DCHP-1 Online

crib Lumbering

• 1a n. in the Ottawa Valley especially, one of the small units or assemblages of logs that, in groups of 25 or 30, formed a raft of timber, used in driving from the camps to the mills or shipping points.

  See also: dram  log crib  raft ((n.)) (def. 2 and note)  timber crib  

  • 1806  (1903)  It is an immense flotilla . . . made up of numerous sections or cribs of timber, lashed together by green withes, which are easily detached from the flotilla or raft, and which are capable of being rowed by long rude oars.
  • 1829  When spring draws on, they form the lumber into small rafts, called cribs, and drop away down the rapids to market.
  • 1864  (1955)  . . . down we shot at a terrible pace, till . . . we lodged upon the first "apron" with a bump and a crash that sent the timbers jumping beneath our feet, and deluged the fore part of the crib with spray and foam.
  • 1963  . . . the Ottawa raft was a different species, built for different conditions. Most of the Ottawa rapids were passed by slides, and the Ottawa "cribs," which went down them, could not safely have run the St. Lawrence rapids.

• 1b n. West a small raft of logs.

  • 1916  Tied up to the Manitou shore were a half-dozen cribs or rafts of timber which should be floating eastward down the Sagalac.
  • 1959  Beamish's Company . . . had built a channel or series of steps to the river below down which "cribs" of lumber could be guided.

• 2 n. Hist. a framework made of floats (def. 1) and traverses, into which staves were stowed for rafting down the St. Lawrence River from the Great Lakes.

  See also: float (def. 1)  traverse ((1)) ((n.))  

  • 1945  . . . some general standards for "merchantable" timber were set up [and] rules of pilotage from "Chateauguay to Montreal," for rafts of timber and cribs of staves, were drawn up.