Some parts of that history are difficult to hold.

Stories that don’t become family lore. Stories that stay quiet.

“My dad and his five siblings were left in a barn in winter,” Sid says. “He said, ‘I’m going into town and I’ll be back.’ He never came back.”

There are other stories too. The ones that are harder to say out loud. The ones that explain why silence can last generations.

Sid’s life in sawmilling didn’t begin as a plan.

It started with a renovation. An old barn. Wood no one wanted to touch.

So he and his wife bought a sawmill and started doing it themselves.

“It always started with ‘just a couple,’” he says. “Then it evolved.”

The work became more defined.

“I’m only going to sawmill logs in an environmental way,” he says. “Storm or disease. I want it verified.”

“That’s not what I want to be known for.”

Sid doesn’t approach carving as repetition.

“I’ll never ever do two of the same thing,” he says.

When he stands in front of a tree, he doesn’t impose an idea. He waits.

“She wants to dance,” he says of a lakeside tree he carved into a jingle dancer.

“The medium will tell you how it’s going to go.”

His work is not only about wood.

It’s also about how you hold people.

He tells the story of a young man who worked with him while trying to finish nursing school. Living in a shelter. Sometimes on the street.

They helped him find housing. Supported him through school. Helped him move forward.

“Someone’s working for you,” Sid says. “Promote them. Promote them out.”

What grounds all of this is place.

The Credit River. Port Credit. Lakeview.

“It was the first highway,” he says.

To him, the land carries memory. Movement. History.

“The wood itself has a historical presence within the region.”

Sid doesn’t talk about legacy.

He talks about responsibility.

Paying attention. Not taking what isn’t yours.

Listening first.

This story is drawn from long-form interviews and developed across writing and film as part of Voices of the Land, a multi-year oral history platform.