July 12, 2013 12:43 pm Leave your thoughts
To better describe what one of my days generally consists of here is a ‘day in the life’ at Slave Lake Pulp as an Engineering Co-op student.
My daily morning greeting at the mill.
A great start to the day; a cup of coffee with a side of CAD.
July 11, 2013 10:35 am Leave your thoughts
It has been over a month now that I have been on the Helitack crew, with each day bringing new experiences! As a member of Millar Western’s Helitack crew, I am responsible for forest fire protection of company interests, as well as many other side projects, giving me a very broad exposure of the forestry industry. My first day was certainly my most memorable to date.
July 8, 2013 3:17 pm Leave your thoughts
Hello once again readers. Since I haven’t talked much about what I have been physically doing at work since my first blog, I figured it was time to provide a brief update as well as discuss some of the tasks lined up for me in the remainder of my time here.
So far, I have been continuing to work on finalizing data for the consistency meters I was trialing at the start of the summer.
July 5, 2013 11:13 am Leave your thoughts
The marginal ground trial that was supposed to start this week has been pushed back to start Monday now, due to wet ground conditions from an abundance of rain recently. Last week, I attended a SafeStart conference along with employees of other forestry companies and contractors. The conference aimed to encourage us to think about our behaviours and actions in regards to safety.
July 5, 2013 10:47 am Leave your thoughts
Safety is an integral part of both the operations and culture at all divisions of West Fraser Mills, and Slave Lake Pulp is no exception. Slave Lake Pulp is committed to the principle that no phase of operation takes precedence over accident prevention. To see evidence of this one has to look no further than the Health and Safety Philosophy that can be found plastered all throughout the mill:
July 3, 2013 1:45 pm Leave your thoughts
The past couple of weeks working here at Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd. have been filled with excitement.
I spent the other day driving to hawk hills to assess logging road conditions there with a fellow co-worker. We went as far as we could by truck, and then hopped onto the quads to get into the heart of the bush.
July 2, 2013 10:33 am Leave your thoughts
My name is Connor Vale, and I am excited to now be a Green Dream Intern as well as part of the Millar Western team! My home is in Bowmanville, Ontario, and I am currently a student, studying toward a Bsc in Forestry at the University of British Columbia. My experiences thus far at Millar Western have been amazing, and I am very happy to accomplish what I had originally set out to do.
June 25, 2013 3:42 pm Leave your thoughts
So much has gone on recently! I have been given some interesting projects – for example, making -center lines on old and new forestry roads. As you might just guess, a center line marks where the center of a road is or will be, and is an important part of the blueprint for road building, maintenance and reclamation.
After I received this assignment,
June 24, 2013 1:17 pm Leave your thoughts
I have decided to take this particular entry in a separate direction from my previous blog posts, which had mostly been examining characteristics and responsibilities that were both encompassed by and related to the forest industry. In this post, I would like to shed light on what it has been like growing up in a community that is heavily influenced by the forestry sector and what I had and had not realized about this industry.
June 24, 2013 12:06 pm Leave your thoughts
This past week I was working in the seed orchard, which is owned by 5 different companies, Weyerhaeuser being one of them. There are 5 different orchards, mostly used for genetic research. Some of the trees were seedlings while others were grafted with scions and root stock. There are numerous boxes throughout the orchard with slides that catch pollen, which are replaced every two days to determine the amount of pollen contamination from outside the orchard.
June 17, 2013 12:18 pm Leave your thoughts
Friday was my last day with the AOP crew, after 5 weeks of designing operating plans for numerous blocks in the forest management area. It was great working with the guys, they must be some of the hardest workers I know, and I learned so much from them in such a short period of time. For the next week, I’ll be working in the seed orchard,
June 13, 2013 11:10 am Leave your thoughts
Would you like to work for a company that believes in operating in a stewardly manner? Where renewing the forest resource for the future is a key focus?
Given today’s socially conscious workforce, it’s no wonder that many of us are thinking about the impact our employers have on the environment and the implications of our career choices.
June 13, 2013 11:06 am Leave your thoughts
I have now been working at DMI for just over a month and the experience so far has been amazing to say the least.
I arrived in the beautiful town of Peace River in Northern Alberta on May 4th after 4 days of driving from Ontario. It was a long trip, but being able to see parts of Canada I had never seen before was definitely worth it.
June 11, 2013 12:07 pm Leave your thoughts
Wow, where to begin?
I guess that a quick synopsis of my summer so far is as good a place to start as any. So here goes:
In the past 40 days I have traveled more kilometers than any other point in my life. From the University of Western Ontario to the Colosseum in Rome, to Edmonton Alberta and finally the Town of Slave Lake,
June 10, 2013 10:08 am Leave your thoughts
Hello everyone once again. Since my last entry, I’ve recognized an aspect of the forest industry that I had never really considered prior to about a week ago. Given that my own field is engineering, not forestry, I hadn’t fully realized that collaborating with different companies, groups and people is an integral and crucial part of this particular industry. Oil companies,
June 5, 2013 2:34 pm Leave your thoughts
Well, I am almost a month into work now and continuing to learn new things at a rapid pace. These past couple of weeks, I have had the opportunity to be the contact between external company representatives and Millar Western on certain trials we have been running. Typically, what will happen is that a technician or a salesman for the meter company we happen to be trialing will come up from various parts of North America and will be on site for 1-2 days.
June 5, 2013 2:33 pm Leave your thoughts
Two more weeks have passed working with Weyerhaeuser, and things are still going great. I was on the AOP (Annual Operating Plan) layout crew again, navigating through blocks and using ribbon to mark boundaries, roads, creeks, and crossings. The average block is around 80 hectares, and we walk a good few kilometers every day. Work is pretty much a long hike every day,
June 5, 2013 2:30 pm Leave your thoughts
When I heard I landed the Green Dream internship with Weyerhaeuser this summer, I was beyond excited! I was excited to move and spend my summer somewhere new, and to gain forestry experience working for such a well-known company in the forestry industry, applying what I have learned in school to the real world. So just over two weeks ago,
May 22, 2013 1:14 pm Leave your thoughts
Now that I have had a better feel with how things are being done around here, I have had the cool experience of using ArcPad. It is what it kind of sounds like: it’s ArcMap, but on a tablet, and can be used in the field. For those of you who are not familiar with ArcMap, it’s a processing program that allows you to explore geographic data and create maps.
May 20, 2013 1:02 pm Leave your thoughts
These past two weekends were almost polar opposites of each other. The first weekend, I was sick and stayed in bed, to make sure I was OK for work. This weekend, the long weekend, I wanted to go see a mountain, because I had never seen a mountain before. So, I headed up to Jasper National Park and went to Athabasca Falls,
May 19, 2013 1:08 pm Leave your thoughts
I’m Kyle Waterman, and I was born and raised in southern Ontario and lived most of my life in the city of Peterborough. I lived there till I hit high school then moved to a small town of Havelock where I learned most of my forestry practice through a very cool program that, over 3 years, taught me how to fell trees,