Grant Hadwin

The Golden Spruce, by John Vaillant.

Couple quick excerpts.

"If you run across an old photo of a man with an ax perched high in a tree, you are not looking at a faller, you are looking at the far rarer high rigger. Like the steelworkers who build skyscrapers, these men were a breed apart; they were the ones who prepared the spar trees to run high-lead cable. A high rigger's duties included hanging the huge pulleys--three feet across and two thousand pounds--that carried the cable, and setting the guy lines that anchored the spar tree from all sides in order to keep it from being pulled over by the tremendous loads it would be supporting. It was a job that required an unusual combination of raw courage, gymnastic strength, and technical skill; the success of a logging operation hung, literally, on the competence of its high rigger."

and

"It is always amazing to consider the things a man will risk his life for, and the promise of a case of beer on Friday could mean the difference between life and death. But as the machines got bigger, more powerful, and more expensive to own and operate, the expectations only rose. Neil McKay remembers an enormous machine from the 1920s called the Washington Flyer; it was a steam donkey eighteen feet long by eleven feet wide; it rode on a ninety-foot sled made from logs that were five feet in diameter, and it could work 3,500 feet of two-inch skyline cable. "It was a monstrous goddamn thing," recalls McKay; "you could clear a whole mountainside with it." And so they did, the gear running so hard that pulleys and cables sometimes glowed red hot and set fire to the surrounding woods."

Cheers.
 
"It is always amazing to consider the things a man will risk his life for, and the promise of a case of beer on Friday could mean the difference between life and death.

:lol:

Nice excerpts.
 
Grant was a complex person that not too many people could understand. Truly a pity what happened to him with his schizophrenia and going off his medication really must have put him over the edge and I'm sure that it had something to do with his actions towards The Golden Spruce.
 
I go off my meds all the time, but the only negative thing it causes me to do is write stupid posts.
 
If you look on Google Earth, you can see the MASSIVE clear cuts that the Government has allowed on the Queen Charlotte Islands and I have to admit that even though I started off as a logger and still believe in the value at times of clear cuts, I found this very alarming.

To someone like Grant Hadwin who was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, I can understand how he thought that the big timber companies, foresters, loggers and government were all against him, in his effort to better manage the last remaining stands of timber on Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands). Also remember (if you read the book), that Grant's ancestors are Scotts from the Islands of The Outer Hebrides. These wind swept Islands off the Atlantic Coast produce some of the toughest people on lands barren of trees. Maybe in Grant's confused mind, he envisioned the BC Islands turning into the Outer Hebrides all over again? Even though I don't think those islands were ever heavily forested.

Who knows? Here's a pic of one of the Outer Hebrides islands.

http://www.cycletourstore.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/CTS-outer-hebrides-temporary-pic.jpg
 
Afaik, Canada has a brutal record on natural resource conservation.
 
Oh yah. Clear cuts down one side of the valley across the floor and right up the other side. I worked the charlottes and from north Vancouver island to south.

BC is running low on marketable timber. Locally now they are going back to log all the leave strips from the first go around, most of these are streams/seasonal creeks. Gorgeous spruce coming out. I've heard the plan is when that runs out that they'll start on the visible corridors. So basically in BC anything that was visible from a major roadway was left so it would stay 'pretty' here. Great management plan. We'll log everything we can and when that runs out we'll go back and get the rest.
 
Well, it sure would have been interesting to read what Grant Hadwin's forest management plan would have been...too bad nobody would listen to him.
 
Believe me when I tell you that incredible environmental atrocities have been committed in the name of logging. Know why lots of older logging equipment have the drain plugs chained to the machine? So they don't fall in the creek while you're changing the oil on a bridge. No shit.
 
I worked planting trees in northern BC in the early 90s and just as squish suggested as soon as you leave the major tourist highways the valleys are clearcut on both sides as far as the eye can see.

The tree planting program seemed more for PR reasons and perhaps creating a timber farm more than for forest regeneration.
 
Believe me when I tell you that incredible environmental atrocities have been committed in the name of logging. Know why lots of older logging equipment have the drain plugs chained to the machine? So they don't fall in the creek while you're changing the oil on a bridge. No shit.

What a shame. Such beautiful land.
 
Lp1.jpg
 
So short sighted imo.

Why aren't the enviros up in arms about clear cutting paradise?
 
Sad.

Stewart Udall, former US secretary of the Interior said , "Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact, plans to protect Man."
 
Sad. Part of it for me when I left the coastal stuff behind was I couldn't handle turning a blind eye. One day we were heading back to camp and the bunny bus stops in the middle of the road, I'm all like WTF? Our foreman had stopped on a narrow steep spot in the pickup ahead of us to throw empty five gallon pails over the bank. I flipped, almost was a good old throw down and it was at that point that I knew I needed to leave. I did log another five years in the interior after that with a good solid contractor that upheld responsible practices.
 
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