Blame the low Canadian dollar, or the tumbling price of oil, or the American housing recovery. Whichever the culprit — or whichever combination of all three — the Alberta forestry industry is happy. Alberta’s third largest industry was hit hard by the 2008 recession, clawed its way back and then was hit with a price drop last year. Now, the stars…
Earlier this month, we learned some bad news about the phenomenon of “sudden oak death,” which has killed more than 1 million majestic oak and tanoak trees in coastal California. Researchers writing in the influential Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published results suggesting that although the pandemic, caused by the invasive water mold Phytophthora ramorum, could…
Canfor works with many exceptional contractors across our operations as part of our day to day business. This includes forestry contractors which harvest timber for us on our tenures in BC and Alberta and undertake challenging and extremely important work for us, delivering the fibre to supply our western Canadian operations. These companies play a…
The Kenora Forest Products Mill is one step closer to full production as Unifor says the first shift in the new planer mill started Monday. Local National representative Stephen Boon says there are now almost 70 unionized members working at the mill and that number will grow to about 110 over the summer with another…
Union officials at the Tembec industrial complex are upset with news that 24 positions will be eliminated at the facility along with an addition of five new positions. The news came down in what was supposed to be the first of three days of scheduled meetings between Unifor Local 233 and Tembec management. “Our meeting…
After an initial flurry of optimism, Premier Christy Clark is now anxious about Canada’s prospects for a renewed agreement with the United States to manage the softwood lumber trade. “I am worried about softwood, period,” Clark told The Vancouver Sun in a recent interview. “I think we are going to have to work incredibly hard…
Nova Scotia’s Department of Environment has laid charges in connection with a clear cutting incident inside Long Lake Provincial Park. Charges under the Crown Lands Act were laid Friday against Dexter Construction, Scott and Stewart Forestry Consultants, and a subsidiary of Scott, Resourcetec Inc. The damage was discovered in November inside the 2,095-hectare park. About 3.8…
When Gary Lovett was studying the effect of acid rain in New York’s Catskill Mountains 20 years ago, he ended the experiment early because so many trees in the test plots were dying — not from acid rain, but from insect attacks. “I consider air pollution and climate change to be serious, long-term threats to…
Things would have been drastically different if Northern Ontario had representatives at the time of Confederation, that according to a research paper recently released on the independence of Northern Ontario. The report, prepared by the Northern Policy Institute suggests that Northern Ontario would be better served as a colony than its own province, but argues…
ThermalWood is putting European innovation into decks, guitars, furniture and siding in Canada and beyond in the form of long-lasting thermally treated wood. The Bathurst company applies the ThermoWood Association certified technique to thermally modify virtually any species of wood to make it more durable, eliminate the risk of decay and damage and bring uniformity to the colour…