LIVE ON RAFTS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5604, 12 April 1943, Page 4

LIVE ON RAFTS

LOGGERS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA TREES GROW ON PRECIPITOUS SLOPES Away in British Columbia is an immense reservoir of wood for the British Empire.

The forests grow for endless miles on the tall ridges of the mountains, and clothe the steep sides right down to the sea. Small narrow inlets run, like small cracks into the sides of the hills and any approach to the forest must be made in boats from the sea. The sides are so steep and so thickly covered with fir trees that the loggers have to start cutting down the first trees from; their rafts, moored to the rocks. But even when a space has been cleared the side are still too precipitous to build on them. The loggers have to live in houses built on rafts, and there make their homes for years. Their families come to live with them, and in the narrow inlets a big floating population lives.

A school has to be provided on the raft if there are ten or more children who can come each day, a teacher being provided by the British Columbia Education Department. The children very often have to come by boat to the floating school.

The most exciting time for the school on the raft is in winter, when the fjord freezes and the children have to make dangerous journeys by boat in the morning. Very often they have to break the ice before they can begin to row. Then sometimes a storm raises huge waves in the fjord and the school raft rocks so much that no written work can be done for days. The raft bumps into the raft moored alongside it, and all the class are thrown out of their desks, When there has been a heavy fall of snow the school had to turn out with spade and shovel to clear the decks in case the rafts should sink.