The Lumberjacks - Dundurn

The Lumberjacks

Published May 2007

Description

Short-listed for the 1978 Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction

The 19th century spawned a unique breed of men who took pride in their woodsmen skills and rough codes of conduct. They called themselves lumberers, shantymen, timber beasts, les bucherons – and, more recently, lumberjacks, working in the vast forests of eastern Canada and British Columbia.

Across the country, farm boys would go to the woods, lumbering being the only winter work available. Immigrants – Swedes and Finns more often than not – resumed the trades they had learned so well in the forests of northern Europe. They broke the cold, hard monotony of camp life with songs, tall tales and card games.

Within these pages, author Donald MacKay allows us a glimpse into that moment in our heritage when men entered the virgin forest to carve out an industry from the seemingly endless array of pine, spruce, maple and balsam fir found there.

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Contributors

Donald MacKay

Donald MacKay has had a forty-year career as journalist, broadcaster and author. Born and educated in Nova Scotia, he was a wartime merchant seaman, reporter for Canadian Press, covered stories in a dozen countries for United Press International, was chief European correspondent for UPI Broadcast Services in London, and general manager of UPI in Canada for five years before turning to writing books. Donald MacKay passed away on August 11, 2011.

Book Details

ePub
May 2007
-
320 pp
9781459711129
Paperback
May 2007
7x10 in
320 pp
9781550027730
ePub
May 2007
-
320 pp
9781770703056