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| A crosscut saw from the Shellbrook Heritage Museum is superimposed on a Library and Archives Canada photo "In the Woods North of Prince Albert". This is a two person saw with the second handle missing. Using a hand saw successfully requires a high level of skill and the use of a crosscut saw has the added requirement of cooperation. |
After securing their own firewood, some early settlers in the area cashed in on the trees from clearing their lands. Using tools that are in the Museum collection like cross cut saws, swede saws, and axes, the settlers, men and women, would down the trees, delimb them, and drag the logs out by wagon. This wood was sold by the cord, a legal unit of stacked wood 4 feet x 8 feet x 4 feet, to fuel stoves and furnaces in homes and businesses.
During the logging boom at the turn of the 20th century, Shellbrook was between two major saw mills. To the north was the Big River Lumber Company's mill (originally the Saskatchewan Lumber Company) and to the east was the Prince Albert Lumber Company's mill.
In the Shellbrook area, the fur industry's most valued species was the beaver. For the forestry industry, the most valued species was the stately white spruce. The trees in the virgin white spruce stands grew a majestic 100 feet in height. Ted Arabsky has long been interested in the history of logging. He wrote the "Logging Era" chapter in the history book Wilderness to Neighbourhoods: Lake Four, Park Valley, Rabbit Bluff, Stump Lake, Millard Hill. Arabsky learned from loggers that many of the Prince Albert Lumber Company largest logs came from the Stump Lake district with an amazing diameter of 3 to 4 feet. This converts into a circumference of 9.5 to 12.5 using the formula πd. As a comparison, the large spruce that towers over the Museum is 5.5 feet in diameter.
Logging, like trapping, was a winter activity. The companies would set up numerous camps for 75 to 200 lumberjacks in their federally allocated timber berths. Camps consisted of a bunkhouse, kitchen and dining room, blacksmith shop, office, and barn for the horses. The companies hired excellent cooks and the workers were well feed. Before meals, men would use basins to wash up, load up their plates, and then sit down at one of the long tables. They did this in silence as silence was the rule during the business of eating. Even the cooks were not to talk while cooking. A dining room sign emphasized the rule with a succinct "Eat and get the h*!! outside".
Arabsky's chapter describes the process of harvesting a tree in detail. In the six man saw gang, the undercutter notched the tree so it would fall in the desired direction. Two sawers used the long cross cut saw to fell the tree and a limber would remove the branches. Two swampers where responsible for clearing a road. The logs were skidded by horse to a loading area where four men would roll the logs onto skids using cant hooks and from there unto a sleigh using a jammer employing the science of pulleys and more horsepower.
A good hauling road for the heavy sleigh was essential and that took more man and horse power. Stumps were cleared on main roads and "graders" armed with hoes and shovels would level it. More science would be employed to reduce the friction for the sleighs by flooding the road to make ice after cutting two ruts matching the sleigh's runners. The sixteen horse team that pulled the sleigh had specially designed horseshoes for ice and horse apples were conscientiously removed from the ice road as frozen they could tip the sleigh. Wisely, the trees along the road were left standing to shade the road from the sun's warmth in the spring. This leg of the journey to a saw mill ended at a rail loading site or frozen lake or river.
The companies would strategically damn waterways so when they opened the damn in the spring, water power would carry the logs for free. This was costly to the environment though as unnatural amounts of bark and debris destroyed fish habitat and harvesting trees along shorelines increased erosion.
It would be an understatement to pronounce that the logging industry was unsustainable and more accurate to pronounce it exploitation. At the end of the 1880s the annual harvest was counted in logs and the count was under 1000. In 1900, the count was 3.6 million board feet and in 1904, it had tripled to 15 million board feet. The Great Fire of 1919 may have had natural causes but it had man made fuel in the form of tinder dry logging waste. The fire burned 2.8 million hectares and was its most destructive in the timber berths. The big logging boom went bust.
Smaller companies with more sustainable practices became the norm. Shellbrook's own Red River Lumber and Construction Company erected a mill at a former Prince Albert Lumber Company site on the Elk Trail in 1925.
The Museum Committee and Friends of the Museum continue to invest energy in inventorying the collection. The inventorying process is the first step as the museum moves from storing artifacts to telling their stories. If you would like to help, please drop in to see Alanna Carswell at the library or call Marlene Fellows at 306-747-2475.
The Museum welcomes monetary donations for inventory show cases and other donations to help better display items to tell their stories. Please make donations to the Town of Shellbrook to receive a receipt.
