Care & craftsmanship transformed some scorched Pioneer logs

Just like the Phoenix that rose from the ashes, something has risen from some of the burnt logs at the Pioneer Log Homes site South of Williams Lake.

On May 5^th several Fire Departments responded to a log pile that was burning and were on site for over 11 hours.

Past President and Founder of Pioneer Log Homes, Brian Reid Sr said there were several hundred logs that were scorched and for some there was no saving.

“We did our best to go through and grade, and some of them we had to just grind up and send to the Co-Generation Plant. It was kind of a salvage operation for a lot of it.”

Reid Sr noted instead of letting the logs go to waste, Pioneer transformed them into something desirable.

“Not every tragedy ends in despair. If you’ve been building as long as Pioneer has, over fifty years, you have to look at it and say what could we do with that and we needed an entryway to a property in Lac La Hache.”

Reid said when a log or a mass timber burns it only goes in so far and then it will stop for a certain amount of time and the core of the logs were still good of the ones we picked so used it for this entryway.

“I believe this is a tribute to the people who actually go out and fight the fires so we could make something that they saved. That log deck could have burned until there was nothing but ashes left. The Fire Departments that came to the site and fought the fire it’s a tribute to them.”

He said the entryway has two verticals that are eighteen feet long and weigh about eighteen hundred pounds each and the cross at the top is twenty-four feet long and sound enough to be there for the next forty to fifty years.

“Every entryway I see looks the same, two posts and a header, this is one that looks different. It definitely stands out of every entryway from here to Alberta to Manitoba to Saskatchewan, all the way through, I don’t think you’ll ever see an entryway like this,” Reid said.

On his Facebook post it reads “Each log carries the memory of fire, the strength of survival and the beauty of rebirth.”