Already a household name, the true forestry pioneer John Drenka will be forever remembered thanks to Squamish Historical Society's (SHS) new original film about the 94-year-old's life.
The movie's title - The Legend of John Drenka - speaks to his innumerable accomplishments throughout his life, the film's creators said.
"Mr. Drenka is 94 years young and I would say he's the grandfather of forestry in our community," said SHS president Bianca Peters. "He's been very influential in all facets of our community from logging to community amenities and he definitely had a hand in shaping the future of our community back in the day."
The amazing story of Drenka's life and his commitment to the logging industry in Squamish prompted SHS to document his story.
"I've known about Drenka for years and years and years," Peters said. "He's matured like fine wine and we wanted to be able to capture him and what he's done for our community on film."
SHS filmmaker Helmut Manzl had only heard stories about Drenka before the decision to make the film. He met Drenka in June 2010 and has since spent hours with Drenka, his family and his friends documenting every tale that was told.
Drenka still lives in Squamish and is the owner and manager of Squamish Mills, the business he began in 1951 with then-partner Pat Brennan.
Born in 1916, Drenka lived in Vancouver during his childhood and left school early to start working in the logging industry.
"I didn't get a lot of education," he said in the film. "After Grade 7 I left school to start logging poles in Steelhead (a community near Maple Ridge)."
After building 10,000-pound freighters in the North Vancouver shipyards during the war and working for Empire Mills logging near Alta Lake in Whistler, Drenka moved to Squamish.
"I wound up in Squamish in about 1938 and I've been here ever since."
Empire Mills let Drenka bring the logging machinery to Squamish, where he and Brennan formed Squamish Mills.
The film also includes interviews with friends of Drenka such as Al MacIntosh, who married Drenka's sister and moved to Squamish after an invitation to get into logging.
The transition wasn't as smooth as MacIntosh had hoped.
"After a couple of days in the woods I would come home and I could hardly walk," MacIntosh said. "It was absolutely unbelievable how hard the work was."
He also admired Drenka's revolutionary improvements to the industry through the introduction of new machinery.
"He's quite a guy," MacIntosh said. "He was the first one to bring a grapple loader into the valley, he was the first one to bring a steel spar into the valley.
"Where we used to take as much as three days from production at this site to production at that site, it was cut down to maybe four to five hours."
MacIntosh said people often described Drenka as "off his rocker" because of his new and seemingly insane ideas, but those same ideas were key to progress in the logging industry.
Drenka also introduced heli-logging, where valuable logs in remote and inaccessible areas are selected and removed by helicopter.
"If it's good timber, it makes sense to heli-log it," Drenka said. "It's expensive but it produces a lot per day."
Both Drenka and his wife Colleen describe their meeting and after being married 63 years, there is still some discrepancy in their stories about Colleen's mother's view of Drenka at the start.
After meeting Colleen at the calling booth (the only phone in town), he courted her for two years before they were married.
With a smile on her face, Colleen described Drenka as "pretty bossy, always wanted his own way and eventually got it."
Together they had seven children and now have 19 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, most of whom live in Squamish. Sixty-three years later, they're still in love.
"I gotta say she got a good catchbut so did I," Drenka said.
Drenka's devotion to the Squamish community didn't end with forestry. He was also a founder of the curling club, the golf course, a community pool and the Rotary Club. He said it wasn't necessarily because he enjoyed those sports, but once someone in the community got an idea in his or her head, everyone pitched in.
"All the years here in Squamish, it seemed any idea people came up with for recreation people got behind them."
In agreeing to make the film, Drenka is continuing to support his community.
SHS invites the public to join them for The Legend of John Drenka world premiere screening on Dec. 18 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Sea to Sky Hotel.
The society is encouraging anyone who has stories or photos of Drenka to come out and share them with the audience. The event will be recorded and scenes will be added to the film at a later date.
Admission is by donation and money raised from the film viewing will go toward establishing a permanent location and display for the Squamish Log Books at West Coast Railway Heritage Park.
"Our SHS motto is to preserve, document and showcase the history of Squamish and I think John Drenka is definitely a great subject for having an event and honouring his legacy," Peters said.
"We really want to make sure our logging history is out there and this fundraiser seems appropriate."
