A Life in the Woods: Bruce Broadfoot

Peter Chapman: Do you remember the first airplanes used by the Forest Service?

Bruce Broadfoot: Yep. It was a Lockheed Electra and I rode in it a couple of times out of here. It was an amphibious plane --- landed on water. Of course in them days a lot of old guys frowned on that stuff. They could do better on foot you know. But the airplane, they tried it and they used it for fast flying and for quick patrol work, but not too often because it cost money you see. Besides that, they had to land on the lake all the time. There was no landing field here then. There was a Lockheed Electra, one of the first old amphibious planes.

Peter Chapman: They used airplanes for dropping supplies too, didn't they?

Bruce Broadfoot: They did --- this is after the Second World War, yeah. Then they had a Beaver, a float plane. And they dropped so heavily, they were dropping stuff out of that, and then we had to take what they called "familiarization flights" so every once in a while there'd be five or six of us guys that would have to go fly around in the Beaver and familiarize ourselves with the areas, you see. And crews working out cutting trails and building roads, they'd drop food--- and then of course if they've got fires, like we had a fire in the Sixties up on Five Mile just close to their water intake. They had quite a fire there and they took all the city crew off and put 'em up and they took us guys as foremen because we were experienced and then they had the Beaver drop all the supplies in.

Peter Chapman: They used parachutes?

Bruce Broadfoot: Oh yeah. Oh, Christ. You couldn't drop it. Like a pump. Everything had a chute on it. Mind you sometimes they it didn't always open properly as they go down, like if it would go down, like I've seen those little fire pumps one from seven, eight hundred , a thousand feet, you see. Lots of places you couldn't get in low enough, see. And sometimes the damn shoots weren't packed right and they wouldn't open, but 90% of the time they opened and they dropped them in there and mind you, they didn't put them right on target all the time. There'd probably be a wind and they'd drift. So it meant that after a drop you had to pack some of that stuff a half a mile or better you see. Oh, not much is broke. I have seen lots of things like --- and you had to be careful how they packed it. Like if they had a bunch of eggs, you didn't pack that with a bunch of other food, because the eggs might get broken. They were all packed in blankets and everything. I've seen two or three cases of eggs dropped and every one of them is broke --- an awful mess. And I've seen pumps come down and get all bashed up and then other times you'd swear to heck it was going to get bashed up and it was perfect. They come down and get caught in a tree and just be hanging three or four feet above the ground.

Peter Chapman: Did they often get caught up high in a tree?

Bruce Broadfoot: Oh yes. Lots of times --- its pretty hard to come in where there's a fire --- they can't drop them in the fire, they have to get away from the perimeter of the fire and lots of fire camps --- they don't take time to clean off the trees and everything so they come in and they fly over and they're looking to see the camp down there so they go their best to get it down through the trees. It's not bad though when they hang up like that, they're easy to get out and they don't get all bashed up either, see. But it isn't often. We used to get them right through the trees. Like some of those guys, the guy we had flying the Beaver, he flew in the Second World War. He was pretty handy at that stuff --- he died of cancer later on --- and they put another man on that. Then they went to helicopters, from the Beaver to the helicopters. From then, they didn't have the trouble, they could hover all the time.

Peter Chapman: But in the Depression, the fire fighting budgets were quite tight weren't they?

Bruce Broadfoot: Oh, yeah, two-bits an hour and all you got was beans and bully beef and sometimes you didn't get that. But men didn't complain as long as they got a lot of it to eat. When a fire order went out you got bacon, beans, bully beef, jam, prunes, stuff like that --- CPR strawberries. There was no fresh fruit or nothing. Everything was in cans or crates or dried. You were lucky if you got eggs. If it was easy to get them in you got eggs.

Peter Chapman: Did you ever go out on a fire and get stranded without food?

Bruce Broadfoot: Oh, yeah, we were stranded up here three days in Pass Creek. It rained so bad, they couldn't get in to us and finally it rained and put the fire out so we come out and we had a heck of a long way to walk because they couldn't get in to us because the roads were so bad, but we ran out of grub and we --- it wasn't bad. You knew when you got down they'd give you lots of grub then. But, and I remember I was up in Whitewater one time and we were a little short of grub --- not completely out. We had lots of bread. And when you start eating dried bread and drinking coffee with no milk --- but guys didn't complain much, not like they do now. Some guys were grumbly but most of them took it in good stead and they did their job. And another time we were up on the head of Five Mile and we sent out an order by radio for this big order to come in and they had to bring it in on a pack horse. A guy in town here, he got mixed into it and he said, "Oh," he said, "you don't have to go up this way, I know the road in." So he was going to lead the pack horses in and he got lost. And there we were waiting two days short of grub and the pack horses were found in the bush up there on the mountains. This guy. He knew all about the trails and the fellow that knew the trail, they didn't bring him back, put this other guy on. And we were short of grub then, but not completely out. We had enough to keep us going for a bit. But that was just the fault of the packer. He believed this guy that was telling him he knew the trail. See the packer didn't know the country and he had to have somebody to show him the trails, but the guy that I sent the wire out to, and told him to get this man, give him the name and everything, go and get him, he'd bring him in, but they didn't do that, they got this other guy. He said, "Oh, you don't need him, I know the trail." He didn't know the first think about it; he got lost. Six horses and --- well seven horses --- and then the guide all lost up here. It took 'em a few days. They had to go right back pretty near to Nelson and get on another trail and finally they got through.

Peter Chapman: At least they had food to eat while they were lost!

Bruce Broadfoot: Well they did, but we were short. We were out of bully beef, were had a few beans and we had a case of prunes left and lots of bread so we wouldn't have starved to death. But that's when the cook starts to complain. He's got nothing to cook. Yes, I've been out of grub sometimes, short of grub, but never completely out. The only one time that we were right out and that was up on Pass Creek, up on Gander Creek, but that was because they couldn't get the trucks in because the road was so bad washed out you see and they didn't have nobody to backpack so they had to come back to Nelson, so they left us up there for almost three days with no grub. As a matter of fact when we started to walk out, we come into a small Doukohour settlement, they fed us and boy, I'm telling you it tasted good, some of that soup and bread they give us, but that's about the only time they --- but they didn't give up. They tried to get stuff into you to help you. You sent a radio call out for it and they'd do their best to get it in to you whereas now-a-days, gosh lots of times you'd stood on the back burner for a day or two you see until they got somebody that was willing to go out, you see.

Peter Chapman: Did the equipment such as Pulaskis and back pumps ---was that new or did you have those right from the beginning?

Bruce Broadfoot: No, they were right from the beginning. They changed with the times. They corrected them and made better ones. But when I was a lad and first started, they were grub hoes, not Pulaskis then. The old grub hoes, they looked like somebody beat them out of an old piece of iron and just threw them on a stick and sent them out there. They were crude looking damn things. And as time when on you get better ones. Until then, after the war, then they come out with the Pulaski, which was an ax plus a grub hoe. You've probably seen them.

Peter Chapman: I've used them, yes.

Bruce Broadfoot: And that was a much much better rig, much better than the old grub hoe and the old grub hoe was soft metal. It was never tempered properly, and after a day's work in gravel and everything, it looked like a God damn hammer instead of a grub hoe. It was all pounded out. And then of course there were the saws, big crosscut saws. And you always had to make sure you that you had a man or two that could file saws and you hired him as a filer and he went out and that kept him busy filing saws because there was a lot of saw work in those days. Falling stuff and cutting out fire guard, you had to cut the stuff short so the men could handle it. There was no Cats to push it out of your road. And then there'd be a crew coming behind with the grub hoes, diggin' and loosenin' it all up and a crew behind that with shovels throwing it all into the fire, making a fireguard four or five feet wide. It was hard work.

Peter Chapman: That's a lot of hand work, isn't it.

Bruce Broadfoot: Oh, God yeah. I seen with men blisters on their hands as big as silver dollars. You know they needed the work and they had probably not been working, they'd probably never been out on a fire. And out they'd come and they'd put them on a shovel or something and their hands would be blisters all over and they'd be tired right out. But they couldn't get any other work. They had to take it. In the Thirties you took what you could get. At two bits an hour, in them days it wasn't to be sneezed at.

Peter Chapman: Well as foreman that must have given you the odd headache.

Bruce Broadfoot: Oh, yeah, yeah. I remember one time I was foreman on the night shift up in the Reno Mine. I had seventy Doukhobours in this area and I never sat down all night. I kept going round and round. I remember this old Doukhohour and his son, three times I had to wake them up out of the brush and get them back on the fire line and finally, the last time around the old Doukohour said, "What's the matter with you? Are you crazy? You no go to sleep?" And I said, "Not when you guys are around here." But if they got off in the bush and went to sleep and the fire jumped the guard, they could get burned to death or something. You had to watch 'em. Keep 'em moving you see, but you know it was a touch job.

And then you'd get a bunch of guys that were really good, you know. You could depend on them. They'd work for you. Another time I was on a big fire at Graves Creek --- that's right across the river from the Gibraltar Lookout --- I was on the Cat, I was Cat foreman and I had eleven Cats and I was working night shift sometimes and day shift and I had ten Indians that were working as sort of roust-abouts amongst the Cats with axes and power saws and everything, cutting snags out of the road and everything and the guy said to me, he said, "You're foreman on that Cat crew tonight." He said, "You take them Indians, but you'll never get any work out of them." He says, "Take 'em out of here." And those guys worked their heads off for me. I got talking to them see and some of them were --- they were old men some of them, and some of them had known my father when he had worked up in Athylmere. They were from down on the Shuswap Nation see. And I said, "Well my name is Broadfoot too you know." "You're Sam Broadfoot's boy?" "Yup." That's all I had to say and they went to work for me and worked their hearts out and they loved night shift because soon as night shift was over, they go down and they eat their full. They couldn't even move hardly. They'd crawl back in the bush and sleep all day. And that's what they liked. Night shift, they go back and they'd work all night for you. But as I say, you've got eleven Cats to look after plus eight or ten Indians and a few white men and you've got to see that the Cats are going where you want them to go and believe me it keeps you busy, especially when you are on foot and don't have anything to ride on. Keep these guys moving, tell them where you want the guards and everything. And then of course you meet some of the guys, they're getting tired and cranky and grouchy and you have to placate them you know and try to cheer them up and give them a little hope. But its not all feather bedding. It's hard work.

Peter Chapman: And dangerous at times?

Bruce Broadfoot: Yes, I remember on a fire we had, on the south fork of the Salmon River, not a very big fire, but it was hillside and there was a lot of snags in there and I remember one night we lost three men on them snags.

Peter Chapman: How did it happen?

Bruce Broadfoot: They burn off at the bottom and --- that's what they call widow makers --- they're silent. You'd be working there and one of them big things would burn out at the bottom and it comes over just like a ghost. Next thing its got you. We lost three men. Two in one snag and one in another. In one night. So then we had to change our method and keep them away from the fire at night until we got all --- and put them out in the daytime cutting snags, you see. And it took a lot of work because a lot of them snags are as hard as iron and had to cut them with that cross cut saw you know. It was hard work. And a lot of the guys weren't expert sawyers or anything like that you see, and it took time to get them down and clean them out so they weren't dangerous.

Peter Chapman: Did the Forest Service maintain cabins in the Nelson district?

Bruce Broadfoot: Oh, yeah they had cabins on White River, they had cabins on the Kootenay River and they had a cabin in the Palliser and they had cabins up at Blue Lake and White Tail Lake.

Peter Chapman: What were the cabins like?

Bruce Broadfoot: They had little cabins. They'd hold eight or ten men and usually what happened was the Patrolmen used these cabins in the summer. If they were cruising a place like that in the fall, well then they used it as their cookhouse and the men stayed in tents you see. Oh, yeah they had cabins all over.

Peter Chapman: Did you built cabins on occasion?

Bruce Broadfoot: I never had to. They always had a special crew that could build log cabins. They built cabins in Connor Lake, they built cabins up the --- what the hell do you call that river through Fernie? The river that comes through Fernie, I can't think of the name of it. But they built cabins up in there, up on the ---

Peter Chapman: Goat River?

Bruce Broadfoot: Goat River, that's out of Creston, yeah they had cabins there. Yeah, they had cabins all over the place. You know, funny thing. In the Sixties and that they went out and they burned a lot of them down because they said hunters would get out in them cabins and set fire, so they burned the damn cabins down. I don't think they should ever have done that. They should have left them. And they had cabins in the Palliser. They had three cabins in the Palliser and another thing --- lots of them were used by the guides and the hunters in the fall and cruising crews and surveying crews would use them when they knew they were there. They were handy. And the men that built them, they did a good job. They were good builders, good log builders. A lot of them were Swedish fellas. They were good at hand axes and everything, you see. Yes, I often think, I wish to hell I could live it over again. It was a good healthy life.

Peter Chapman: When did you start the marking work?

Bruce Broadfoot: I just can't remember. I started just at the beginning of the Sixties, the tail end of the Fifties, beginning of the Sixties and we started in there and when we first started, I had one, two, three, four, five men and myself and an old Dodge Fargo truck, an old Fargo, and we didn't even have pressurized pumps, mind you, just little cans with spray things on them, that's all. You'd pump your finger back and we had a tank we carried on our back full of paint so we'd get to fill these little cans up when they were empty and we walked miles, packing them thing's, marking timber for cut.

Peter Chapman: How would you choose which treed to mark?

Bruce Broadfoot: Well you had to kind of know. You take so many trees out of an acre and trees that look decadent and getting old, then you mark them. A good looking tree that would make a good seed tree you left it you see. They decide whether they want you to mark it for cut or for seed you see. So that's what we do, we go in and cut everything, mark everything to cut with red marks, you see. And at the same time we cruise it, you see. Lots of pine. And we'd take the height of it and then we had --- its like a tape measure that goes round and gives you the diameter and then we'd say "Well there's so many thousand feet in it" --- had to kind of guess at it --- and that went on your cruising sheet and when you were through, you had pretty near a 90% cruise you see.

Peter Chapman: Would they set a limit on the size of the trees that you were to mark?

Bruce Broadfoot: Oh, yeah, they'd say, "Well you go into this area. No one can cut trees under 12 inches in diameter or 14 inches in diameter. It's all big stuff. You leave the smaller trees, the healthy trees and take the older ones."

Peter Chapman: Before then, they would have had the same contracts, the timber sales would have been with a diameter limit, but they wouldn't have marked them. Why did they start marking them?

Bruce Broadfoot: Because that was silviculture --- the treatment of trees. By deciding that the contractor should not cut certain trees. They left them. If they cut them, they penalized them you see. And if you went in, like I did --- they sent you in say, "Now this timber sale has got to be marked for seed." We'd go in and we'd mark all the trees that have to be left for seed and you'd hear some groaning then ---

Peter Chapman: It was up to you to decide?

Bruce Broadfoot: You'd decide, yeah. You had to know. Say we left 14" diameter trees for seed. They'd be good healthy trees with no forks in them or nothing. Those are the seed trees. You used your judgment. You left so many seed trees to an acre. We travelled so many chains apart in a line you see and then we'd get to the other end of the sale and we'd turn around and go over and come back on the way back on us and we'd leave so many seed trees for later. Well sometimes they thought they were getting gypped, but once it was logged, and you could go back in and look at it, you could see you wouldn't get hyped. You left just a fair amount of trees for seed. I went back and looked at some six years later and you'd be surprised after they'd logged out that stuff, dragged out, and then they had to clean up the slash you see, and then you'd go back in there and you'd be surprised, there'd be hundreds of little trees coming up where there was all scraped around, from the seed trees, but when they quit doing the marking business and the contractors came in, then what would happen then, they'd over cut and they'd take every dang thing and besides that, when these marking [?] they had not --- when they went in Cats, they were not to try to score our trees up. They had to go in and fall their trees before they built the skid roads. They'd mark off a skid road with ribbons and the trees all fell toward that and then they went in with a Cat and they built their skid roads very lightly, not dig everything all out and that worked good. But once they quit that marking, and left it up to the contracts and loggers, everything went to kaput.

Peter Chapman: How would you mark the trees?

Bruce Broadfoot: What for cut?

Peter Chapman: A mark up at the top and the bottom?

Bruce Broadfoot: Yeah. You marked the tree and they --- well it was right in the contract --- they cut it so many inches above the ground and you mark the tree right above where it should be cut.

Peter Chapman: Did there have to be paint on the stump as well as ---

Bruce Broadfoot: That's the way --- they were supposed to leave it on the stump. They cut above the mark and left it on the stump. Oh, I've been in on lots of work, penalized people who've trespassed and cut too much where they weren't suppose to cut and one time up at Hills, we had to go in and cruise a piece that this many, this Doukhohour fellow, he trespassed, he cut his own plus he cut a hole bunch he wasn't supposed to plus he trespassed on the other sale. They penalized him so heavy they shut him down, they put him out of business. But it was his own fault, He got greedy. And the trees, they weren't big but they were all white pine. They wanted to thin it but they didn't want to clean it all out. And he was taking everything. I used to hate to have to do that. I told him, "I'm sorry but it was your own fault." That was the idea of marking trees, which for me, trees for seed, and if the sale was heavy to big timber and decadent, you marked to cut and left the best, the very best trees as seed. If it ran sort of 50-50, you marked for seed or for cut which ever you wanted. Sometimes it was better to mark for seed and you could leave three, four to an acre here and there and they could take all the decadent stuff out. < br/>
Peter Chapman: Did the move to more clearcutting affect your job?

Bruce Broadfoot: Well, by this time, by the time they started this clearcutting, I was on my way out of it. I was getting to where ever I had to go. They made me retire because I was 65 you see so I never had --- the only one area where I had anything to do with where they clearcut and this was a trial area and it was up it was about I would say twenty miles south of Golden and on the right hand side just below Nicholson, across the river and they clearcut the mountainside and you could see that damn thing for miles and miles. And they sent us up there to check it. They wanted us to look at it to see what we thought about it you see and when I went in there, a fellow by the name of Ollie Christie, he was the Ranger then and he'd been in just ahead of us and he was coming out when we were coming in and he said, "Bruce," he said, "You're not going to like it." He said, "I don't.' He said, "It sure messed it up." And they cut everything right off the side of that mountain. Everything! What they didn't --- small stuff --- they knocked it down with them with this high rigging you know, they come through there and knocked everything out and today --- then of course this here soil erosion started in and there was mud slides and everything and by this time now I would say its brushed in but its 90% Jack Pine, small Jack Pine, you see and they don't have the value of the other stuff in it before. It was all Fir and Spruce. Gee it was a beautiful stand of timber and they cut it right up. You couldn't believe it you know and so you went up to see it. And that's what they were trying out. That's what they call high riggin' see. They used the spar trees and they clear cut her and what they don't cut they bash down. Everything gets all smashed and many many of the old Rangers didn't like that because you'd just spoil the area. If they went in and cut it properly, put a few logging roads in it and took out the crooked stuff and left the seed trees it would have been much better. But they cleared it right out you see. And of course they do all this dang things where all the other people can see it and then they're raising heck because they clearcut these things. You can't blame them.

Peter Chapman: Did you work for the Forest Service on trail maintenance, on keeping up the trails?

Bruce Broadfoot: Yeah. If you can remember back --- Maybe you weren't here when they decided to build the Salmo Creston cut-off from Salmo over. The Board of Trade had to see it all, all this foolish government stuff so I cut a trail with a crew of men right up to the top of Summit Creek and the Creston crew come in from the other side to meet us there at Summit Lake, they call it Bridle Lake now and we were cutting trail up that creek. I cut trail up Rover Creek right pretty near into the foot of Copper Lookout. I cut trails up Ten Mile Creek. I built roads up Ten Mile Creek.

Peter Chapman: What was the purpose of the trails?

Bruce Broadfoot: Access trails to get at these areas where there were good stands of timber. If they had a good trail, then they could get pack horses in in a hurry. Say you had a big fire back, way back in there and there was a good trail cut out in there, and they'd decide well, they'd send a small crew in and they'd radio back if they needed more men. Well, say they needed 150 men, it didn't take long to get 150 men going if they had a good trail to get in there. And the pack horses had no trouble with it, could go right in there and do a quick job of getting in there. That was the idea of having good trails. Then as time went on, into the Forties and after the Second World War, then they started building access roads into these big stands of timber, which made it all [?] be protected. That was the idea of the trails. Some people thought they built trails in just for people to go fishing but it wasn't that all at all. It helped them all right but the idea was to get trails into these stands of timber and timberlands so they could get in there if they had to. And then, say for instance, if they wanted a big stand of timber cruised, a cruiser could go in there with four or five men and their equipment, pack it in there and take horses to pack equipment in and they had no trouble getting in or out you see. That's the idea of trails.

Peter Chapman: Did you work always in the Nelson Ranger District?

Bruce Broadfoot: Yup. Always out of here. I have worked in other districts when I was on this tree marking business. You'd go over and give them a hand or something but 90% of the time we were right in the Nelson District, which went from the Boundary this side of Osoyoos right through to Golden and the Kinbasket Lake country.

Bruce Broadfoot: I've spent some time treeplanting. Before I retired, I used to go take the treeplanting crews out to treeplant. And I worked out of Cranbrook. It was the second to last fall I worked for them here. I went over and took out a tree planting crew out of Cranbrook and they were all women and we planted something like 280,000 spruce trees in the fall there and they were working in about six inches of snow, which is a good time to plant because there's lots of moisture and those women used to plant 600 or 700 trees a day. You wouldn't believe it and I had one old lady, she was a great-grandmother and she looked like a piece of rawhide, just tough as nails. Heap. The best crew I ever had. I had fifteen women there and the sixteenth --- I had sixteen to start with --- and the sixteenth was a twenty year old girl. She only lasted two days and them old girls stayed right there and we planted all them trees and I remember the last two days we worked it was blowing and it was freezing cold and you never heard them complain. But then I went out the next spring. You see they'd need a man so they'd come down and take you, you see, ask you to come out. Somebody else would take your place down here, so then I went to Sanca and I was in charge of a big treeplanting camp there two Springs in a row. And then they used a helicopter and they were flying them across the lake from Sanca over to Midge Creek and planting them. They had a nice big camp. It was like a hotel and I used to say, "You're complaining about things now, you should have been when I started out, living in camps and under canvas and eatin' your stuff off of tin plates, if you got it. And then of course I went through that phase and after that they changed their methods again so I stayed back at the complex and finished out the rest of my time there as the grounds supervisor and foreman.