Log Drivers Waltz
I shared stories of the pirates on the high seas, but now it is time to head to Canadian rivers to celebrate the men who danced on logs.
If you grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, there is a good chance you heard this song while watching your morning cartoons.
The Log Driver’s Waltz is an indelible part of Canada’s cultural legacy that shares space in our nostalgia as much as the House Hippo and The Hockey Sweater.
Written by Wade Hemsworth and sung by Kate and Anna McGarrigle, it celebrates log driving which is when felled timbers travel down rivers to sawmills for processing.
Floating logs down rivers was perfect because they moved quickly at no cost. To ensure the logs made the journey, workers walked on them as they floated down the river and kept them moving.
Sometimes called bubble walkers or bubble treaders, log drivers played an integral role in the lumber industry for decades.
The song romanticizes working as a log driver, which wasn’t easy.
Up from sunrise to sunset, log drivers worked in difficult conditions and slept in dirty and overcrowded bunkhouses for five to nine months at a time as they worked in the bush, far from their families.
It was also dangerous, one misstep meant falling into a raging river with the real possibility of being trapped under logs and being scraped on the rocky bottom.
On the river, crews were divided into two groups.
The experienced and nimbler log drivers were part of the jam crew and like the name states they watched spots where logs were likely to jam. If the logs piled up, the men balanced their way over floating logs and dislodged them.
Failure to clear jams would create partial dams which would cause water levels to rise. If enough lumber backed up, it could take weeks to break up.
Less experienced crews brought up the rear, and pushed straggler logs that would get stuck on the banks. For those unfortunate workers it meant spending more time standing in water than dancing on logs.
Each crew also had a boss — selected for their ability in controlling the reckless men who were attracted to the job.
The ideal river was straight and uniform, with sharp banks. To approximate these conditions, loggers would alter the water’s flow by blowing up rocks and building up banks.
All of this brings us to Wade Hemsworth, who worked in logging camps in the 1940s and 1950s and saw the skills needed to be a log driver first-hand.
Hemsworth was impressed by their strength and agility and noticed how their movements resembled dancing.
His great nephew, also named Wade Hemsworth, said,
“The Log Driver’s Waltz is a song about a time in Canadian history when logging and moving logs to the pulp and paper mill was done in a more traditional fashion. The action of burling on logs, or standing on them, as they turned over and staying upright was a unique skill.”
Watching them inspired Hemsworth to write The Log Driver’s Waltz, which appeared on his first album, Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods, in 1956.
The most famous part of the song is the chorus,
In it, the word birling, often heard as whirling or twirling, refers to the Scottish word birl, which means to revolve, or cause to revolve.
While the act of log driving inspired the song, the song itself is about the footwork lumberjacks have on the dance floor thanks to their experience on the river and much like milkshakes those skills bring all the girls to the yard. Hemsworth only wrote 16 songs in his entire career, most of which became Canadian folk classics, but none became as famous as the Log Driver’s Waltz.
In the early-1960s, he met the folk band Mountain City Four who were impressed with his music, and they released covers of his songs, including The Log Driver’s Waltz.
That band broke up in 1967 and two sisters in the band, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, became a duo and released their eponymous first album in 1976.
That same year, CBC contacted the National Film Board and asked the organization to create several short films to be used in between programming.
The federal government was also in favour of the venture in hopes it would promote national unity.
For the next three years, 80 filmmakers from across Canada made films and one of them was the Log Driver’s Waltz.
It was released in 1979 as an animated short film directed by John Weldon, with music sung by Anna and Kate McGarrigle.
Of all the films released as part of this CBC-NFB initiative, none were as popular as The Log Driver’s Waltz and remains one of the most requested films in the National Film Board’s collection.
Hemsworth’s great nephew, Wade Hemsworth, said,
“To think that he wrote these songs half a century ago and that they still are on people’s minds, it is something that I know would have pleased him completely.”
Hemsworth died in 2002 and Governor General Adrienne Clarkson said,
“So much a part of our folklore and so familiar to us that we didn’t realize anyone had written them.”
Kate and Anna McGarrigle continued to make music together for decades after The Log Driver’s Waltz. They released 13 albums together, earned the Order of Canada in 1993 and received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award in 2004.
Kate died in 2010, but you might’ve heard of her children.
Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright have kept the family’s musical legacy alive.
As has the Log Driver’s Waltz, which continues to be beloved by Canadians.
In 2017, the Montreal Gazette ranked 150 of the greatest musical moments in Canadian history and the Log Driver’s Waltz ranked 62nd.
Information from NFB, Toronto Guardian, CBC, Wikipedia, On The A Side, The Independent, Macleans, Montreal Gazette, The Ottawa Citizen,
