Island Timber: A Social History of the Comox Logging Company, Vancouver Island by Richard Somerset Mackie
4to. pp. 309. b/w illustrations. bibliography. index. paperback (fine condition). Winlaw: Sononis Press, [2003].
Signed Presentation Copy. Signed by Richard Somerset Mackie on title-page with inscription.
ISBN-10: 1550391011 / ISBN-13: 9781550391015
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Logging history, up close and personal! Richard Mackie charts the history of the largest logging concern on coastal British Columbia—the Comox Logging Company—from the turn of the century to the devastating Sayward fire of 1938. With 450 employees, six huge steam-powered logging machines known as skidders, a dozen locomotives, hundreds of miles of track, and sole access to the great Douglas fir forests between Courtenay and Campbell River, Comox Logging boomed and towed billions of board feet of logs from Vancouver Island to Fraser Mills at New Westminster—the largest sawmill in the British Empire. But Island Timber is more than the story of the "heroic age" of coastal logging. This innovative and entertaining book is rich with stories, humour, and pithy sidebars on coastal legends like Big Jack McKenzie, "Greasy" McQuinn, "Promise Bob" Filberg, "Highpockets" Hughie Cliffe, Boomstick Thompson, and Sailor Lehtonen. Island Timber is also the first social and community history of a logging company in British Columbia. Mackie interviewed over 100 people directly involved in the early logging industry, and the book is packed with dozens of stories and stunning photographs that have never before appeared in print.