Hiway16 Magazine... about people and places in north-central British Columbia, Canada

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Andrew's Office on the Road

by Debi Osborne

I arrived in my big Chevy and looked up, waaayyy up to see where I had to climb to spend the next eight hours with Andrew Yewchuk. It was 7:20 a:m. and he was already at the Houston Forest Product's scales, having safely delivered his first load of logs for the day.

As owner/operator of a 1999 Peterbilt, Andrew had agreed to take me en route across the ferry at Babine Lake to pick up his second load. Sounded easy. Heck, even sounded boring. But what did I know?

(Click for another great photo)

Andrew Yewchuk seated in his "Office". A picture of his daughter, Kayla, rides on the dash.

From so high up in the cab, cars now looked like annoying bugs as we made our way down Highway 16. I felt large, even powerful sitting up there. "Can't we run them over?" But before we had a chance, we turned off at Topley, on the empty stretch of pavement headed to Granisle. Almost immediately, there appeared a young moose, then a coyote. Hey, wasn't that a bobcat? "Some days you see more critters than others", Andrew says. "And I get to see so many beautiful sunrises." I thought of the cardboard pictures of animals that surround my computer and began to feel the first tinge of envy. It would get worse.

Headed empty across frozen Babine Lake

Right after the Spawning Channels, we turned off and found our place in the line-up of logging trucks. A large ferry, the Babine Charger takes forty minutes round-trip to ferry 8 to 9 trucks across the frozen Babine Lake.

One hundred and fifty feet beneath the barge is a submerged airhose that releases enough bubbles to keep the ice broken up between the two shores. Andrew usually takes this time to read a book but today he takes me upstairs to meet the captain of the Babine Charger "Captain Crunch" (Craig MacArthur). I learn that 140 trucks cross here everyday!






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