A Life in the Woods: Hugo and Barbara Wood

Barbara Wood: The Forest Service was a very big part of the community. People called on them for help for all sorts of things, from looking for lost kids to people that were lost on the lake or house fires or information or advice. I mean he still gets called for advice on how to take down a tree or whether or not its got disease or whatever ---

Hugo Wood: After nine years. [...changes in the Forest Service ]

Peter Chapman: Was it hard to raise a family?

Barbara Wood: Well, if you talk to our family, to our sons, they say no. We found with the pay being on the low end of the scale when you work for the government and no overtime and that sort of thing.

Hugo Wood: No overtime pay you mean!

Barbara Wood: No overtime pay. Yes, we were like an awful lot of young people [...] . We lived from payday to payday. He waited fifteen years for a car and twelve years for a vacuum cleaner and all sorts of things like that. But looking back if you talk to our sons, they've both got extremely responsible jobs and good positions. They don't think they went without a thing. We felt that they were going without trigs, but they think they had a wonderful life. Both of them worked for the Forest Service in the summer time. I wouldn't change it. I mean I spent lots of lonely hours and spent an awful lot of time worrying but I wouldn't have had him working anywhere else. It was a very interesting life and he was extremely happy in his life.

Hugo Wood: I was in it all the time. [...]

Peter Chapman: [...sustained yield management...Ranger's practical knowledge...]

Hugo Wood: [...Reports, manuals, uniformity or procedures. Some didn't put everything into it....Ranger meetings, three days in Nelson once a year. Supervisor kept them in tough. Rangers were very busy in their own area. Policy came from the head office. Circular letters. Four Rangers on the Arrow Lakes. Castlegar, Edgewood, Nakusp and Arrowhead.]

Barbara Wood: [...] I can remember there were lots of times that you [...] let off steam [...] I know you used to get upset with some of the logging practices and try to change them.

Peter Chapman: What were the kinds of practices that would get you upset?

Hugo Wood: Well, going into an area that I didn't thing was old enough to cut or something like that. Not immature but it would be on the balance of where we should have waited another five years to cut it. This kind of thing.

Peter Chapman: When they came in to apply for that kind of area, couldn't you simply turn them down because of that?

Hugo Wood: No, that was done by the district office. We just filled out the application form and then we sent them to the District office.

Peter Chapman: Could you make recommendations?

Hugo Wood: Oh, yes. We could do that because it shouldn't be cut because it was immature timber or because or because you couldn't get a road in, straight up and down sort of thing. Had to be a goat to get in. [...being over-ruled by senior levels of Forest Service. Tape off.] And then we'd have our supervisor come in or the man that was handling the timber sale from the management part of the district office and then we'd go out on the ground and discuss it all and say, well this area, we should block this out here, this should be block cut or strip cut or whatever it was.

Peter Chapman: [Transition to clearcutting.]

Hugo Wood: [...] We'd have to go in and examine the area that the fellow applied for and we'd take an "inci-borer" with us [ed.: increment borer], what we called an inci-borer, drill it, then count the rings on it then we could go back and say that it was immature. That kind of stuff. The Ranger did have some say in the matter, well actually quite a bit of the say. But they would make up rules and regulations at the head office, in Nelson, and we'd get these circular letters [...] we were guided that way, put it that way. So it was a real life. [...changes to Forest Service, not like the old days, the Rangers had a lot to say about how the area was run. Management, operations]

Barbara Wood: [...Whole family was involved. Importance to keep confidence.] I told him when he got his first posting that he wasn't to tell me anything, not anything and the District Forester told me that that was very wrong, that if he couldn't blow off steam to me and trust me not to go around talking about it, then I wasn't much of a wife. And so then he did. I kept confidences for many many years. [...] If was like a great big family. Everybody helped everybody else. [...] It was really the most marvelous organization. [...] I think it was the best department to work for in the government. [...decent, honest, upright, dedicated...]

Peter Chapman: [...Timber sale process...]

Hugo Wood: Well, all they would do is they would come in and make an application and the Ranger would send it to the District Office to be cleared, and find out if there was any private timber on the area and then we'd get a clearance back.

Peter Chapman: Would that application have all the bearings --- would the area be ---

Hugo Wood: Well, it was done by a map, it was just squared up on a map, so many chains there --- and they would come in and there was an application form and they had these little maps that you could draw what you wanted to be the boundaries and then it would go to the district office. They in turn would send it to Victoria for clearance to find out if there is any private timber on it and then they would give it a number, like timber sale 654321, sort of deal. And then that was known as that until it was all finished.

Barbara Wood: You had to have an auction sale, didn't you.

Peter Chapman: After the clearance came back, what was the next step for you?

Hugo Wood: We'd have to go out and cruise it, find out how much timber there was and then we'd make up an appraisal on it. And a rough sketch of where the roads would go.

Peter Chapman: How would you mark out the area so they would know---

Hugo Wood: We'd go out and blaze it, see if we could find a post, and make it legal and that took a lot of time, some of them were falling down, half of them were rotten, they'd been there so long. Hunting for these damn [...] survey posts.

Peter Chapman: What would they be from?

Hugo Wood: I guess the old days when they had these lots all laid out [...old STL marks, some still owned. B.J. Carney owned some and Warren Larson, Arrow Lake Cedar Pole. We had to keep an eye on them, fire hazard, slash disposal. Made out hazard reports.]

Peter Chapman: [...] After you worked out the value, you would advertise the bid.

Hugo Wood: Oh, yes.

Peter Chapman: Did people actually bid?

Hugo Wood: Oh, yes. It was a good area. It was a good area. It was handy and everything. But there wasn't that much --- there was at the start, but after it got going to where everybody got settled in, well you could say B.J. Carney, they were a pole company and Bell Pole, they were that. They pretty well stayed in --- but every once in a while they'd get cranky and start bidding against each other and then the stumpage would really go up.

Peter Chapman: So was there a gentlemen's agreement about territory?

Hugo Wood: Well, yes in a way. That's a good way to put it. Now, like Bell Pole went in at Arrow Park, and they went all up the creeks up in there, Caribou Creek. Pingston was on the Arrow Lakes, so it would be their land, that was B.J. Carney, they were poles, so was Bell pole and then if there was any timber on it, sometimes they took the timber, but very seldom and then there would be re-advertising and it would get cruised [...] sawlogs and everything and they had an auction sale.

Peter Chapman: When it was re-advertised for the sawlogs, was that Bell Pole advertising the sawlogs or was that the Forest Service?

Hugo Wood: No, it would have been somebody that applied for it. It could have been a logger that applied for it after they had taken all the poles off of it. They were just interested in poles. They weren't interested in sawlogs. They would just take off the poles. And then, as I say, it might lay ideal for six months or whatever it was and then somebody, they were getting short of timber, so they would go in and take a look at it and go in and make application for the sawlogs off it.

Peter Chapman: So you could make application for a specific thing.

Hugo Wood: Yes. [...]

Peter Chapman: What was an auction like?

Hugo Wood: Well, we'll just say there were two or three operators that were interested. Advertised it in the paper. [...] And it would be advertised --- it depended on who big it was. If it was a big area and everything, it would take a month to advertise or something like that and there would be these operators, they went in there and they went all over it themselves to see if they were interested in it and all this kind of think. See what the road conditions were like, or the roads that they would have to put in, (1300) I should have said, but how steep or rocky or whatever --- but then they'd go up for auction. Not too much fighting back and forth on it because the guys had picked out their areas [...] We had some where there was a lot of words about it and everything and then you'd get an auction sale and you'd get maybe three operators in there and so much on the fir so much on the pine and then the poles and everything else and there'd a few words and some of them would get hot, going, and then guy would throw up the paper and walk out the ruddy door.

Peter Chapman: But one of those people sitting there would have been the one who made the original application.

Hugo Wood: In most cases, but if it got over what he could handle, he just had to back out because he just couldn't afford to do it, if it was a smaller operator and a bigger operator would come along, like B.J. Carney for poles and Bell Pole Company and then you'd have a small operator with just a small mill sort of a deal and he'd just get [...] but if there was any poles on it, he made a deal with either Carney's or Bell's or something like that and he would make the poles and everything and then they'd haul them out. They all had to be scaled of course so we'd know exactly what was coming out of the area and everything and so that's the way it worked.

Peter Chapman: Most of the time did the person who made the application get the bid?

Hugo Wood: I would say yes. Every once in a while you'd get a couple of guys that had it in for one another and start bidding --- really go at each other, but that didn't happen too often, I mean everybody tried to stay in their own area sort of deal. But it was always advertised. It had to be advertised, even though there'd be four people interested, they'd come to the auction sale and they'd have what they call an upset price that we had set and okay well in those days way back there it was in board feet. Now its in cubic feet. [...] If it was a big sale, somebody from the District office in Nelson would come out and handle it but the Ranger on a normal one, he would handle it himself.

Peter Chapman: How many feet was a big sale?

Hugo Wood: A hundred thousand.

Peter Chapman: So a million board feet?

Hugo Wood: Yeah. So but if it was in a good area and everything, I had two or three that boy they really went at each other. Pretty near had to have a bloody peevee in there to keep them apart, banging the old gavel on the table. In fact if we were pretty sure it was a pretty big area and we were sure that we were going to have a lot of opposition on our hands, somebody from the District Office would come out and then I wouldn't because its hard on the Ranger sort of deal. He's got to work with these guys and if one of the guys come up from Nelson to handle it, you're out of it and then after they've gone, then you hear about it. Dubdubdubdubdubdubdub.

Peter Chapman: Did they ever argue with you about the upset price.

Hugo Wood: Sometimes, but not too much. Once it was set, it was pretty hard to do anything unless it was outstanding that was all haywire, which I can't remember any actually. And then maybe we had to do it over again.

Peter Chapman: You would have had to estimate their logging costs?

Hugo Wood: Yes. He actually the District office, they took care of it because they would get all these in and then they'd average them out and then we could tell if it was a real tough operations, steep sidehill, lots of road and everything, then we would allow more on the appraisal for the logging or for putting in roads and this sort of stuff. So it was all done that way.

Peter Chapman: That calls for a lot of judgment.

Hugo Wood: But the wives, they had their --- well not problems, but they were left alone a heck of a lot in the summer time.

Barbara Wood: Yes, and though nobody ever said it --- I'm sure Joe Killough would have said the same thing, because his wife would have gone through the same thing --- we were expected to take message and relay them and people on a weekend instead of phoning the office, if there was a fire, would phone here and if you know we had to take down all the information and locate whoever was available and get them down to the office or you know, locate them either an assistant Ranger or dispatcher or somebody and get them going and people would get very very upset if they phoned here and the line was busy. And one day, you had, I forget how many fires and I took the chair and put it under the telephone and I just sat there --- this was on a weekend --- and I answered one phone call after another, writing everything down and I guess I must have been on the phone off and on for about an hour --- one phone call after another until one fellow phoned and he really tore a strip off me and told me that if I wouldn't stay gabbing on the phone all day you know I could take the information about the fire that was burning and I hung up on him. And I got a phone call from --- well I hadn't been gabbing on the phone. It was a private phone. But Forest Service didn't pay for it. And then I got a phone call from his supervisor in Nelson and he asked me what I thought I was doing hanging up on somebody who was reporting a fire so I hung up on him to. [Laughter.] Then I complained to him [Hugo] and he got in touch with his supervisor and his supervisor called me any apologized and I said, "If you expect me to be an unpaid secretary --- you I don't have to spend all my days sitting under the telephone." But that's what it was like in the summertime. Any oldtime Ranger's wife can tell you that. It was fun. I have to admit it. It was an exciting scary life, but it was fun. Particularly in this area right around here. As I say, exciting times. The unfortunate part now is that the Forest Service is not an integral part of the community that it used to be. In an town, the Forest Service was always extremely disable and everybody knew who the Ranger in charge was and the Assistant Rangers and the hours --- they knew everything about it. Three years after Hugo retired, I got a phone call from Cominco from their fire department. They worked very closely together and this fellow phoned me up, phoned one Sunday and wanted to know where he [Hugo] was and I said he's out golfing and he said, "Well, what's he out golfing for, we've got a big fire going up on our property up in Warfield." And I started to laugh and he said, "Mam, this isn't funny, we've got a fire going." I said, "Yes it is funny. He retired three years ago." But they didn't know who was in charge here. So I told him to phone the Nelson office, or the Zenith number. They weren't very pleased about that. But I've heard a lot of people saw its unfortunate that the Forest Service isn't ---