Our Sawmill

As told by Gurney Baverstock:
Around 1978, Ray Beebe, a gentleman who cut hardwoods in Indiana, brought the sawmill up to Sioux Lookout. It was a used 1950’s vintage, Corley, made in Tennessee. When he reached Canadian Customs, he tried to talk to the customs man to reduce the value. It was old, used, the wood was rotten and it had to be rebuilt. Well as luck would have it this customs officer was a sawyer himself. He said, “The husk looks pretty good to me.” Ray knew he wasn’t going to get a break on the duty. “Yep”, he said, “I know a fellow will give you $700.00 right now as is.” Ray replied,” No, I’m giving it to these fellows from Sioux Lookout, they are good lads.” Gurney set up the mill, he says, pretty much by himself as Gordy, (Gord Fenelon his partner) had been transferred out of town to Fort Frances with the Ministry of Natural Resources. They had many a good time cutting 4’ white pine and big spruce with the 54” blade.

As told by Allan Pizziol:
When Paula and I purchased the park May 1st 1989, trees had grown up through the track and carriage. It hadn’t been used for several years. Jamie Arnold an employee at the time and myself went up, looked it over and decided to clean it up and see if it would work. Once we had done all we could, I asked Peter Dunham a mechanic at Universal Maintenance to look the motor over. A battery, some fresh fuel and now take the can off the stack. Well, the Cummings fired up first time around. We had a belt-driven saw mill. With Jamie and our part-time employee Bill Kuzemchuk, we tried to move the carriage. We didn’t know about belts. Soooo, when the lever was pulled the carriage was instantly off the track and in the bush in the blink of an eye. It took the rest of the day to get it back on the track. A few days later, we gave it another try and the same thing happened. This was too dangerous.

I decided to talk to Chester Carlbom, a neighbour, who operated a portable mill for several years cutting tie blocks for the railroad and rough lumber for sale. Chester had gone through a bout of bone cancer and was in remission but decided he could help convert it to hydraulics. After a month or two of trying we were successful in the changeover. We now had a safer saw mill. The original Perkins engine had to be resleeved and was replaced with a Detroit diesel. In order to keep the snow off and make the mill operational in inclement weather, we built a frame over the mill and covered it with a parachute purchased from Army/Navy Surplus. We now have the sawing area shed roofed.

Our first endeavour was to cut material for our first new cottage, “Birch Haven.’’ We cut all the lumber and planed it wherever we could. The high school gave us a lot of time on their shop planer thanks to Laurie Metza. For our part we made sure the lumber was clean and dry. As well a contractor in Dryden, Horst Lang and a couple of little hobby planers enabled us to complete Birch Haven in June, Aspen Lodge in July of 1995 and Cedar Crest in May of 1996. While doing Cedar Crest we found a mill in Thunder Bay to plane as well as tongue and groove the lumber. Zeke Bartz in Dinorwic does our dimensional lumber, (2×4, 2×6, etc. and beams (4×4, 6×6, and 8×10). Over the years we have cut thousands of feet of rough Spruce, Red Pine, Black Ash, Cedar, Birch and Tamarac from locally cut logs, hauled out with our 1950 Timber jack skidder. Over the years we have completed Dogwood, Evergreen and Firlough cottages, remodelled the Shower house/Laundromat, added the shower-house suite, and remodelled the bathrooms in Lakeview, Lookout, Small Log, Big log and the Office / Office Suite with our very own lumber. This year, 2008, we will use our cut Tamarac to do our new dock deck.

Each cottage has an album of pictures recording the journey from site cleaning to excavation to finish product.

Our invaluable crews have been Treacy Harrison, master log builder from Thunder Bay, myself, our sons Chris and Colin, Jamie Arnold, Tom Cappell, Brady Harrison, Bill Kuzemchuk, Borden Kent, Nelson Kewakundo, Larry Binguis.