Blurring the lines between family home video and documentary, Sawing a Log (2024) is part of an ongoing archival project that chronicles my father’s logging activity. Born into a family of loggers, hunters, and bush people, my father has stayed close to the labour of those who came before him. Working as a city firefighter for most of his life, bush work has not played a central role in supporting him—or our family—financially. Regardless of this lack of necessity, he has continued to engage in this intensive manual labour that takes a toll his body.
Filmed just 10 weeks after my father underwent a shoulder replacement, Sawing a Log led me to consider the political dimensions of this labour. Although my initial aim was to document my father sawing a log, recording this video became the starting point for reflection—and speculation—on the reasons why my father continued to do this work. What set of values, affective relationships, and commitments drive our loyalties to labour, and how do our bodies absorb the shock of these practices?
My interest in this work is rooted in loyalty to my kin, and in a pride shaped by the class dynamics that have fostered resourcefulness across my lineage. From my own subject-position as a gay man, I consider the gendered dynamics of this labour and how social constructions are imbued with the labour we are drawn to, or find ourselves engaged in. Logging’s legacy in Canada, particularly across the Ottawa Valley, is marked by a history of violence against Indigenous peoples—displacement and erasure. Loggers throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, many of whom were Irish and French settlers, are implicated in the nation-building project of Canada. This project is a reflection on the histories, social constructions and conditions that shape our attachment to labour.