Sculpture Honors Logging Legacy In Enumclaw

Power, strength and danger. Retired logger Michael sees all these qualities in the larger-than-life bronze figures recently installed at the new Logging Legacy in downtown Enumclaw. A with his goad stick and a joined by a are all bent forward, their backs and their shoulders straining atop a huge slab of sandstone.

and hobnail boots push forward as one.

Still to be installed is a 20-foot long, 5-foot- diameter bronze log that will connect to the oxen by bronze chain. A Tacoma foundry is putting the log pieces together.

“I think it is a great thing,” said of the memorial in his hometown.

“For some of us, growing up with those men – dads and stuff – they were our heroes,” said , 61. “They need to be remembered. The military has its memorials.”

The park will pay tribute to the more than 8,000 dead and 65,000 injured in the in the state in the last 100 years, according to Tom Poe, president of the Logging Legacy Foundation. It has raised close to $550,000 since 2002.

, who grew up in a logging family and worked in the industry for nearly 26 years until his knees gave out, knows the toll the woods can take on bodies and lives.

He was injured a couple of times. He also remembers a hot July afternoon in 1984 when his best friend died in his arms on a hillside in the woods after being run over by a tractor.

is a jeweler, not a logger, but he has a of community and the history of Enumclaw. He also had the vision for a memorial.

Enumclaw isn’t the it once was, especially with the closure of ’s White River Mill in 2003. But said there’s still a of logging in the surrounding woods.

He took his idea for a memorial to Enumclaw Dan Snider. The artist came back with the stylized oxen and dragging a log, the same kind of logging that cleared the plateau in the 1860s.

“I started carrying around a small mock-up in bronze,” said.

The nonprofit foundation was formed and the fundraising began.

The city donated parkland in front of the Enumclaw Library. said it took eight or nine meetings with city committees and commissions to get the go-ahead.

“It wasn’t without opposition,” he said. “It’s different, a little and meant to be striking, enduring and tell the story for a long time.”

Donations came primarily from private individuals, close to 300 of them, he said. There also were corporate donors, including , Mutual of Enumclaw and the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe.

Chuck Nelson from the Wilkeson Sandstone Quarry donated the 136,000 pounds of sandstone base for the bronzes as well as for the benches, rocks and pavers in the park.

Nelson’s huge mobile crane lifted the heavy pieces into place.

said that if he had to bid out the project today, it would cost $2 million.

“Both the artist and the foundry felt it would be a signature piece and they were willing to work more for exposure,” he said.

said that for him the work epitomizes “the resolve and toughness these loggers had. This was the spirit of the Northwest. It was tough and rough.”

Kevin Keating of The Bronze Works in Tacoma is rushing to cast and assemble the bronze log in time for the June 14 dedication. The log is made up of 84 pieces that must be welded together. Each of the oxen had 65 pieces.

The entire sculpture will use 15,000 pounds of bronze, Keating said. The foundry has been working on it for 18 months.

“It’s pretty much the largest overall project we have ever done,” he said.

Keating said those involved were proud to be part of a local project of such magnitude.

“So many of our bronze pieces go outside the area,” he said. “We don’t get to brag about them.”

The oxen drew immediate attention when they were installed. A plan to cover the sculpture until dedication day was scrapped.

“They look so powerful,” Carol Smith said as she and her husband, Brit, strolled around the memorial last week. Landscapers were hard at work.

“There is such a rich history here,” she said. “I think it’s sad there is no real logging presence anymore.”

Allan Magstadt of Enumclaw Landscaping also liked what he saw.

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Thursday, June 5th, 2008

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Tom Thomson Mystery Reviewed

The black flies and mosquitoes were so thick he gave up on sketching and set out to go fishing alone one Sunday in Park.

Tom Thomson’s canoe was found floating upside down a few hours later Equipment Landscaping.

His bloated body surfaced in Canoe Lake the next week – shrouded in a mystery still not laid to rest more than 90 years later.

How did the famous Toronto painter die on July 8, 1917: was it by accident, Equipment Landscaping suicide or murder?

Who found his body?

Where are his remains buried?

These questions are explored in one of three new sections of Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History, an educational website launched by the University of Victoria in 1997.

“It, for me, was just a compelling story,” said project research director Gregory Klages, a graduate student in the joint communication and culture program at York and Ryerson Universities.

“It had all the great makings of a great mystery: a suspicious death, accusations of murder, suicide, accidental death, a question about where Thomson’s body was buried.

“There just seemed to be so many questions.”

Visitors to the site  Equipment – called Death on a Painted Lake: the Tom Thomson Tragedy – are encouraged to tackle these questions themselves by combing through primary sources such as letters, journal entries and newspaper reports and draw their own conclusions about his life and death.

They will explore a young country grappling with its first great war and a landscape marred by the .

They will meet a cast of characters including his family, park residents turned murder suspects long after the fact, fellow artists like Group of Seven founder A.Y. Jackson and the various people – including journalist Roy MacGregor – who have investigated the story of his death.

“Growing up in a rural high school, we didn’t have the opportunity to go to museums, to go to art galleries, to handle these primary documents,” said Klages.

“Something like this site would have been tremendously useful.

“It’s to allow students, on the one hand, to get access to the primary documents, to learn how to handle them [by] themselves responsibly as historians, as critical thinkers, Equipment and also by handling these primary documents, to make some decisions for themselves about what might have happened,” he said, adding they will be learning about Canadian history and art as they go along.

The site also offers contemporary interpretations of the evidence, including a report by Chief Forensic Pathologist of Ontario Michael Pollanen.

Pollanen concluded the coroner at the time – who never examined the body – was wrong to agree with a doctor’s opinion that the cause of Thomson’s death was accidental drowning.

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Saturday, April 5th, 2008

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