Although it has been 50 years, Marnie Melnyk’s eyes still fill with tears when she recalls the day her father died logging outside Squamish when she was 14.
“It is like it happened yesterday,” she says.
“My aunt driving up to the bus station at the high school and somebody coming and getting me off the bus and my brother is crying in the car…. It was an emotional time.”
Melnyk’s father was Geordie Dickie, a faller and Squamish councillor who was killed by a falling tree on Oct. 22, 1965 when he was 38 years old.
On Saturday, the Dickie family gathered for a ceremony to unveil a granite memorial bench dedicated to Dickie and his older brother Donald who died in 1977, also by a falling tree while working in the woods.
The brothers had come to Squamish in 1960, when the highway first opened from Vancouver and had a logging company in Squamish called Terminal Contracting.
Melnyk said the memorial bench is more than a dedication to her dad and uncle; it is a reminder of the role forestry played and still plays in Squamish.
“I just want people to know that the forest industry is important,” she said.
“People need to know what the history was, and granted we are the outdoor capital of Canada, but we need to know the history and the sacrifices people made for this great community to be here.”
While deaths in the logging industry were more common in the past, fatalities still occur. In 1995, 15 workers died working in the forest industry in B.C. Eight died in 2014. This summer saw a cluster of four deaths in July, according to WorkSafeBC.
So far this year, five forestry workers have been killed.
“Behind every statistic is a person, a worker who is out there doing the work,” said Al Johnson, vice-president of prevention services at WorkSafeBC. “One death is one too many.”
WorkSafeBC performed 30 days of inspections that included 44 forestry worksites – primarily manual tree-falling sites – along the B.C. coast in September. Inspectors issued 49 non-compliance orders. Some of the orders related to poor falling cuts, unnecessary brushing (when a tree brushes another tree as it falls), lack of first aid equipment and insufficient supervision, Johnson said.
Getting logs out of the wood has become more complicated in recent years, increasing risks, according to Johnson.
“The terrain is steeper, the congestion around the area where the worker might be working is greater,” he said.
The timber is accessed from more remote areas today compared with previous years.
Having multiple contractors onsite is also a modern concern.
“There used to be, in years gone by, some very large contractor companies that were out there and everybody worked for one company…. Today, that same group is working for a multitude of different companies,” he said, adding that careful planning can reduce injuries and deaths in forestry. “With all the success that has been there to drive down the work-related death rate, or the fatality rate in the industry, and that is a good news story, more needs to be done and more can be done.”
The Dickie memorial bench is downtown at the Workers’ Memorial in Pavilion Park.
