UUTENA TORONTOSSA?
Mitä kaupungin perinteinen suomalaiskenttä
voi tarjota tulokkaalle?
When historians think of the Timmins area and of Finnish Canadians they often recall its turbulent and tragic beginning.
First, in 1906, there were the two lucky Finns, Johan Pennanen and Vihtori Mattson, who discovered gold by Night Hawk Lake. Then there was the gold rush of 1909 that brought many hopeful Finns and immigrants of other nationalities to the region.
The devastating fire of 1911 killed about a hundred people, among them many Finns. And if this was not bad enough, there was a long and bitter strike during the winter of 1912–1913 and numerous devastating mining accidents that claimed the lives of so many miners.
Yet immigrants kept moving to Timmins; among the earliest settlers were also Finnish women. Soon the first Finnish child, and quite likely the first non-native child, Senja Kyllönen, was born in Timmins. Finns built halls in Pottsville, Timmins, and South Porcupine and started political, cultural, and sports organizations. Boarding houses and rooming houses - poortitalot ja ruuminkihaussit - gave a temporary home to the pätsärit - the bachelors - who worked in the mines. By World War I, an active and colourful Finnish community had been established in the area. This history deserves its own book.
Today, however, Margaret Kangas has asked me to speak about a less known aspect of local history: the pioneering women who worked in the surrounding lumber camps. These brave women made Canadian history, often without realizing it.
No pushovers these ladies
Just imagine what Canada was like ninety years ago when the Victorian view of women dominated here. Women were supposed to be modest and quiet. They wore long dresses to hide their ankles - after all, they were told no man could be trusted to control himself if he was exposed to the sight of women’s ankles. Single women were not allowed to spend time with men without chaperones. Women’s modesty had to be protected.
Into the midst of this view of women, this British value system, came the defiant sisters from Finland, the tenacious, - sisukas - some might say stubborn women, who broke these rules, who were free spirits, and who showed remarkable independence.
“Minua ei ole orjaksi luotu” - “I was not born to be a slave” they protested as they left Finland and came to Canada.
Most of them traveled to Timmins from Finland as single women. They took jobs as maids or worked in rooming houses and boarding houses that were full of men, some single, some married with wives in Finland. No chaperones, no illusions of life of a leisure, instead they came to work hard and they came to make money.
Lumber camps best place to make money
Soon they discovered that the best opportunity to make money was to work in the lumber camps.
Lets examine briefly what the working conditions were like? How much money did the women make? What about the social dynamics in the lumber camps? And most importantly how did these Finnish Canadian women change the course of Canadian history?
The camps were in the wilderness. No roads, no neighbours, except occasionally some native communities. Often the women were simply dropped off at some railroad mile post and then expected to walk for miles carrying supplies.
First they lived in tents, then in log bunkhouses. And they worked hard. Rain or shine, weekday or holiday, every day and often night too was a workday, the lumberjacks had to eat and the women fed them. Fortunately some of their stories from 1920s and 1930s have survived:
Martta Laitinen
There were 25 men working at the lumber camp. It was a small camp run by a Finnish man and his wife and they needed a dishwasher…and they wanted a three month contract for January, February, and March. So I agreed. I was a ‘tiskari’ (dishwasher) and I had to work long days. I started in the morning already at four o’clock and worked untill night as they had no other helper. I had to clean the men’s camp, the one where they lived, that I cleaned and I had to help the Mrs, she was the cook, and I had to do the dishes and all other that kind of work.
Impi Kanerva
It was really hard to bring in the supplies for food. We brought nothing ready made. The cook had the worst job. Often the cook had to put the alarm on in the middle of the night to make the dough to be ready to bake in the morning. We dishwashers could sleep the night although it still made for a long day. The men were called to breakfast at six o’clock. The food was good, you se it was a Finnish camp. We made mountains of cookies.
Finnish women revolutionized lumber camp fare
Finnish women soon earned a reputation as good lumber camp cooks. One lumberjack told me: “In most camps the meals were either bacon and beans or beans and bacon and you can imagine what it was like in the bunkhouse after 40 men had dined on beans.” The Finnish women introduced new foods: plenty of meat and potatoes, fish, a variety of soups, eggs, rye bread, porridge, pancakes and cookies, and they set a strict standard of cleanliness at the camps.
Alva Korri
The food was wonderful – many kinds of everything. Breakfast at six o’clock; most men would make their own lunches, everything was ready for them. Then they would go into the bush. Those working near the camp would come in for coffee about 10:00 a.m. There was all kinds of goodie cakes and stuff. There was always quite a few at lunch. All afternoon there was coffee, then supper, and evening coffee. It was really something!
Men who had once experienced meals at a Finnish camp began to demand better food in all the camps they worked in and to ask for Finnish female cooks. The lumber camp owners competed to get the experienced cooks. They visited Finnish boarding houses to entice women to come to the camps and offered them lucrative contracts to sign. They knew that if they could advertise that their camp had a good Finnish cook, there would be no shortage of willing lumberjacks to sign on. One Canadian lumberjack recalls: “Not a man could stand half up to the Finnish women. God, they even used to scrub the benches that guys sat on.”
As the word spread and the supply of cooks could not meet the demand, women were able to argue for the same wages as male cooks received. It may come as a surprise that the highest paid worker in the lumber camps was the camp cook and the dishwashers were well compensated as well. Finnish women, many of them newly arrived immigrants, could not believe the wages they received and proudly boasted:
Martta Laitinen: I received a good salary, I got forty-five dollars a month and free room and board. So I had over hundred dollars when I left the camp.
Impi Kanerva: I got eighty dollars a month wages as compared to thirty dollars a month in the city as a maid.
Aino Norkooli, a young, single woman, was just bubbling with enthusiasm when she wrote a letter to her sister in Finland in 1925:
There are twenty men here and I am here to cook for them…I have one boy as my helper…I get $60 a month wages which is a good salary but I sure have to work hard for it…in the morning I must get up about five o’clock and then I run non-stop until nine o’clock. All the time I have to work and try to bake as much as I can manage…I am trying to learn to become a cook because there is always work for them and a good salary. I know even now around here on the camps women get sometimes over $100 a month when they cook for fifty men and that is an excellent salary. And one day I will get it too and then I will come to Finland because I have decided that when I get $300 then I will come to Finland. Maybe I will have it by the spring.
$100 a month-unheard of wages
$100 a month - these wages were unheard of for single, newly arrived immigrant women. But the wages came with many sacrifices. The Finnish women who chose this career decided that it was worth the agony, the isolation, the black flies, and the long hours of work.
As Aina Mackie concluded: “It was the money alright, that’s what drove me to the bush; eventually I even learned to like it.” Some, like Nelma Sillanpää’s mother, swore that they would never again return to the camp life as it was too lonely and harsh – and a few months later signed yet another contract to work at a lumber camp.
Some families also moved to the bush and many young Finnish children grew up in the wilderness. When they reached school age they were often boarded in the cities or took correspondence courses in the camps.
However, it was not only the money that enticed women to go to the lumber camps. Women also enjoyed the sense of power they had. The cook was, after all, crucial to the success of the camp. If the cook quit the camp would have to close until a new cook was found. The camp life also offered social advantages – the odds were greatly in women’s favour – just imagine 40 men and one or two women alone for months in the wilderness!
Unwritten code of conduct
It seems that the camps had unwritten rules and codes of behaviour that insisted the women be left alone. I was suspicious when I kept hearing from women how the men respected them at the camps. Finally I asked Aina Mackie who was over 100 years old and surely had nothing to hide. She confirmed the fact that, “yes” men left her alone in the camps but then she slapped her face and said “oh how many times I wished they hadn’t!”
When the camps became unionized and strikes occurred it became important for the union organizers to convince the cooks to walk off the job. Without a cook, the other bush workers would soon leave the camp. In the lumber camps of northern Ontario many Finnish women learned to become involved in labour unions and radical activities while determined to improve the working conditions in the camps.
Changed Canadian history
Thus, the Finnish lumber camp cooks and dishwashers changed Canadian history. They were the first women to work in the lumber camps. They demanded and received equal wages with male cooks at a time when this was unheard of. Their stubbornness to insist on a measure of cleanliness and reasonably good food raised the standards in all northern Ontario lumber camps and became the standard to strive for.
After World War II women of other nationalities began also working in the camps. By then, women’s presence was no longer a novelty but an expectation.
It was the Finnish women, however, who cleared the path for all women to the lumber camp jobs and who set the standards for women’s work there. It is great to be able to finally recognize their contributions to Canadian history and economy.
Sources:
Margaret Kechnie and Marge Reitsma-Street ed., Changing Lives: Women and the Northern Ontario Experience
Varpu Lindström, Defiant Sisters: A Social History of Finnish Immigrant Women in Canada
Ian Radforth, Bushworkers and Bosses: Logging in Northern Ontario 1900-1980
Nelma Sillanpää, Under the Northern Lights: My Memories of Life in the Finnish Community of Northern Ontario
Interviews by Lennard Sillanpää and Varpu Lindström
