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bush ape
DCHP-2 (Sep 2013)
n. — Forestry, British Columbia, informal, historical slang
a term for a logger.
Type: 4. Culturally Significant — Bush ape was used in BC as a colloquial term for a logger, and does not seem to have been derogatory (see, e.g. the 1975 and 2007 quotations). Given the vital historical and present importance of the forestry industry to the BC economy, bush ape is culturally significant to the province and is an example of the rich logging vocabulary that has developed in BC and in Canada.
Quotations
1972
With number two of The Raincoast Chronicles on newstands, Pete Trower, associate editor reports good progress on the third issue, which will deal with the history of logging, featuring the first chapter of Pete's 80,000 or-so-word autobiographical book on early west coast logging experiences. This book will shortly appear as The Memoirs of a Reluctant Bush Ape, with illustrations by the author.
1975
The British Columbian who works in the woods is not a lumberjack. He is a lumberjack only in novels by retired teachers, by writers who have never been out of Vancouver, by Americans and by eastern journalists. A man who works in the woods in B.C. is a logger. He may also answer to ape or bush ape, and if he quits and takes a job in a mill, tame ape.
2007
As a third generation logger I can feel my dad and grandfather spinning in their graves. A lumberjack works in the East, with his touque on his head and his pants tucked into his socks, with bow saw in hand, cutting the scrawny pulp wood that's grown back there, actually loading it on a sleigh or throwing the stuff in a river to float somewhere.
In the West, we are "loggers". We cut down trees the size of which would cause a lumberjack to pale, and shake in his rubber boots. I don't mind being called a "bush ape, bead setter, hooker, cat skinner or donkey puncher" -- but lumberjack! I feel insulted.