Chad Wasilenkoff grew up in Calgary. The pulp and paper mills his company owns are in Switzerland and Quebec. His office is in Vancouver. His wife Laura and two boys, aged six and eight, “recently relocated,” to La Quinta, a suburb of Palm Springs, Calif. — good for the kind of riding Laura does, which…
After one of the coldest months on record in East Tennessee, many people are more than ready for some warm weather. But the especially frigid winter has been a life-saver for some of the mightiest trees in the forest. This winter’s sub-zero temperatures in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park have devastated the once unstoppable…
The Opposition NDP put the Attorney General in their crosshairs over the handling of the current coroner’s inquest into the Lakeland Mills explosion. Justice Minister Suzanne Anton fielded questions from B.C. NDP members in the Legislative Assembly Wednesday afternoon over the lack of participation by senior WorkSafeBC officials and shortage of funds made available for…
Canada’s lumber producers should be a happy lot. The U.S. housing market is coming back, exports are rising and the Canadian dollar is cheap. But the industry has a wary eye on its own version of the doomsday clock – the countdown to the Oct. 12 expiry of a long truce in the Canada-U.S. lumber…
After a long siege of public pressure and negotiations, punctuated occasionally by media-savvy comic stunts, the 3M Co. has gone from the doghouse to darling of sustainable-forestry activists. All it took was a wholesale rethinking of its responsibility for the steady stream of wood fiber it turns into Post-Its, masking tape and other products –…
A new pulp and paper sourcing policy, aimed at protecting forests and respecting human rights, announced Thursday by 3M in collaboration with the environmental group ForestEthics, could have implications for industry giant Resolute Forest Products. Under the revised strategy, the maker of Post-it® notes will only accept materials made from virgin fibre that can be traced to the…
The explosion that destroyed the Lakeland Mills sawmill originated in a spot where equipment not rated for use in a high sawdust area was operating, a coroner’s inquest into the disaster heard Friday. B.C. Safety Authority engineer Jeff Coleman was on the stand to present findings from that organization’s investigation into the April 23, 2012…
The Ontario Forest Industries Association’s (OFIA) 72nd Annual Meeting celebrated the forest products sector’s role as a sustainable economic engine and employment generator in Ontario’s green economy. Opening the event, Jamie Lim, President and CEO of the OFIA, explained ‘by actively choosing Ontario’s renewable forest products, government and citizens are actively participating in our province’s…
Comments are being accepted until May 3, 2015, on a new discussion paper released today as part of a comprehensive timber supply review for the Fraser Timber Supply Area. Feedback on the discussion paper will be considered by the chief forester before setting the new allowable annual cut. The discussion paper describes the geography, natural…
One of the men killed in the Lakeland Mills sawmill explosion would “literally pound on the table in the lunchroom” when expressing his concerns about the level of wood dust in the facility, a coroners inquest into the incident heard Tuesday. Glenn Roche, who died from injuries suffered in the April 23, 2012 explosion, was…