When the smoke cleared, unbelievably, there was good news. A $1.5-million stockpile of logs harvested over the winter and stored in a gravel pit north of Fort McMurray had caught fire but only about half of it was consumed before the flames burned themselves out. The stacks contained about 40,000 cubic metres, enough wood to…
The union representing 600 workers at Tembec’s operations in Temiscaming, Que., will fight announced layoffs taking effect June 20. Roger Gauthier, president of Unifor Local 233, said the cuts do not fall within the provisions of the collective agreement between Unifor and Tembec. “We were told the move was to reduce costs . . ….
The Town of Iroquois Falls has publicly released the purchase agreement they signed along with Resolute Forest Products and Riverside Developments to redevelop the former mill site into a multi-use industrial facility. But interested or concerned residents won’t be learning much more about the deal they didn’t already know because the vast majority of the…
A proposed wood pellet venture in Enterprise, Northwest Territories, has acquired land for its mill, bringing a six-year slog of development one step closer to reality. Aurora Wood Pellets Ltd. president Brad Mapes said the company purchased 320 hectares of land from the hamlet, or about four square kilometres. The site is about two kilometres…
The Municipality of North Cowichan has provided the B.C. Forest Discovery Centre with a $25,000 grant. The money, which will come from the municipality’s Forest Legacy Fund, will go towards the centre’s Shay Locomotive Project. Alf Carter, president of the B.C. Forest Museum Society, told council at Wednesday’s meeting the money will be used to…
Two-thirds of the way through the 100-day countdown set in March by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Barack Obama to agree on the parameters of a new bilateral softwood lumber deal, time is fast running out to reach an agreement before U.S. election fever overwhelms the negotiations. The Canadian lumber industry is still hoping…
The fire came in waves at Howard Ewashko’s family business: once on Tuesday afternoon, again in the evening. Both times, Ewashko, his brother Craig, and a small band of workers at the sawmill north of Fort McMurray saw the “beast” of a wildfire threaten their operations, before it turned back. Today, the Northland Forest Products sawmill is still…
Carissa Camenson stood in a vast acre and a half arena in Missoula, Montana, the ground covered with chips and flakes of wood. The sophomore forestry major from Northern Arizona University expertly pulled back and forth on her six-foot-long crosscut saw that sliced through an approximately 20-inch diameter log. Camenson was competing in the single…
Cities are shaped by fire. From Chicago to San Francisco, enormous swathes of urban fabric were wiped away by accident in the 19th century. These horrific disasters did more than just clear the way for new development, though. They also helped spur building codes that outlawed the use of one particularly dangerous building material: timber….
Wildfires menacing Fort McMurray for the past two weeks have carved a new path of destruction, levelling an oilsands work camp to the north of the city. Two others were still under threat as of Tuesday night. The fire continues to grow, spreading to more than 355,000 hectares, and it’s not just oil and gas…