Cantley 1889 Articles
The following article first appeared in The Echo of Cantley Volume 26 no 3, September 2014. This article is made available for the enjoyment of others with the express permission of the Echo of Cantley.
Rivermen in Cantley
by Oriana Barkham
The following article by Oriana Barkham first appeared in the September 1998 Echo. Denis Dubois, Léo Vanasse and some of their fellow rivermen will attend Cantley's tugboat celebration on September 14th.
We invite all of you, young and old, rain or shine, for an afternoon of music, fun activities and the official unveiling of Cantley's first historic plaques!
Léo Vanasse started working on the log drive on the Gatineau River, at the age of 16, in 1943.He was to work there for 44 years. Denis Dubois started working on the Gatineau River in 1977 and stayed there till1993, the year in which logging on the river ended.
When Léo first worked on the river, he worked 10 hour shifts, 6 days a week; there were two shifts from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., or from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. It was seasonal work, starting with the melting of the ice on the river in spring and ending with its freezing over in autumn. At least one winter, Denis told me, large boat had to break through the ice to rescue two smaller boats iced in at Cascades. A pathway made for them all the way down river to the Chelsea dam, where the boats were always kept for the winter.
Sometimes the logs came from north of the Baskatong reservoir and sometimes they had been cut by local Cantley farmers on their land and put into the river or the creeks nearby in spring. In Cantley, the logs were sent down river loose until they arrived at Cascades. There «boomers» or river men awaited them on loose booms to put them into «sacks». A small two-cylinder boat pushed and compacted the logs inside a boom which was then closed, while another would drag the sack forward. Each sack could contain 1,000 to 1,500 cords of wood or "units", as they used to say. The sacks were then pulled down river, sometimes 3 or 4 at a time, by a large boat as far as the log reserve before the Chelsea dam.
If there was a south wind, they often had to winch their way along, tying the boats to the "rock boats" or anchors set into rock all along the river. This was very slow going and frustrating. Once at Chelsea, the boat operators, their deckhands and river men opened the sacks and towed the loose booms back up to Cascades. The logs remained in what they called Foley's Bay, above the Chelsea dam, waiting their turn to be sent down the chute, which would take them past the dams.
If there was a south wind, they often had to winch their way along, tying the boats to the "rock boats" or anchors set into rock all along the river. This was very slow going and frustrating. Once at Chelsea, the boat operators, their deckhands and river men opened the sacks and towed the loose booms back up to Cascades. The logs remained in what they called Foley's Bay, above the Chelsea dam, waiting their turn to be sent down the chute, which would take them past the dams.
Denis Dubois loved his job, being outdoors on the river, and running along the booms. Léo Vanasse did too and says if he could live again, he would do the same. He did every job there to do on the river: river-man, boat operator and foreman.
