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Woodsmen of the West
by Martin Allerdale Grainger
Martin Allerdale Grainger
Woodsmen of the West
by Martin Allerdale Grainger
Martin Allerdale Grainger
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Overview
"An extremely interesting picture of life among the 'loggers,' or lumbermen of British Columbia." -Athenaeum, 1908
"Grainger has performed a literary feat. The narrative is real and necessarily true." -Spectator, 1909
"Scintillates with wit and exhibits a fine vision of the inner meaning of things." -The Bunyip, 1909
"Grainger has drawn a very striking picture, remarkable as a study of humanity in strange conditions." - Westminster Gazette
"Powerfully written, picturing, in the hard outlines of realism, life under primitive conditions." - Springfield Library Bulletin, 1907
Partly autobiographical, Grainger goes to Vancouver, becomes a logger, and writes a narrative of life in those fretted inlets between Vancouver Island and the mainland, and writes it in the language of loggers. Grainger, for all we know, would be shocked if he were told that he had achieved a literary feat.
Grainger's 1908 book "Woodsmen of the West" is an extremely interesting personal narrative of a logger's life in British Columbia. Logging, as everyone knows, means felling and preparing for the saw-mill the giant timber in the forests that fringe the Pacific coast of Canada, and it is probably true that no more strenuous work is done on the face of the earth. Grainger, who was a Cambridge Wrangler, preferred this manual work to the usual mental occupations of the mathematician, and gives us a vivid and graphic account of an adventurous life.
It is a hard and brutalizing existence here described; and, in spite of the writer's freely-expressed admiration of the men who go out to battle in hand-to-hand conflict with nature, he does not draw an heroic picture. Nor are the loggers modern "bad men" like Billy the Kid. They have their men in buckram, and to spare, to overcome in the actual labour of the axe every day in the forest, and they would swallow many hard words to avoid a quarrel. It also paints the picture of a logging operator both obsessed with the lumber trade and with his own power. The accuracy of detail in Grainger's work has led it to be called "one of the finest examples of local realism in Canadian writing."
When one has read this book one knows the language of the West, or at least the language of the loggers; and, further than that, one knows the loggers' life. His writing falls on your ear, as you say the words over to yourself, like a burst of conversation from a bar-room in the West. It seems very casual. But as you read on you become conscious that Grainger has really got his language and his ideas very well in hand; he makes his impressions as with the cut of an axe and with no waste of material.
In describing the workings of one logging operation, Grainger writes:
"The 'fallers' had worked along the slope, slope that was almost cliff; and all the trees of value had been felled criss-cross, upon each other and upon the mass of smaller trees their fall had shattered. The 'buckers' had then wormed their way among that giant heap of trunks and limbs and matted boughs, and sawn the good timber into lengths. The 'swampers' were at work chopping limbs and brush, preparing the cut logs for hauling. Beyond them we could hear the shouting and the clank of metal blocks and the tap of a sledge-hammer where the riggingmen were making fast a log to the wire rope with which a donkey-engine hauls."
Grainger work gives a dramatic picture of a life in which the most exhausting toil alternates with periods of idleness or wild dissipation.
Abut the author:
Martin Allerdale Grainger (1874 —1941) was a Canadian journalist, forester and author. He was an influential figure in developing forestry in British Columbia.
"Grainger has performed a literary feat. The narrative is real and necessarily true." -Spectator, 1909
"Scintillates with wit and exhibits a fine vision of the inner meaning of things." -The Bunyip, 1909
"Grainger has drawn a very striking picture, remarkable as a study of humanity in strange conditions." - Westminster Gazette
"Powerfully written, picturing, in the hard outlines of realism, life under primitive conditions." - Springfield Library Bulletin, 1907
Partly autobiographical, Grainger goes to Vancouver, becomes a logger, and writes a narrative of life in those fretted inlets between Vancouver Island and the mainland, and writes it in the language of loggers. Grainger, for all we know, would be shocked if he were told that he had achieved a literary feat.
Grainger's 1908 book "Woodsmen of the West" is an extremely interesting personal narrative of a logger's life in British Columbia. Logging, as everyone knows, means felling and preparing for the saw-mill the giant timber in the forests that fringe the Pacific coast of Canada, and it is probably true that no more strenuous work is done on the face of the earth. Grainger, who was a Cambridge Wrangler, preferred this manual work to the usual mental occupations of the mathematician, and gives us a vivid and graphic account of an adventurous life.
It is a hard and brutalizing existence here described; and, in spite of the writer's freely-expressed admiration of the men who go out to battle in hand-to-hand conflict with nature, he does not draw an heroic picture. Nor are the loggers modern "bad men" like Billy the Kid. They have their men in buckram, and to spare, to overcome in the actual labour of the axe every day in the forest, and they would swallow many hard words to avoid a quarrel. It also paints the picture of a logging operator both obsessed with the lumber trade and with his own power. The accuracy of detail in Grainger's work has led it to be called "one of the finest examples of local realism in Canadian writing."
When one has read this book one knows the language of the West, or at least the language of the loggers; and, further than that, one knows the loggers' life. His writing falls on your ear, as you say the words over to yourself, like a burst of conversation from a bar-room in the West. It seems very casual. But as you read on you become conscious that Grainger has really got his language and his ideas very well in hand; he makes his impressions as with the cut of an axe and with no waste of material.
In describing the workings of one logging operation, Grainger writes:
"The 'fallers' had worked along the slope, slope that was almost cliff; and all the trees of value had been felled criss-cross, upon each other and upon the mass of smaller trees their fall had shattered. The 'buckers' had then wormed their way among that giant heap of trunks and limbs and matted boughs, and sawn the good timber into lengths. The 'swampers' were at work chopping limbs and brush, preparing the cut logs for hauling. Beyond them we could hear the shouting and the clank of metal blocks and the tap of a sledge-hammer where the riggingmen were making fast a log to the wire rope with which a donkey-engine hauls."
Grainger work gives a dramatic picture of a life in which the most exhausting toil alternates with periods of idleness or wild dissipation.
Abut the author:
Martin Allerdale Grainger (1874 —1941) was a Canadian journalist, forester and author. He was an influential figure in developing forestry in British Columbia.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940185588062 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Far West Travel Adventure |
| Publication date: | 08/21/2022 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 936 KB |
About the Author
Martin Allerdale Grainger (1874 —1941) was a Canadian journalist, forester and author. He was an influential figure in developing forestry in British Columbia.
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