Gord Barney: Logger, Cartoonist, Writer, Poet Ladysmith Logger, Gord Barney likes to look on the lighter side of the logging industry. Barney draws on nearly three decades of experience as a logger for his humorous cartoons, pen and ink sketches, stories and poetry. He pokes fun at the typical logging camp life. He writes comic profiles of some of the characters he has encountered over the years travelling the West Coast camps. Guys whose larger-than-life personalities have guaranteed them a place in logging mythology forever.

Barney who began logging when he was 16 years old, first turned to the pen and paper as a way of beating off the sheer boredom of hours in a bunkhouse at night, after work.

"You're stuck in a room with four walls and maybe a small window. As you lay on your bunk, staring at a crack in the ceiling, or watching a spider spin a web, you start to wonder. Is this all there is?" he explains.

"You feel cut off from the outside world. A lot of guys drink or do drugs to beat off the boredom. I drank too, but to me it was a dead end street. So I began drawing and writing poems and stories instead."

Barney, whose cartoons and stories have appeared in publications like the "Green Gold Newspaper," the loggers union paper for the Local 1-71 I.W.A., The Ladysmith Chronicle, the Duncan Citizen, the Nanaimo Times and the Business Logger. He also self publishes his own work. His 5 books are "For Loggers Only, Stories For Loggers only, More For Loggers Only, Poems For Loggers Only and Riggin Rhymes. His books have sold extremely well to the people in the industry who appreciate Barney's off the wall humor and "tell it like it is" approach. Barney has had no formal training in art when he began cartooning. It was a hit and miss thing he admits. Mostly miss. His last book Timberbeasts of the Great Bear Rain Forests is ready for publication and Gord is also working on a Logging Glossary of all the logging terms, old and new. His new book A Room at Murphy’s is a novel based on the lives of many loggers that lived in a rooming house on Carrol Street in Vancouver in the 1950’s.

Barney ran a Grapple Yarder for different companies before going to work with Mount Sicker Logging in the Cowichan Valley. "Every once in awhile I go into a camp as a relief operator so I can get some new material," he says with a smile. He lives in Ladysmith and has two sons, Clay and Martin, both who work in the area, but not in the woods.

Barney has his views about saving the forests, by the environmentalists. All the problems are blamed on the logger, who is caught in the middle. It's a dangerous job and all the loggers want to do is earn a living to support their families. Asking Gord Barney what is ahead for himself. "I'd like to work at home writing stories, poetry and cartooning if I could make a living at it. But I love the camps though, listening to all the stories and working with a great bunch of guys.”

Gord Barney was born in Vancouver in 1947 and moved to Ladysmith on Vancouver Island at a very young age. His father George was a faller for Mac Millan, Bloedel at Copper Canyon near Chemainus for 31 years. Gord went to work at an early age in the woods as did most young men around Lady- smith at that time. The jobs were many and he chose the forest industry. He started work punkin whistles on the Riggin' and moved upward until he was a machine operator. He logged up and down the West Coast of British Columbia and the Queen Charlotte Islands in many of the small logging camps. He always drew cartoons as a young man and then put them to use, drawing caricatures of his logging buddies and made fun of some of the woods bosses as he improved his technique. He wrote down stories that he heard in the bunkhouse on scraps of paper and then in later years copied them on to a computer disk, to write into a book one day. He still works in the forest industry and lives in Ladysmith which is near his two sons Clay and Martin. Gord has drawn many logging cartoons and submits written material to the Green Gold Newspaper regularly. He is well known as a Logger poet, cartoonist and writer in the Vancouver Island area.

Bill Owens, Editor, I.W.A. Green Gold Newspaper (Local 1-71 )