A visit to the museum actually involved a walking tour. The museum covers two eras of Algonquin logging, the “square timber” and the “sawlog” eras. The tour started with a video and then took us down a wooded trail back to the 1830s, to a replica of one of the earliest camboose shanties, which was a very 
large, low log cabin type building with no windows, just a chimney and a door. Around fifty men ate and slept in this building for six months of the year. There were no tables or chairs, just bunks and an open hearth upon which to cook.
During the early logging they squared off the 40+ foot tall virgin timbers sent back to England aboard ships. The trees were much taller, but any part containing branches was considered waste. Even though there was a lot of wasted wood by our standards, the squared timbers fit nicely in the ships’ holds without wasting space or shifting. Some of the broad axe heads used to square off the timbers weighed 12 pounds! Imagine swinging that for hours a day!
As we walked along the museum trail we saw a replica stable where horses were kept. Many of the men who logged during the winter were farmers during the spring and summer. They would 
bring their teams of draft horses with them when they came to log.
Displays housed snow plows and water tanker sleighs used to maintain icy tracks upon which the huge horse drawn log sleighs travelled. The maintenance was all done at night so the tracks could freeze firmly before morning. The other problem, however, 
was the sleigh going too fast, running over the horses, spilling the load and injuring or killing the driver. Being innovative, they either shoveled hot sand on the spots that were too steep or 
employed a Berrienger brake, a set of four pulleys rigged with cables that slowed the heavily laden sleighs to a manageable speed going down steep inclines.
Other logging innovations we got to see: a boat called an alligator, a log chute, and finally modern equipment such as a steam locomotive, trucks, and a mechanical skidder. The alligator was a steam powered paddleboat that reminded me of “duck boats,” the military amphibious landing craft that served during WWII. The alligator was equipped with strong winches that could pull in large cables to gather logs and move them across lakes once the ice thawed and the logs were floating. With its winches and a steel plated bottom, it could actually winch itself across portages between the lakes and rivers.
The loggers used log chutes where there wasn’t enough current to get the logs down river. They usually drove them first thing in the spring when water levels were high, but occasionally they had to build dams and a series of wooden chutes to get the logs from one body of water to the next. Some chutes were several hundred yards long!
Log Chute
Slowly the quality of shelter and food evolved to the sawlog era, the later 1800s and early 1900s, and eventually there were separate bunk houses and dining halls. The cookery resembled a large kitchen and dining hall and actually had tables and benches. The men still weren’t allowed to talk during a meal – it distracted the cook, and fresh baked bread was withheld for a couple of days so no one would eat more than their share. We learned that the food offered in the later sawlog camps included corned beef, vegetables, tea, beans, prunes, butter and jam. This was considered a vast improvement over the diet of their predecessors. The reason they referred to this as the sawlog era was that at this point there were saw mills in nearby towns and the timbers were just cut and shipped to the mill. They didn’t have to do anything but saw logs and ship them.
The afternoon we spent at the Logging Museum was beautiful and warm. It was peaceful vacation day. There was a lovely breeze and only a few people wandered around the grounds. It was in total contrast to what we had just learned about the beginnings of Algonquin logging: frigid winter weather, backbreaking labor, noise, danger, and poor, crowded living conditions. I am really glad I am not a logger, then or now. However, our visit gave me an appreciation of how hard the men worked to help their families survive in this harsh northern area and how innovative they were in creating equipment and processes they needed to make their rugged job easier.
Author ringing the dinner bell at the Sawlog Cookery. It was LOUD!
Sunday evening Lake of Two Rivers, Algonquin Provincial Park, Loons.
All week we had gone back and forth by the Lake of Two Rivers to evening programs. I wanted to take pictures of the lake and island because it was so beautiful. One evening we forgot the 
camera, another we talked to the ranger until it was dark…so we ended up going out to take the pictures the last night. As we were taking pictures, one adult loon showed up with a baby loon still wearing black fuzzy feathers trailing it. Shortly after that a juvenile showed up wearing its beige and white “teenage loon apparel.” Then another adult swam over. If they were actually calling to each other, they were too distant to hear. We could only see them clearly with the benefit of a long camera lens and binoculars. We 
stood at the side of Highway 60 for over a half an hour watching the adults dive and surface with food for the young birds. It was a lot of fun to watch because we both really like loons and had only heard a couple of them fly over our campground. So in spite of not seeing or hearing any loons on Canoe Lake when we went paddling, we did get a bit of a loon fix after all.
Loons on Lake of Two Rivers
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