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Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Richard Somerset Mackie, Island Timber: A Social History of the Comox Logging Company, Vancouver Island (Victoria: Sono Nis Press, 2000)

THIS IS A POPULAR HISTORY written by an academic historian. Mackie, who has produced a monograph on the 19th century fur trade in the Pacific region, here presents the story of people associated with the Comox Logging and Railway Company. The firm ran extensive logging operations in the Comox Valley, about halfway up the eastern side of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia. It was one of the largest operations in the coastal region, turning out logs for its owner, the Canadian Western Lumber Company. The logs were converted into lumber at the company's massive sawmill on the mainland at Fraser Mills, near Vancouver. The book considers the years from the late 19th century to 1938, the year a great fire destroyed much of the area's forest. In a region where the lumber industry continues to be very important, historical books on the topic are welcome indeed.	1
Mackie begins by chronicling the first rural settlement of the Comox Valley and the business history of the early lumber companies. After this background the focus is on loggers and their families. Much of the book is about work in the woods. This was the era of highlead logging, in which steam-powered skidders and aerial cables yarded huge logs by lifting one end of the logs and then dragging them to a central location. Trees were felled manually using axes and saws, and railways transported the logs to sawmills or to the seashore, where they were boomed and transported on the ocean to mills. This logging system was introduced into the coastal region just before World War I. Prior to this, steam-powered, ground logging had been used to yard logs. In the late 1930s trucks began replacing railways in the larger coastal operations, and power chainsaws were being introduced for fallers. In Island Timber individual chapters describe all aspects of the logging process in the highlead era, from cruising the timber and building logging railways, to falling and bucking the timber, yarding the logs to seaside, and finally transporting log booms across the Strait of Georgia to the mill on the mainland. Fine maps and drawings show how logging operations were laid out and how log booms sere constructed. The book supplements Ken Drushka's Working in the Woods: A History of Logging on the West Coast, which covers the coastal region from early days to recent times.	2
Life in the towns and camps where the workers lived, places such as Courtenay, Comox, Headquarters, and Camp 3, is also described in much detail in Island Timber. There are anecdotes about schooling, snowstorms, and kindly butchers, as well as observations on the social composition of the area and accounts of leisure activities. Here, too, there are finely-drawn maps: the residents in all the married men's houses in Camp 3 in 1936, for example, are noted on one full-page map. (125) Throughout, the book pays close attention to the local social and physical geography.	3
While many sources are used, Island Timber relies extensively on oral interviews. Mackie spoke with an amazing number of people — some 150 — in the preparation of the book, and the testimony of these residents provides much of the content. These voices describe the operation of cold decking, the job of a whistle punk, and the fun of logger' sports days and deer hunting. As with most histories based on oral interviews, the story told is from the perspective of the persisters, the people whose families remained in the area and are willing to talk to an interested historian. Mackie recognizes this focus, acknowledging that this is primarily the story of the Comox Homeguard. These were loggers who lived permanently in the valley, were largely married, and engaged in farming as well as logging. After retiring, they remained in the area. It is not clear how extensive the Homeguard was, but one informant estimated that by the 1930s, half of the Comox Logging Company's employees came from farms in the valley. (81) The account, then, does not capture the experience of the loggers who moved away, or the many others who were hired out of Vancouver, traveling to the camps and then returning to the city during shutdowns or when they were laid off.	4
This celebratory, well-written book has sold many copies and was on the provincial bestseller list for months. It is a handsome presentation, offering more than mere text. Beyond the narrative, there are photographs and sidebars on every page. I found myself going through each chapter twice: first reading the narrative text and then examining the pictures and sidebars, which usually contain an anecdote or a brief biography of a member of the Homeguard. The pictures are wonderful and evoke much about coastal logging and coastal life.	5
Unions and strikes are introduced near the end of the book, but, according to Mackie, organizational initiatives were not integral to the history of the Homeguard. When we finally learn that the area participated in the massive strike wave in the British Columbia woods after World War I, though, the significance of the logging Homeguard does become clearer: the company hired local farm people, usually family men, to work in their camps as a strategy to keep out unionism and socialism. (255) Mackie notes that the Homeguard was anti-union and satisfied with the "safety-conscious paternalism" of the company, apparently even during the big Vancouver Island loggers' strike of 1934. (255–6) In 1942 Comox Logging was the last big coastal operation to be organized by the International Woodworkers of America.	6
Readers of this journal would likely have preferred a little more context and political economy. Island Timber goes against recent trends in provincial academic history that locate communities and industries in provincial, national, and international contexts. Some attention to the changing fortunes of the lumber and log markets, as well as the fate of Canadian Western Lumber in the period under consideration, would have helped explain the lives of the people described in the book. The Depression of the 1930s shaped the lives of Comox Valley residents, but it seems that it merely happened and had to be endured. Comox Valley residents are also depoliticized, ignoring an interesting and important aspect of local society. In the 1920 provincial election the successful candidate in the riding represented the People's Party-Farmer-Labour, and in 1933 the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation candidate finished second, winning over 35 per cent of the popular vote. In 1937 the CCF took the riding. The victor in Comox riding was Colin Cameron, renowned as a strong leftist presence in the legislature and the most biting critic of government forest policy in the early 1940s.	7
Mackie has produced a fine, popular history, which, though footnote free, has an extensive bibliography as well as an index and a glossary of logging terms. The book will yield rewards to anyone interested in coastal logging and the lives of the people involved.	8
Gordon Hak Malaspina University-College

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