Felling Trees on the Nashwaak River, New Brunswick, circa 1870.
In many parts of the Maritimes, sparse farm and fishing earnings were augmented with hard cash, more likely further extensions of credit at the merchant's store, earned through lumbering. For merchants, timber making was often a profitable adjunct to other activities, especially during the first half of the nineteenth century when they had the opportunity to sell on the protected British markets. The process was relatively simple. During the winter large pine trees were felled, trimmed and squared for floating down to tidewater on spring freshet, there to be loaded on ocean-going vessels. The large number of rivers offering direct access to the sea permitted small scale involvement by merchants or even groups of farmers. Crews such as the one pictured here were often formed semi cooperatively by farmers who cut and moved timber to tidewater where it was consigned to a merchant for disposal on international markets.
After mid-century, the fragmented nature of the lumber industry was transformed by increasingly sophisticated sawmills which cut the squared timber into boards of various dimensions. Employment in lumbering diversified with the result that, in New Brunswick particularly, mill hands began to rival the cutters as the most numerous workers in the trade. They were employed more steadily and tended to live in towns or cities where they were paid daily wages rather than by seasonal contracts. (For more information on the lumbering industry see Canada's Visual History, volume 4, Lumbering in the Ottawa Valley.)
