Cape Breton's Magazine

Malcolm MacLeod: For the driving, you piled them alongside the brooks maybe 20, 25 feet high, 3 or 4 tiers on each side, maybe more than that • and then you know they had splash dams on it, just for to back up the water; and they used to fill the brook up with wood and open the dam and splash that out; then close the dam up again and fill the brook up again • be getting it into the main river. They used to start around the last of March, Ah, a good pastime, I wish we had it back. Yeah, It wasn*t bad work. You worked all night and all day. You used to get 25 days out of the drive. It would come down the North River, under the North River bridge, and then float away down to the boom. Well the boom would hold it there. The first boom had two logs and it was the one that broke. The wood was in the river and a freshet' came, and the snow was melting, and rain • it took the old boom away. Kept on going. They lost a lot of it. (George Hamm: They lost 11,000 cords.) But they saved some of it. (Duncan Morrison: They'd pay five dollars a cord to throw it back in the boom. And where the boom broke, the tide was running out • and a lot of it ran behind the beach there and they got a boom behind it there so it wouldn't get out. John J. Ma? theson: It went around the cove to Jersey Cove • that's at the end of the beach going up to the ferry. Well it started to tangle up in the cove there. And they used to do a lot of fishing in that cove, especially eels. And ever since that stick went in the cove • no eels.) Malcolm: Some of it, by gosh, went to Newfoundland. It went all over creation. And they picked a lot of it around the island here. They got some of it at Mira, (Alex Matheson: That first boom was 60 feet in each section, a chain go? ing do vn and connected with the next, 5 or 6 foot chain, I hauled the first log that went into that first boom. It was made down here where the cemetery's at. The sec? tions ;vere too long, and when the pressure came on she broke. The second one they anchored with piers perhaps 100 feet apart. The Bishop Company built it. The piers were made of crib logs, filled inside with stone and gravel and what have you. The boom was anchored on the shore here; there was a big rock and it looped in between these piers and then anchored on the shore on the other side. It was three deep and three wide, and the sections shorter.) Malcolm: Oh, the last of it they were paying pretty good. 3.75 a cord. Pretty dry the first years, 25 dollars a month. One buck a day. Then 27, 30. It was going up. Ah, it was a nice outfit. Too bad that it didn't last. And too bad that we're getting old, that we ain't out there now, load? ing pulp and taking it to the river with horses. A good racket. Cover Photo as remembered by Mrs. George Hamm: Bottom Row (read left to right): Murdoch MacDonald. John MacKenzie. Mur? doch D, MacDonald. John MacDonald| John J, Matheson. John Morrison, Phillip Mac? Donald. Norman MacLeod; 2nd Row (left to right); John MacLeod. Rory Kerr. William D, MacDonald with Simon MacDonald behind. John Kerr. Malcolm MacDonald. Murdoch Peg? gy MacLeod. Sandy MacLennan. Donald Mac? Donald; 3rd (right to left); Donald Mac- Ritchie with beard, Alex Montgomery. Mal? colm MacAulay, Murdoch MacDonald, John MacLeod, Murdoch J, MacDonald, MurdocE Morrison. Murdoch Montgomery; Top Row (left to right): John J. MacDonald. Mal- colin MacRitchie, John MacAskill, Angus Kerr, and a Pentecost man from away. Cape Breton's Magazine/?