The Passing of an era

On November 1, 2012, the Planer mill in Cranbrook caught fire, destroying the main part of the planer mill.  Ironically, no one would really care, since the planer mill was just about to be scrapped - contractors were busy pulling components out of the badly weathered and neglected building, and the carcass would have been picked clean by the scrappers by the end of November anyway.

Overall, though, it's the end of a major industry in a town that is the major hub of the East Kootanays.



It was not always like this.  You see, a small lumber company started consolidating mills in the 1950's to form Crestbrook Forest Industries.  By the 1960's, they had three mills - one in Creston, one in Canal Flats, and one in Cranbrook.

By 1969, with the help of the Japanese, CFI Built a pulp mill in Skookumchuck. In the late seventies, they bought the Crowsnest Industries Sawmill in Elko.  It was a rather neatly run operation, with the Main office located at the old school building in Cranbrook.

In the late 90's things were not looking so good for Crestbrook.  The Creston mill was shut down and demolished in 1994/5. and the decision to shut down the Cranbrook mill was made in 1998. From an operational standpoint, both mills were well over 40 years old, and cost a lot to run. The Softwood-lumber dispute by then had boiled over, and left the company hurting.

Ventures into an OSB plant cost Crestbrook a lot of money, and weakened them to a point were Tembec bought them out.  The Cranbrook sawmill was converted into a "Value added Centre", where short pieces of wood were finger-jointed together and converted back into stud-grade lumber. The planer mill was left, as were the kilns (The kilns at Elko and Canal flats were undersized, so green lumber was trucked to the Cranbrook kilns for drying and planing.)

Eventually, Tembec ran into money problems. The US housing collapse was hurting them, to the point where the Skookumchuck pulp mill was the only plant making money in the East Kootenays. By this point, the only thing running at the Cranbrook site was the Kilns - both the Value Added Center and planer mill's last major shift was in 2004.

Things gradually improved since that time, until Tembec decided to cut their losses and focus on their mills back in Quebec.  Canfor bought up the Canal Flats and Elko mills in March 2012, as well as their woodlands operations, and reorganized them so they were independent.

As a result, the main office was sold off to the Ktunaxa First Nations. After Canfor's initial agreement to use them expired, the dry kilns in Cranbrook were shut down in May 2012.

Since then, Tembec has been trying to find an owner for both the Skookumchuck Pulp Mill and the VAC.

I wonder if Cranbrook would even notice that a major company is rapidly disappearing from their town. I would love to say they would, as industry is an important economic factor in any community, but the initial economic impact was felt when the Cranbrook Plant was shut down in 1998 and 2004 - most of the workers either transferred to the other mills, found work elsewhere or moved out.

It's sad to see this happen, and happen so fast.  When I was growing up, it was an extremely fun adventure to travel with Dad to the sawmills to look over the upgrades or repairs they were working on that weekend, then go grab a load of firewood and head home.  The fact that it was a local business gave me pride knowing that my dad worked for them.

Now, as I go to Engineering school myself, and prepare for life on my own, I wonder what my future would hold, if I will ever be a homebody, or be a transient forever hunting for that long-term career like what my dad held.

Truly the passing of an era.