Many museums and heritage sites on Vancouver Island feature displays about workers and the technology that aided resource extraction. But don’t forget that there was a time when horses, mules and oxen were worked by people to haul logs and coal. Animals laboured above and below the ground throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Eventually, innovations in power generation and extraction methods replaced the need for animals and forced workers to adapt their knowledge and skills, relegating animal labour to old-timer reminiscences and history books. …“Drawing the logs from the bush to the skid-road called for the greatest exertion of ox-power, and a teamster who could common the unified action of 10 or 12 oxen was an animal psychologist of the first rank,” writes Nathan Dougan in his book Cowichan, My Valley, about the complex systems and special skills required for horse and oxen logging.