WhiskyJack Publishing
  • Home
  • About
    • About Us
    • Our Life Here
    • First Lines-The Beardmore Relics
    • News Clips: Greenstone's Believe It or Not!
    • Q&A : Greenstone's Believe It or Not!
    • Tipping Points - GERALDTON BACK DOORS
    • The Jarheads of Goshen: Next to Last Lines
    • The Gardens of Goshen: Next to Last Lines
    • First Lines - GERALDTON BACK DOORS
    • Events
    • Blog Articles
  • Sample Chapters
    • Kennet Forbes Mysteries
    • The Chronicles of Goshen
  • Recent Titles
    • Retail Outlets
  • Book Credits
  • EJ's POSTS
  • Beardmore Viking Relics
  • Contact
    • Links
  • My Services
    • Description of Services
    • Pricing of Services

#12 - BLACK DAN & DYNAMITE

5/8/2016

1 Comment

 
Picture
  Some months ago, I came across two logging stories from Greenstone Region, both told in one magazine article.  As the title suggests, the stories deal with danger, death, and grief.
 
   I contacted the author, Ken Plourde, who worked in the Beardmore area in the summer of 1957, staying in the Domtar Staff House.  He returned to live in Beardmore in 1960, working for Domtar until 1970.  Black Dan, in the article, is the uncle of Ken Plourde's wife.  Black Dan lived with his sister in Beardmore, Merle Smetaniuk.
 
  Both the author and the magazine gave me permission to reprint the article:
 
Black Dan and Dynamite!
by Ken Plourde

  I first worked in the pulpwood industry as a student in northwestern Ontario in 1957, at St Lawrence Corp. (later Domtar), which was originally Brompton Paper. At that time, the companies in the Port Arthur area (now Thunder Bay) were still moving logs by river transportation to lakes and thence across Lake Superior to mills. Others picked up the logs in Lake Superior and transported them by ship to mills like Red Rock, Port Arthur and Thorold. The industry was still cutting pulp by hand, mostly into 4-foot bolts for ease of handling, and for ease of river driving the logs. The 4-foot bolts obviously got hung up less in the rapids, and this length made clearing logjams easier. The downside to 4-foot bolts was the greater amount of handling, and the loads were less stable when hauling pulp on trucks.
 
  Most of eastern Canada used river driving to transport logs to the mill, and many shanty songs and romantic lumberjack tales from the Ottawa Valley area were about these river drives. Indeed, Charlie Chamberlain, of Don Messer & His Islanders, worked and sang in river drive camps in those days. Books have been written about the tough lumberjacks going into town and stirring things up, including the story telling.
 
  One such lumberjack tale involved a logging camp, near Auden, Ontario, east of Lake Nipigon . . .

Read the full article on E.J. Lavoie's Blog > http://bit.ly/2alWr0G


1 Comment
mybkexperience link
16/2/2021 01:32:31 pm



I found this on internet and it is really very nice.
An excellent blog.
Great work!

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    E.J. Lavoie contributes a weekly column to Greenstone's Coffee Talk and the Nipigon-Red Rock Gazette.  The column can be read in its entirety on his blog, complete with images.  Just click the link at the end of each post.

    Archives

    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.