It’s a part of a Canadian vignette that lives in so many of our memories; the crunch of sharp blades on pond ice, the brace of morning air, the smell of wood smoke from a distant chimney promising warmth for soon-to-be frozen fingers and toes. But our children, it seems, will have different memories. Across…
Resolute Forest Products Inc., Montreal, has announced that it will permanently close a paper machine at its mill in Alma, Quebec. The shutdown, slated to occur by early April 2015, represents a reduction of 75,000 metric tons of annual specialty papers production capacity. The mill, which has three paper machines, has a total annual capacity…
Much has been said recently about clearcutting on public lands in southwestern Nova Scotia, including the former Bowater lands acquired by the province in late 2012. Comments both for and against have shown a large, and potentially growing, gap between the various viewpoints of stakeholders and members of the public. Amongst that confusion, however, and…
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…