Since the advent of the Iron Age, house building with whole timbers has been a common mode in the coniferous forest of Russia, the Scandinavian areas and Central Europe. Beginning in the 17th century, due to the influences of the Swede-Finns in the Delaware Valley and to new methods emerging in Eastern Canada, log structures soon were widespread over the North American continent. By the mid-twentieth century, however, log building was mainly the preserve of specialists. The resurgence of a back-to-the-land style of living in the 1970s and ’80s, combined with Allan Mackie’s books and promotion of log building in Canada, made the art of building with whole logs fashionable once again.
A broadaxing scene from the old B. Allan Mackie School in British Columbia, Graduate Course, October 1982
