L grew up in Squamish back when it was a real waterfront logging town. A self-confessed tomboy she was always keen to keep up with whatever fun her older brothers were having. And that included log salvaging.
In those days there was quite a bit of storm spillage from the old log booms moving up and down the coast and thrifty local folks would help themselves to the spoils that washed up on the beaches. After all, they reasoned, the resource belonged to the people of BC and ordinary folks were used to recycling, reusing and not letting much go to waste in those days. Seemed right.
Those who had a license to harvest could officially ‘stamp’ the salvaged logs and some even made a respectable living from selling them back to the lumber companies. There was even a famous and popular TV show called The Beachcombers about that kind of work and it was shot and produced in the nearby area. It was a ‘spin-off, you might say, of the logging industry.
When she came here to the islands, L quite naturally developed a discerning eye for spotting and ‘dogging’ (putting a line on to a log) the odd good firewood or milling log floating down the channel or washed up on a beach. She and her husband only took one (maybe two) a year but she was good at getting the good ones. And the wood was much appreciated in the winter when it was needed for heat.
These days logs are transported in massive barges towed by high-tech tug boats with very little spillage resulting. The logs are loaded directly on to the ships and sent off to China without being handled or processed in any way by local people. The log salvagers are all gone and quality logs for the finding are now few and far between. Put bluntly: there is no benefit to the local people with today’s logging business – not in jobs, not in wood, not even in salvaged wood.
However, the BC coast recently experienced a series of heavy storms that even the massive barges and high tech tugs had trouble negotiating and fate was kind enough to spill a few good logs into the saltchuck somewhere up the coast. One such log managed to make it down our way and caught L’s beady little beachcombers eyes. She retrieved it.
Meanwhile, there is a neighbourhood group applying for funding to help local folks with community projects. But a requisite part of the potential grant is that the recipient group has to contribute an equal share either as cash or ‘payment in kind’ which includes private donations or volunteer labor. We get labour from people. We don’t get much cash.
The reason? They no longer have jobs in the forest (or fishing) industry. Thus the need for grants. It’s kind of a Catch 22.
Despite considerable success in squeezing local donors, the grant application committee was still short a few hundred dollars. A few hundred dollars out here is a big number.
L decided to donate the log she had ‘rescued’. It had already been cut into 12 foot lengths but it still had value as ‘short’ lumber. She asked a local old timer to carefully mill the log into rough lumber. She then ‘donated’ the lumber to the building projects. That is a donation-in-kind. And so, the grant application requirements were satisfied.
There’s even enough good wood (ends and off-cuts) left over to supply some good quality material to the community woodwork shop in which local craftsmen will hopefully be busy building wooden toys in the near future. If they succeed in selling some of those toys, then the log will have fulfilled its role as we think it should have – providing building materials for local services and raw materials for ‘finished goods’ that locals might sell.
Hence in a beautifully symmetrical way the log that got away might be seen to have returned to its rightful owner, the people of BC, helping to trigger a new, local and sustainable economy.
Of course, I made this whole story up out of thin air. There is no ‘L’. There was no log. Only kiddin’. This was a work of fiction because retrieving and using logs that float in the water while posing a danger to local boats and usually just end up rotting on the beach is illegal. I was just messin’ with ya.
But what a concept, eh? I wonder if the politicians know of this novel approach to sustainable employment?
Our Off the Grid Home 
You raise an interesting point about the bounty of our forest just floating along. You cover all the bases regarding legal owners rights to identifiable logs. Why do folks needing wood not cut up beached material?
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They do. But the industry owns beached material, too. Think of it this way – a marketable log gets away from Timberwest or some other major company. They worked hard to get it and they paid the taxes on it and the damn thing gets away. They want it back. Who wouldn’t?
But logs look alike and even when they don’t no one can prove whose log is whose. There are ways but it is technical. The ones with roots still attached are a bit easier (they fell in the water) but even they belong to the government and the government may have leased the land (cut block) to a company from which even the rooted tree came. So, rather than try to deal with it on any kind of one-log basis, they just say, essentially, that all loose wood is not your wood, peasant.
You might be surprised to learn that the rocks on the beach are theirs, too. Legally, you cannot take a beach rock.
Practically, the company doesn’t want any of that ol’ beach wood. Not after it has been floating and beaching for a long time. They don’t really care about much of it – just the fresh-cut fugitives, mostly.
So, we can cut up a beached, salt-infused log and there aren’t many repercussions. But heaven help the poor jerk who decides to cut that log up at home and drags it into the water first. Now the log is free. Now the log is easily retrievable. Now the ‘rescuer’ is way more vulnerable to a passing ‘authority’.
And, anyway, who wants to cut up a log three miles from home? Therefore most logs just sit there. One that floats by, all insolent-like……? Well, the risk and the exposure is minimized. A local might dog that log, drag it a few hundred yards and cut it up for firewood. Illegal as hell but he/she will likely get away with it because the firewood cutter is actually looking for smaller, less marketable logs, skinny ones, logs that have very little value even when they were in the boom.
Sal and I look for logs that are not much bigger than 8-10 inches in diameter. Barely got a 2×6 in it. The real crime is that they logged the little feller in the first place. Shoulda been left to grow.
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Torredoes attack many of these logs. A beached log picks up sand and junk that plays havoc with saws during milling. The salt impregnated logs have rotted many a stove before the sacrificial anode was discovered. Many hemlock logs drop out of the booms and lie on the bottom to be feasted upon by torredoes.
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