Canadian Forestry Corps Company No 25 sawmill area Mar Lodge
The image is courtesy of Alistair Cassie, Ballater, who received the images from a contact in Australia.
Canadian Forestry Corps (CFC) Company No 25 was one of eight companies based in the Deeside area as part of CFC District No 2. Records indicate the Mar Lodge camp construction began in December 1941 aided by men from Companies 2, 3, 4, 13 and 16. The team of men that formed Company No 25 (around 200 men) arrived in Deeside at the end of March, early April 1942 and no doubt began timber production shortly after.
A beautifully constructed timber bridge which has all the hallmarks of the work of the Canadian Forestry Timber Corps. It is a crossing point of the Dee to deliver cut timber products to the other (south) side of the river by light rail. Loading bays for lorries were located there to take the products onwards to Ballater rail head and Aberdeen harbour. The bridge will also have been a shortcut to the camp from further down steam.
A website by Bob Briggs and Jude Mitchell has provided many details and the total timber production of the No 25 Company is listed: (which has been roughly converted to cubic metres) Sawn Lumber 47,017m3, Lagging as approx 140m3, Birch Spoolwood as 90 m3, Tonnage wood as 3500m3, Pulpwood 750 m3, Quartered props 50 m3, Pit props 280 m3, Slabs 16400 m3,Logs and boat skins 230 m3, 412 Poles say 100 m3 totalling 68,557 m3 or around 62 thousand tonnes!
The various categories are a revelation and certainly pulp wood was delivered directly into the Aberdeen pulp and paper mills on occasions. What were the slabs used for as there is a very high volume of them?
More details of the CFC No 25 Company and the Mar Lodge camp will be available in the next Record on this site.
[http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~jmitchell/genealogy/cfc45.html] "ERROR 404"
N.B. this hosted link on the Rootsweb website has now been "buried" behind further index's as "static content"!:-
RootsWeb "Hosted websites will become read-only beginning in early 2024. At that time, all logins will be disabled, but hosted sites will remain on RootsWeb as static content. Website owners wishing to maintain their sites must migrate to a different hosting provider before 2024"
The revised link to Bob Briggs and Jude Mitchell's data, as of January 2024, is:-
https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~jmitchell/genealogy/cfc.html
This revised link (please copy and paste into your browser) with the kind permission of Bob Briggs takes readers to a very detailed website constructed from information provided by Bob Briggs and Jude Mitchell. The camp and bridge locations, the volumes of timer produced by each company, lists of all the CFC men at the camp, images and much more with links to many other information sources. A really great resource.
Revised BR 2024-01-09
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Groups: Canadian and Newfoundland sawmillers in Scotland, Forestry Areas, Northeast Scotland , Sawmills, pulp mills, chipboard mills, War time constructions and defence structures in woods and forests