PWAC Victoria: Paula Wild, Writing Sample

The Reading Room

With Axe and Saw

by Paula Wild ©

Retired hand-logger, author and logging historian, Bus Griffiths, documents old-time logging in a series of paintings. Published in The Beaver, June/July 2005.

Bus Griffiths has the broad-shouldered, barrel-chested build of a faller and fingers gnarled by a lifetime in the woods. The retired hand-logger, self-taught artist, author and logging historian is perhaps best known for his book, Now You're Logging, an action-packed adventure that takes place during the Depression. But what many don't realize, is that Griffiths also created a series of oil paintings that are an important historical reference on old-time logging.

According to Griffiths, "Before heavy-duty equipment moved into the woods, loggers were a hard breed who took pride in their work and were artists in their own right." His paintings are a blend of this rough and ready work environment and the grandeur of the British Columbia landscape.

Griffiths' paintings are historically accurate right down to the tiniest detail. Snoose tins bulge out of pockets as loggers slice into bark with crosscut saws. Nearby rests a bucker's measuring stick; hanging from a tree is a glass bottle of coal oil to lubricate the saw. These paintings, along with their in-depth captions, provide a unique record of BC logging history.

In 1971, the Royal Museum of British Columbia exhibited eight of Griffiths' logging paintings. "Griffiths' paintings have become our most important reference for details on old-time logging techniques," noted Daniel Gallacher, then curator of Modern History at the museum. The collection is now housed at the Courtenay & District Museum located on central Vancouver Island, not far from the Griffiths' home in Fanny Bay.

Griffiths was born in 1913 in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Christened Gilbert, he got his nickname when a butcher leaned over the counter and told his mother, "That's a real little buster you've got there!" Griffiths was one of those youngsters who didn't like to go to bed. So his dad bought a Big Chief scribbler and said if he went to sleep, elves would slip through the keyhole and leave a picture.

"I'd wake up every morning with that scribbler tucked under my pillow with a new drawing in it," Griffiths recalled. "I was horse crazy so it was usually a picture of a horse. One time Dad drew a galloping horse and I thought that was the greatest thing I'd ever seen. I tried to copy it and that's how I learned to draw."

Griffiths was 12 when he fell in love with logging. His dad hired a faller to chop down a Douglas fir that threatened the chicken coop. Griffiths watched the operation and declared, "I want to do that." He was given an axe and told to cut wood for the kitchen stove. "I had trees hung up all over the place--it's a wonder I didn't kill myself," Griffiths said. "I really liked falling those trees but I wasn't too handy at getting the wood up to the house."

Griffiths didn't plan to make a career out of logging. He attended Sprott-Shaw Business School and eventually got a position in the Vancouver office of Massey Harris. But when the Depression hit, Griffiths was laid off and later found work chopping second-growth fir into cordwood. "This fellow would fall a bunch of trees on the weekend and I'd chop them up during the week," Griffiths explained. "I ran out of trees so decided to fall some myself. I'd chop an undercut, then rig up what they called a 'Chinaman,' a saw with a big piece of rubber on the end. If I couldn't find a sapling to tie it to, I'd ram a piece of bar in the ground and tie the other end of the rubber to that. As soon as you'd slack off, the rubber would pull the saw back the other way." Jobs at numerous small logging camps followed and Griffith soon became experienced in every aspect of logging.

When he wasn't logging Griffiths was drawing. He'd always wanted to be a comic strip illustrator but the first time he submitted a story the editor said, "You better get some drawing lessons, kid!" Griffiths didn't let that stop him--he never did get any lessons--and a few years later Maple Leaf Publishing in Vancouver accepted Griffiths' "Now You're Loggin'." The series was so popular that Maple Leaf asked Griffiths to create another story line. "Son of the Range" featured cowboys so Griffiths could draw horses.

The comic strip ended when Griffiths took a logging job at the north end of Vancouver Island. People were clamouring for the stories but Griffiths just didn't have the time. In the early 1960s, tired of being away from home so much, Griffiths bought a 30-foot troller, the Loon, and started commercial fishing. But he missed working in the woods so his wife, Margaret, suggested he paint some logging scenes.

So, just like he'd taught himself to draw and log, Griffith set about learning to paint. His first canvases were sheets of 4 x 8 hardboard. He'd cut them in half and work on the backside. In the beginning, composition was a challenge so Griffiths drew each component of the painting on paper and then moved the pieces around his canvas until he and Margaret agreed everything looked right. And when he needed a model, he'd have Margaret dress in his old logging clothes and wield a lightweight stick to simulate the axe. Griffiths didn't want his wife climbing trees, however, so he bought a Polaroid camera and had Margaret take pictures of him up a tree. And without even thinking about it, he created a visual and written documentary of a way of life that no longer exists.

Griffiths, who continued to cut his own firewood and paint well into his eighties, says he was "a reluctant artist." "I'd paint a little, leave it and go back," he admitted. "I'm an outdoor man, when the weather's good, I couldn't sit inside and paint. I had to wait for a foul day."

In 1973 Harbour Publishing asked Griffiths to enlarge his old comic series into a book. Now You're Logging was published five years later. The book won the Eaton's BC Book Award and was sold out in two years. Although Now You're Logging was reprinted in 1992, the original edition is classed as a collector's item.

Griffiths' paintings are held in numerous private and corporate collections. But his most historically significant work, the eight logging paintings augmented with extensive handwritten texts, reside in the Courtenay Museum. The oils, painted on board ordered through Eaton's catalogue, were reframed in 2002.

"The paintings are vigorous, historically accurate renditions of the early days of logging," said Peter Wiebe, then interim director of the museum. "These paintings have an incredible historical value but it's the artistic value that makes them so vital. He brings the action to life, you can almost hear the whistle blast and crack of the whip over the horse's backs."

Now 91, Griffiths' physical strength is waning but his charm and good humour remains strong. And he still gets a twinkle in his eye when the conversation turns to old-time logging.

Paula Wild
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Last updated: July 12, 2005 http://www.islandnet.com/pwacvic/wildp05.html