Canadian logging talent arrives in Mactaquac for lumberjack championships | CBC News

Being a lumberjack isn’t just a job anymore — it’s become an international sport.

Brittany MacLean, a timber-sports competitor from Prince Edward Island, first got into it by joining the UNB team, which competes against other schools. 

“I thought I would give it a try. [I had] never heard of it before,” she said.

“I just fell in love with it.”

MacLean is one of the 40 competitors from across Canada who will be competing in the Canadian Lumberjack Championships in Mactaquac Provincial Park, near Fredericton, on Friday and Saturday.

She said a lot of the events pit competitors against the clock and involve all of the traditional sawing and tree-felling used in logging camps in days gone by.

In the 1800s and well into the 1900s, New Brunswick lumberjacks — young men or farmers — would make their way to the woods for the winter, where they’d stay in tight sleeping quarters by night and chop trees by day, looking to earn some money for the warmer months. 

These days, for athletes like MacLean, it’s that physical challenge that attracts her to the sport. 

“You’re getting a whole body workout when you do lumberjack sports.”

Rod Cumberland, one of the organizers of the championships and a competitor in the master’s division, said he ran a competition out of St. Stephen for 25 years and started this one in 2022.

It is taking place at Centennial Park, within Mactaquac, where the wood will be used by the park once it’s been chopped, he said.

Other skills will also be tested, including axe-throwing. Competitors will have to throw as many double-bit axes at a bull’s eye as possible in a minute. 

Then, on Friday night, an elimination event will demonstrate another part of the traditional lumberjack routine. After chopping wood all morning, Cumberland said, lumberjacks would need nourishment around noon, so they’d boil a kettle for tea. That’s the basis of the elimination event. 

“We give our competitors a block of cedar, a little can of soapy water and five matches and an axe,” he said.

“Then, on the word ‘Go,’ they have to split the block, make shavings and pencils, get a raging fire going and get it hot enough to boil the water up over the top of the can.”

Cumberland said competitors have three minutes to do that and they’ll need to do it over and over again, with teams getting eliminated each round.

He is expecting a turnout of 1,000 or more people for the weekend competition, and it’s a chance to see the current Canadian champion compete — Ben Cumberland — who happens to be his son.

New Brunswickers Ben, Nathan Cumberland — Rod’s other son — and Marcel Dupuis, who are all competing in Fredericton this weekend, will also all be heading to the STIHL Timbersports World Championship in Toulouse, France, in November, representing Canada, said Cumberland.

The world championship will welcome 120 athletes from more than 20 countries.

Cumberland said the show in Mactaquac is an opportunity to see some of Canada’s best.

“We’ve got, you know, the original extreme sport that people see on TSN happening right in our backyard here in Fredericton,” he said.