Back when logging was the lifeblood of small towns and lumberjacks skillfully wielded axes in forests and wrestled with cut trees in B.C.’s coastal waters, Jubiel Wickheim was the absolute master of birling.
That impossible task of balancing on a slippery, spinning floating log for as long as possible without falling into the chuck was a highlight of logger sports.
And there was nobody better than Wickheim, who died on Feb. 17 at age 90.
The son of Norwegian immigrants, Wickheim — affectionately known as Jube — grew up on a homestead in Saseenos near Sooke. He mastered birling as a kid during the Depression, when he gathered logs for milling with his brothers at Cooper’s Cove in Sooke Basin.
His uncanny sense of balance and ability to outlast opponents would earn Wickheim 10 world championships between 1956 and 1969 — a Guinness World record that still stands today. Between them, he and brother Ardiel, who died in 2013, won 15 world titles during logging-sports competitions around the globe.
They were the stars of All Sooke Days, which for decades was an epicentre of logging sports, and travelled to competitions and exhibitions around the world, from Japan and Australia to Europe and the United States.
Wickheim went on to produce logger-sports travelling shows with his own company, Wickheim Timber Shows, across Canada and the U.S., employing loggers from the Island and elsewhere in B.C.
Wickheim was considered an ambassador for what former premier W.A.C. Bennett once declared the official industry sport of British Columbia.
“He was proud of being a logger,” Wickheim’s daughter Sonja Ganton said in an interview. “He went all around the world promoting forestry on the Island and B.C. That’s what he did. It was never about his titles — it was about what forestry meant to Canada. Dad really felt that way.”
Ganton remembers that at the end of every school year, all the Wickheim children were “loaded up” to head to the Calgary Stampede and other logging-sports shows across Canada and the U.S.
She said it was fun to watch the axe work, the climbing competitions and — of course — her caulk-booted father and uncle spinning on logs.
“Dad’s whole sense of balance was pretty amazing. Dad and uncle Ardy were very nimble,” said Ganton. “Part of their act in some of the shows was putting roller skates on and doing headstands and handstands on a chair on the log … it was hard to believe, and pretty amazing.”
Many of Wickheim’s notes and artifacts have been donated to the B.C. Forestry Museum in Duncan, and several trophies and photos are in the Sooke Regional Museum, where Wickheim’s sister and last remaining sibling, Elida Peers, now 93, is the historian.
Peers was one of six children of Mikael and Karen Wickheim, who settled on four acres in Saseenos in 1922 after failing to find a fortune in the Yukon Gold Rush. Five of the children were born in the Sooke area.
Peers said her brothers Jube and Ardy, along with their elder brother Maywell, started birling through their early work booming logs in local waters and were often seen practising at Coopers Cove.
“It was in that quiet inlet, which in those years served as booming grounds for GE Bernard and for B.C. Forest Products, that the brothers got their start on the logs, practicing their nimble-footed skills,” Peers wrote in the Sooke News Mirror in 2013.
Peers said in an interview her brothers helped to put Sooke on the map as logging competitions gained in popularity before the mechanization of the industry.
Peers said during the 1950s and 1960s, log birling was one of the feature attractions at All Sooke Day. The competition was first held in the Sooke River before a birling pond was dug in Sooke flats.
She said during the booming times of logging, All Sooke Day would draw crowds of up to 12,000, and people would lay bets on which of the caulk-booted brothers could best demonstrate their agility and balance to withstand the spins and counter spins of his opponent.
She said Jube and Ardy brought their special skills to New York City’s Central Park in 1967, a prelude to their six-month stint at Expo ‘67 in Montreal.
“Apparently the Canadian government wanted to use a log-birling demonstration to promote Expo ‘67 to New Yorkers, so they arranged for Jube to get his birling log to the big city, and a partner to birl with him,” said Peers.
In his papers donated to the B.C. Forestry Museum, Wickheim said the Canadian consulate in New York City contracted the Wickheim brothers to present a small timber show and they brought along Hugh McKenzie of Victoria, and Jim Duncan, a fellow birler, and Marshall Smith of Sooke.
Wickheim also recounted how he and Ardy put on exhibitions “many times” at the Crystal Gardens and other Victoria-area locations.
Wickheim’s family said his proudest days were with his travelling shows and the teams of local loggers he employed to show off their skills.
“Competing loggers were issued a green jacket, caps and tee shirts with the Canadian Maple Leaf,” Wickheim said in his memoirs. “These soon became a sought-after item wherever logging sports were held. Three to four shows per day was normal, but this could increase to as many as seven shows daily at busy locations.
“Several young B.C. Loggers, after practicing their skills all summer, were in such good shape they went on to easily win Canadian and World Championships. Some of these young men met their future wives at far away locations and came home with their new brides.”
But Wickheim noticed changes to logging sports as modern machinery transformed the industry.
“As the logging camps and some small logging towns gradually died out in rural B.C. … [there has been] a switch from hand fallers, boom men, choker men to automated machinery like chainsaws, dozers, boom boats, mobile spar trees,” he said in his papers. “Logging sports has changed from working loggers honing their skills to more of a professional sport with big corporate sponsors.”
One of Wickheim’s last overseas travelling shows included the opening of Euro Disney in Paris in 1992.
Ganton called her father a good role model.
“He always believed in a handshake … that meant the world to him,” said Ganton. “Deals were done with a shake of the hand and that’s the way he worked. He was admired by everyone because he created so many fantastic memories. A lot of men and their families got to travel because of Dad.”
Wickheim moved to his own farm in Shawnigan Lake in 1970, where he had logging rights along the outskirts of the local watershed and used the E&N rail line to transport logs for his travelling shows. He also operated a small Christmas tree farm there for several years.
Wickheim is survived by his wife of 67 years, Mavis, and three children Fred (Karen), Sonja (Colin) and Kari (Philip), as well as nine grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers, the family said donations can be made in his memory to Cowichan Hospice House.
A celebration of Wickheim’s life will be held at a later date.
