1

Herman Finger, lumber magnate and first mayor of The Pas, turned a small fur trade settlement into a mill town. Finger moved north to The Pas from the United States at a time when forests in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Northern Ontario were being depleted. He went on to secure a railroad extension to his mill site and established the largest logging and milling operation in the Prairie provinces.

2

Original building of the Finger Lumber Company, later The Pas Lumber Company
1920-1924
The Pas, Manitoba

Credits:
PP84.393.1

3

As early as 1914, the Finger Lumber Company employed 500 men at three winter camps and 200 men at the mill during the summer. Working in a logging camp meant living in crowded bunkhouses and risking life and limb since accidents with saws, axes, horses and falling timbers were common.

4

Men loading logs onto a large wooden sled on the Carrot River.
c. 1910s
Northern Manitoba

Credits:
PP2008.4.2

5

Logging teams on the frozen Carrot River.
c. 1910s
The Pas, Manitoba

Credits:
PP2008.4.3

6

Hector McLeod hauling a sleigh of logs with the help of some horses at Sipanok Landing.
1936
Sipanok Landing, Saskatchewan

Credits:
Morris, Ed
PP2007.5.11

7

A group of loggers stand by a two-horse team pulling a sleigh stacked very high with cut logs.
1920s
The Pas, Manitoba

Credits:
PP2007.4.1

8

Living and working conditions for loggers improved under the Winton brothers, who bought the Finger Lumber Company in 1919. The Finger boarding house in The Pas, with its two large rooms that housed sixty men each, was replaced with a new two-storey boarding house equipped with showers, electric lights, steam heat and space for 120 men to sleep two to a room. Accommodations in the winter camps also improved gradually. In the mid-1930s the large portable bunkhouses were replaced with four-man bunkhouses partitioned two men to a bedroom. As David J. Winton explained, something as simple as warm, clean toilets also did a world of good: "We broke their hearts with warm toilets. A cold toilet at forty-five below zero is quite a survival operation. Nice, warm, sweet and clean eight-holers was a new experience. They loved that."

9

Planer mill at The Pas Lumber Co.
c. 1920
The Pas, Manitoba

Credits:
Foster, S.
PP2000.5.50

10

The Pas Lumber Company as seen from a boat on the Saskatchewan River.
20th Century
The Pas, Manitoba

Credits:
PP2.79

11

The Pas Lumber Co. sternwheeler, the "David N. Winton".
20th Century
The Pas, Manitoba

Credits:
PP3.13

12

The Pas Lumber Co. sawmill as seen from a garden across the Saskatchewan River.
1930
The Pas, Manitoba

Credits:
Kevin O'Brien Collection
PP91.26.14

13

The Pas Lumber Co. mills and part of the town across from the Saskatchewan River.
June 1948
The Pas, Manitoba

Credits:
Kevin O'Brien Collection
PP91.26.78

14

Log drive on the Carrot River.
May 1930
Carrot Valley, Manitoba

Credits:
Wickett, Oscar
PP94.8.2