AT THE SAWMILL, WEAR A HARD HAT
René Bruemmer, reporter
I got work at the sawmill in Chapleau, Ont., located 12 hours west of Montreal in the heart of forest and lake country. My cousin was a manager with the owner company, which meant I was looked on as “one of the manager’s relatives” by the fulltimers, and had to work to prove myself. Pay was about $10 an hour, decent money for a 17-yearold in the mid-1980s.
I started with planting trees in the sandy fields near the mill. Sawmill rules required hard hats, so I wore a dark green one in the open fields in the baking sun. Locals used the area to snowmobile in the winter and killed all my trees.
In the mill, an ominous sign indicated how many days since the last accident. Co-workers quickly brought me up to speed: one guy was on extended leave due to a three-inch splinter in the eye. Another was on permanent leave because he fell into the de-barker, a conveyor belt with spiky metal wheels that gripped fresh-cut logs, then spun rapidly to remove the bark. Legend had it the fatality was discovered when the wood chips started coming out red.
I was struck in the head by wayward pieces of lumber twice that summer. I learned to appreciate my hard hat.
My main job was to watch lumber stream by on a conveyor belt, picking out stumpy off-cuts that could clog the works. Despite the din, I nodded off often. It inspired a lifelong aversion to boring work.
The muscled men and women who wrestled raw boards all day working on the line would wear out a pair of work gloves every week. I was offered a “real” job working the line the next summer. I had liked the solitary beauty of Northern Ontario and the pride of working at a tough job, but I missed my friends. I found work in a hospital kitchen in Montreal instead, where I did not save nearly as much of my earnings.