BAD LUCK CAMP

by Elliot Dunnett
We were logging up on the Sheepdogs in the fall of '49. We come home for Christmas and then when we went back the problems started. There was a lad from Traced with us who wasn't too happy about something or other and he up and quit. He left the camp one morning but about a week later be came back. One day Fred Le Claire was piling hydro poles on a yard with a horse and chain. Once they got the poles on top of the pile Fred had to get up to roll them back. This time he just got up on the pile and the big poles started to roll When they snubbed up the chain Fred somehow got tangled up in it. The piling chain formed a loop around his chest and when it tightened up I suppose it crushed his ribs. Or the weight and pressure from the squeezing might have stopped his heart. I'm not sure exactly how that chain killed him but no matter how you look at it, it was a sad and senseless way for an old man to die. They had to cut that chain with an axe to get him out of there. After this incident the man from Traced left for home again but be was back within the week. A few weeks after Fred's death Danny Hub bard was hauling logs out to the landing on the Seville. Where he stopped his sled by the landing the ground was sloped a bit so the logs could be rolled off the sled rockers more easily. When Danny got off the load he hit the chain grab with his peavey and knocked the chain at the front of the load loose. The young lad working on the landing was supposed to take the back chain off. However, the boy was inexperienced and couldn't do it as slick so Danny stepped back to the middle of the load and knocked the back chain loose with his peavey. As soon as he loosened this back chain the logs started to roll! They rolled off the sled and took Danny right over the hill with them. Those logs rolled because the sled was sitting at an angle plus there was one big log sitting on two others and it sort of pushed the ones below. About a half dozen logs come off the sled and killed poor old Danny right there. He died instantly. His head was caught between two of those logs. It was a terrible sight!Weldon Oozier from Sunny Corner and Willy Johnston from just down the road here in Sillikers come running when they heard the racket. I told them to put the chains back on the load in case any more logs should roll. After they did that we carried Danny up and put him on my sled and covered ••him up with some blankets. Weldon drove my team when we took the body into the camp. The foreman, who was my uncle, Harry Blackmore, thought for sure it was me that got killed when he saw another man driving my team. Two deaths in a matter of a few weeks! I tell ya that really shook everybody up. Not only did the man from Tracadie leave this time but so did a lot of the others. There were six or seven fellers from down there went home. They wouldn't stay there at all. Bad luck camp, ya know.The cookee had to leave too. When Fred LeClaire got killed it bothered him real bad and after the second man died he packed her in and left. There were two old men from back in the Gardens that left for the funeral and didn't come back. They knew Danny real well and had worked with him for years.Four or five days after we started logging again back come the lad from Tracadie! That was his third trip now! I don't know if anyone else ever thought about it but I often wondered if something else was going to happen. Bad things come in threes.