Caul cuts through loggers’ competition

The 74th-annual loggers’ competition drew a large crowd to the grandstand at the Emo Fair last Friday morning.
The event began at 9:30 a.m. as nine contestants competed in the nine events that eventually would crown the champion logger.
The clear sentimental favourite was perennial champ Gaston Godbout. The wiry 74-year-old great-grandfather has won the competition more than 20 times—and showed no signs of slowing down this year.
Although many of the competitors were a fraction of his age, the soft-spoken Godbout still had the competitive spirit.
“I can feel it now,” he said after scoring five points with the fastest finish in the chainsaw speed buck event.
A loud roar of support could be heard from the grandstand when Godbout and his partner—grandson Duane Loveday—started the two-man cross-cut saw.
The pair represented three generations of proud logging tradition in the area as they furiously sawed through the log in 10.82 seconds—good enough for second place behind the father-and-son duo of Kelvin and Jason Caul.
“It makes it easy,” Loveday said about competing with his grandfather as his partner. But, will he be able to compete in 50 years?
“I don’t know, we’ll see,” laughed Loveday.
Certainly the most artistic event of the competition was the chair carve. For this one, it’s not a matter of how fast the task can be done, but rather how well it is executed.
Each logger is armed with a chainsaw and a stump. Within a matter of minutes, each had skillfully carved a usable piece of furniture out of the wood.
The designs were amazing and left many in the crowd shouting out requests for the tiny chairs. Each one then was judged and points were awarded accordingly.
Dion Godbout’s high-backed chair won the event as Gaston could only look on and laugh. “I made a mistake,” he smiled. “I cut the wrong side.”
Nevertheless, Gaston confidently scored first-place finishes in the axe throw and the bucksaw events to give him a commanding lead with only a handful left. But Kelvin Caul’s signature event—the pulpwood toss—was coming up next.
When Caul stepped up and gripped the pulpwood, the announcer jokingly warned the crowd to get out of the way because he’s known for his Herculean tosses.
As Caul released the chunk of wood, it sailed through the air—end over end—landing an amazing 12.42 meters from the start line. Caul easily won the event with two combined tosses measuring 24.35 meters-out distancing the next closest competitor by a full four meters.
It would prove to be a turning point as the burly Caul racked up 34 points over the nine events to edge out Gaston Godbout’s 31. Organizer Kathy Rea then crowned Caul the 2002 champion logger.
“It feels pretty good,” said Caul, who also noted he would use his winnings to support the Emo Fair.
“I’m going straight to the beer garden,” he laughed.