DCHP-2

camboose cambuse [< Cdn F < F cambuse, store, hut, galley] Hist. DCHP-1 (pre-1967)

• 1 † n.

  a stove, used by voyageurs, explorers, etc.

  See also: caboose (def. 1)  

  • See the note at caboose.

  • 1835  (1945)  He sold a . . . ship's cooking Camboose half worn for 2 [beaver].

• 2 n.

  an open fireplace in the living quarters of a lumber camp.

  See also: caboose (def. 2b)  shanty fire  

  • 1883  It requires very considerable mechanical ingenuity . . . to construct the camboose and the opening in the roof immediately above it. . . .
  • 1891  . . . the fireplace . . . has . . . the very queer name of "camboose ". . . .
  • 1947  (1963)  The fireplace, the actual "camboose," was built on a square foundation of stone and sand.
  • 1964  The central fireplace or "cambuse" was the remarkable feature of the shanty. Beneath a large hole in the roof, a roaring fire burned day and night from November to April. . . .

• 3 n.

  a camp at which logging (def. 2) is carried on. See picture at shanty.

  See also: camboose camp (def. 1)  camboose shanty  logging (def. 2)  shanty ((n.)) (def. 1b)  

  • 1923  He had heard talk around the camboose, and at noon in the still, snowy pine woods . . . that the man who married Marie-Louise must be a better man than her father.
  • 1964  A camboose was made of the forest at hand, of large pine logs for the sides and "scooped" cedar for the roof.

• 4 n.

  a camboose camp (def. 2).

  See also: camboose camp (def. 2)  shanty ((n.)) (def. 2a)  

  • 1960  The lumbermen of legend, mackinaw-clad, hobnail-shod, this was the lumberjack of the Ottawa; the Spartan life of the camboose, the giant drive, the roistering plague of Quebec. . . .

• 5 n.

  on a lumber raft, a simple shed, often without walls, having a floor of deep sand and used as a sheltered fireplace for cooking purposes.

  See also: caboose (def. 2a)  

  • 1963  On the [Ottawa] river the men lived on rafts of square-cut logs, with a small cookhouse, called the "caribouse," [sic] in the centre of each.