Postcard Memories is a new biweekly series on InnisfilToday, where we share stories of the town's past from the Innisfil Historical Society
As a teenager in the 1920s, Belle Ewart resident Jack Fisher had gotten a job helping Harvey Whan, who had obtained the right to take old logs out of the bay.
The logs were mostly large beams that had been at the bottom of the lake since there was a lumber mill nearby.
Harvey and Jack used to dynamite logs and they would come to the surface and stay. The logs would stay there for about an hour and the men would then put a pair of ice tongs and a rope on them and drag them to the shore with a rowboat.
There was a lot of lumber, long beams about 14-16 inches square.
Harvey had a large pot sitting on the stove with a roaring fire going. He had the pot filled with dynamite, heating it to get the nitroglycerine out of it. He would then pour this off into small medicine bottles, and had fuses about six inches long through the cork and then put hot wax over it.
The pair would then take them out to the boat and Harvey would light the fuse and let them burn down to the cork before throwing them in the water and letting the logs blow up. He got away with it for years and sold lumber locally.
Story from Jack Fisher of Belle Ewart in the Skunks and Scholars book from the Innisfil Historical Society
