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Temagami Gets $1 million From Feds BY ARNIE HAKALA - The Nugget - Wednesday, December 19, 2001 |
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TEMAGAMI - A new mill here will turn white birch trees Into popsicle sticks, tongue depressors, golf tees, baseball bats and hockey sticks.
"Yes," said Joe Montrieul with a smile and a twinkle in his eye. "We should have been doing things like that 50 years ago," Montrieul, 71, spent a lifetime workIng In the bush and watching lumber being shipped south, where it was turned into finished products. , For a century, white birch may have looked pretty, but it was considered little more than a weed in the path of the pine, spruce, maple and oak that everyone wanted. In the past few years, white birch has become a valuable wood, and Tuesday more than 80 people watched as Timiskaming-Cochrane MP Ben Serre handed the new mill's owners a $1-million cheque and a promise of $700,000 more. People have been working five years to make the mill a reality. "The word today is 'finally,'" said Serre, as onlookers cheered at a town hall meeting. Temagami Forest Products Inc. plans to begin mill construction in the spring and hopes to be in operation by late fall. It will begin with 30 employees, but that number is expected to double in a year or two. The mill Is a dream come true for many people, particularly Ivan Beauchamp, who has spent five years trying to pull it together. "It's been a long battle with lots of ups and downs," he said. "It's great because it means jobs and we really need them." When Beauchamp was young, there was an iron-ore mine, a sawmill and five service stations In this town, 100 kilometres north of North Bay. The mill and mine closed 10 years ago and then the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ontario Provincial Police pulled out. "We're down to one gas station now," said Beauchamp, who is the mill's co-owner with Aurele St. Jean. The Temagaml First Nation, based on Bear Island, is a 30 per cent shareholder. Chief Raymond Katt said his people are proud to be partners. "The birch are there for people as well as the forest," lie said. Serre said the $1-million cheque from Jane Stewart, the minister rsponsible for Human Resources Development Canada, has been sitting in Finance Minister Paul Martin's desk for two years. "We were just waiting for the wood allotment from the province," he said. That allotment of 30,000 cubic metres was announced by the province Dec. 7. There was a festive mood among those in attendance Tuesday, half of them elderly people. "I guarantee you that most of them see the mill as a way of getting a son or daughter back to Temagami," said Joihn llodgson, the town's chief adminIstrative officer. "Young people have had to leave because there just aren't very many good jobs around here." Temagami Mayor Wayne Adair said employment Is "almost 100 per cent" in the summer when the town's population doubles to 2,000, but most jobs are low-paying. Winter is a problem for most. "Last winter, some men had to go all the way to Longlac to work as logging truck drivers. That sort of thing is tough on families. "We really haven't had real, year round employment for a long time." The mayor said there is room for spinoff operitions froni the mill. "We're excited." Montrieul, who started bush work as a cook's helper when he was 16, was in charge of wood operations at William Milne and Sons in Temagami when it closed in 1990. "I started by peeling potatoes and doing the dishes out in the bush near Mattawa," he said. "I remember doing some timber cruising out behind Thorne with an engineer from New Brunswick and he looked at all the dying tops of the white birch and said they would all be gone by 2030. "Now, finally we're starting to use them more. We used to cut them, but they didn't keep long, especially in June, luly and August when they went straight into the water when they got to the veneer mill. "They used to go sour, turned soft in the summer." St Jean said the mill will start with two kilns to make sure the wood is prepared promptly after it is cut. "Three years ago, you couldn't even give white birch away. Now everyone wants it." He said the new mill would not have been possible without money from the federal government. Timiskaming-Cochrane MPP David Ramsay said the role of govenment is to help build jobs. |
