In the last Transitions column, it was noted that French Canadians made up a heavy percentage of the crews that worked in the woods and ran the record-setting sawmills of our local lumbering industry at the turn of the century and beyond up to 1920.
Tupper Lake was the leading lumbering capital of the state during those years, and there was a high demand for lumbermen experienced in the use of the axe, horse teams and, later, the saw.
With our close proximity to Canada and with four to six trains running daily to Ottawa and Montreal, it is not surprising that many Canadians were attracted to this fast-growing community and its employment opportunities.
Those lumbermen came by their skills naturally because long before lumbering began here, the French (as servants of the king) had been cutting and rafting masts and ship timbers, procured from the monstrous virgin pines, along the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers for use in His Majesty’s navy.
They became excellent woodsmen from the beginning of this activity, according to Charles Bryan Jr. in The Racquette River of the Forest, and they exhibited outstanding aptitude and skill.
In his autobiography, Ferris Meigs, president of the Santa Clara Company here, recounts one crew of Canadians who escaped the inclination to celebrate and “blow” their wages, as was sometimes the case when the lumberjacks left the woods after the cutting was finished. This crew was made up entirely of Canadians of Scottish descent. “The foreman, Jim Wiley, was five feet, 11 inches tall and the shortest man in the crew. These Scotchmen rarely ever visited the ‘van’ in camp.”
Note: The “van” was also called a wangan or wannigan, a word of Indian origin, and it referred to the company store where lumbermen could purchase tobacco, clothes, soap, matches, etc. Maine canoeists still refer to their food box carried in the canoe on river trips as a wannigan.
“Those particular Canadians,” Mr. Meigs explained, “would bring from Canada all the home-grown and home-cured tobacco they would need for the season. Their socks, mittens and extra pants were made by their sisters and mothers. They were young men and spent not a cent of their wages. The payoff nearly broke the bank when camp broke up. The boys saved all, and in a few years, by their thrift, were able to buy farms, marry and be lost to the ‘bush’ and become an asset of value to their Canadian communities.”
What follows are some reminiscences and nuggets of early lumbering days by the late Beatrice LaVigne of Parishville, who grew up in a lumber camp in the 1900s, where both parents were employed. Mrs. LaVigne went on to earn a master’s degree in education at Columbia and taught at the campus school in Potsdam. She had this to say in an interview on logging, conducted by Kate Klien:
“I loved my life as a child in the logging camps. My mother was a camp cook in the Colton woods called 35 Pond [Note: Town of Hopkinton, northwest of Little Jordan Lake, later O.W.D. lands], where my father, Ed LaVigne, was a lumberjack. She earned $1.50 per day and he earned $1. Camp cooks were the highest-paid jobs in the camp. The best lumberjacks went where the best food was found. I remember how hard they all worked. Mother prepared meals for 100 or more every day. She made 200 loaves of bread every other day – mixed them in huge, galvanized tubs, and oh, how wonderful the camp smelled when the bread was baking. Everything the men ate, my mother cooked. They had huge appetites and required many calories, for the work was hard, and they worked from long before daylight to well after dark, often by the light of torches and lanterns. They went out no matter how cold. Cold weather is good logging weather, and frozen feet were a big problem. The food came in by train to Potsdam, where it was carted to 35 Pond. Flour was in barrels; coffee came in a big chest weighing more than a hundred pounds. I still have one of the tea chests. Pie filling came in large pails. My favorite was apricot pie, but she made a raisin pie that was something to remember. The Sissons owned the lumber business my father worked for. It was a hard life but a good one.”
Ms. LaVigne doesn’t mention it, but the humble prune, according to lumber historian Robert Pike, deserves a special mention. In later days of the camps, it was very common, both stewed and in pies. As a French Canadian cook (I think it was Joe Buckshot) once remarked: “For me, I’ll take the prune. It makes better apple pie than the peach.”
In 1916, the Oval Wood Dish Corporation set up logging headquarters at Kildare near the main line of the NY and Ottawa railroad and its Kildare passenger station not far from Pitchfork Pond.
From here, O.W.D. ran railroad spur lines that reached as far as 35 Pond, O.W.D camps run by jobbers like DuMoulin, a prominent family name here. Sullivan from South Colton and Buckley were served by this rail line, an occurrence that would have astounded Mrs. LaVigne.
The O.W.D. owned two locomotives and 65 flat cars that were used to haul hardwood logs cut on their extensive land holdings in this area. In 1926, Sisson and White took over the logging railroad and moved the tracks a year later.