "Eats like a child" one said as he surveyed his stack of toast, probably 15 slices. I knew he'd take 1/2 of them to work and warm them on the little wood stove in his crew's portable shack. A few guys bantered comments about the corrupt government, the taxes, puncutated by a chair scraping the floor and someone going to one of the buckets placed around the cookery and spitting tobacco into what passed for a spitoon. Cigarette smoke hung everywhere, almost everyone smoked, in fact it was hard to think of anyone who didn't, in the spring it was a type of bug control having smoke waft over your face, and it was more like a passtime when we wern't working.ckered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

After eating breakfast I made my lunch. A long counter had 3 tiers, and the top was bread and butter, the next held meats, peanut butter, jam, lettuce, tomatoes, and any kind of condiment you'd need. On the lower tier was a place to make a sandwhich, and sheets of wax paper and bags. You could also order a made lunch, ticking off boxes on a menu sheet, and rows of these stood at the end ordered in payroll numbers. I made 6 sandwhiches, all roast beef with mayo and horseradish and lettuce. Put 2 sandwiches in precut sheets of wax paper and repeat. Filled one bag with sandwiches, the other with oranges and a bannana. Filled 5 thermoses, 2 with coffee, and three with hot water. A handfull of teabags to put in the hot water, most guys just threw 2 teabags in each thermos but I didn't like sugar and that was really bitter tea. But it was winter and as long as there was snow on the ground we would make a big pot of tea on the wood fire and throw bags in as needed to keep it strong. ckered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

Back at the bunkhouse i pulled out my packsack from the dry, put the food in it and grabbed my big white javex bottle. Everyone had one with their name on it. Le Prof, mine said, for the nickname they gave me, 'cause I'd taught high school in Quebec. I filled the javex bottle with water, and went back to sit on my bed until it was time to go. ckered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

Jimmy and Stan wandered back in, rolling cigarettes and putting them in little hard plastic cases. Almost no one smoked tailor mades, they were illegal from April to November and most were adapt enough that they could roll a smoke with one hand. We sat and waited cigarette smoke curling around the room. The crunching sound of the buses pulling up prompted a mass exodus, heavy boots echoing on the tiled floor, everyone headed out to board the buses. Beedee the foreman stood at the door of the yellow bus and stared at his clipboard. We worked in 5 man crews and there were 3 spare guys, one being me. Until I got more seniority I filled in or did odd jobs. Turns out that Norman is staying in the camp with a back problem so I'm told to go with his crew. They are anything but happy, the job is piecework and they are worried about making less, trying to convince the foreman to let them run with 4 instead of 5. The arguement is short and futile, I'm with them for the day.ckered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

The bus travels quickly over the frozen road, a winter road cutting through swamps and frozen solid, a drag pulled over it to smooth it out and then the bus could go 60 miles and hour across what was an impassible mess of swamps just months before. Twenty five minutes later we arrive at the end of the road. A solitary building stands, surrounded by 15 4 wheel drive articulated skidders. These machines are plugged into a series of suspended cords, a generator making power for the electric heaters on each engine block keeping the oil warm enought to let the machine start in the cold. The drivers shot ether, a flammable gas into the intake manifolds and started the machines, unplugged them, and lined up at the fuel tanks. I found my gas can and chain oil bottles and gave them to Guy who was driving the skidder for my crew.ckered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

We cutters started walking, most smoking and coughing, our boots crunching in the snow, the silence broken by the squawks of ravens. A faint orange glow in the east foretold the coming dawn. Forty minutes later, my chainsaw balanced on my shoulder, I arrived at patch 32. One of the guys was firing up the woodstove the the small cutter's shack, and another was using a spray paint can to mark the woodpliles. That would allow the scaler, who's job it was to measure the wood and calculate our pay, to keep track of our production. I filled up my saw, checked the chain, and fired it up. No problems there. We all piled into the small shack built on a travois of large logs to await the skidder and sunrise. Coffee was poured, and the light through the east facing window started to illuminate the inside of the shack. The drone of 15 powerful skidders in the distance was a prelude to a day of cold, fatigue, and perspiration in the boreal forest. As with most crews there was little need to speak. Usually one guy felled trees, one skidded, and the other 3 bucked and piled. Charles took off, headed out to the edge of the timber stand and we heard trees falling in the distance. A minute or two later and the skidder stopped, dropped off gasoline, chain oil, and the water bottles. No one needed to said anything as he headed off to meet Charles. The skidder stopped and between themand they pulled out a one inch thick steel cable, 'the mainline' equipped with 12 chokers, smaller cables that went around the felled trees. The chokers slid up and down the mainline, which had the equivenlent of a huge knot at the end of it. We kept a spare one of the wall inside the shack, a broken mainline took 30 minutes to replace and cost everyone in the crew about 20 dollars in lost production. After tying on a dozen black spruce trees the skidder operator engaged the winch and pulled them up to the back of the skidder, the butt ends hoisted a couple of feet off the ground, and he started back towards the shack and woodpiles. Each tree had a butt of about 8 to 12 inches, and was anywhere from 30 to 50 feet tall. Standing like a few solitary sentries were 3 poplar trees, and the skidder operator skillfully went around each, draging the load against the side. At 45 below zero any branches that did not snap off when the tree was felled would be snapped off when the tree was pulled around the poplars. In summer there was lots more work, for the branches would bend and you had to cut them off with a chain saw before piling the wood.ckered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

The skidder came to a stop just past the 3rd pile of wood, and dropped the trees on the ground. I unhooked the chokers and he did a 3 point turn, and used the machine's front blade like a plow to even up the wood so it was square to the pile. I started bucking the wood into 8 foot lengths, each cut yeilding 12 logs. The other two started piling the butt ends, turning half the logs so the flared butts didn't make that pile uneven. The logs were piled with pulp hooks, the smaller logs being picked on the side and tossed with a flick of the wrist, the larger picked in the end. Small branches were dispatched with a swing of the hook, the frozen limbs no match for the metal at such cold temperatures. We had barely got our wood piled and straight when the skidder returned with the next load. I could feel the sweat soaking my clothes despite the cold, and knew that as soon as I stopped moving I'd be damn cold. As the morning wore on, the distance to the timber from the pile increased, and I was sent to assist in dropping and choking trees, rather than helping at the skidway. About 10 a.m. the skidder operator stopped for a coffee and I managed to get about 20 trees ahead of him. I filed my saw with a rat tail file, and grabbed a sandwich and cup of coffee. The next 10 trees were all leaning back into the standing timber, and I notched and cut them until the tree started back on the cut. You had to pull the saw out quick or it would jam in the cut as the tree sat back on it. I had an 10 foot pole and had cut a quick X into the tree about 8 feet off the ground. I stuck the pole into the X and pushed, eventually the tree fell exactly where it didn't want to go. One tree was too far into the stand so i felled it backwards, we'd pull it straight out later. When the skidder arrived it was my job to take the mainline over my shoulder and stretch it along the trees, counting as I went, peeling off a choker at each tree, the first 4 the operator hooked up, the rest I did. Then you had to get away from the trees, because during winching they might hang up and swing violently. Everyone knew people hurt and killed when they stayed too close. ckered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

About noon we knocked off for lunch. The other feller (cutter) stayed and dropped 20 or so trees. I ate, putting sandwiches on the stove to warm them, while one of the guys held his over the stoves hole to toast it, but there wasn't room for us all to do that. I hung my mitts and took out a second pair, and took an orange, leaving to get a head start. Just as I opened the door our foreman came along. "Salut Le prof", he said, how's she going hup ear? " Well, Ok" I replied and we switched to french. He talked to the others, who said little when asked how i was doing. He took his pole and rough measured our piles. Twenty one cords he exclaimed, a 40 cord day was about a hundred dollar per man per day. I could tell he was trying to impress them with how well I was doing, but I knew they weren't buying it, if there was only 4 of them the pay might have been even higher, mostly because of the cold keeping the need to cut limbs to a minimum and the type of trees we were cutting. Balsam or White Spruce would require a 5th man, and the further the machine had to drag the wood the more need for another feller on the treeline.ckered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

The pace kept up all afternoon, only the visit of a grey jay to break the montony. We all kept treats for the birds in our pockets and I threw him a crust or two. If you shut off the saw and stand still they will stand on your hand to get the treat, but today there was no time for that. The saw's pungent gas fumes, the vibration and the noise permeated me. I had spilled some gasoline on my pants, and the smell of balsam and gasoline mixed with the cold air in my nostrils. My moustache was heavy with frost, and the other guys looked like someone had painted white all around their hair that poked out of their touqes. The long almost limbless black spruce had given way to a mix of balsam fir and white spruce. Both these trees had more limbs, and the snow was deeper on the little side hill where it had drifted in I had to stomp around the trees to make room for the saw, kicking snow that was knee deep. The flat swamp had given way to a gentle rise, and on the rise there were birch and poplar trees I had to ignore, except that the other trees are punching through the limbs, and if one wasn't careful they might break off a branch that could fall on your head. Once the tree was downed you had to take the saw and limb one side to the end, change ends and work back to the butt. My production was dropping, I could only give the operator about 8 trees, but they were bigger, and had more limbs. I didn't take off more than about 1/3, leaving the rest for the two guys at the pile. As the light started to wane, a skidder from the patch up the road trundled past, and we packed it in for the day. I put the saw over my shoulder, the warmth of the muffler unthawing my face, and grabbed my gas can. I trudged through the snow back to the pile where they had just estimated 39 cords of wood for the day. Too bad about the limby bush I stated, but no one replied. We set out for the bus, everyone walking with weary muscles, the crunch of snow, and the cracking of the trees as they froze harder in the falling evening temperatures. The diesel fumes from the machines wending their way back to the field garage permeated the air, hanging still and blue in the cold. Some drivers were filling their machines when we arrived, but most had just parked and plugged in, the machines sitting in a neat row next to the garage. The mechanic was standing in the open garage door, the light burning behind him, a machine with the motor half removed sitting still in the January cold. His overalls were more grease than not, and a greasy rag in his hand served to take some of the thick black muck off his fingers. He flicked the light off, and pulled the doors shut, locking them and carried his oil stained parka to the bus. I remember the smell of oil and grease, diesel fuel and gasoline as he sat beside me on the way back to the camp. It was dark by the time we pulled in, and at least half the guys on the bus were sound asleep. My back and legs ached with fatigue, and I couldn't wait to stand in the hot shower and unthaw. ckered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

As we got off the bus eveyone trudged single file into their bunkhouses, I went straight to the dry where I peeled off my wet clothes and hung them in the heat. Then I went to my room, naked, and pulled the wool blanket off the bed and wrapped myself in it. Under there bed were 48 beers, 2 cases, and I pulled one out and used a file to pry off the cap. Short stubby bottles, warm and bubbly. I drank one down and grabbed a towel and headed to the showers. I must have stayed about 15 minutes, willing the soreness out and the heat into my body. Then I went back to my room, and grabbed another beer. The boys had just shown up and they were driking beer too, a couple before supper. I tried to get them to talk, but in traditional Cree fashion talking was not a forte with them. "What did you guys do today?" I asked. "Peel Logs" they said. I would have done the same, had I not been diverted to the bus had someone not been missing this morning. For a month now we peeled logs in the yard. It was a make work project. 40 extra bodies were soon going to be needed for river drive and the camp was gearing up. Constant turn-over was the norm. Someone in the camp hears that there are better stands of timber up the road at another companies camp, and it wasn't uncommon for Monday to reveal an entire crew of 5 missing, gone to work elsewhere. Then the junior guys who were not cutting would get a shot. New crews were a problem, some people didn't work well together, others didn't pull their weight. I knew my 2 cree roomates were promised river jobs come breakup, and didn't want to cut, so I figured a dozen or so new workers should show up soon, many destined for the river drive. To some of the cutters the drive was too much of a paycut, but on some years the spring breakup meant we had to suspend cutting for a few weeks and they would bump the junior guys right out of a job if they could. ckered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

The boom logs we were peeling I helped cut for the first week in camp. I trudged through the tracks the skidder operator left as the meandered through bush we didn't usually cut, a ridge along the river, looking for huge white spruce trees, they had to have 30 inch diameter butts to qualify. Half the time you'd fell the tree and the center would be rotten, so you'd take off 2 feet, and then maybe more and suddenly the tree was too small to serve as a boom log. Those had to be dragged out to the road and cut into 8 foot pieces to be picked up later. We found 20 or so trees and cut and dragged them out to the road, and a large crane and truck arranged their transport back to the camp. There were faster ways to peel logs than with a pulp axe, a mid-sized axe 3 times the size of a hatchet, but not as big as what most people know as an axe. Anyway the logs sat beside the blacksmith's shop and once the bark was removed and the log ready for him, he'd add steel plates to the ends, and put on metal pieces allowing short chains to hold the logs together. Once ready these booms were strung across the river, and there were clevises, made like a "C" with the part that closed them a heavy steel pin with threads on one end and a loop in the other that you could turn to lock the chains in place. Peeling those logs was a form of torture, your hands froze holding the axe and striking the log, and you needed to stop every so often to keep you fingers mobile. We worked out a way that 2 of us would work, the third would thaw his fingers unless we saw the foreman, and which point all 3 of us would start, but work a bit slower so he had no idea we were taking turns resting. The blacksmith had stood and watched one day and told me no wonder I was Le Prof, I could trick even the foreman who was smart, heck he even heard the s.o.b. had gone to high school. Imagine that, a guy can read and write and wastes his f'ing time working with the blackflies and ravens. I liked hanging around the blacksmith shop, he had stores of coal and steel, and made all his own tools, banging away on the anvil, shapening axes, making picks, fixing metal parts from machines, he never seemed to no be working. Watching him make a large pair of pliers to hold hot steel took me back, I could imagine a day when all tools were made this way, the pieces of red-hot steel being heated, then beat on the anvil, the ring of metal on metal, till the final point where he plunged the hot steel in a large barrel of water to cool it off, steam filling the shack with a moist heat, the smell of the coal and hot metal heavy in the hot little shack. "Not so much fun in summer in here" he told me once, "sweat 10 pounds in one hour!". An exaggeration of course, but no doubt it was that hot.ckered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

We sat silent, propped up on pillows, our warm beers making us sleepy, so finally I lead the move to the cookery for supper. We didn't bother with parkas or anything, just put on some jeans and tshirts and boots and ran the 20 yards across the frozen ground, the stars in millions above us, and the ever present cold quiet forest in hues of black and blacker standing watch over the 20 camp buildings lurking like intruders in the boreal forest of Northern Ontario. ckered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

Supper was pork chops or stew, and biscuits. There were 3 kinds of pie, coffee, tea, and juices. 4 kinds of vegetables, and pork hocks. The menu was pretty much the same every week. Steaks one night, beef tongue in spanish sauce was a favorite of mine, roast beef, roast pork, we ate well, and we ate lots. By now the guys had livened up, maybe the sugar from the fresh pies did it, but there was a lot of laughter and banter. After supper was over we headed to the "Wreck". Somehow in french the Recreation Hall was "The Wreck" or the "Wrecked" and there was on TV, with a a faint image of a snowy picture from Timmins, a long ways to the south of us. Some guys watched the tv and smoked, most played cards. In the corner the union rep was 'holding court', giving advice to guys with beefs, pounding the table. I wasn't sure about unions, I still felt it was some sort of semi-communist thing, but I had no choice but to join after 30 days or go home.ckered in the north, and the myriad of stars showed there were no clouds at all. The dry cold bit your nose and face, and I kept my hands in my pockets.

I didn't stay too long, but headed back to my room. The other two were there, smoking and sitting like statues, saying nothing just drinking beer and smoking. I picked up a book and lay on the bed, remembering the lineup just after I arrived, watching me read. No one did that they said, well maybe that german guy 20 years ago, he had some books. They shook their heads. Julian showed up at the door and a stood there in his hard hat, green summer rubber boots and mitts. Started in on the same story as every night, he'd tell it 30 times about some guy who was 90 smoked 15 cigars a day and drank a quart of whiskey. Then he'd laugh and mention that it never hurt him. Sometimes he'd tell the story twice back to back. The indian boys didn't speak french, and Julian had no english so only I understood. The asked me one time about what he came to tell us and they just listened, didn't say a word. About 2 days later when he showed up Jimmy said "Family should come and get him and take him home". Around the camp they said he'd gone bush crazy, he never left the camp, and now was down to taking the garbage in a wheelbarrow to the dump, a job he took all day to do and still didn't do it right. But he'd worked there in one camp or another for 30 years, and they just kept him as busy as they could and let him 'work'. Finally he left and I could feel my eyelids getting heavy, so i pulled the bed down and jumped in, setting the alarm clock and pulling the rough wool blanket over me. The other two would sit until 11 or so, then drink 3 quick beers and fall asleep. I asked once about drinking 3 beers fast like that and Jimmy said, "Alarm Clock". It took me a couple of days of head scratching to realize he meant you had to get up early and go to the bathroom, which woke you up, they could sleep through the beeping clock without any problem, but having to take a leak in the morning meant getting out of bed and moving.