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Buzz Lien's DOMTAR BUYS SMOKE !

Buzz Lien’s  DOMTAR BUYS SMOKE!  February 5, 1974

When a company injects a million dollars into the cash flow of an area, it should not go unnoticed. When the same company provides the transportation companies with nearly two million dollars, the bells should ring out, flags should unfurl and rockets should streak across the commercial sky.

Domtar Woodlands Limited, of Red Rock, Ontario, have done these things. And, they have done it with style, class, imagination and plain, ordinary sawmill residues of sawdust and shavings.

Once upon a time, sawdust and shavings were a source of real annoyance to sawmill owners.  Small sawmills in woodsy locations had mountains of it around the place.  Larger sawmills at rail sidings spent all kinds of money just burning the stuff top get rid of it, while at the same time polluting the atmosphere and infuriating local housewives when the fly-ash product  of combustion settled out on the clothes that were drying on the line.

Before this, long, long before this, sawmills dumped this stuff in streams and lakes where it drifted downstream out of the way, not doing the fish or wildlife any good.  But, this was before it was discovered that wild life could be obliterated much more efficiently with DDT and other pesticides.

In 1969, Domtar Woodlands purchased the great and noble sum of 133 oven-dry tons of sawdust to see what the paper mill could do with it.

In 1970, the purchases for the year zoomed up to 1,000 tons, still nothing to get excited about.

But, in 1971, after a lot of hard head-scratching by a lot of people, some break-throughs were evident as the mill used 30,000 tons of residue.  Hearst and Thunder Bay supplied most of it.  In 1972, after more successful head-scratching and break-throughs, 90,000 tons of what used to be turned into smoke became a useful  product when it was turned into pulp.

1973 was a banner year.  Things went much better because 94,000 tons of sawdust went in one end of the mill as wood fibre and came out the other as part of a saleable product.

City dwellers, and indeed people who live and work in forested areas, do not really realize that the day of easy availability of virgin fibre has passed away.  It is of great importance that our natural resources (fibre) are used to the very best advantage. There can be no better illustration of this than the use of sawdust and shavings in the manufacture of pulp.

And, when the one million dollars that was spent to acquire the material is spread across Northern Ontario, it has a definite plus affect on an economy that is still too narrowly based on the production of wood fibre.  The nearly two million dollars that were spent to get one million dollars worth of material into Red Rock should spread a warm, pecuniary glow among the people who in railway cars and trucks brought it in.

The course of true love never runs smoothly and Domtar’s affairs with sawdust and shavings does have its bumpy moments.  But, these bumpy moments are becoming less bumpy and the relationship cozier and cozier as experience and techniques combine to turn the affairs into a prosaic domestic relationship.

There doesn’t seem to be any reason why the bulk of the technical problems that beset a new and novel process cannot be solved before the end of 1974.

We are betting Domtar can do it!

Buzz Lien's PULP CUTTER OF '49

Buzz Lein’s  PULP CUTTER of ‘49

A pulp cutter is a husky individual that gets up at the crack of dawn and goes into the bush where with great rapidity and much skill he commences cutting little logs out of big trees.  He never gets a chance to cut in strips where the timber is really good.  That is always reserved for the fellow who is cutting alongside of him.  From the time he hits his strip until a little after dinner,  he cuts down the trees and saws them into bolts along the rabbit trail that he has swamped out.  This trail is ten feet wide according to him.  It is only four feet wide according to the strip boss and the stumps are high enough to be used for lookout towers.

Along this trail and at regular intervals are little clearings where he piles up the wood that he has cut.  A great deal of thinking and ingenuity goes into this.  It is essential that he get a minimum amount of wood in a maximum amount of space.  To further this worthy ambition he stays awake nights thinking of ways and means to accomplish it.  He has already tried putting in plugs; crooked sticks and knotty bolts but he knows that that won’t get by the scaler.  So the wood is carefully piled according to a plan worked out over the years.  When the scaler comes along he will stand back and look at it, wondering how the hell so little wood get piled in such a large space without leaving any holes.  This worries the scaler but makes the cutter glow with happiness for the rest of the day.

After battling all day with heat; flies; brush; poor timber; dirty ground; long walks to work; poor tools; ruining expensive working clothes; wearing out lousy files; arguing with strip boss’s; scalers; walking boss’s; contractors and anyone else who thinks that the cutting regulations are not being followed he drags himself back to camp, completely exhausted after making about $12.00 in six hours.

In camp, there are about 50 more men all engaged in cutting pulp.  The only  difference is that these fellows all have better timber and are working much closer to camp than he is.  After having washed up and put on clean clothes, he discusses the happenings of the day with his fellows.  During the course of these conversations there may be casual references to women and liquor.  By the time the conversational ball really gets rolling, the bell goes and they all troop in for supper.

For some reason there are never any good cooks in a pulp camp. The cookees are just about the slowest things that ever skidded a plate along a table.  The table is invariably bare except for bread and butter; meat and potatoes; Two or three vegetables; pies; cakes; cookies;  various condiments; tea; coffee and milk.  The cutter never stays in the mess hall for more than six minutes, completing the last of his swallowing about halfway between his place at the table and his bunk.  He usually takes on during this brief sojourn in the cookery, enough food to keep a tribe of Indians for a whole winter.

After his post prandial smoke, he ambles over to the office.  He doesn’t want anything but it is a good way to kill a few minutes.  Since the clerk hasn’t done anything all day, he will be glad to see him and to pass the time of day with him. In between the time he first gets this idea  and before he actually arrives at the office, he thinks of several things he might as well discuss with the clerk while the other fellows are lined up behind him patiently awaiting their turn to buy the few little items that they need.  In the first place there is that matter of a difference in his scale slip of some .0000038 points. He might just as well have the dough as the company.  In the second place this would be a good time as any to check up on his income tax.  That so and so of a clerk is picking on him and that’s for sure.  He has no business taxing him as a single man when he has put down on his tax form that he is personally maintaining a self-contained domicile and is looking after his three young brothers, a crippled uncle, his great grandmother and thirty seven orphans.

After this brief and stimulating encounter with the clerk – which ended in a draw – he goes back to the bunkhouse to read; smoke; talk to his chums or just loll around till it is time to go to bed.  He may or may not feel the pangs of hunger and go for a coffee.  He may even file his saw or touch up his axe.  When he tumbles into his well- made bed and draws the blankets up under his chin, he drops off into a deep and restful slumber, so that when he awakens in the morning he will be in great shape to go forth and give battle.

After spending about 42 days in camp, the cutter discovers that he has a few bucks on the books and that since the jobber is drawing interest on this money, he might just as well go for a holiday and spend it.  His nerves are pretty well shot anyway.  The moment this wonderful idea hits him, there is loud cry for the strip boss and scaler.  Orphan number 23 is dreadfully ill and his presence is required at home at once. The clerk and strip boss and scaler know how it is.  He really should have given notice ahead of time but since this is an emergency he knows they won’t mind clearing him at once.  The clerk and the scaler and the strip boss are all suspicious as hell but they can’t take a chance.  Maybe this is an emergency.  So the cutter gets cleared and away he goes in an expensive taxi to the nearest town.  Forgotten are all the things that were worrying him a few days ago.

Once in town, cheque cashed, room reserved and all dressed up in his good clothes, you can’t tell a cutter from a Woods Manager or a high school teacher.  In fact some woods managers and high school teachers have been cutters. Its only after the cutter has been in town for a few hours that you can tell the difference between him and a high school teacher.  He goes into business for himself then. Invariably the first thing that he tries is to put the local liquor store and brewers’ warehouse out of business.  This has never been done in the memories of the oldest inhabitants but it isn’t because it hasn’t been tried. Our cutter won’t make out any better than his predecessors.

Depending on whether or not the cutter gets rolled, his stay in town will be about two weeks at the most.  During this period, he will be viewing the world through a warm comfortable fog.  He will also purchase many meals that he doesn’t eat, give away much money to bar flies with sad stories and purchase one of more taxis.  His popularity will flare briefly and brilliantly.  It finishes abruptly when his last penny goes out of his pocket.

Borrowing enough money from the hotel keeper to go back to work, our disheveled and sick cutter morosely finds his way back to his camp the best he can. He rolls into the camp yard and peering painfully through blood red eyes he looks to see what is new.  He totters over to a bench in the sun and practically collapses on it.  Through the haze he recognizes one of his chums beside him.  He leans over toward him as if to impart some secret of great importance.

“Boy!” he croaks. “Boy.  Did I ever have a good time!”

Buzz Lein: Domtar Woodlands and its influence on the Community of Nipigon, 1973

Buzz Lein, August 27, 1973

Domtar Woodlands and its influence on the community of Nipigon

When twenty-one year old John C. Burke arrived in Nipigon in 1909, he had no way of knowing that sixty-two years later, in 1971, he would return to see trains running over the right-of-way he had surveyed from Nipigon to Red Rock for the C.N.R.  John Burke was delighted to see that the engineering office of Foley Brothers, contractors, where he had labouriously worked over his survey notes  by the flickering light of an oil lamp was still there and still being used by people who still made notes, maps, and estimates.  The sign over the door says “ DOMTAR WOODLANDS LIMITED” in 1972.  As John Burke reminisced, one could see the moose on the right-of-way, one could taste the cheap whiskey that sold by the water glassful, one could hear the gay chatter of the local girls in the old Finn Hall that stood where  Clarke’s garage now is. [2015 = Mac’s Mart]

But Domtar Woodlands office building had a history even before this.  It is rumoured that it was originally built just after 1900 for Nipigon’s first resident doctor.  Certainly the square nails used in part of its construction would indicate it came into being about then.

Domtar’s next door neighbour, a small Anglican Church, was built in the early 1890’s by an Anglican prelate whose children had learned to speak Ojibway while playing with the little girls and boys on McIntyre Bay on Lake Nipigon in the 1880’s. This same prelate’s son eventually became the Bishop of Moosonee and Metropolitan Bishop of Toronto.  The tiny graveyard speaks of Alexander Matheson, Hudson’s Bay Company, retired, of Andersons and Olsens who died during the construction of the C.P.R., of the infant sons and daughters of the pioneer families of Nipigon.

Across the street from the Woodlands office is what was once the Scandia House, “the” place to stay in the days when the bulk of the traffic was by water.  It is not too recognizable now in its middle class décor, but eighty years ago, this cement block boarding house must have rocked to the sound of lonesome and homesick Scandinavians gradually becoming accustomed to the strange new ways of this wild, isolated wilderness in which they found themselves.

And just up the street is the Catholic Mission, established in Nipigon in 1906, the first permanent home in this area for people of this faith.  It is true that Pere Mesaiger, who was here with LaVerendrye in 1727, would never recognize it , nor would Pere Fremiot who so painfully snowshoed to Lake Nipigon from Fort William in that never-to-be-forgotten cold of February of 1852.

Another of Domtar’s neighbours is the first permanent Protestant establishment.  Even Methodist Peter Jacobs might have seen this one.  But the land was acquired for this Presbyterian Church not from the Hudson’s Bay Company, but from the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson’s Bay.  A truly grandiloquent landlord of what was probably a scruffy, sandy lot covered with scrubby jackpine in 1899.

Domtar’s building is [ now,2015, was] at the junction of Second Street and Newton Street.  Second Street is just off the old portage from Red Rock [Post} to Lake Helen.  Newton Street is named for the swinging Irishman who was the Hudson’s Bay Company man in charge of the Red Rock Post in the 1880’s and early 1890’s.

After Foley Brothers got the C.N.R. causeway built and the right-of-way built up between Red Rock (of 1972) and some distance north of Nipigon, they left the area, and their engineering office seems to have been acquired by a fur trader named Sanderson who left nothing of himself behind except a reputation for stinginess and his name on a street. Sanderson rented the building out as a dwelling.

The late Carl Sjolander acquired the building in the late 1920’s and he was a fit occupant.  He was a character who left behind him years of service to the town and many delightful stories which were still going the rounds a few years ago.  It was said that he knew every cornerpost and every lot marker for miles around Nipigon – because at one time or another for some reason or another, he had changed or moved them all!

In 1942, Brompton Pulp and Paper acquired the house from Sjolander and after some slight remodelling, used it for a woods office and that has been its purpose to now.

In a small town, thirty years is a long time.  It is also plenty of time for community-minded employees to give of themselves to the community, and during this three decades the gifts have been worth while.

Stewart Young (Great Lakes Paper) worked and lived in this building. So did Bill Turner (Vice President, retired, Ontario Paper Company).  Julian Merrill was never at a loss to improve Nipigon’s civic image, Russ Hallonquist was an excellent Reeve.  Bruce Pow, Bill Christie, Cliff Elder, Jack Wynes, Pete Lacasse, Bill Schultz, Steve Farrell are remembered names.

The impressive contributions of Don Stevens and Bill McKinley to the curling Club.  Frank Polnicky’s invaluable aid to the arena construction and the United Church. Murray Wilson on church construction and on school boards at the expense of his own time. Ernie Smith’s years of service to the High School Board.  Bill Baker’s selfless service to the Public School Board. Bill Moore’s tremendous contribution to town planning boards over many years.

And the names could go on.

It just didn’t seem right that Domtar should suddenly and quietly disappear from the community after more than a generation of integrated life. It didn’t seem right that after all those years the roots should  be salted.

It was therefore suggested that Domtar should give the nearly 6000 citizens of the area a going away present, reversing the trend of what usually takes place. When their Woodlands Department moved to quarters in the main mill office building at Red Rock, Domtar donated their Nipigon property to the people of the area for use as a museum, to be used as an area museum and as a base of operations for the Nipigon Historical Society and  as a centre of operations to do the basic research that will lead eventually to the reconstruction of LaVerendrye’s Fort Ste. Anne. This was a poste du nord originally built in Nipigon by La Tourette in 1679 and rebuilt by LaVernedrye in 1717.

Here, in this museum, will be kept a record of what went on in the past.  It is important because everything now was built on everything past.  As will be the case in the future when what happens then will largely depend on what is happening now.

Thanks to Domtar Woodlands Limited, there is a very good chance that this will come about.

Buzz Lein: Last Raft on the Nipigon

Buzz Lein Forestry Articles: August 27, 1973

Towing & Rafting

The last raft to be moved into the Red Rock Mill holding ground was a 5,000 cord effort that was safely delivered after an uneventful tow time of three hours during a rare spell of Domtar weather (ideal for rafting).

This is the raft that had to be left in the Sturgeon River in 1972 when the rains didn’t come and even the muskrats had to portage when they went upstream or down.  Neil Arthur battled some of wood into the river.  Ernie Kivi had the overall responsibility.  John Ahl was an interested observer as he was required as a rafting consultant.  Art Steinke made a couple of trips up and down the river to see how it was done. Jiggs McInnis and Ed Conway were along to guess how much wood was left in the river.

Then in 1973, Ernie went back and finished cleaning the wood out of the river and at the end of June saw the Abitibi tug, Orient Bay, depart for the last time from the mouth of the Sturgeon River.

Abitibi, with foremen George Flett and Henry Hill, took this wood down to Lake Helen where Bob Matchett picked it up and delivered it to the mouth of the Nipigon River. Here it was picked up by Stubby Lanktree in the mill boat, Dorothy, and by Howard Leitch in the Abitibi, Goki.

All water delivery in the Nipigon has now ceased and there will probably be no more.

Buzz Lein's Forestry Article : November 7, 1973

Buzz Lein  Writes About :  Prosperity, November 7, 1973

Prosperity in Northwestern Ontario is directly dependent on the availability of wood fibre. Without it, there would be a dramatic and catastrophic change in the economic climate.  There would be no Marathon, Terrace Bay would vanish, Red Rock would again be a section house, Thunder Bay would assume depression status, Dryden would be a ghost town.

Wood fibre isn’t of any use until such a time as it has been torn apart and put back together again in a commercially desirable form, whether it be Kraft paper of grocery bags, bleached pulp for further processing or two by four’s for construction purposes.  It is this tearing apart and putting together again that is the heart of Northwestern Ontario ‘s economic prosperity.

Trees have to be cut down, limbed and cut into manageable sized logs. Logs have to be transported to the place of utilization and every step of the way there are costs added to costs until by the time a log gets to a mill its value has augmented from nothing to a considerable something.  And, of all the labour required to move wood from stump to the mill, 65% of it is used in cutting the tree down, taking the limbs off it, moving it out to a road, and cutting it up into logs that are to be hauled away.  The cost of woods’ labour in Northwestern Ontario  Is reported to be the highest in the world, so that when this is related to the labour content of tree processing, it has a very sad effect on the profit margins that the wood fibre processor must have.

And, it is this profit margin which pays for increased sales taxes, wages, all Government socialized benefits, increases in transportation, increases in the cost of raw material of all kinds.  For some mystifying reason, Canadians still think they get all these things for nothing and from huge profit laden companies with head offices in Utopia.

It is an axiom that the hungry wolf runs the fastest and the farthest. Because companies need more fibre than manual labour can (or will) produce, means must be found to augment the manual methods of harvesting with mechanical methods. And, it is only when all wood fibre users get into a short labour supply situation that an effort will be made to run farther and faster in the direction of mechanical harvesting.  It is also sadly true that they will be all running in different directions and over different length courses.

The need for mechanical harvesters is imperative, urgent and here now. Wood fibre producers have to mechanize or they are not going to survive.  It is as simple as that. And, they no longer have years and years to develop these machines.

The importance of having more and better harvesting equipment in the woods is more than obvious.  This equipment is a survival kit for wood fibre producers if they are to maintain their economic well being.  If this same equipment can be developed  and made in Canada, then it will help our Canadian economy.

It looks very much as if what is ahead is a lack of fibre for the mills.  This lack will come about in two ways.  One will be a lack of reserve fibre available and there isn’t much that can be done about this. The other  lack will be due to an inability to supply the machinery and people needed to harvest the crop.  It doesn’t make any difference to a machine whether or not the trees are numerous, scarce, tall, short, limby, branchy, or anything else.  It will do exactly as its operator directs. Yet all these things have an effect, usually adverse, on the production of manual workers. If there are not enough manual workers to make up for the lack of harvesting machines, then there will not be enough fibre produced at a reasonable enough price and then all consumers suffer.

Mills can make paper (or lumber, or pulp) from high cost fibre.  They cannot make a product of any kind from no fibre at all.

There is now and there always has been a need for wood-harvesting equipment. The financial success of it depends on it being a better than average product, backed up by a better than average service with better than average customer relations. Any piece of equipment can be sold under conditions like these.  It is surprising how many equipment manufacturers seem to forget these rules after they get a product well underway.

It is too bad, really, that wood harvesting has to be carried on in remote areas where people are few, biting insects are numerous, and the places have unpronounceable names along with unforgiveable extremes of climate.

The development  of successful tree harvesting equipment in Eastern Canada is dependent upon the success of a shock treatment from some external force. The first part of the shock is here – the labour shortage.  The second part will come when fibre producers suddenly become aware that not enough is being done in the area of mechanical harvesting.

There is also a third part of this shock.  It is frequently fatal and will come with the sudden awareness that planning has not been done well and that fibre processing plants will have to close because there is no way to supply them.

It could happen here.

Buzz Lein: Forestry article, February 6, 1974

Why Are We Tolerating it Now?  Industrial Foresters, Speak Up.

By: Buzz Lein , Industrial Forester, Feb. 6, 1974

I am an Industrial Forester.  I am part forester, part engineer, part ecologist and part myth. I live and work in Northern Ontario where I am never seen, never heard and never believed. I help to cut down and harvest nature’s trees. I build roads and bridges. I worry about the effects of having too much of our area covered with over-mature and decadent trees.  I wonder where al the small trees are going to come from to keep paper mills going a few more years hence;  and, I wonder , on occasion, why the role of an Industrial Forester is either completely ignored or completely misunderstood.

The fact that an area is dependent on its forests and trees for its economic well-being does not in any way mean that the dwellers therein are any more aware of the industrial forester’s role than a person who lives in a factory town where the only trees are those that  appear about the end of December each year, are greatly admired for a few days and then discarded.  It is just not possible to relate to the function on an industrial forester unless one takes the time and trouble to go see not only what he is doing but where  and how he is doing it.  The gas pump jockey who never gets out of town may get all emotional about cutting down  trees and wilderness areas without having the foggiest idea what it is all about.  The manager of the big service centre who refuses to go camping because there are flies that bite is never going to understand why trees have to be cut down when they are “ripe”.  And, the Insurance salesman who has never spoken to any kind of a forester will recoil in horror at his first sight of a clear-cut area.

These good people are typical of people who live in forested parts of the country.  Mill workers are not normally knowledgeable about either the natural forces that produce the raw material or the mechanical processes involved in moving the wood from the woods to the mill.  And, when people as close to the use-process as mill workers are not clear about what goes on in the forest, it wouldn’t be right to expect that other people in industries not forest –based should be more knowledgeable.

Why doesn’t the industrial forester do something about alerting people to forest happenings?  Why doesn’t he show his knowledge of the woods?   Good questions.  And, easy to answer.

He doesn’t alert people to the forest happenings because he doesn’t know how to do it.  And, he doesn’t know how to do it because he has received little or no training in this art.  In addition, he receives practically no encouragement from his superiors to do anything like this because his superiors  are also industrial foresters and are labouring under the same handicaps he is.

Now, combine this “ isolationism” with a species  that is few in number, widely scattered, generally living comfortably in small towns where their activities are out of the main stream of public awareness, and the end result is complete public silence.

In 1974 ( or any other year that’s handy) , complete public silence from experts in the wood harvesters’ field cannot and should not be permitted.

Why are we tolerating it now?