WHY I SPEND A LOT OF TIME INDOORS

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 Lein Predicts, November 7, 1973 : It Could Happen Here

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 Asked In 1974 - "WHY ARE WE TOLERATING IT NOW?

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?

BEYOND THE FAIRY RING

A walk in the edge of the Boreal this September.

They all start from little buttons.

These are all "look-at and leaver right there " types.

Interesting. Haven't located a name for them.

21,000 PAGEVIEWS September 7, 2015

Thank You to all my viewers and readers. It has been a busy summer at the Nipigon Museum so I haven't even been out taking photographs. Tonight was an exception we had a rain and the sun was shining.

Rainbow at night, a sailor's delight.
We will see what tomorrow brings.

BEAR WITH ME

It was going to be a good fall for our apple trees

This chipmunk was not a suspect.

One of the few limbs on this tree and now it's gone.

 

This is the tree from August surprise. The surprise branch is still on the tree.
I am checking if the flowers set fruit.

Black object under the tree is little bear.

This was the largest of the three bears.

On the way to the crab apple tree the plum tree got taken down.(left)

They stripped the lower branches and then climbed into the top.

Bear wise no longer removes nuisance bears. Which is a shame.
 Transporting bears keeps them out of our gardens
 long enough for the fruit to mature and be picked.
Local bear "catcher" didn't answer his phone.

These are wind-falls rescued the day before the attack
. From the little tree the chipmunk is sitting in.
They will make a pie.

These were picked from the tree the bear is seen under after it was chased away
We had tested them the day before for ripeness but the seeds were still white.
Good for jelly, maybe..

August Surprise

This is almost a believe it or not but I put the day's newspaper behind the blossom for verification.

August 25, 2015 Apple blossoms

August 25, 2015 apple blossoms

August 25, 2015 Apple blossoms.

August 25, 2015