Old Time Trains

One of a Kind Lumber Camp.

Huntsville Forester

Not long ago, Charlie Stiles, a Whitestone Township native who shares my interest in area history, brought to my house a waterlogged lump of wood he knew I'd want to see. While out trapping on Cramadog Creek, Charlie had found floating there an old pine log with a lumberman's brand deeply impressed in one end, and he had gone to the trouble of sawing off the historic artifact and bringing it to me. The brand embodied the letters GH, the signature of Chicago-born George H. Holt, who, nearly a century ago, made his considerable mark on the Whitestone area by paying scores of local men good wages to work in his lumber camps. Holt, a slight, red-bearded life-long bachelor, purchased cutting rights to an estimated 150 million board feet of McKenzie Township timber in 1909, and two years later, started logging in a manner that suggested money was no object. And probably it wasn't, for in 1913, R.G. Dun & Co., watchdog of Mercantile Enterprises, awarded the Holt Timber Company of Whitestone, Ontario, an A1 credit rating with "an estimated pecuniary strength" of over half a million dollars. Initially, Holt's annual cut of sawlogs was floated down the Magnetawan River to be sawed in Georgian Bay mills. Then, in the dry spring of 1915, a forest fire swept the northeastern quarter of McKenzie Township, killing 25 million feet of standing pine and completely derailing his logging timetable. In order to salvage the dead trees before larvae of the white pine sawyer beetle riddled the wood with holes, Holt, in true Yankee "can-do" fashion, swiftly revised his plans by punching eight miles of railway steel into the heart of the bum. This logging railway ran from Bolger Bridge on the CNR eastward for three miles, to Holt's Bay on Wahwashkesh Lake (where a sawmill was built), and took up again near where the Magnetawan River enters the north body of that lake. Locomotive and rolling stock were barged between the two railheads as required. But enough about Holt's railway, for I've already dealt with this enterprise in two or three of my books. Today's story focuses instead on George Holt's lumber camps, and I must credit another North Star columnist, John Junck (keeper of the McKellar Township drawbridge), for inspiring it when he made passing reference, in his Junck Mail tour de force of a couple of weeks ago, to favouring a certain Manitouwabing Lake backwater when it came time to take his annual bath. Lumberjacks called it "the Million Dollar Camp." This was the spacious and airy bunkhouse (with eight-foot walls, in contrast to the cave-like hovels that were the general rule) of a central base of operations which Holt established as he prepared to log his newly acquired pinery north of Wahwashkesh Lake. Furnished with spring bunks and lots of brand new blankets, the structure housed 125 men in unaccustomed comfort. The grounds also boasted a "hospital" and a laundry where the men could have their clothes washed regularly during their six-month stay, and the cookery tables were set with white enamel utensils (not rusty tin) and good-quality cutlery. Other frills included "phonographs, lectures, violins, and other instruments of musical intention." Holt stopped short of adding a central steam-heating plant only after carefully weighing the costs and finding them altogether prohibitive. Alas, after only two years of use that 1915 bushfire reduced Holt's wilderness spa to ashes. And did he then, having determined that coddled workers produced greater dividends for the company, rebuild accordingly? No, he did not. The new camps that sprouted along the railway as it pushed into the burnt timber, although as large as before (Henry North, who drove a team of horses there, once told me that the Camp 8 bunkhouse could sleep 200 men, and the Camp 9 cookery seated 150) were considerably less deluxe than the showplace described above. Holt, it turned out, had learned that pampering employees could be carried altogether too far. "The reputation of the camp kept the crew full," he admitted in a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Lumberman's Association in Montreal, in early 1918, "but the efficiency was lower in that camp than elsewhere. It was too easy." The old rule that the best approach to getting maximum work out of a logger lay through his gut, Holt concluded, remained as true as ever. "There is no doubt," he declared, "that the lumberjack would choose a camp to suit his stomach rather than his idle time and sleep time." And while noting that standards of comfort and cleanliness in many lumber camps still left something to be desired, he couldn't help adding that if the average lumberjack "were compelled to take a daily or even a weekly bath in winter time he would vamoose without warning." Remember folks, those happily unwashed woodland dwellers of whom George Holt spoke were the forebears of not a few of us Parry Sounders. Including, of course, my fellow rustic scribbler, John Junck.

Jun 30, 2006 MuskokaRegion.com

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One of a Kind Lumber Camp.

Huntsville Forester

Not long ago, Charlie Stiles, a Whitestone Township native who shares my interest in area history, brought to my house a waterlogged lump of wood he knew I'd want to see. While out trapping on Cramadog Creek, Charlie had found floating there an old pine log with a lumberman's brand deeply impressed in one end, and he had gone to the trouble of sawing off the historic artifact and bringing it to me. The brand embodied the letters GH, the signature of Chicago-born George H. Holt, who, nearly a century ago, made his considerable mark on the Whitestone area by paying scores of local men good wages to work in his lumber camps. Holt, a slight, red-bearded life-long bachelor, purchased cutting rights to an estimated 150 million board feet of McKenzie Township timber in 1909, and two years later, started logging in a manner that suggested money was no object. And probably it wasn't, for in 1913, R.G. Dun & Co., watchdog of Mercantile Enterprises, awarded the Holt Timber Company of Whitestone, Ontario, an A1 credit rating with "an estimated pecuniary strength" of over half a million dollars. Initially, Holt's annual cut of sawlogs was floated down the Magnetawan River to be sawed in Georgian Bay mills. Then, in the dry spring of 1915, a forest fire swept the northeastern quarter of McKenzie Township, killing 25 million feet of standing pine and completely derailing his logging timetable. In order to salvage the dead trees before larvae of the white pine sawyer beetle riddled the wood with holes, Holt, in true Yankee "can-do" fashion, swiftly revised his plans by punching eight miles of railway steel into the heart of the bum. This logging railway ran from Bolger Bridge on the CNR eastward for three miles, to Holt's Bay on Wahwashkesh Lake (where a sawmill was built), and took up again near where the Magnetawan River enters the north body of that lake. Locomotive and rolling stock were barged between the two railheads as required. But enough about Holt's railway, for I've already dealt with this enterprise in two or three of my books. Today's story focuses instead on George Holt's lumber camps, and I must credit another North Star columnist, John Junck (keeper of the McKellar Township drawbridge), for inspiring it when he made passing reference, in his Junck Mail tour de force of a couple of weeks ago, to favouring a certain Manitouwabing Lake backwater when it came time to take his annual bath. Lumberjacks called it "the Million Dollar Camp." This was the spacious and airy bunkhouse (with eight-foot walls, in contrast to the cave-like hovels that were the general rule) of a central base of operations which Holt established as he prepared to log his newly acquired pinery north of Wahwashkesh Lake. Furnished with spring bunks and lots of brand new blankets, the structure housed 125 men in unaccustomed comfort. The grounds also boasted a "hospital" and a laundry where the men could have their clothes washed regularly during their six-month stay, and the cookery tables were set with white enamel utensils (not rusty tin) and good-quality cutlery. Other frills included "phonographs, lectures, violins, and other instruments of musical intention." Holt stopped short of adding a central steam-heating plant only after carefully weighing the costs and finding them altogether prohibitive. Alas, after only two years of use that 1915 bushfire reduced Holt's wilderness spa to ashes. And did he then, having determined that coddled workers produced greater dividends for the company, rebuild accordingly? No, he did not. The new camps that sprouted along the railway as it pushed into the burnt timber, although as large as before (Henry North, who drove a team of horses there, once told me that the Camp 8 bunkhouse could sleep 200 men, and the Camp 9 cookery seated 150) were considerably less deluxe than the showplace described above. Holt, it turned out, had learned that pampering employees could be carried altogether too far. "The reputation of the camp kept the crew full," he admitted in a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Lumberman's Association in Montreal, in early 1918, "but the efficiency was lower in that camp than elsewhere. It was too easy." The old rule that the best approach to getting maximum work out of a logger lay through his gut, Holt concluded, remained as true as ever. "There is no doubt," he declared, "that the lumberjack would choose a camp to suit his stomach rather than his idle time and sleep time." And while noting that standards of comfort and cleanliness in many lumber camps still left something to be desired, he couldn't help adding that if the average lumberjack "were compelled to take a daily or even a weekly bath in winter time he would vamoose without warning." Remember folks, those happily unwashed woodland dwellers of whom George Holt spoke were the forebears of not a few of us Parry Sounders. Including, of course, my fellow rustic scribbler, John Junck.

Jun 30, 2006 MuskokaRegion.com