The colourful and dangerous days of the loggers and lumbermen in the old-growth forests of Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes
Shantymen, river drivers, timbermen, lumber barons -- the words evoke a bygone world of hardy men of mythic strength and daring, of wilderness and trees as far as the imagination could stretch. Immortalized in folk song and tale, the logger in "the age of wood" wielded axe and saw to deliver a raw landscape into the twentieth century. The mighty timbers he hewed and trees he felled were the means to build and fuel a country.
From Lake of the Woods in northern Ontario to Nova Scotia's old-growth Acadian forests, Canada offered a vast and rich resource of timber. The early entrepreneurs made fortunes from the harvest while thousands of men lived in primitive conditions and risked their lives in this dangerous work.
David Lee, also the author of Lumber Kings and Shantymen: Logging and Lumbering in the Ottawa Valley, has written a colourful and fascinating story of the men who worked in eastern Canada's early forest industry. He describes their work in shanties and camboose camps, in the woods, on the river and in the sawmills of Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. With many colour and black and white illustrations and photographs from leading historic sites in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes, Great Forests and Mighty Men is a very human history of almost legendary figures.

DAVID LEE was born and raised in the Ottawa Valley, and educated at Carleton and Queen's universities. He has worked as an historian with Parks Canada, and has published numerous articles on Canadian history, as well as the book The Robins in Gaspé, 1766 to 1825.

David Lee's profile page