Category: Raftsmen

Categories: Lumber Industry | Forestry Workers | Bytown, Upper Canada | Hull, Lower Canada | Hull, Lower Canada aka Canada East 1841-1867 | Occupations by Name

Landing level category

A raftsman is someone who works on a raft. It was common term used in the timber trade of the Ottawa and St Lawrence valleys of Canada during the nineteenth century. Lumber camps supplied logs to sawmills or to forwarding companies. Workers built rafts of the felled timber and raftsmen were hired to take them down the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers to the Port of Quebec, where they were disassembled and the timber shipped to England, the returning ships carrying immigrants to Canada. The raftsmen's work helped shape Canada and then faded into history. This was different from log driving, where logs were not squared.

Links:

• Wikipedia - Ottawa River Timber Trade
• French web site "Mêtiers forêts bois" - Cageux (Raftsment)
• Léon A. Robidoux. (2008) The Raftsmen of the Ottawa and St Lawrence Rivers. Shoreline Press, Montreal. pp198. ISBN:978-1-896754-38-3. Shoreline page
• http://www.bytown.net/lumbering.htm

Raftsmen

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