A Life in the Woods: Don McCusker

I was born in the States, and my dad came over here with the Bell Pole company in 1926,1 believe it was. And he was a pole contractor up at Sugar Lake [near Cherryville]. Okay, so he was a pole contractor up there about five years. I went to school up there, up as far as my grade eight, and then I had to move to Lumby and my family moved down, and my dad went to work in the pole yard for Bell Pole, and I continued my schooling in Lumby. After school, I started working for Bell Pole. I worked there for about three years, and then I went over to Nakusp - they were just opening up over there. And, um, I worked there for a year, but the War had just nicely got going and, uh, I got itchy feet, so I quit and joined up. I was away until 1946, and when I came back I asked ... I contacted the president, Mr. M.J. Bell, Senior, in Minneapolis ... if I could go back to Nakusp. And he said, "Yes, certainly, yes." So I went back and worked there for 17 years for Bell Pole in Nakusp. In 1963 I got transferred to Lumby, and I worked there the remainder of my working life and retired in 1983. My service record continued while I was in the armed forces, so I had a continuous record of 46 years service.

Robert Turner: Isn't that something. Was Bell based in the States? This is "Bell" as in the telephone company?

Don McCusker: No, no. This is an independent family affair started by M.J. Bell, Senior, back in the year 1909. It's a private family company and it still is. It was M.J. Bell the first, M.J. Bell the second, M.J. Bell the third - and now M.J. Bell the fourth is being groomed in the business.

It's a first-class company to work for, I mean they treated their men like they were somebody. They're very considerate, and what I find very striking since I retired is the amount of time and thought they put into their retired personnel. Every time there is a banquet or a party or a retirement or anything of any kind, we are always invited. Now, even after 11 years retirement, I get my invitations regularly. And they think a lot of their workingmen too.

Robert Turner: Well, when working for Bell were you in one of the unions? Or was in not a union place?

Don McCusker: I was in Nakusp at the time, but I was working in the office at the time, so I was not included in the union when it came in. I guess that came about '47, something like that, '48 ...

Robert Turner: Which was that?

Don McCusker: IWA. And then when I got over in Lumby, after a stint in the office, I was put out in the yard as an assistant yard superintendent, and then eventually yard superintendent - that's the position I held when I retired, so I was in a non-union position at all times. But, uh, they had a good union.

Robert Turner: How big an operation was it, say in Nakusp or in Lumby?

Don McCusker: Oh ... at our peak I guess in Nakusp we probably employed 30, 35 people. That's in the yard - in the woods, I wouldn't hazard a guess. It probably ... maybe 50 in the camps. Polemakers and skidders, cooks and bull cooks, and whatever. All kinds of characters.

Robert Turner: Where else did they have pole cutting in yards in B.C.?

Don McCusker: Up north, Hazleton. And then as time progressed, they opened new yards at Topely and Valemont, Maple Ridge ... of course, I mentioned Revelstoke I believe, yeah.

Peter Corley-Smith: What sort of vacations did they give you?

Don McCusker: They were unheard of!

Peter Corley-Smith: They were unheard of?

Don McCusker: Yeah well, there was usually a layoff in the winter - especially over in the Arrow Lakes country, 'cause the snow was so deep over there it's in the same snow belt as Revelstoke. There was usually a winter layoff from Christmas time till after breakup, and then you went back, and so that was rough. But vacations as we know 'em today didn't exist.

Robert Turner: I guess if you needed time off for some reason you could book a week off and...

Don McCusker: Oh yeah ... as I say this company I worked for they were great generally, I mean ... your needs were their needs too. Peter Corley-Smith: Were there any recreation facilities in the camps? Films?

Don McCusker: Nope, not to my knowledge. When the boys used to play poker, they could go in the laundry room and it was something to do. It was a little more room and a little less smoke. There were eighty men in a twenty-man bunkhouse or something like that. [laughs] Double-decker beds side by side.

Robert Turner: Was liquor allowed in camp? [laughs]

Don McCusker: Well, there was no rule about it, I don't think, but it did appear. We had a cook one time that... first-class cook, little Cockney English ... and I mean, he could cook! He could really-really cook! But, uh, about once a month he'd go on a downer for about three days, and he didn't know whether he was cooking or washing dishes or what he was doing but... no, it just got...

Peter Corley-Smith: So how many people did they have to feed in that camp roughly?

Don McCusker: Oh, it could have been anywhere from 50 to 60.

Peter Corley-Smith: Yeah. So you'd have a cook and a couple of ...

Don McCusker: Yup, yup right. Yup dishwasher and wood splitter. Went through a lot of wood too! big camp stove you know they were cooking all the time.

Peter Corley-Smith: Yeah, cause it was all wood heating and cooking ...

Don McCusker: Um-hmm, absolutely, yup.

Peter Corley-Smith: What about the living conditions. Did you have bunkhouses, or?

Don McCusker: Yes, yes, in the Arrow Lakes. When I went over there in the '40s we had our own camps and bunkhouses and, uh ... they actually, by today's standards, they were pretty crude you know. There was a place to eat and sleep and a big wood-heater in the middle of the bunkhouse, and lumberjacks would come in and hang their wet smelly clothes [laughter] around the stove to dry, and the rest would sit on the bunk and either play a mouth organ, or try and read, or play poker, or some such thing like that by a coal oil lamp. There wasn't much for them, but then once the union came in, things did improve. They got washrooms for their clothes, they had dry rooms for their clothes. They had better living conditions all around.

Robert Turner: What about the food and cooking?

Don McCusker: Oh excellent! That's one thing about even in those tough days: they always had good food, otherwise they couldn't have kept anybody out in the bush. If you had to work under those conditions and eat bad food, fellows just wouldn't have been there. They always had good food in the camps.

Robert Turner: What were the wages like - let's say in the early '40s, when you started?

Don McCusker: Oh, I think probably around 1939-40, maybe anybody who was on salary making $100 a month, he was doing pretty well. And then once the union came in, they started increasing.

Robert Turner: What about, over the 40 years that you were with the pole industry, um, things like worker safety and things like that? Did hard hats, steel toes come in?

Don McCusker: This another one of the good things the union did about it: they focused on safety. Between the union and the Workman's Compensation Board.

Robert Turner: What were the things that changed?

Don McCusker: Oh ... Well, hard hats, a lot of steel-toed boots ... um, just general education among the workers.

Robert Turner: That's very important.

Don McCusker: Yeah, that's right! So that they don't hang a tree up and it knocks another one down near something, or on top of somebody else that sort of thing. That was quite prevalent in the early days, injuries and deaths. Yeah, that improved a lot.

Robert Turner: When you were dealing with the creosote and stuff like that, that would be tough to handle too.

Don McCusker: That's right.

Robert Turner: How was it dealing with that and the later stuff, which was pretty toxic too?

Don McCusker: Yeah, it's toxic as well. Uh, they were just generally coached by the foreman or whoever happened to be handling them that, ah ... 'watch out for this and watch out for that, and don't stand under that pole when it's going up over your head, and get out of the way because you can move and he can't move the swing cable!' sort of thing. And, uh, especially with the younger people coming in, they weren't aware of anything that could happen, like the older fellows had seen it before and they knew that...

Robert Turner: It's "when you're young, you're immortal."

Don McCusker: That's right! [laughter] You're really gullible, too. I can remember back when I started working, 1937 it was, all the old-timers in the yard they'd wait for a young, new guy to come in, and then they'd proceed to make life miserable. I can remember them sending me all the way down to the blacksmith shop, one time, to ask for a left-handed screwdriver.

Robert Turner: Oh, yes! [laughs]

Don McCusker: So, I went all the way down there and asked for a left-handed screwdriver. "Oh," he said "go back and tell them I'm sorry," he said, "it's up on the sky hook." [laughter] So, I trotted back ...

Peter Corley-Smith: You learned all kinds of stuff yeah, yeah.

Don McCusker: But it didn't take long before ... You could tell them in a few words where to go [laughter], so that was the end of it.

Peter Corley-Smith: I think that happens in most trades.

Don McCusker: Oh, I think so too, yeah. It's a good way to learn! Really, it's a good way to learn.

Robert Turner: What about fire fighting and things like that. Did you have any experiences with forest fires when you were ...

Don McCusker: Well, just uh being taken out of the pole yard and said you were going fire fighting'. [laughter]

Peter Corley-Smith: They didn't ask you! [laughter]

Don McCusker: No first, all the single fellows and if there, that wasn't enough, they'd take someone else. No, with fire fighting - Bell Pole I'm speaking of again - if there was a fire broke out on their limits, they sent their men right in right now! But the Forest Service were in charge; they'd also bring additional crew in if required.

Robert Turner: What sort of equipment would you take in?

Don McCusker: A bulldozer, and a grub hoe, and a shovel, and that was all we had then.

Peter Corley-Smith: Not even a backpack pump ...?

Don McCusker: Yeah, the Forestry had those. We had pumps up at camp too, but there were no helicopters or water bombers or anything until later on.

Robert Turner: When you were firefighting, what was the living like then?

Don McCusker: Oh, it was kind of enjoyable it was like a camp-out. You usually had ... [laughs] bullybeef, and sardines, and, ah, canned tomatoes, crackers. Actually the food wasn't that bad. They did cook, and uh ... they hired people that said they were cooks. I don't know whether [laughs] ... whether they were just learning it. [laughter] But it was a dollar a day in board, and that day was from when the foreman told you to "get your ass off the ..." [laughter]

Peter Corley-Smith: Not till dark, in other words, no.

Robert Turner: It was a long day for a dollar, [laughter]

Don McCusker: Yeah, but it was a .. it was a break from the normal routine.

Robert Turner: Well, if you had a bad fire season and you got pulled off work for a long time, it would be kind of a hardship for you.

Don McCusker: Yes, it would have been. But normally the fires didn't last that long, and if they were out of control, then you just put so much time in and they'd send you back and bring somebody else in.

Robert Turner: Uh huh, so you wouldn't sort of cut short...

Don McCusker: No, I mean you weren't there for the summer that sort of thing, no. Maybe two weeks, two or three weeks. But you made fairly good money because timekeepers there were not a bit stingy with their hours, you know. You got your 18 to 20 hours a day whether you worked them or not. I was just trying to think what the hourly wage was when I first started, it was two bits an hour. Two bits an hour, and you paid your board.

Robert Turner: Did you, um ... say in the Nakusp area, did you do any towing on the Lakes?

Don McCusker: No actually we didn't, but we did have booms towed in by other people who would tow booms and poles into us. But not that much, most of our stuff over there was from our own limits, which were up back in the mountains, so we trucked them in. The only ones that were towed came in were if we purchased a boom of poles from somebody some hired individual.

Robert Turner: I see, sure.

Don McCusker: But once the forest management came in then the whole thing changed. Everything went down to the pulp mill.

Robert Turner: Poles too?

Don McCusker: Cedar poles, everything.

Robert Turner: Once that changed you wouldn't do ... you wouldn't cut poles before they cut for pulp?

Don McCusker: That's right they were supposed to have, ah ... verbally assured the pole companies that were there that all poles would be taken out as poles but that in effect, once the license was granted didn't work out that way. I know that there were old pole men working for them that they used to just practically cry when they saw some of the stuff going into the lake for the pulp mill.

Robert Turner: I'm sorry?

Don McCusker: They was all towed down to Castlegar. So that changed the pole business over there radically!

Robert Turner: I guess it would. It would dry up the supply pretty quickly. Is it Bell pole that has the yard over at Jaffray?

Don McCusker: Nope that could be B.J Carney. They have the one in Galloway.

Robert Turner: That's the one I was thinking of, yes, sorry. What other companies were running in the area?

Don McCusker: Well, there was Big Ben Lumber Company and there was the Bell Pole Company and there was B.J. Carney. Well, B.J. Carney took over from the Big Ben Lumber, their pole yard. Previous to that, there were Lindsay Brothers were out there. They had a big yard. But that's about all there was. But, uh, when I was there it was Bell Pole and Carney were the two. And between the two of them they handled a lot of wood. Shipped a lot of stuff out. Trainloads of poles.

Robert Turner: Um-hmm. I guess a few of them would end up as pilings on the Lake too, for and dolphins and stocks and things like that?

Don McCusker: No, well they had to be more or less specially cut. They had to be a bigger stick, more taken off the butt end of the tree, the heavier end.

Robert Turner: Would you get contracts for jobs like that?

Don McCusker: We did have a few for supplying timber for the federal government for wharfs on the Lake. But that was just custom ordered. I don't know, I can't really think of anything else ... except that it's a ... I wouldn't give up any of it, you know if I had to do it all over again I'd do it again.

Robert Turner: That's a nice feeling.

Don McCusker: Maybe I say that because of the company and because I like it over in the Kootenays.

Peter Corley-Smith: What sort of pattern of logging did you do? If you want to talk about clearcuts now, did you do large areas?

Don McCusker: No, it was selective logging.

Peter Corley-Smith: It was selective logging?

Don McCusker: In the biggest part of my time there, it was selective logging, and, uh ... with horses, and I still think that's the only way to go, I mean ... there were never any of these slides and floods and that sort of thing that we're getting now from this clearcutting. I'm an advocate for selective logging. You can farm the stuff, not just cut everything down.

Peter Corley-Smith: I suppose in this case, too, you sort of selected the trees that you needed for great poles.

Don McCusker: That's right, that's right. And regardless, we used to put up pole sales, and if we got a pole sale and we'd go in and take the poles out first and then somebody would go in and log it, but we'd always take the poles out first because they had to be handled so delicately, you see, because they damaged easily. You know, cedar is soft and it'll gouge and split and that sort of thing with rough handling. So we always poled the area first, and what was left was logging material.

Robert Turner: Uh huh. How would the horse logging work, how many horses would you have?

Don McCusker: Normally a single horse. If you were in really big timber, you might have a team [two], but two single horses would bring out more wood than a team together, that sort of thing - unless it were, let's say, extremely heavy or really tough country.

Peter Corley-Smith: Would they skid it out one pole at a time with a horse, or?

Don McCusker: Well, depending on the size. No, no, no, they'd take three or four.

Robert Turner: How big would, say, a woods crew be? Would you be four or five guys working in the area, or would it be larger than that?

Don McCusker: Well, no what they did was they would lay out the sale in strips, each man would have his own strip and they would stay in that strip and just handle that stuff, and nobody else cut on their strip.

Robert Turner: So, you'd have a faller and somebody to do the limbing, or would there just be one ...

Don McCusker: No, no, the pole maker did his own falling, limbing and peeling. And that was his product, and when he was finished, God help anybody that tried to claim it or move it or anything else. They just didn't touch it.

Peter Corley-Smith: Did they work for wages or did they work on contract?

Don McCusker: That was piecework. And some of the better men made real good money.

Robert Turner: It would certainly be an incentive to do it quickly and well.

Don McCusker: And, you know, they looked after their own tools. They'd bring their crosscut saws in every night and file them up, so you could just cut right through.

Robert Turner: What about the horses. Who would own the horses, would it be the fellows themselves.

Don McCusker: Well, the company in some cases owned some of the horses, some of the contractors had their own and would bring them in, and then of course they would get more money for supplying the horse too. They would get so much a day for their horse or their team. Yeah, it's a look at the past, you know, because there isn't anything like that any more.

Robert Turner: Yeah.

Peter Corley-Smith: Yeah, we know, that's why we want to record it see let people know how it used to be done.

Robert Turner: And I think there's a lot to learn from it too - now, from several perspectives just how country develops and what people were doing. But the way you're describing taking poles out was paying a lot more attention to the landscape and all that.

Don McCusker: It's advantageous for everybody because, I mean ... besides scarring our whole countryside, which was "beautiful B.C." at one time, and now looks like we had a bad case of chicken pox or something. They just raped the country and there's no necessity for it. The big thing was when forest management licenses came in and it was take it and get out! Go somewhere else to another part of the license and do the same thing there! Before that it wasn't... no thought given to that kind of destruction.

Robert Turner: Where were most of the poles going that were ...?

Don McCusker: In Canada we pretty well looked after the Canadian customers: B.C. Hydro, Ontario Hydro, and Hydro Quebec - you know. There was a lot of utilities. Then in the latter years of my time there, we had obtained a lot of business from the western States: Washington, Oregon ...

Robert Turner: What sort of volumes would you be shipping out from Nakusp, carloads?

Don McCusker: Oh, in carloads ... I don't know. I would say at times ... well, probably - out of the yard, for instance which I'm more familiar with - we probably shipped 40,000 a year. Now that's a guess.

Robert Turner: That's poles.

Don McCusker: Yup, um hm. I think that's it, and it did expand towards the end, but I really don't have a clue as to how many pieces it... because they were going every which way.

Robert Turner: Oh sure, yeah. And the poles were mainly, uh, fir, cedar?

Don McCusker: Uh, they started out cedar and then they got into fir, and then lodgepole pine. Lodgepole pine developed to be quite a popular pole due to the scarcity of cedar and the abundance of lodgepole pine, and it was an easily workable pole, too.

Robert Turner: Cedar made the best poles?

Don McCusker: Oh yes, definitely, yup.

Robert Turner: Did you get into treating them?

Don McCusker: Oh yeah, that's what Lumby was. Now that was a treating plant. And I should go back maybe a few years. In 1960 or [hereabouts, they opened a yard in Calgary and had a full-length treating plant. In Lumby we had a full-length plus a butt treating plant.

Robert Turner: So what would you treat them with?

Don McCusker: Originally creosote, and latterly, pentachlorophenol. It was cleaner than creosote.

Robert Turner: Did you also do things like bridge timbers?

Don McCusker: Uh, yeah, we did - not towards the end, but, uh, my time, one time we did, we treated bridge timbers and ties for the CPR and that sort of thing. But that was not a big part of our business.

Robert Turner: What, uh, what would you look for in poles? What were the qualities that made it a good one versus a second-rate one?

Don McCusker: Right. First of all it had to be straight and no cat faces, no scars. It was the dimensions of the circumference at the ground height and the top and you combined those to get, to determine the class of the pole and, of course, some of them went anywhere from 20 to 110 feet, in five-foot increments.

Robert Turner: I see.

Peter Corley-Smith: Did you buck these and strip them before they went out?

Don McCusker: Originally, they were peeled in the bush.

Robert Turner: I see. How would it have been done before that?

Don McCusker: By hand, with an axe.

Robert Turner: Could you describe how the fellows would do that? Was there a trick to that?

Don McCusker: Oh yes, there definitely was. The best pole makers were the old Swedes. They would knock - crosscut saws of course - knock the tree down with a crosscut saw, go on with their axe and limb it, and then they'd start at the top with the axe and get under the bark. And they'd go right and chop all the way down the length of the pole.

Robert Turner: Now would this be with like a bridging axe ...?

Don McCusker: No, no just a poleman's.

Robert Turner: Just a straight axe?

Don McCusker: Um hmm, and they would back up - a steady back up - and they didn't hesitate or anything, and then they'd get a strip taken down. Then they'd turn the pole a quarter turn and get on in and do it all over again ... about four turns.

Robert Turner: How long did it take them to do a hundred-foot pole?

Don McCusker: Oh, golly ... Well okay, for me it would have taken me about a day-and-a-half [laughs], but a good peeler, a Swede peeler, they'd probably do it in half an hour. They had a real knack to it.

Robert Turner: Uh huh. What about handling these long poles. Was there an art to falling or the moving in the woods?

Don McCusker: Oh yes, yes, there was. You had to fall them in certain directions to your advantage, so that the skidder, and horses in those days, could come and take over and take 'em out. And they'd just skid them out on the ground, and as machinery got in, they would have an arch on the back of a tractor or something like that and, uh, lift the ends up and skid them out. And actually it hasn't changed much since then. That is basically the way they do it still.

Robert Turner: When they were brought then into the pole yard, what would be the stages and the process to ship them out?

Don McCusker: Okay, we'd peel them, we'd have the sealers classify them - just their class and length and species. The skidders and the tractors, in that time we'd take them to the various decks which were allocated - class 440 went to the class 440 pile, class 535 went to class 535 pile. And then they would be put up there strip-decked in a lot of cases, which would be like car stakes or strips of some material, preferably wood, to allow the air to circulate and dry them a little quicker. But a lot of times, they were just put in the decks and seasoned in there. It took longer without the stripping, of course, but once they were seasoned, they were ready for treatment and shipping...

Robert Turner: Two months to season?

Don McCusker: Oh, in the summertime - if the weather was hot in the strip decks, six weeks would do it. If not, if it was a cold, damp, rainy summer, well it would take three months. But they definitely had to be seasoned poles before you could treat them, otherwise the treatment wouldn't take. The moisture in the pole would repel the treating.

Robert Turner: I see.

Don McCusker: And when they were treated they were put on the cars.

Robert Turner: Was it mostly by rail that they were shipped out?

Don McCusker: At that time, yes. It's just latterly rather ... I speak "latterly" in my term, the last five years I worked - say, from late '70s to up until now - there is a lot of it going out by trucks, and the rail at Nakusp had been torn up and removed, and that has happened at other areas, as well, besides cost. It's much more economical to take them out by trucks. Then you can take them right to the destination, whereas by rail they only go to the town. Then they are dumped, and they have to reload them on trucks and take them where they want them. But if we can take them to their destination by trucks, that's a big benefit to the utility companies. In some cases they have their own yards. In other cases, we take them right out to where the line is being started and unload them with a crane.

Peter Corley-Smith: Going back just a step, if I may - um, did you work a shifts, or did you work sort of day shifts?

Don McCusker: No, just day shifts. Well, until later years when they got peelers and that in the pole yards, then they put two or three shifts on the peelers, if there was a lot of wood coming in. If there was more coming in than they could handle with the peelers, they would work a double shift.

Peter Corley-Smith: So, in war time would you have to take off in the morning?

Don McCusker: Well, in Lumby when I worked up there in the yard, we used to start at seven in the morning and work till four in the afternoon with an hour off for lunch.

Peter Corley-Smith: How did you get out to your show? Did you have to walk out or did you get the crummy or what?

Don McCusker: There were crummies supplied if you had to go a distance. But people staying in camp were close enough that they'd jump on the bush foreman's pick-up or something, and he'd just drop them off at their various locations sort of thing - and some, you could walk to it. And then after the poles were made, they were inspected by the pole inspector and he'd put a stamp on it, and then the skidders went in and took them out to the landing where the trucks were parked. Once the inspector had been in and marked the poles with a hammer stamp, which happened to be a bell in this case, they were paid for those poles. The inspector turned his tally in what he had inspected on strip number so-and-so, and there was a credit given for that.

Robert Turner: I see.

Don McCusker: Then from then on in they could just be skidded down and mixed with all the other poles.

Peter Corley-Smith: How did they work the stumpage on the poles?

Don McCusker: We had to make our forest branch returns at the end of each month and send them in to the forest branch at Nelson or over here at Kamloops and we would be billed. We would be billed by the Forest Service for what we had reported.

Peter Corley-Smith: They didn't send sealers in to check you all the time?

Don McCusker: I believe now they do that. They have check sealers and that sort of thing for the logging companies, sawmills and that. But no, back then we didn't. We had to make the returns.