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Quesnel mill puts through final board

The last board has been cut into lumber at Quesnel Sawmill. "With no planning, just by coincidence, the last one through was one of the best pine logs I'd seen in a long time, really clean wood," said acting-manager Mark Zurek.

The last board has been cut into lumber at Quesnel Sawmill.

"With no planning, just by coincidence, the last one through was one of the best pine logs I'd seen in a long time, really clean wood," said acting-manager Mark Zurek.

That last strip of lumber was laid on the boardroom table at Canfor's head office at the mill. It will be turned into a plaque that the forestry corporation will keep at their Vancouver headquarters as a human resources memorial to the 209 people who had jobs at the factory.

Canfor's senior vice-president of forestry, environment and energy Mark Feldinger was in Quesnel for the final day of sawing (planer mill activities and inventory shipping will still go on until all wood on-site is gone). He said Quesnel Sawmill had one of the oldest workforces of any facility in the company, and that played a role in the closure date.

"We have known this was coming for a long time. When we saw the effects of the pine beetle happening, we knew it would eventually come to this," said Feldinger. With a large percentage of the mill set to retire in the next few years, it would have been unconscionable to drag it out, he explained.

"We could have limped along for awhile longer but we would have had to in-fill those positions as the retirements happened. That would have been done with younger people, and we would have put all the effects [of the inevitable closure] onto those younger workers and their families. The severance costs are higher doing it this way, but it was the right thing to do - the right way to treat people."

Canfor found 230 job openings within their company for which Quesnel workers were offered transfer employment. So far, 39 people have taken them up on those offers. Seventy-five others have declared their intention to look for new jobs or open their own businesses in Quesnel. In keeping with the age calculations made by Canfor, 62 chose to take a retirement package.

The rest have not declared their intentions, yet, to the company.

"It is always poignant when something like this comes to its end," said Canfor's vice-president of external relations Christine Kennedy, also in Quesnel for the final day of milling. "There has been a mill on this site for 55 years. There are emotions involved in any closure. There are many valuable people who worked here, and this mill was profitable for us, the decision has nothing to do with issues over people or profits. It is entirely about fiber supply."

Due to the mountain pine beetle disaster, the Quesnel area ran out of trees that could be used for lumber. There were too many mills in that area for all of them to survive on that shrunken fiber supply. The situation was the same in the Houston area. So Canfor and fellow forestry firm West Fraser - each with a mill running in those towns, but with vastly fewer trees than anticipated before the pine beetle wave - made a deal to swap their remaining healthy timber in those respective areas. Each would close one mill and allow their other mill to carry on.

Despite the two companies' attempts to minimize the pine beetle disaster's effects on the towns of Quesnel and Houston, there are still pains and worries. Quesnel mayor Mary Sjostrom said "I can't go to the mill today" for the last log. In tomorrow's edition of The Citizen she discusses the future of the Cariboo city without one of its most important employers.