TIMBER & Forestry
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Chapter 19 TIMBER & Forestry The single most dangerous action you can take on this tour is failing to pay attention while travelling on the route. Do NOT read the following chapter while actively moving by vehicle, car, foot, bike, or boat. TIMBER and Forestry Driving Tour To avoid possible forest fires, My thanks to Mike Gogo please DON’T SMOKE for the & Sandy Macham for their parts of this tour found west input to this chapter of Highway 19, in city parks, and/or in forests during your travel. Thank you very much. COMMON CONIFEROUS TREES Coniferous trees bear cones and most kinds are evergreen, since they do not lose their needles in fall. The heavily watered rain forests of coastal BC have always offered enormous conifers of all kinds: cedar, fir, spruce and hemlock. Each one had its own specialized use. The lightness, water resiliency, and resistance to decay of red cedar have historically been useful in ship building, roof shingling, and finishing work. The strength, durability, and hardness of Douglas fir made it perfect for construction purposes. The fast growth in poor soil and knot-free grain of Sitka spruce made it ideal for ship masts and musical instrument manufacture. The softness of western hemlock made it the best choice for ornamental lumber or pulp and paper production. These are likely trees you may see along this tour. Red Cedar Douglas Fir Sitka Spruce Western Hemlock Differentiating appearances of bark from four trees commonly found near Nanaimo A BRIEF HISTORY OF LOCAL FORESTRY Initially, the Snuneymuxw (original inhabitants) carefully used wood for building their longhouses and carving their canoes and totems. They peeled the inner bark of the western red cedar tree to make clothing and baskets. Early Spanish and British explorers took the occasional tree for a ship’s mast. With European settlement around 1850, lumber was needed to repair their ships and build their homes. As a result, industrial forestry pre-dates coal mining on Vancouver Island. However, when coal mining grew, much lumber was required to reinforce mine shafts, slopes, and tunnels. Therefore, sawmills were scattered all around Vancouver Island and logging was in full force by 1860, albeit on a small scale. Mining companies had immediate access to wood, because the forest was right next to their mines in 1860. Most collieries had their own sawmills to create the lumber needed for shoring up mine tunnels and constructing buildings. These mills were first operated by water power from the dammed creeks that supplied water to wash the coal and later by steam power to boil water by burning timber and coal. When land was cleared for housing, the forests were further away, but still close to the water for easy transport of logs. These were arranged into booms and towed by small boats to commonly constructed sawmills, milled into lumber, and taken from there by big sailing ships to nearby and distant markets. Logging was initially performed by hand. The Timber Act of 1884 stated that a logger “shall not use any machinery propelled other than or operated otherwise than by muscular power to carry out lumbering.” Standing on a springboard and pounding wedges into a half-cut in order to fell the tree. When a tree was flared at its base, notches were cut in the trunk and springboards were inserted into the notches. Two loggers climbed up and stood atop the board, but opposite to one another so that they could safely chop separately with double-bladed axes or team up with a double-handled long saw. Elevated a couple of metres above ground, less effort was required to cut through and fell the tree. After the forests were logged beside the water, animals (horses and/or oxen) were used to haul logs from more distant logging spots to the water. These logs were dragged along minor corduroy roads constructed from waste logs laid side by side providing less friction that pulling logs through the bushes. The 1860’s Cariboo gold rush increased timber demands for construction, cooking, and heating. As a result, logging demand increased. Building the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s required even more wood for railroad ties and once completed, lumber could be shipped via train to Eastern Canada. Logging proceeded deeper into the forest and logs were pulled across major skid roads, first by animals, then later by steam powered winches (the “steam donkey” in 1897), and logging railways by the 1910s. A two operator double-handled long saw (1949) & steam donkey powering the high lead system (1938). Other methods of transport were innovated. Logs were floated down large rivers. When water flow in tributaries was insufficient, a splash dam would be built and then purposefully broken to flush the logs downstream in the ensuing flood. The high lead was used to lift logs over obstacles by a system of lines suspended from high points of nearby poles. Clear cutting of all trees was a normal and easy procedure. Robert Dunsmuir, owner of the massive land grant (20% of Vancouver Island) that was necessary to build the 1886 E&N Railway from Esquimalt to Nanaimo, began to sell off his vast properties to logging companies by 1900. As coal extraction began to diminish in Nanaimo, the timber industry started to grow, and workers transitioned from the mines to the forests in the 1910s. Trucks replaced railways for hauling logs and bulldozers soon built temporary roads into almost any forested slope by the 1920s. When European demand increased, saws and axes gave way to two-person chain saws in the 1930s and feller bunchers: machines designed to cut and stack trees with minimal risk to loggers by the 1940s. In 1950, after light metals were developed for the Second World War, chainsaws became single operator. Balloons or helicopters were used to transport logs from more remote locations in some extreme cases. By 1960, timber companies had started to plant seedlings in an effort to regenerate some forests and in response to government legislation and harvesting limits. Sustainable practices began and the forestry worker had to become more specialized than ever before. New uses for forest bi-products were explored and pulp mills sprang up in Port Alberni, Nanaimo (Harmac), and Crofton, for making paper. Transport by truck (1932) or horses via wooden rails (1918) and then locomotives on iron (1937). The environmental movements of the 1970s, meant that the timber industry had to reconsider its clear cutting practices and plant more trees to reach government sustainability goals. Groups challenged those companies (that failed to get on board) through acts of civil and criminal disobedience. A well- known blockage of logging on the west coast of Vancouver Island made international headlines in 1993. The government responded by setting the goal of preserving 12% of forests as protected parklands and brought in stringent legislation in 1995 with rigorous limits to protect stream quality and animal habitat. Over time, the saw and pulp mills became more efficient and automated, as fewer workers were needed to convert a tree into the final product than ever before. By the 1990s, demand for specialized forest products had decreased. Timber operations were consequentially reduced. Thousands lost their jobs. The province transitioned away from the forest industry and toward the tourism industry by the 2000s. Today, facing new factors of climate collapse and insect infestation, forest fire seasons were expanding. Devastating burns were widely publicized in the 2010s. Nanaimo saw darkened skies and smoke filled lungs as recently as 2020. Conditions have become extreme and are only expected to get worse. THE TOUR Map of Timber and Forestry Tour. Start in the south of Nanaimo, near the interchange of Highways 1 (Trans-Canada) and 19 (Island). Drive north on the Trans-Canada Highway 1 toward downtown Nanaimo. After passing under the railway trestle bridge, turn right at the traffic lights on Haliburton Street. Bend slowly left and then, at the middle of a long straight section of road, pause on the right side in a large open parking area. This is near the entrance to Coastland Industries (#1). Access is restricted, so please do not visit the mill. The Coastland Wood Industries Mill. 1. Coastland Wood Industries: Established as recently as 1988, this successful Canadian company operates a mill to manufacture veneers and “roundwood” from second growth Douglas fir logs. Veneers are thin sheets of wood that are peeled from a larger log. Roundwood is the term for stakes and fences posts that are leftover cores from the veneer peeling process. This process is explained in the next section. Coastland added additional production lines in 2000 and 2013 to become the largest veneer manufacturer in North America. They continue to lead with new technological innovations and focus on sustainable practices to protect the environment. VENEER PEELING PROCESS (https://coastlandwood.com/) About 60% of logs are brought to the mill by water and stored in log booms just offshore. The rest come by truck. These logs must be straighter than most that are sent to sawmills to be cut into lumber. The reason for this needed linearity is that logs will be rotated and peeled to extract large sheets of veneer. In the mill, each log is scanned by the latest technology to determine how best to cut it and ensure an efficient yield. Next, the log is debarked by a set of rotating knives that strip its bark away. The “bark- free” log is then cut to a precise length and moved into the conditioning chamber. Materials that don’t make the grade are converted into wood chips.