... he just talked to her like we're talking and the horse just- it was just like, you-know, if- the- the horse was skidding a log out of this thick swamp, tamarack swamp, he got snagged, you just stop him, back him up a little bit and go over and on you-know ...

Interviewer: What is this called? Speaker: Those are called skid-tongs. Interviewer: Skid-tongs. Speaker: Or log-tongs they could be called. Interviewer: Log-tongs. Interviewer: And- and when you're skidding, there's two horses- there's a whipple-tree here- here a double tree, a swivel hook and the swivel hook- hooks into that. And when you're the teamster, you got to pick that leg of the tong up and swing it.

... that's a long hard process for a team of horses because they have to be rested. You could only do so much. Maybe you do an acre a day or-something a day or-whatever. But with a tractor, you can just- you can just do the whole thing so- but there's other things like skidding out a bit of firewood and- and working in a sugar bush where horses make sense ...

Interviewer: So what would be the biggest tree you could cut down? ... What kind of things did you learn? Speaker: Well, to start with they ah- they got through the bush and they pick out the skid ways where they're going to put- skid the logs onto and then the road ways so when you following trees, you don't follow the tree so they have to move all that brush you-see?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we skidded all our logs with horses pretty well until the latter years and then we had a- a different kind of machine.

Interviewer: On- on your farm, on that five-hundred acres, ah, to get out in the forest were you clearing trails to, ah-? Speaker: Yes, yes, yes. It wa-- well, it- ah, mostly, ah, in terms of trails, ah, I'd say, ah, they were skid trails for horses. ... Yeah, we skidded all our logs with horses pretty well until the latter years and then we had a- a different kind of machine. But, ah, yeah, so it was mostly s-- skidded out into open areas and those open areas happened to be hydro lines, corridors, that sort of thing- or farm fields or-something-like-that, so. Yeah. But no, there's definitely a certain amount of cutting of trails, that's for sure, to- to get the, ah- the logs.

My father was a farmer and a carpenter, which took me into that sphere of activity with horses, everything was done with horses. ... And ah you started out, with the horses, ... maybe when you're ten, you would drive the horses with the load of hay, or an empty wagon. And that's how you would learn to handle the horses. And ah, so then you would graduate from there to being in the bush, and skidding logs when you're maybe twelve. ... And you would skid logs out of the bush ...

I was only sixteen. He was twenty years older than me. I had sixteen children. We had a hard time. ... When I was a young girl, I worked for my father in the bush, cooking for him, too. Baked the bread, I was twelve years old and I skidded the logs and took care of the horses. Had two horses.

Cut wood. Fall the tree and skid it to the landing and land it back and pile it up. Pretty well all hand work but you did it all with horses.

... just going dandy and then come the labour lords, you-know to check us all out ... Well I says, "Why wouldn't you leave us alone." He says, "I guess but it's not in the book. It's not in the book. If it's not in the book, you couldn't do it." Well I said, "To hell with your book." I said, "Make common sense, the man that wrote that book, he never to the bush in his life." So anyways, went back to that and it worked great. Got along good. So that's how we skidded.

... you either lifted or pushed the logs up skids to the places- and they were what they called corners, and on the corners, they'd match the logs in. ... I never- I never attended a loud rai-- I never attended a barn-raising.

Speaker: You-see they had to have skids, and it shoved the log up. Well you had to have three or four darn good men on them (inc). ... Interviewer: Isn't there a kind of a pole that you need? ... Speaker: Ah they call them a bowl. ... a long pole and a piece that way (inc) on the log. ... And they started up so far up the skid you-see, 'til they got that in. Then there was handles across it. And they shoved the head.

We were out ah, unloading the truck. Well the truck was gone and we had the skids out there. It was warm right? It was summer. So we saw, in a distance the other end of the parking lot a blond come out with a white tank- top. And ah I can 't remember her pants. But she was just sitting there in the sun, we were just like, "Wow, I wonder if she 's hot"?

He was basically trying to find out I- guess who put the skid there right. "Well this is unacceptable." I said, "I realize that it 's unacceptable and I- that 's why I wouldn 't have done it." You-know, but I was only at that place for about two-and-a-half to three months. ... I got my forklift license there, my (inc) license, you-know, my transportation-of-dangerous-business and stuff. So it was good for that anyways. Not that I need them now but- ... Actually the final straw I can remember. There's a lot of chemicals and stuff at that place. You- know like sandbags? Kind-of army guys pile those. It's like that, but there's chemicals in them? So they pile them on skids. They're like little plastic beads ... they always said if you hear the alarms, jump off your truck and just run at an exit as soon as you can because the whole place could just completely blow up, right? So taking stuff out of racks on my fork-truck ... you had to be very careful 'cause if you clip the metal corner of the racking when you 're pulling a skid out, it would rip that bag open and the little plastic pellets would all start pouring out of the bags.

Five- five-hundred people is huge. People are chucking skids, entire skids, onto the um onto the fire and ah other people put, like- did Jayden dance on one? ... like, the people are chucking skids on the fire and people are going, like, dancing on top of these skids in the middle of the fucking fire. And I- yeah, I got pretty- pretty drunk.

I know Jayden-Lee. I was walking around with him and talking for a bit and he's dancing on the fire at one point. And he's not getting burned. It was a huge bonfire, probably, like, you-know, like, big enough. Like- 'kay, think of piling, like, four skids side-by-side. So, must have been, like, you-know, eight-feet-by-eight-feet, this fire. ... And, like, you-know, thirteen-feet tall (laughs). And ah there's a skid on there, and Jayden's just standing on these fucking dancing around.

On mine- ah we were at Pete-Liskard's, we- there was like two fires going. Like a little shitty fire where everyone was just sitting around probably be like- I-don't-know, jerking to each other, I-don't-know. But anyways, there was another one far- farther away from the campsite where there was a larger one and like we were putting skids and- (inc) there's like all the people that I hung around with, with like- like- like Larry-LaSalle was there, Joe was there, Tyler was there, Riley, all them um- Carl-Giorgio, do you remember him? Carl-Giorgio.

So you'd move the logs out, l-- log wall out. And you had the- nailed all up and-so-on, and skids under them.

And ah, so buddy mentioned to me that they were going to ship their bikes out to- ... To Vancouver and they were going to ride back. ... So on the Tuesday before the August long weekend, I took my bike to Barrie and ah, we put it on a metal skid like the- is inside the crates that Harleys come on. You kind-of drive it into this thing and it drops in and then you strap to the skid and they pick the whole skid up with a forklift, put it right in the trailer.

Speaker: And- and- and this part here, the wooden part has a steel thing on the end, so you- you dig it into the log like that and you roll it. So it's for- it's really a log roller. ... Interviewer 1: So it's like almost to- for leverage. ... Interviewer 2: And that would really control the log. Speaker: Yes, yes. And usually one person on each end of the log and- and- and then you would have like two skids and roll them up onto the truck and that sort of thing.