Reefer, Schnarb and Crummy Drivers: A Treeplanter’s Lexicon

t. colin strong

1. Introduction and Objectives

Most people who have never gone treeplanting think of it as just another job – albeit an especially difficult one – and leave the matter at that. However, those who have spent a season in the bush as a treeplanter know that it is more than a mere occupation: it is a lifestyle, a subculture that is completely and utterly unique. Excruciating labour, extreme conditions, and isolation from society are the norms for a treeplanter, and these factors combine to create a world far different than that of the non-treeplanting life.¹ Like any subculture, treeplanters use a specialized vocabulary, with a wide variety of terms referring to treeplanting-specific objects and concepts, including a rich and often colorful selection of slang terms.

The goal of this survey is to compile and analyze a list of terms used by treeplanters to refer to common objects and activities of the treeplanting life (hereafter referred to as “concepts”). First to be examined are the terms themselves: what different terms exist for a given concept, what are the variations of these terms? Are some concepts known by a single term by all treeplanters, while other concepts have many terms by which they are described? Next to be examined is the geographical distribution of the terms: are certain terms used more prevalently in certain regions of Canada than others? Do major isoglosses exist for treeplanters? What lexically distinguishes a treeplanter in BC from a treeplanter in Ontario?

It must be remembered that due to time and length constraints, it is impossible to fully explore every aspect of the above questions. However, all efforts will be made to confine the analysis and discussion to only the most interesting aspects of this survey. No formal investigation has yet been made into the language of the treeplanters, and hopefully this introductory foray will inspire other scholarly attempts at enriching our knowledge of this uniquely Canadian subculture.

2. Implementing the Survey

The survey was written by first preparing a list of focus terms, or terms identified to be unique to treeplanting. Sources for this list included the author’s personal knowledge, Hélène Cyr’s amazing book Handmade forests: The treeplanter’s experience (1998), and Scooter’s admirable glossary on replant.ca, a popular treeplanting website. Thirty-six focus terms were used in all, and questions were designed to elicit the term (see Appendix A). After a brief pilot test to ensure the questions did indeed elicit the desired focus term, the survey was made available on the internet, chosen because of the wide dispersion of treeplanters across Canada and the relative ease of quickly obtaining a large number of responses.

Each question was followed by two text fields, and participants entered the term they used most often into the first field, and any other terms they knew into the second field. While this method could allow for some interesting analyses pertaining to actual usage of a term versus mere familiarity with it, for ease, simplicity, and brevity all terms submitted were given equal weighting. Thus, many questions are answered with several terms, and are thereby more of a reflection of the participant’s general knowledge of treeplanting vocabulary, fitting for this general exploratory inquiry into the matter. As well, participants indicated the length of time they had planted and the region in which they had spent the majority of their planting career – a necessary element if isoglosses are to be determined.

In total, 69 treeplanters completed the survey, for a total of 2484 data entries. Most participants (36) planted primarily in the interior of BC, with the next greatest number of participants coming from Ontario (13). Seven planted primarily in Alberta, four on the coast of BC, two in Manitoba, two from the East coast, and one lone soul represented the entire Québécois reforestation industry. As can be seen, the results are dominated by participants from BC, with other important regions barely being represented. This led to the necessity of consolidating regions into larger groups, as is described in Table 1:

Table 1: Regional Divisions

Region	# of Respondents	Consolidated Category	Abbreviation	# in Category
BC Interior	32	British Columbia	BC	36
BC Coast	4
East Coast	2	Eastern	E	16
Quebec	1
Ontario	13
Alberta	7	Prairies	P	9
Manitoba	2

To further complicate the matter, eight participants identified both BC and Alberta as their primary location, leading to the creation of a BC/Alberta category, which was unfortunately largely unusable for most of the analysis.²

3. Considerations of Data Analysis

With such a large and varied data set, it is difficult at best to determine the most effective and informative way of analyzing it. Various methods abound, and along with constraints introduced due to the methodology of the survey, it was more than a challenge to choose those most suited to this study.

The main problem with the data is the disparity of regional group size. Even if the regions were to be consolidated into only two groups, Western (BC and Alberta) and Eastern (all other regions), two-thirds of the data set would be Western – hardly an equally proportioned sample group. Any meaningful analysis must take this problem into account. Another issue dictating the method of analysis is the inclusion in the data set of all terms provided for each answer, rather than the primary term alone. While this does certainly complicate matters due to increased amount of data and overlapping percentages, it more accurately reflects the participant’s general knowledge of treeplanting-related terms. As well, it allows for a wider range of input (reflecting the survey’s exploratory approach), and takes into account the fact that treeplanters regularly use more than one term for a single concept. However, the proper analysis must account for multiple responses as well. Unfortunately, one of the most useful and well-known linguistic statistical method, the chi-square, is consequentially unable to be used, due to its requirement of mutually exclusive and exhaustive data. ³

Table 2: Q2 variation
Variable	BC	P	Diff.	P	E	Diff.	BC	E	Diff.	Global Var.
schnarb	25%	44%	19%	44%	6%	38%	25%	6%	19%
kife	8%	33%	25%	33%	44%	11%	8%	44%	36%
shit & vars.	44%	33%	11%	33%	56%	23%	44%	56%	12%
Net Var.			55%							194%

The first approach to be utilized is to simply take the percentage of a certain region to answer with a certain term.⁴ This solves both the multiple-answer conundrum and the problem of disproportionate sample sizes from different regions (although the larger samples obviously provide a much larger degree of accuracy). As well, it provides meaningful, easily comprehendible information about the data. Also to be employed are the net variation and major isogloss analyses, as described by Charles Boberg in his extremely comprehensive study of Canadian regional vocabulary (2005:32-34). In brief, net variation is a measure of the variability of a given set of variables across a regional boundary. For example, Table 2 contains data from question 2 (denoted hereafter as Q2), showing frequencies of the variables:

Each region is paired with the other two (e.g., BC/P, P/E, BC/E – hereafter referred to as pairings), and the absolute differences of the percent occurrence are summed together to give the net variation. A higher net variation denotes a set of variables with a relatively greater variability. The global variance is unique to this study, and is simply the sum of the three net variances of the pairings. This gives a general impression of the overall Canada-wide variability of a set of variables. Finally, major isoglosses occur when, in one pairing, a variable has an absolute difference of over 50%. They will be demarcated by a shaded box.

While possible to perform these analyses to each question, it is very impractical and would result in a dry, boring read. Therefore, in the sake of brevity and reader interest, only results of consequence will be discussed; insignificant or boring results will be omitted, and not all analytical methods will be applied to every question – discretion will be used.

4. The Extent of Treeplanter Knowledge

Before the analysis proper begins, it is worthwhile to examine individual participants’ knowledge, quantitatively measured by the total number of terms given in a survey, as a function of the length of time they have spent planting. The time categories in Figure 1 were created with the intention of each group having roughly the same amount of participants as the others, and the mean number of total terms was calculated and plotted. Figure 1 indicates that one’s knowledge of treeplanting vocabulary does indeed tend to grow the longer one is in the job. However, even though these time categories are the closest in participant number as possible, another way of grouping the participants gave results not as strong, and yet another time category configuration provided similar results to figure 1 (see Appendix B).

5. Results

5.1 Universals

The first terms to be examined are the unanimously known terms, or universals, of which this survey suggests four. These are terms for which all 69 participants provide the same variable for same concept – universals must have 100% participation (no blank answers) and 100% unanimous agreement. The first universal term is ‘cream’ from Q1, including variants such as

Table 3: Eight most commonly known terms
Universal terms	Near-universal terms
‘cream’	‘veteran’ or ‘vet’
‘rookie’	‘bags’
‘j-root’	‘replanting’
‘screef’	‘stashing’

‘creamy’ or ‘cream show’. There were other interesting terms used as well – notable BC terms are ‘beach’ (probably especially referring to smooth sandy ground), ‘gravy’, ‘peanut butter’, and ‘spezza’. The next universal, ‘rookie’, is of Q13, along with the variant ‘greener’, known by 18% of participants. ‘J-root’ is a clear universal for Q24, with only a handful of other terms mentioned: ‘lazy plant’, ‘s-root’ and ‘banana’. The final universal, of Q35, is the most homogenous universal of the four. The only other variant was ‘scuffing’, known by the two East Coast respondents (Re: Table 1).

Also worth mentioning are four near-universal terms, that is, terms which were given by every participant but a few. The first near-universal is ‘veteran’ or ‘vet’ (the two terms are derivative and may be counted as one), with 94% of respondents knowing it. Experienced planters may also be called a ‘crusty’ or a ‘lifer’. The next near-universal, ‘bags’, is known by 97% of respondents, with the only other notable terms being an instance each of ‘bells’ and ‘cowbells’. ‘Replanting’, the bane of all treeplanters, is not as well known, with 90% showing knowledge of it. A full 20% also knew the term ‘repo’ for Q34. The final near-universal, ‘stashing’, of Q36, was given by all but one participant (98.6%), showing it to be one of the most prevalent terms in the treeplanter lexicon. This practice is also referred to as ‘bush lining’ or ‘tree lining’, and three participants consider it ‘cheating’.

5.2 Regional Variation

Next to be discussed are terms that demonstrate regional variation. Analysis for Q2 has already been done in Table 2 (the variations of ‘shit’ include ‘shit show’, ‘shite’, and ‘shit storm’), and noticeable variation exists between BC and E for the term ‘kife’, with an absolute difference of 36%. Also, variation is evident between P and E for the term ‘schnarb’, with an absolute difference of 38%. While this suggests that Easterners are more likely to know the term ‘kife’ than BC planters and less likely to know ‘schnarb’ than Prairie planters, the variation is not strong enough to rely on these terms as isoglosses. While Q2 did not show any major isoglosses, the global variation for these terms is relatively high, at 194%, indicating greater variability for this set of terms across Canada.

While Q12 does not have as high of a global variation, it does exhibit a major isogloss

Table 4: Q12 variation
	BC	P	Diff.	P	E	Diff.	BC	E	Diff.	Global Var.
highballer	83%	78%	5%	78%	94%	16%	83%	94%	11%
pounder	36%	67%	31%	67%	6%	61%	36%	6%	30%
Net Var.			36%						41%	154%

between Prairie planters and Eastern planters for the term ‘pounder’. However, as the lower global variation implies, these terms do not vary as much across Canada as does Q2. The greatest regional variance is demonstrated by Q15, as is shown in Table 5:

Table 5: Q15
	BC	P	Diff.	P	E	Diff.	BC	E	Diff.	Global Variation
van	3%	56%	53%	56%	50%	6%	3%	50%	47%
bus	0%	44%	44%	44%	56%	12%	0%	56%	56%
truck	69%	11%	55%	11%	13%	2%	69%	13%	56%
crummy	50%	44%	6%	44%	19%	25%	50%	19%	31%
Net Var.										393%

With a global variation of 393%, it is obvious that the Canada-wide variability of terms referring to “the vehicle that brings [treeplanters] to and from [their] worksite” is immense, and this is due to the fact that there are four variable terms and four major isoglosses. As can be seen, the use of ‘van’ or ‘bus’ is virtually non existent in BC, but is far more common in P and E, leading to two major isoglosses between BC/P and BC/E. Use of ‘truck’ is far more prevalent in BC than P or E, leading to the other two major isoglosses. Use of ‘crummy’ is certainly more prevalent in BC and P, but the variation is not as entrenched as with ‘truck’, ‘bus’, and ‘van’. These terms demonstrate the strongest variability, and illuminate a division between Eastern and Western treeplanter vocabulary.

No other variables presented global variables as high as these, nor any other major isoglosses. However, there are still some regional differences worth noting. Table 6 shows Q26

Table 6: Q26
	BC	P	Diff.	P	E	Diff.	BC	E	Diff.	Global Var.
plug	53%	56%	3%	56%	13%	43%	53%	13%	40%
container stock	14%	33%	19%	33%	19%	14%	14%	19%	5%
jiffy	0%	11%	11%	11%	6%	5%	0%	6%	6%
Net Var.			33%			62%			51%	146%

to have a sizeable global variation, but like Q2, no firm conclusions can be drawn from this data – it suggests that Eastern planters are less likely to use ‘plug’ than BC or Prairie planters, but the results are not strong enough to label it as an isogloss.

5.3 Other Results

Q3 elicited a relatively homogenous data sample, with ‘slash’ making up 85% of the set. Six BC planters did also refer to this as ‘schnarb’, which also appeared in Q2 and Q6, suggesting an interchangeability of this term.

The majority of each region knew the term ‘duff’ for Q5: 68% of P, 58% of BC, and 81% of E, making it the most prevalent term. The variation appears to be relatively even, but BC had a large amount of other terms: 22% used the term ‘f-layer’ or ‘fh-layer’, ⁵ and other notable terms included ‘stick mat’ and ‘o-layer’.

Q7 elicited a wide range of responses, but only 13% knew the focus term ‘organic’. This may be attributable to the wording of the question, as a subsequent survey will hopefully show. The most prevalent terms, known by 25%, are ‘muck’ and ‘black muck’. Other terms are various descriptors of soil types: ‘mineral’, ‘mud’, ‘sphagnum’, and ‘humus’.

30% of participants knew ‘unscarified’ for Q9, with ‘raw’ being a prevalent BC term (36%). An interesting Ontarian term is ‘no sip’, perhaps an abbreviation of a longer form.

In Q10, ‘foreman’ is a very well-known term, with 80% of total participants knowing this term. ‘Crew boss’ is the other prevailing term, with 46% participant knowledge. 33% knew both.

70% of participants responded with ‘supervisor’ for Q11, which had a global variation of 106%. It seems as though the term ‘project manager’ or ‘PM’ is an Ontarian trend, because not only did one BC Coastal planter note it as a distinctly Ontarian term, but the term appeared exclusively in the Ontarian data.

The ‘highballer’ is known by nearly everybody, as Q12 attests: 86% know that term, with ‘pounder’ appearing in 42% of the BC and Prairie planter data. Other notable terms include ‘slammer’ (Ontario), ‘machine’, and ‘slutter’ (BC), the last perhaps in reference to Q28.

For Q17, 80% responded with the focus term ‘shitter’. Many seemed to prefer nature, with 16% giving references to the bush, the block, or ‘anywhere’. Only three participants were polite enough to use the term ‘washroom’, and a unique term from Coastal BC is ‘dunnie’.

67% answered Q19 with the focus term ‘Christmas toe’ - you don’t feel your toe until Christmas. ‘Planter’s toe’ and ‘screefer toe’ (Re: Q35) also appear, and one planter even considers it ‘normal’.

The most prevalent term for Q22 was ‘draw bag’, at 62% participant knowledge. Variants include ‘grab bag’, ‘trigger’ (the other focus term, with only 2 occurrences), and ‘picker’.

‘Reefer’ is well known for Q27, with 87% knowing the term. The only other term appearing is ‘FIST’ in BC,⁶ with 28% of BC planters knowing the term.

Q28 was characterized by two main groups of terms: ‘slut’ and variations (e.g., ‘slutted tree’, ‘slutty’), with 23%; and ‘shit’ and variations (e.g., ‘shitty tree’, ‘shite’), with 20%. However, the bulk of the responses were more fault-specific terms, such as ‘leaner’, ‘loose’, ‘shallow’, and ‘duff shot’ (Re: Q5).

Table 7: Q29
	BC	P	Diff.	P	E	Diff.	BC	E	Diff.	Global Var.
quad	92%	89%	3%	89%	81%	8%	92%	81%	11%
ATV	28%	11%	17%	11%	6%	5%	28%	6%	22%
4-wheeler	6%	0%	6%	0%	19%	19%	6%	19%	13%
Net Var.			26%			32%			46%	104%

Table 8: Q32
	BC	P	Diff.	P	E	Diff.	BC	E	Diff.	Global Var.
pounding	69%	78%	9%	78%	50%	28%	69%	50%	19%
givin’ ‘er and vars	33%	22%	11%	22%	19%	3%	33%	19%	24%
slutting	3%	11%	8%	11%	6%	5%	3%	6%	3%
Net Var.			28%			36%			46%	110%

As can be seen in Table 7, Q29 exhibits some degree of global variation, though regional variation is very weak: the greatest absolute difference is 22%, hinting that BC planters are slightly more inclined to know ATV than Eastern planters. Other terms are ‘jigger’ (BC) and ‘bikes’ (East Coast).

Table 8 shows that Q32 is similar to Q29 in that there are faint regional trends, but nothing strong enough to warrant any distinct regional differences, apart from two Ontarians who mentioned ‘slamming’.

5.4 Interesting and Unique Terms

Both Eastern Canada and Quebec have some interesting terms unique to themselves. Eastern planters responded with ‘scuffing’ (Q35), ‘regen’ (Q6), and ‘bikes’ (Q29). Though there was only one Quebecois participant, four terms unique to Quebec were disclosed: ‘sleepy toe’ (Q19), ‘smoochy’ (Q9), ‘kingpin’ (Q12), and ‘panel’⁷ (Q15).

What appear to be personal names also appear in the data set – for example, one BC planter responded to both Q16 and Q22 with ‘Paula’, an affectionate name, perhaps given in the same spirit as a marine naming his rifle. Also, not only did Q15 show great global variation with its prevalent variables (Re: Table 5), but it elicited the most unique terms of any other question, including many that appear to be monikers of some sort, like ‘hag’, ‘thunder’, ‘burban’, ‘chopper’, ‘Big Deuce 8’, ‘space canoe’, and ‘Xcretion’.

Most treeplanters are there for one reason alone: the money. This sentiment occasionally surfaced in the data set, with terms like ‘moneybags’ (Q16 and Q22) – this planter’s moneybags will hopefully make them a moneybags. Other money-related terms are ‘money sores’ (Q18) and ‘free money’ (Q25).

Living on the fringe of society can lead to fraying of social niceties, and as a result, treeplanters have a reputation of being “colourful”. Though crass and rude language is unappealing to some, any treeplanter vocabulary survey that overlooked vulgarities would be misrepresentative and incomplete. Colourful terms range from benign and amusing – ‘baby poo’ (Q1) and ‘stink tape’ (Q23) – to outright vulgar: ‘loon shit’ and ‘milf squelch’ (both Q7). There was also a wide variety of derogatory terms for a first-time planter (Q13), including ‘schwak’, ‘bonkie’, ‘biatch’ and three instances of ‘rookie fuck’. Finally, no less than eight treeplanters found pre-contract meetings with mill representatives (Q33) to be ‘bullshit’.

5.5 Problem Questions

Two questions were deemed to be problem questions, due to the overwhelming amount of participant confusion. For Q25, the focus term ‘nub’ did not appear in the data set, and even though some other terms were given, the majority left this question blank. 38% of participants correctly understood Q31, giving terms in line with the focus of the question, but far more than that gave erroneous responses, indicating an overall lack of understanding of the question. These questions’ failures are likely due to the pilot test, which, being executed hastily, failed to discover these poorly worded questions.

6. Conclusions

As it has been shown, treeplanters employ a wide range of specialized terms to describe treeplanting-specific concepts, and this survey only begins to explore this unique lexicon. However, this survey successfully compiled and described a list of various terms for common treeplanting concepts, and drew tangible conclusions from the data. First, the eight most commonly known and used terms (Re: table 3) were identified. These represent the most stable terms in the treeplanters’ lexicon, and have a minimum of variability across Canada. Then, on the opposite end of the spectrum, the terms exhibiting the highest regional variation were identified, with variables for “the vehicle that brings you to and from the worksite” (Q15) showing by far the largest Canada-wide variation. Major isoglosses along East/West divisions were found to exist for the terms ‘pounder’ (P/E), ‘van’ (BC/P), ‘bus’ (BC/E) and ‘truck’ (BC/P and BC/E).

While most other questions fell between the two extremes of universality and high variation, the results were still showed prevailing terms for most questions, with a range of other terms known by a minority. This suggests that while the treeplanters’ lexicon is vast and widely varying, most concepts have an established central term known by the majority.

While successful as an exploratory, first-time description of treeplanters’ vocabulary, the study would benefit by another survey using closed questions (participants would select only one term from an available list), perhaps using term variables uncovered by this survey as a starting point. This would allow for a more rigorous data analysis, and would allow for the use of chi-square tests. Also worthy of more investigation are regions that were underrepresented in this study, such as Coastal BC and Quebec. While regional variation was investigated in this study, it was coarse at best and requires a follow-up study.

Regardless of its faults and shortcomings, however, this study may be deemed a success. Many thanks to all those who participated, and the interest shown in the Canadian Regional Treeplanter Vocabulary Survey is greatly appreciated.

Notes

¹ Indeed, many planters refer to their life outside of treeplanting as “the real world.”

² This is due to the methodology of the survey: an open text field was used to collect answers for this question, leading to many erroneous responses, such as company names (these responses were not included). Rather, a drop-down menu of choices should have been used to ensure the input remained within predefined categories.

³ Inclusion of multiple responses nullifies mutual exclusivity.

⁴ For example, five out of 36 BC participants, or 14%, knew the term ‘beach’. This is in opposition to calculating the percent of a region which made up the answers for a certain term; for example, three out of the twelve total respondents who knew ‘kife’ were from BC. This does not allow for the disproportionate group sizes, and gives radically different results.

⁵ FH stands for “fines and humus”, a more specialized term not exactly reminiscent of what was asked in the question, but still interesting.

⁶ “Fiberglass Insulating Seedling Transport”

⁷ Perhaps in reference to a panel truck, a windowless cargo van built on a truck chassis.

Appendix A: Survey Questions and corresponding focus terms

Which terms would you use to describe . . .  

(1) easy-to-plant land? cream

(2) difficult-to-plant land? shit, schnarb

(3) the debris left on the ground after logging? slash, sticks, litter

(4) the land on which you plant trees? block, piece

(5) the layer of moss and twigs above the soil? duff

(6) vegetation on the land you plant? green, natural

(7) dark, wet soil? organic

(8) sandier soil? mineral

(9) ground left just as it was after it was logged? raw, unscarified

(10) the person who runs a single crew? foreman, crew boss

(11) the person who runs a group of crews? supervisor

(12) someone who plants many trees a day? highballer

(13) a first-time planter? rookie

(14) an experienced treeplanter? vet

(15) the vehicle that brings you to and from your worksite? crummy

(16) what you use to carry the trees while planting? bags

(17) where you do Number Two in camp. shitter

(18) painful afflictions of the hand? the claw

(19) numbness in the foot? Christmas toe

(20) trees that come with exposed roots? bare root

(21) where you store trees during the day? cache

(22) the bag from which you pull trees while planting? draw bag, trigger

(23) rolls of long, thin fluorescent plastic strips? flagging tape

(24) a bent root? j-root

(25) when trees arrive in the box with bent roots? nub

(26) trees that come encased in dirt, with minimal root exposure? plug

(27) the truck in which trees are stored? reefer

(28) a poorly planted tree? slut

(29) single-person, four-wheeled off-road vehicles? quad

(30) where you get and eat your food in camp? mess tent

(31) the act of planting a line away from the existing line of trees? ghost lining

(32) planting as hard as you can? pounding

(33) the start-of-contract morning meeting with mill representatives? pre-work

(34) redoing work due to poor quality? replanting

(35) the action of kicking away debris to clear the ground? screefing

(36) hiding or throwing away trees? stashing