Through the Dip Into the Past

Driving through “The Dip” brings back vivid memories of my first job out of high school. I set chokers for a small logging contract company outside Ucluelet on Vancouver Island. I was a “wet-behind-the-ears” homesick 17-year-old.

The scene at the Dip reminds me of that time: the amputated trees, the twisted stumps, the loose, disrupted earth ravaged by logs hauled over the ground, large rocks tipped over, and exposed cliff faces that were once obscured by proud standing trees.

Most of all, I remember the heavy smell of sawdust, exposed wood, and loamy earth. If you roll down your car window while driving through the Dip construction job, that smell brings it all back to me!

Looking at the crew’s work, it’s easy to imagine a battlefield from World War One, where the trees look like corpses splayed on the ground. Craters and mounds of earth might be from bomb blasts. It’s not a pretty sight. But it’s a sign that we’ll soon have a reliable road leading to and from South Pender, with no traffic light to hold us up.

I was a teenage chokerman

Visually, the scene was almost exactly what I saw as a summer student in 1973. I was a choke setter or “choker-man,” the lowest of the low in the woods those days. We worked on side hills off the Kennedy Lake logging division on Vancouver Island. That summer, I earned the princely sum of $4.25 an hour and used the proceeds to pay my first-year tuition at UBC.

Our domain was the “logging roads” among the fallen trees, where the cedar, fir and hemlock once towered into the sky. On a signal by the rigger, two or three of us chokermen rushed over fallen logs and wrapped steel cables — chokers — around the trunks of trees that had been cut by fallers a few days before.

We’d thread the choker under and around a tree trunk, then cinch it by means of a knob and knob hook, that I think we used to call “the bell.”

The men there were then!

We’d run clear of the choke-set logs and re-join the rigger, who would then signal the landing crew that the logs were set. Three short electronic “whistles” that reverberated through the woods.

The overhead rigging lifted the logs into the air, the chokers cinching them tight, and the yarder at the landing hauled them in. There, a yard worker unhitched the logs, and a loader piled them onto logging trucks.

The men there were then! In my mind’s eye, they’re like relics from an older time. Burly, bearded hard-hatted fellows who lept from log to log like ballet dancers in spiked caulk boots! Always a half-smoked cigarette between their lips, eyes squinting from the smoke and the sun.

Today, boys! Today!

They’d laugh and curse at us chokermen, yelling for us to hurry up and “set those fuckin’ piss poles! Today, boys! Today!” They boasted of their drinking exploits, the injuries they’d sustained, the grizzly accidents they’d seen. The work was physical, brutal.

At the end of the day, their faces were caked with dust, streaked with sweat and sullen with fatigue. Their tired minds were fixed on a steak and beer for dinner. Afterwards, they’d carry on at the Ucluelet pub with jugs and glasses, more cigarettes and fights.

Being underage, I stayed in my room and read. I was a “shrinking violet,” but I was also too exhausted to move. I’d fall asleep before dark.

But by the end of the summer, I had more energy.

Chaotic ambient music

Once, when I joined some of my buddies at the pub (“No one ever asks for your fuckin’ birth certificate, you candy!”), I saw all kinds of mayhem. The sound of smashing glass, drunken laughter, and loud curses was like chaotic ambient music. More than once, our table got knocked over, either by someone falling over it or purposely smashing the pub’s fine drinkware and beer.

I worked two summers for Millstream Timber Company, owned by my uncle Jack McKercher. I think he was happy to have me working in Ucluelet, but I was no logger. We both knew it. I wasn’t fast enough to keep up. Too slow to understand the way work went, the way the land was logged. Also a bit lazy and homesick. I was glad to get back home and to university.

I was also the privileged kid, the boss’ nephew. Lots of guys kept their distance from me.

The privileged kid

The second summer was cut short by a province-wide forestry strike. One day, the crew was called off the side hill just before lunch. We convened for a strike vote in the camp’s mechanic shop, about 40 loggers standing in a semicircle. The shop steward read out the wage package offered by the industry negotiators and called for a vote.

“The package stinks, boys,” he said. “It’s up to you, though.” 1

As the loggers called out their votes, I realized I was in a bit of a pickle. I wanted to keep working to pay for my university tuition for the next year. But a vote to accept the wage offer would put me further at odds with my co-workers. Voting to reject the offer would be a slap in the face to my uncle. And word would get back to him.

I listened to the loggers calling out their votes. I could barely see their faces in the dark mechanic shop, the sunlight outside glinting off their aluminum helmets. The heavy smell of oil and metal filled the shop.

But I could hear their answers. Almost all wanted to reject the offer and spend the rest of the summer on the beach.

“Not yes, not no”

“Morton?” the shop steward called out.

“Morton!” He smiled and looked across the room at me. “You wanna abstain?”

I didn’t know what he meant by “abstain.” I asked if he could tell me. “You just say I ain’t voting. Not yes, not no. If I was you, that’s the one I’d choose, if you know what I mean. Either way, it ain’t gonna make a difference.”

“OK, abstain,” I said quietly. He chuckled quietly along with a few others.

He marked that down on his clipboard, and my summer in Ucluelet was over. The forest industry was on strike, the loggers had their beach holidays lined up, and I limped home to Vancouver to look for another job.

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