The time has come, the walrus said:
....And the time has come, friends, to check your local listings and get out and support your local logging champs. For all over the province and in many places across Canada, Logging Sports is the name of the game in recreational forestry.
....I look back over quite a few years of being associated with some of the finest people I have ever met in the forest industry – through loggers sports.
....I have watched thousands of people cheer and stand in awe of our Canadian logging champions and I have always seen good sportsmanship and good manners displayed.
....Our logging sports champions are among Canada’s finest ambassadors that we could send anywhere in the world – and only the ultra-conservative nature of the hierarchy in the forest industry has prevented these champ-ions from really reaching their potential in offshore goodwill for their country.
....Twice we have been to the World Chainsaw Contests for Loggers where the competition was from seventeen countries. Once we competed in Fin-land and once in Norway. On both occasions our loggers did well – with a silver medal in Norway and a gold medal in Finland.
....On our last visit to Norway (B.C.L. Oct., Nov. ’80) we left behind three throwing axes with the three man teams from Poland, Norway and Czecho-slovakia. We encouraged them to take up the sport so we may go back some day and compete with them in the target axe throw. It was nice to know that last summer we were invited to the world Chainsaw Contest again – this time in Poland. But due to our summer long mail strike, we received the invitation – sent in May for the games in September – in late October.
....At the moment, the champions are always ready to travel and only time stands in our way before Canadian

saws and axes will be performing in some part of the world. Have saw – will travel!
....Some of you may not remember, but it was a big thrill for many of us associated with Loggers Sports when the then premier of BB.C., W.A.C. Bennett, proclaimed the sport – The Official Industrial Sport of British Columbia (BCL July ’71). Committee people from all over B.C. gathered in Victoria for the occasion and a luncheon. By Order in Council #712, the honor was bestowed – and should be remembered and used to promote the sport.
....I should explain my feelings about what I term the poor response from the conservative hierarchy of the forest industry towards loggers sports, as a means to help sell the industry. I have seen many individual leaders of our industry yell and cheer just as much as an excited kid over the closeness of a good axe chopping event. But while they, like most people, enjoy the sport as individuals, they do not feel they can support it because of its ‘commer-cialism.’ Now, just what that word means is beyond me – but I have had it told me many times by those who sit high on the stump in our industry.
....What I feel they have failed to grasp is the classic example of the good public relationship that exists in the sport – for their company and for their industry. There is not one forest company or association in B.C. that is remotely associated with loggers sports or logging champions. Hell, even a breakfast food cereal made its name known the world over as ‘the breakfast of champions.’
....There has never been a great amount of prize money in loggers sports. Even the best could not live on the earnings of prizes as say the cowboy could on the rodeo circuit. Champion loggers go back to the woods each fall to earn their keep. And it is interesting to remember that some years ago we had to go to high places to get ‘time off’ for loggers who wanted to compete. A lot of their

camp bosses wouldn’t approve of loggers sports.
....The Canadian Loggers Sports Federation has been in existence now for 13 years and has done an ex-cellent job of bringing to the sport a book of rules. This book is upgraded each year to catch up on all the slight details that keep popping up, that need defining. And that little book, put together by competitors and com-mittee people, is in the hands of interested people all over the world.
....The Canlog stamp of approval is given to those shows that pass certain criteria of safety standards, prize money and crowd control.
....Nice people, these people of the forest industry who have put so much into our official industrial sport. A parade of names flashes by me – too numerous to remember them all, but I think of Wickheim, Hartill, Perry Clemens, Frank Grey, Hugh McKenzie, Herling (you got one, Dick), Chris Arnet, Carney, Holmquist, Boyko and Hart – you gotta have Hart!
....Let’s hear it for them and for so many others – competitors, com-mittees, backers, and champions. They have made the image of a logger and the public applauds.
....Be a sport – A Loggers Sport

Keep out of the bight,

Bill Moore