ST. FINTAN’S While working in woods camps might not be for everyone, Freda Gillis said it was a good life for her.
The St. Fintan’s woman will turn 100 on Sunday.
“And yes, I’d be fool enough to do it again,” she said when asked about it.
Originally Freda Cook from Cartyville in the Bay St. George South area, she married Thomas J. Gillis and the two spent many years together with their contracting company cutting wood for Bowaters. It stemmed back to the early 1930s when she first went with her husband to the Deer Lake area.
She did all the secretary/bookkeeping work for his company, which eventually had up to 75 men on the payroll.
Interviewed on Nov. 18, she reflected on the tidal wave of St. Lawrence that took place on that day in 1929 and how they ended up getting most of their workers from that area due to the fish disappearing after the tsunami.
“Fishing was the main industry there, however, the men from St. Alban’s and Bay d’Espoir turned to woodcutting when they moved to western Newfoundland. We had quite a lot of them when we were working in the Butter Brook area when we got into directly contracting for Bowaters. At that time we actually had three buses which ran from Heatherton to South Branch, picking up workers,” Gillis said.
She recalls that in the early years they would use horses to haul wood and that her husband loved animals and was really good with the horses.
“I’ve often said I’d rather be his horse than his wife,” she said jokingly.
But it was obvious she liked spending time with him, since the two worked together right up until he died in 1982.
She still has the ledger books where she recorded all the time for the workers and said their wages would be up to $17,500 for the lot in a week. Every week their cheques, made out by Bowaters, were passed over to the workers.
But the job for the couple didn’t mean only handling paperwork as they also kept supplies for the men. Bowaters provided the scalers to measure up the wood.
In the winter, while their camp was at Butter Brook in the Highlands area, wood would be hauled to the railway station at St. Fintan’s by horses or truck.
After Butter Brook, they set up camp at North Branch, where they eventually finished up because they couldn’t keep up with the increasing costs. They even made their own roads and Gillis said they were even better than the highway, when the highway was still a dirt road.
During all these years the couple also started a family. They had five children, including from oldest to youngest, Vera Bruce, Hugh, Douglas, Emeria Power and Malcolm.
Her family has expanded to include 23 grandchildren, 42 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren.
The three boys in the family all worked with their father in the woods at different points in their lives, however, there was no favouritism shown as everyone who went to work with them was hired and worked on a seniority basis.
Gillis would cook for her family members who were at the woods camp and did everything during her years from patching up injuries, sewing, spinning, weaving to churning butter and even snaring rabbits, something she learned from spending her young years with her dad.
Her husband retired as an active pulpwood contractor on Sept. 9, 1979 but continued with the job of building forest access roads for Bowaters after that. He died in August 1982 while checking out one of their roads in the Bald Mountain area.
Despite having some close calls through the years, including a heart event and being in a vehicle rollover accident with her husband, Gillis is in good health and very young for her 100 years of age. To celebrate the milestone, her family is holding an open house at 2 p.m. on Sunday at the Three Rivers Lions Club in McKays and hopes well-wishers will drop by to visit with her.
