KAWARTHA LAKES-Joseph Handley Sr. settled near Burnt River in 1877, being one of the community’s early settlers. While many pioneers were primarily interested in agriculture, Joe Sr. made a business of harvesting timber, then using the cleared lots for agriculture. In 1918, his son Joe Jr. opened a shingle mill at Burnt River. By then, the era of harvesting the old growth pine trees had ended, but many other species could be found in the cutover forests. Most buildings in that era had cedar shingle roofs, and there were plenty of cedar trees in the surrounding forests to meet this need.
Once the ground was frozen it was no longer possible to do field work, so many farmers spent the winter working in the woods—cutting firewood, posts, tankbark or logs. The logs were hauled with horse and sleigh to Joe Jr.’s shingle mill, where they were cut into knot-free blocks that were 16 inches long, then sawn into thin slabs. These slabs were trimmed of any bark, producing a cedar shake, that would be used to shingle a roof. This process made two bi-products: Excelsior resembled curly straw and was used for packing fragile merchandise for shipping. Snipes were the slivers of bark taken from the edge of shingles, which was excellent kindling.
On January 18, 1924, Joe Jr. was transporting the carriage track, trimmers, edger and cut off saw from an abandoned mill he owned on the Third Concession of Somerville to add a sawmill to the shingle mill that was located beside his house. As his team crested the ledge hill south of Burnt River, he could see the smoke in the distance as his house was in flames. A spark from his furnace had ignited the pile of snipes from the shingle mill. The fire spread first to his white brick house and then to the shingle mill. The house was completely destroyed, but the boiler and steam engine survived on the cement pad from the shingle mill. Joe Jr. used these to rebuild, as he persisted in the face of this tragedy to move the sawmill to Burnt River. He had good help in completing the mill: Carpenter Angus Campbell, millwright Bill Rettie and engineer Owen Rettie.
When the new sawmill was completed, the logs continued to be brought in winter by horse and sleigh—in that era, it was easiest to move heavy loads on packed snow, rather than on rough, muddy roads, especially through forests. Over the course of the winter, the logs came into the yard, which could then be sawn for the rest of the year. Once the yard was full, they would be piled along the ditch, from the corner of the main street to the beaver meadow. Before the advent of hydraulic machinery, all these logs either had to be lifted by hand, or swung up a ramp using horses. After Christmas, the mill sawed the logs in the yard first, creating space to stack the lumber, mill slabs and edgings produced.
Joe Jr.’s business continued to grow in the 1930s, as he acquired Fred Chambers’ Fenelon Falls planing mill and his first tractor trailer in 1936. During the Great Depression, cutting logs was a very important source of employment for local families, as trucking became the norm. Because rural roads were not reliably plowed in winter, trucking often had to wait until spring. His employees would drive around the countryside buying logs from local farmers. Cedar posts and pulp wood were also commonly produced, and piled in Charlie Hodgson’s field for export, right beside Burnt River Station. Cedar posts were readily saleable, but had to be peeled first. Many Burnt River boys worked on this laborious job, earning one cent per post. Joe Jr. continued to cut his own logs, with Ernie Anstey and his son Clifford as lumberjacks.
The sawmill had a cookhouse and bunkhouse to accommodate the men working there. Peggy (Handley) Rettie recalled: “When the whistle at the mill blew, the cook knew the meal had to be on the table. The tradition of the monastic rule of silence meal time is obscured in the past, but not one word was said except perhaps, “pass the bread”. The workers would eat big meals… meat, potatoes and corn syrup… in fifteen minutes. Eat and get out was the rule. The pork came, not in the form of roasts and chops, which would have required refrigeration, but salted, cured bellies, packed in boxes. This fat pork was used to fuel the men, because strenuous exercise in cold weather causes the human constitution to crave fat. Some of the pork was also bought from the farmers in the district. Chester Godwin recalled being given the job of helping Ray to kill and butcher a large sow that had been purchased from Joe Handley’s brother, Robert. It weighed well over 600 lbs, and the only way the boys could scald it to remove the bristles was to lay sacks over it, and then pour hot water over all. The diet of the lumberjack was soon to become less dependent on fat port, however. With refrigeration there was fresh meat, vegetables, and even apple and raisin pie. Warm raisin pie, with corn syrup, was a specialty. Mmmm, good!”
Joe Jr.’s son John drove the tractor trailer to Toronto, where the Wirebound Box Company bought poplar lumber, while pine was shipped to the Laidlaw Lumber Company. Ray Handley drove the other truck delivering the mill slabs to the Coboconk lime kilns, hauling eight cords per load. When Chester Godwin became a driver in 1937, John switched to operating the Fenelon Falls business. Joe Jr. passed away in 1945, and the business was operated by his widow, Mattie, before passing to his two sons. Ray, alongside his lifelong best friend Chester Godwin, operated Handley Lumber in Fenelon Falls, while John carried on the Burnt River sawmill.
The postwar boom ushered in a new era of prosperity and the old ways of life in Burnt River were changing. As most families came to have an automobile and winter snowplowing became the norm, ever more families had off-farm employment, and younger generations tended not to spend their winters in the woods, cutting logs as had been customary in previous generations. Stamped lumber became the norm for construction, and it tended to be produced in much larger, more mechanized operations located in areas where the forests were much more abundant. Stamped spruce lumber could be imported for less than local logs could be sawn. The Burnt River sawmill ceased to operate, while Handley Lumber shifted to selling imported lumber, rather than retailing local produce. John died of cancer in 1980, and his brother Ray continued to operate the Fenelon Falls business until he died in 1999. Handley Lumber is now in its fourth generation, operated by Joe Jr.’s great-grandson, Chris.
This story is part of our partnership with Maryboro Lodge, The Fenelon Falls Museum and was written by Glenn Walker.
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