Just over 50 years ago, I arrived in British Columbia and spent my first twenty-five years working in forestry and fishing. Even then, both industries were grappling with market and technological change, growing corporate concentration, and shrinking employment opportunities.
In hindsight, this wasn’t surprising. Both were established extraction and manufacturing industries well before 1900. By the time I entered them, the focus had shifted from growth to managing mature markets and extracting more productivity from ageing assets.
As a union activist in forestry, and later a union staffer in the fishery, the work was challenging. We often shot ourselves in the foot trying to preserve the status quo, because that was what workers wanted.
Logging on Vancouver Island in the 1970s and living in Prince Rupert from 1984 to 2020 provide an opportunity, in a few words, to tell a story familiar to much of the province.
What was being said in the woods and mills
The talk in the crummy (crew bus) at Menzies Bay, just outside Campbell River, in the mid-1970s was already focused on the future of forestry. There was concern about new competition from Brazil, Indonesia, and Scandinavia, and about how quickly technology was changing the industry.
The overriding concern was competition from southern countries, where second-growth forests mature far more quickly than in British Columbia.
In both the bush and the mills, technological changes were being introduced that improved safety while reducing the workforce. In the bush, this included advances in power saws and the shift from cable systems to hydraulics to operate logging equipment. In the mills, it meant machine debarking, mechanical log handling, and the introduction of setworks, an early use of electronics and mechanics to automatically position logs for precision cutting.
Steep climb, plateau, sharp decline
In the 1940s and 1950s, the government facilitated private-sector investment in, and construction of, dozens of lumber, pulp, and paper mills across rural British Columbia.
By the 1970s, productivity was rising, production was consolidating, and mills were closing.
In 1973, Ocean Falls Pulp and Paper Mill and Skeena Cellulose Inc.’s pulp mill were taken over. The Ocean Falls operation closed quietly in 1980, while Skeena Cellulose went out in a far more dramatic fashion.
Extraordinary efforts to keep Prince Rupert’s mill operating
This story demonstrates the lengths a community, industry, and government will go to save a mill, even when the evidence suggests it cannot be done. Walking away is hard.
Twelve years after purchasing the pulp mill, the government sold it to Whonnock Industries in 1985, with the expectation that it would restart operations and invest in the facility. The mill did operate under Whonnock.
Two years later, negotiations began with Repap Enterprises, which was then acquiring distressed mills across Canada and the United States in a classic roll-up strategy. The transaction closed in 1988.
In 1997, the mill was floundering again, and the NDP government took out an equity stake in the mill. Then the union went on strike for six months in 2000, and the mill entered creditor protection, finally shuttering in 2001.
There were still more efforts to revive the mill. In 2002, NWBC Timber & Pulp Ltd. purchased the company’s assets under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, promising a 25-week start-up plan. The start-up never happened, and the company was placed into receivership.
Then came Sun Wave Forest Products, which secured a tax deferral from the City of Prince Rupert based on a commitment to undertake major work on the site within three years. That promise was not kept. The company and the city became embroiled in multiple court battles (see Globe and Mail reporting). In 2009, the city ultimately appropriated the property after municipal taxes went unpaid.
In total, Skeena Cellulose remained closed for 20 years before Watson Island once again had an operating, lease-holding, tax-paying tenant: Pembina’s Prince Rupert Terminal, which began exporting liquid petroleum products in 2021, reflecting the realities of the day.
The Skeena Cellulose closure, talking points
The talking points expressed in the community around the 2001 closure of the Skeena Cellulose pulp mill in Prince Rupert remain familiar today:
- Access to timber on the North Coast was declining, driven in part by policy and rising costs.
- Inland timber was becoming uneconomical due to distance from the mill.
- Inland fibre was also of lower quality, with substantially fewer saw logs within the allowable cut compared to the Interior. This undermined sawmill economics and further reduced fibre supply to the pulp mill.
- Government and industry attention had shifted to vast Interior forests devastated by the mountain pine beetle, drawing investment towards those regions.
- The 50-year-old mill required major capital upgrades to extend its operating life.
- The Canada–U.S. softwood lumber dispute placed persistent pressure on the entire industry.
The point is simple: the fibre supply problem has been evident for a long time. What is different today is that these challenges are now compounded by much higher tariffs and by bureaucratic malaise at home.
The elephant in the room remains the balance between conservation and the societal value of the forest industry, meaningful employment, the production of building materials needed for shelter, and essential paper products.
The protests now unfolding, as they have been on Vancouver Island, offer little confidence that a pragmatic balance will be reached any time soon, unless public pressure mounts and the Legislature intervenes.
Adopting From Conflict to Care: B.C.’s Forest Future without first reaching consensus around a new balance risks repeating the pattern of recent aspirational policies that faltered at the implementation stage.
The program on offer is bold, and it may ultimately prove to be the right direction. But the immediate priority must be breaking the logjam in permitting. 2026 cannot be a rerun of 2025.
If a balance can be struck that respects communities as well as environmental goals, there is at least a chance that system-wide reform can be discussed, and implemented, with the goodwill required to make it work this time.
Jim Rushton is a 46-year veteran of BC’s resource and transportation sectors, with experience in union representation, economic development, and terminal management.
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