Home
In the Bight (Harbour $32.95)
As the biographer of industrialist H.R. MacMillan and The Vancouver Sun's forestry columnist, Ken Drushka looks pretty mainstream these days, but it wasn't always that way.
In 1968, following the 'Summer of Love', Drushka, as a Toronto journalist, gravitated to the west coast in the wake of the Chicago riots and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. He figured the United States was heading for fascism. "That's the climate, the context, in which I came to the coast,"; he says. "I thought if that's what's happening, it's probably a good idea to know how to survive outside of cities.";
Drushka hand-lined for fish, worked for a gyppo logging outfit that didn't pay him, and eventually created the Cosmic Logging Company, a 'state of mind' as much as a business. Drushka's partner Brian Lewis sold a rotting gillnetter to some ex-California bikers in return for cash and a vibrant yellow panel van with red flames painted on the hood.
Drushka and Lewis added the words 'Cosmic Logging' onto the truck, then they placed an ad in the Georgia Straight offering workers between $0 and $35 per day. Only hippies applied. Drushka barged over to Thurlow Island with their motley crew and their truck-and in the spirit of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, another West Coast entrepreneur was born.
Recently profiled in a new history of Campbell River called River City (Harbour $36.95), the Alberta-born Drushka is now one of the forest industry's most enduring critics. His ninth book is In the Bight (Harbour $32.95) a relatively unbiased view of the tricky marriage between logging and B.C. politics.
"The forest industry today is characterized by big corporations, big unions and a big state bureaucracy... Unless we reorganize the system to be more diverse, we will also have to continue grappling with the tension between B.C.'s urban and rural populations.";
Druskka recalls being told by a corporate forester in the 1970s that companies didn't want local workforces. The forester's reasoning was simple: The local logger could always stay home and mend his chicken coop; workers isolated in camps could be more easily controlled.
As a formerly independent 'gyppo' logger, Drushka has kept this anecdote for 30 years, mindful of its social and economic implications for the province.
Drushka's In The Bight strongly favours a revamped tenure system, one that would re-open the woods to 'local' entrepreneurs-even if that means his acceptance of private ownership of forests. "Private ownership of forest land is not a goal or an objective in itself,"; he says, "it is merely a means to realize the social objectives of the people of B.C. The existing tenure system is an obstacle to reaching these goals. It must be changed.";
In the Bight is a follow-up to Drushka's previous overview, Stumped: The Forest Industry in Transition, published by Douglas & McIntyre in 1985. It will take its place alongside dozens of titles-such as Martin Allerdale Grainger's Woodsmen of the West (1908), Bus Griffiths' Now You're Logging (1978), Cameron Young's The Forests of British Columbia (1985) and Herb Hammond's Seeing the Forest Among the Trees (1991)-as populist reference material about the province's main industry.
These days Drushka's style is cautiously sober, as if he's afraid to alienate the guys in the boardrooms by putting red flames back on the hood. Logging is serious business, but writing about it needn't be devoid of style or flair. Drushka is nonetheless one of the top 100 authors in the province, someone who has contributed long and hard to the public good.
River 1-55017-211-5; Bight 1-55017-161-5
[BCBW SPRING 2000]
In 1968, following the 'Summer of Love', Drushka, as a Toronto journalist, gravitated to the west coast in the wake of the Chicago riots and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. He figured the United States was heading for fascism. "That's the climate, the context, in which I came to the coast,"; he says. "I thought if that's what's happening, it's probably a good idea to know how to survive outside of cities.";
Drushka hand-lined for fish, worked for a gyppo logging outfit that didn't pay him, and eventually created the Cosmic Logging Company, a 'state of mind' as much as a business. Drushka's partner Brian Lewis sold a rotting gillnetter to some ex-California bikers in return for cash and a vibrant yellow panel van with red flames painted on the hood.
Drushka and Lewis added the words 'Cosmic Logging' onto the truck, then they placed an ad in the Georgia Straight offering workers between $0 and $35 per day. Only hippies applied. Drushka barged over to Thurlow Island with their motley crew and their truck-and in the spirit of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, another West Coast entrepreneur was born.
Recently profiled in a new history of Campbell River called River City (Harbour $36.95), the Alberta-born Drushka is now one of the forest industry's most enduring critics. His ninth book is In the Bight (Harbour $32.95) a relatively unbiased view of the tricky marriage between logging and B.C. politics.
"The forest industry today is characterized by big corporations, big unions and a big state bureaucracy... Unless we reorganize the system to be more diverse, we will also have to continue grappling with the tension between B.C.'s urban and rural populations.";
Druskka recalls being told by a corporate forester in the 1970s that companies didn't want local workforces. The forester's reasoning was simple: The local logger could always stay home and mend his chicken coop; workers isolated in camps could be more easily controlled.
As a formerly independent 'gyppo' logger, Drushka has kept this anecdote for 30 years, mindful of its social and economic implications for the province.
Drushka's In The Bight strongly favours a revamped tenure system, one that would re-open the woods to 'local' entrepreneurs-even if that means his acceptance of private ownership of forests. "Private ownership of forest land is not a goal or an objective in itself,"; he says, "it is merely a means to realize the social objectives of the people of B.C. The existing tenure system is an obstacle to reaching these goals. It must be changed.";
In the Bight is a follow-up to Drushka's previous overview, Stumped: The Forest Industry in Transition, published by Douglas & McIntyre in 1985. It will take its place alongside dozens of titles-such as Martin Allerdale Grainger's Woodsmen of the West (1908), Bus Griffiths' Now You're Logging (1978), Cameron Young's The Forests of British Columbia (1985) and Herb Hammond's Seeing the Forest Among the Trees (1991)-as populist reference material about the province's main industry.
These days Drushka's style is cautiously sober, as if he's afraid to alienate the guys in the boardrooms by putting red flames back on the hood. Logging is serious business, but writing about it needn't be devoid of style or flair. Drushka is nonetheless one of the top 100 authors in the province, someone who has contributed long and hard to the public good.
River 1-55017-211-5; Bight 1-55017-161-5
[BCBW SPRING 2000]
Submitted on July 10, 2003 in By David.
