When Catalyst Paper Corporation celebrates the 100th anniversary of paper making in Powell River September 15, Roger Taylor will be there. At 91, he is one of the last old-timers who worked at the mill.
Catalyst will be hosting a birthday party and has invited all retirees and past employees to come back and celebrate from 11 am to 4 pm on Saturday, September 15 at the mill site. The actual date that the first rolls of paper were produced was April 12, 1912.
As a teenager, Taylor had his start working at the mill doing odd jobs on the weekend.
“When we reached the age of 17 or 18, we were allowed to go into the mill but not on a permanent basis,” said Taylor. “We were able to go in on a Friday afternoon and work a four-to-12 shift or a graveyard shift. Sometimes we could be called in for Saturday and Sunday work and then we’d go back to school on the Monday.”
After leaving Brooks High School, he went directly to a full-time job at the mill where eventually he trained as a journeyman carpenter. For the next 45 years, he used his passion and talents for working with wood.
In the late 1930s, the mill paid permanent full-time workers 25 cents an hour and part-time workers less. They hired teens like Taylor to help sweep up and do odd jobs. “The wages weren’t that great in those days. When I first started work I was only making 19 cents per hour,” he explained.
Although he was earning less than the full-timers, he was still happy to have the chance to earn some pocket money and help his family out.
After graduating from high school in 1940, Taylor went into the mill full time. “When I first started out I was getting odd jobs here and there,” he said. “You wouldn’t know where they were going to put you. One day you could be in the saw mill cleaning up, sweeping the floors, or you could be called to broke hustle on the machines.”
When workers had to “hustle broke,” they fed paper that had broken away from the rolls back into the pulp machines where it started over again. Although hustling broke wasn’t the easiest job in the mill, there were more difficult jobs around. According to Taylor, mill supervisors wouldn’t even look at workers for the grinder room if “burly” wasn’t a word that described them well.
“You were never called into the grinder room unless you were a big six-foot-10 guy,” said Taylor. “In those days if you wanted to go into the grinder rooms you had to be a big, husky guy.”
Heavy blocks of wood entering the grinder room would float down a long flume into a holding pond where workers would have to pull the blocks out of the water by hand and feed them into the grinders.
At 145 pounds, Taylor never had to worry about ending up in the grinder room. Instead he spent two years working in the steam room, where workers would emerge from their shift covered in ash and smoke. Eventually he switched jobs because the smoky environment was too much for his one good eye.
Relief came when he finally moved to the carpentry division. Although it took him 13 years to become a journeyman carpenter, he said after that “it was just clear sailing.”
Journeyman carpenters at the mill did varied work. They could find themselves driving piles one day and remodelling offices for the company executives on the next. “You had to be very versatile,” explained Taylor. “It’s not like a person who is building a home. Building houses is straight forward. This job had everything in it.”
During Taylor’s career he became well known for being a member of the what he calls “The Tank Crew.” There were six or seven guys, all about the same age as Taylor, who worked to put together prefabricated tanks that would hold pulp.
“We would put it all together right from the ground up,” said Taylor. “We used to love it because it kept us outside and it was good straight heavy work. We were in such beautiful condition. It was fabulous and we used to love doing it. There was a lot of camaraderie.”
Taylor and his crew became minor celebrities when word of their ability to construct the tanks made it down to the company’s headquarters in Vancouver.
“They couldn’t believe how fast those tanks went up,” said Taylor. “They sent a whole bunch of bigwigs up one year to find out what’s going on. See how were we doing it. They were very impressed.”
Taylor remembers fondly the good old days back before the Second World War when the mill was operated by Powell River Company. “They were a darn good company to work for. It didn’t matter what it was, they’d donate for this and donate for that. If a sports team was going away, they’d sponsor them. On Halloween they’d put on a big party at the Dwight Hall for the whole community. Every kid would get a present. It didn’t matter how many kids there were. Christmas was the same. They would put on a huge do there in the Dwight Hall.”
He is a member of the last generation of Canadians who spent their whole career at one company.
The term “active senior” doesn’t even come close to describing Taylor. Although he retired in 1985 he continues to use the varied skills that 45 years of mill carpentry helped him develop. On Thursday mornings, rain or shine, year round, Taylor and his friends, the other members of the Bloody Old Men’s Brigade or BOMB Squad, do volunteer trail work in the backcountry to make it more accessible. “If we aren’t building a bridge,” he explained, “we’re cleaning trails, keeping them open. Today we’ve built miles and miles of trails, well over 100 bridges and boardwalks. We have opened up the back country for people.”
A swimmer and life guard, soccer and basketball player in his younger days, Taylor started running at age 46. He began running marathons in his mid 70s when he “got the itch to try something longer.” The highlight of his running came in 1996 when he travelled to Massachusetts to compete in the Boston Marathon. Up to then he’d just been doing 10K runs and having a good time with them.
At 91 he’s still got runner’s legs although he gave up running at 89. “I had some trouble with my back,” he said. “So I had to stop running. Now I just walk.”
Most mornings Taylor can be found making his way around the outside edge of the Timberlane Park track which he calls the ninth lane. Taylor completes the 450-metre lap in six minutes.
“I’m walking on the hardtop around the outside of the track and I’m getting all kinds of questions like, ‘What are you doing out there? We’ll give you space in here.’ So I had to tell them why. I’ve got 450 metres on the outside edge, so I’m doing more than the guys on the track. You don’t see marathoners running on a cushion.”
For more information about the 100th anniversary celebration or to RSVP, readers can email company organizers at powellriver
