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4 The Lumber Trade in Norfolk Moves On

By 1880 the majority of the big stands of virgin pine had been harvested from the sand plains of Norfolk and the rest of the Long Point Country. The lumbermen and their families were forced to move on to often more remote areas in search of forested lands to harvest. Some turned to other parts of Ontario and Quebec where the pine-timber industry was being carried out on a much greater scale. Many others found opportunity in the forests of Michigan and beyond.

The Ottawa River watershed, which drained almost 60,000 square miles, was by far the largest area supporting white-pine timberlands in Ontario. Other areas where extensive stands of virgin pine were to be found included the Trent watershed, the Muskokas, areas around Georgian Bay, the Nipissing district, and the Rainy Lake and Lake of the Woods districts. In Quebec, in addition to their share of the Ottawa River watershed, large stands of virgin pine were to be found in the St. Maurice and Saguenay watersheds, the Lake St. John district, the north shore of the St. Lawrence from the Saguenay River to the Bersimis, and on the south shore in the Gaspé district.

By the late 1880s, the more easily harvested timber along the main water routes had been removed. Lumbermen had to work in more remote, inland areas of rough and rocky terrain, where drainage was through myriad small lakes and connecting streams and creeks. The familiar spring river drives of thousands of logs at a time were a thing of the past. Removal of logs became much more difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.

CADGE CRIB WARPING

Where pine logs had to be moved for miles, through a series of lakes and small streams, before reaching the river that would carry them to the mill, the lumbermen resorted to a method called warping. It was first necessary to build a cadge crib or warping crib.

This crib was simply a raft of preferably dry, red-pine logs that were light and floated high in the water. The raft or crib, usually 40 to 50 feet square, was constructed in late winter on the shore of the lake where the logs were to be moved. A wooden capstan was next anchored to the crib and supplied with 300 to 600 feet of 2-inch manila rope. To one end was attached a heavy warping anchor.

Other floating cribs were also built to accommodate a bunkhouse for the men doing the warping, and a cookhouse where the cook on the drive could store supplies, cook, and feed the men. When the ice went out of the lake, the logs to be moved to the sawmill were assembled in a bag boom, the name applied to a mass of loose logs enclosed in a loop, or “bag,” of logs chained end to end, for the purpose of towing. The ends were then brought together to enclose the remaining loose logs to be moved, and the resultant boom of logs was attached to the warping crib by a cable or chain.

These three men strain to operate the capstan — or headworks — on a cadge crib to move a boom of logs to a waiting sawmill. Photo circa 1891.

Courtesy of the Clarence F. Coons Collection.

A small rowboat was required to begin moving the boom. The warping anchor would be rowed out to the full 300-foot length of the manila rope to which the anchor was attached. The anchor was then dropped and the men on the crib began pushing on the bars of the capstan. As they travelled round and round the capstan, or headworks as it was called, the crib and boom were slowly drawn to the warping anchor, imbedded in the lake bottom. As the rope came aboard the crib and was coiled down, the boom was moved slowly down the lake. This procedure was repeated, as many times as required, to move the boom of logs to the opposite end of the lake being traversed.

The crew of a cadge crib pose for the photographer before embarking on the crib for a long day of hard work.

Courtesy of Archives of Ontario, #S 16199.

George S. Thompson, a logging superintendent for several years in the Trent watershed, provided a first-hand account of what warping a log boom was really like:

Often I have seen a crew of forty or fifty men warping, as it is called, for days at a time, sometimes for thirty or forty consecutive hours at a stretch. This ceaseless pushing on the hand bars of a capstan, it is worse than a treadmill in a jail, the constant going round for so long a time often made men sick. To hold or coil “slacks” as the rope came in was another job even worse, for one’s hands most of the time, if not freezing, would be terribly sore.¹

When horses were used for warping, the capstan was modified and the rope lengthened to about 600 feet. This also meant that stabling for the horses had to be provided on the crib. Fewer men, from sixteen to eighteen rather than thirty or more, were needed when horses were used. Horse capstans and warping anchors were manufactured commercially by the William K. Hamilton Manufacturing Company Limited in Peterborough, Ontario.

This method of moving logs was both slow and expensive and required a workforce of many men. A further hazard was the wind, which, if in the wrong direction, could either blow the crib and boom ashore or in the opposite direction. The warping crib could not be moved from one lake to the next unless connected by a stream large enough to float the crib and its boom of logs. The alternative was to have several warping cribs to move the logs through a series of lakes. In smaller operations the cribs were disassembled and moved to the next lake, where they were reassembled.

Once the logs had been moved through a series of lakes, rivers, rapids, and waterfalls, a crew of agile men were required to break up log jams and “sweep” shorelines for escaped logs. This called for a light, rugged, shallow-draught rowing boat. But until the 1850s no satisfactory boat could be found to perform the job to everyone’s satisfaction. It is the prominent timber baron of the Ottawa area, J.R. Booth, who is credited with finding the man who designed and built the pointer boat, a boat well adapted to this very specific job.

A horse capstan, operating on the Pickerel River, is shown “at rest” as the horse and men take a breather. The man on the left coils down the manila rope as it comes off the capstan. The outboard end is attached to the anchor set ahead of the crib.

Courtesy of George E. Knight.

Marjorie Clarke, Harry Barrett’s mother, Clara Gorrie, and Dorothy Clarke enjoy a canoe ride on Head Lake, while, in the background, an Alligator tug feeds logs to Haliburton’s Malloy & Bryans sawmill.

Photo circa 1915. The mill burned in 1919.

Courtesy of Harry B. Barrett.

John Cockburn, an Englishman who came to Canada to do the carvings in the woodwork of the first Parliament buildings, was a recent immigrant to the Ottawa Valley. He also had outstanding boat-building skills. Booth persuaded Cockburn to design a boat that met the needs of the men engaged in the log drives, gathering stray logs, and forming the booms. As a result the now famous pointer boat was born. The first of these were built in Ottawa.²

Cockburn’s design met with instant success and soon he was building some two hundred boats a year in his shop he had established in Pembroke, on the Ottawa River. These were built of heavy pine to withstand the rough usage, with an upswept bow, and stern that allowed them to be pivoted with one tug of an oar. The largest were up to 50 feet in length, yet drew only a few inches of water and weighed more than half a ton. They ranged in size down to less than 15 feet in length. Pointer boats were still being built by John Cockburn’s grandson as late as 1968. For over a century this versatile craft had made the life of the riverman a little easier on the Ottawa and its tributaries. The pointer boats were immortalized in 1916 by Tom Thomson in his striking canvas, entitled Batteaux, which he painted on Grand Lake, on the east side of Algonquin Park.

Cockburn pointer-boat crews are working with a log boom in Algonquin Park.

Courtesy of Bud Doering.

Dave Lemkay³ has fond memories of seeking relief from summer heat at lunchtime in the cool, windowless, old Cockburn boat shop, with its plank floor, specialized tools, and the tantalizing fresh aromas of pine and cedar shavings and oakum. Here, too, he could relax and reminisce with Jack Cockburn, third-generation boat builder, about the great log drives on the Ottawa River watershed and the crucial part played by the pointer boats of Pembroke⁴ and the men who worked them. These were tough, agile men, many of them Irish immigrants who moved into the forest camps in the fall to harvest the timber. Many came from subsistence farms to work through the winter and early spring and then return to their farms. Some brought their horses with them. Others worked as lumberjacks year round in the forests, on river drives, and in the sawmills.

There was an urgent need, however, for an improved and economical method of moving logs from the remote timber limits now being harvested. A conventional steamboat could be used, but to place one on every lake where logging was taking place was too costly and the construction of railways for the purpose was out of the question.

A logging crew operate a cadge crib, with a horse-powered headworks, anchor, and manila anchor rope, as they enter a lock on the Trent Canal at Buckhorn. Note the shelter for the horses and the second crib for cooking and sleeping accommodations.

Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, C-27216.