September 11, 2017 5:19 pm Leave your thoughts
This week marked the beginning of a new chapter in my time at Weyerhaeuser. Over the weekend I traded up my college dorm in Grande Prairie for a camper trailer out in the woods. This was necessary with the onset of herbicide application, or “spraycation” as some of my colleagues good naturedly call it.
Herbicide treatments are necessary to improve the performance of planted trees,
September 11, 2017 5:14 pm 1 Comment
This summer has shown a perspective as to how technology impacts my daily job. The forestry sector can move forward at a faster rate due to technological advances. From flying drones to do reconnaissance, creating maps using the latest GIS software, to LiDAR calibration plots to increase the accuracy of laser technology. Each piece plays an important role in the progress of allowing timber to come into the mills.
September 11, 2017 5:13 pm Leave your thoughts
This wildfire season has now been dubbed the worst in British Columbia’s history. The Cariboo region has been heavily hit and we are not out of the proverbial “woods” yet.
The Elephant Hill fire which began in Ashcroft and burnt through to Loon Lake and up onto the Cariboo Plateau near Green Lake and is now burning near Sheridan Lake,
September 7, 2017 2:28 pm Leave your thoughts
Over the summer, I was able to get to know some of the operations outside of the sawmill. Those places include the kilns, energy plant, and planer mill! I wanted to touch base about these because they are imperative to our lumber production!
We will start off at the sawmill outfeed where the forklift drivers will come pick up the lifts of green lumber.
September 7, 2017 2:18 pm Leave your thoughts
Today we are going to follow alongside a woodchip as it transforms into the wood pulp that we use abundantly throughout the world. Before I start I’d like to give thanks to Brian Perron for sitting down and hammering out some of the finer details with me, it is very appreciated.
Millar Western Pulp is an extremely unique mill in the sense that we have the technology and expertise to make any grade of hardwood or softwood pulp,
September 6, 2017 2:39 pm Leave your thoughts
Big news for us here at Northwood, our next capital project is under way and has been announced publicly! You can find the press release at http://www.canfor.com/investor-relations/investor-news-press-releases/news-detail/2017/07/26/canfor-pulp-announces-northwood-and-taylor-pulp-mill-energy-projects, which also talks about the capital project going on at the Taylor Pulp Mill.
In my last blog post, I had briefly described the liquor recovery cycle and how this ties into energy generation.
September 6, 2017 2:06 pm 2 Comments
It’s hard to believe I’m already sitting here reflecting on the summer that has come and gone too fast. When I first received the phone call from the woods manager here in Hinton requesting an interview for this position, I remember feeling like moving up here was simply not an option but I am so glad I did; I can’t imagine my life without this experience in it.
August 29, 2017 2:35 pm Leave your thoughts
This week, I would like to give a brief overview of how the pulp mill works! So many people I’ve talked to from home don’t even really know what pulp is, so this seems like a good opportunity to explain what it is and how it’s made.
When people ask me what pulp is, I always describe it as an intermediate step between wood chips and any type of paper or boxboard product (including tissue,
August 25, 2017 2:49 pm Leave your thoughts
Working at Canfor – Truly the Green Dream
Before beginning my work term, I had briefly learned about the pulp and paper process at school. For example, one part of the process I learned about is called counter-current jump stage washing, which happens in the bleaching stage of the pulping process. Counter-current washing describes a way of washing the pulp in between bleaching stages.
August 25, 2017 2:36 pm Leave your thoughts
Throughout the summer one of the common tasks that we were given was to walk cutting permits that were scheduled for harvest to search for migratory bird nests in order to mitigate incidental take of potential bird nests during harvest. This involved thoroughly walking through each block in search of cavity nests and stick nests. If we noticed any type of bird activity,
August 24, 2017 3:57 pm Leave your thoughts
Coming into the final weeks of my work term, I think it’s time to finally discuss my main project of the summer with you! This blog has to have some technical terms (I’ll try to define them all, I promise!) but I’ll work through it as simply as I can!
Asides from the wonderful wildlife surveys and various other projects I’ve been on,
August 24, 2017 3:44 pm Leave your thoughts
For this week’s blog, I’m going to talk mainly about the benefits about working for Tolko Industries and why I am glad I was able to start my forestry career with such a good company. Over the course of the summer, I’ve classified my experience with Tolko as an unforgettable time. Although it was a short 4 month work term,
August 21, 2017 4:16 pm Leave your thoughts
This week, I had the opportunity to head out to the log yard and practice some scaling. We have scalers at Blue Ridge, who are all excellent at their jobs. It was a great opportunity to learn from one of them, and I wanted to give some insight into the world of scaling. Scaling is important to forestry because we need to have a fair and consistently applied basis for measuring the volume coming into the mill.
August 21, 2017 4:11 pm Leave your thoughts
Where the Rivers Meet
In my first blog I mentioned I wanted to talk about the Whitecourt area. My family moved here nine years ago, and I’ve I really grown fond of this place. Not only do we boast one of last years “Canada’s best restroom” for those travelling through (haha), but there’s some really great perks to living in this forestry driven town.
August 21, 2017 4:05 pm Leave your thoughts
Hello everyone! I can’t believe it’s August! Warmer weather means harvesting is up and running here in Blue Ridge. In the last few weeks I got to go out with a couple of our operations supervisors to check out the quality of logs being harvested. This summer, I’ve been focusing on helping to ensure high quality logs are continuously being brought into the mill.
August 17, 2017 6:17 pm Leave your thoughts
This summer has taken an unusual turn with all of the forest fires in British Columbia. 100 Mile House was evacuated for a couple of weeks, and after everyone had secured their belongings and families, West Fraser was challenged to find everyone somewhere to work to keep us going during this time. People from our office in 100 Mile House who had somewhere to stay in areas nearby that were not evacuated were able to work at the Chasm office.
August 17, 2017 6:12 pm Leave your thoughts
Over the past few weeks I’ve had a lot of questions from family and friends who have seen my previous blogs, and it continues to baffle me how people will believe any rumour they hear. I had one friend who I’ve known for a long time ask me “what’s the point of talking about sustainability in your blog when the mill is constantly cutting trees down?”.
August 14, 2017 4:46 pm Leave your thoughts
It was a rainy Friday morning in the office when I got a phone call that brightened my day right up! Larry, one of our operations supervisors, called me with a bit of hawk ‘emergency’. One of his contractor’s buncher-men had gotten out of his machine to look at something in the block he was harvesting, and was dive bombed by two large birds that he described as good-sized hawks that were brown/tan in colour.
August 14, 2017 4:31 pm Leave your thoughts
Taylor’s Capital Project
These last two weeks have been very eventful for Canfor Pulp! Canfor Pulp Ltd. announced on July 26th that it will be undertaking two capital projects – one of which will be happening at the Taylor Pulp mill. The capital project in Taylor aims to improve the efficiency of the mill by using less energy to produce the same amount of product.
August 14, 2017 4:16 pm Leave your thoughts
Nothing screams sustainability more than re-usable energy.
We here at Millar Western are extremely fortunate for the opportunity to build and run our very own bio-energy plant (BEP). After 3 tedious years of construction, our plant now has the ability to use the gasses that we produce to create some of our own power. I sat down with our production superintendent recently to ask a couple questions about the BEP.
August 14, 2017 4:12 pm 1 Comment
Being a summer student in operation with Tolko Prairie Woodlands, a huge portion of the work we do is Riparian Management Areas and Visual Sensitive Area boundary ribboning. This task is extremely important when preparing a block for the contractors to begin work. The reason that we focus a lot on these boundary lines is to ensure the harvesting practices are not interrupting the land around waterbodies to maintain erosion protection naturally and to provide habitat placement that many animals rely on being there.
August 9, 2017 9:00 pm Leave your thoughts
It is a difficult feeling for anyone to receive the news that they are being evacuated from their home. Many feelings, thoughts, and memories cross a persons mind; will I see my house again? What do I take with me? Where will we go?
This was, and still is, the reality for many British Columbians this July with hundreds of wildfires breaking out around the province,
August 3, 2017 7:59 pm 3 Comments
Day 2: Tuesday July 4th, 2017
Today’s adventure takes me to Quesnel, BC also known as the ‘Mothership’ of West Fraser. Quesnel hosts the largest density of West Fraser Mills, with two pulp mills, one sawmill, one plywood plant, one MDF plant, their sales offices and their Canadian Operations office. That’s a lot of mills in one day,
August 3, 2017 7:51 pm 2 Comments
Rocky Mountain Adventures
One huge bonus of living in Hinton is the close access we have to the Rocky Mountains. This was a huge selling feature for me when I decided to come to Hinton for the summer. I touched on some of my local explorations in a previous blog, Finding Home in Hinton, but today I want to take you a bit further,
August 1, 2017 4:05 pm 1 Comment
Forestry isn’t all watching wildlife and flying in helicopters. Occasionally we have to actually get some work done. So far at Weyerhaeuser I have had two primary responsibilities: writing silviculture prescriptions, and performing tree planting checks. This may sound rather humdrum, but it’s actually relatively interesting when you know how it fits into the big picture.
When an area of land is cleared of trees,