JORDAN RIVER, B.C. -- At a bend in the road near Jordan River on Vancouver Island, three men are on a picket line, waving from camp chairs to passersby and trying to keep their "On Strike" signs from blowing over in the ocean breeze.
They are members of a much-diminished army, the logging and sawmilling workers who toil in British Columbia's coastal forests, and they have gone from being among the loudest and most powerful economic forces in the province to fighting for their survival.
"They probably take more wood out of here than they used to," says picket Will Lionas, who has spent more than 30 years working in and around the forests of southern Vancouver Island and runs a grapple yarder, a machine that picks up and hauls felled logs. "But there's not as many employees."
The numbers bear him out. About 7,000 workers went on strike last week after the United Steelworkers and employers at four separate tables were unable to reach a deal. That's down from about 8,800 who worked in the coastal industry four years ago and more than 15,000 in the early 1990s. The sector, which is smaller than the lumber industry in B.C.'s Interior, still accounts for some $2-billion worth of exports every year, but has been in crisis for so long that some wonder whether this strike is akin to a death rattle.
More National Stories
For more than a century, logging has been at the centre of the Island's economy and culture. It has provided a prosperous livelihood for many communities, but people see that slipping away as the industry declines and jobs disappear.
New technology means fewer workers are required to haul the same amount of wood out of the forests. Coastal producers face increased competition from producers in places such as Uruguay, Chile and Brazil, where labour is cheap and trees grow more than twice as fast as they do on B.C.'s wet, often hard-to-access coast.
Things are so tough for the industry that on this particularly scenic stretch of coast, some companies have concluded there's more money to be made in subdividing and selling land than in perpetually logging it.
Vancouver-based TimberWest Forest Corp., for example, a major landholder on the island, has transformed itself over the past few years, contracting out nearly all of its logging operations and stepping up real estate sales to capitalize on the ravenous appetite for lots with a view.
"Demand for residential properties in this area is increasing exponentially," says Bruce MacMillan, a ReMax real estate agent in Sooke who is selling lots at Wildwood Terrace, a project near Jordan River developed by Victoria-based Totangi Forestry Ltd.
Mr. MacMillan, who has been building or selling real estate in the area for about 20 years, says people drop into his office every day in the summer, hunting for waterfront property or to view lots.
Last year, Victoria-based developer Three Point Properties bought a 200-hectare site from TimberWest in Port Renfrew, a fishing and logging town about a 2½-hour drive from Victoria best known for buckets of rain and as an end point of the famed West Coast Trail.
Plans for the site are still being developed - Three Point wants to move slowly and in co-operation with the community, managing partner Ross Tennant says - but Port Renfrew has many of the attributes that have made Tofino a tourism magnet.
Proposed developments have already raised alarms among residents about overstretched fire departments, loss of green space and increased traffic.
But forest companies that own private land have flagged their intentions to scout around for the sites that may have development potential.
TimberWest hired a new vice-president of real estate this past spring and is reviewing its property holdings to ensure they are put to "highest and best use."
Earlier this year, Western Forest Products Inc. won approval to remove some of its privately owned land, including some in the Sooke area, from provincial tree farm licences, through which the province governs forest industry operations.
Environmental groups slammed the move as a giveaway to the company, but the province defended its decision, saying the company owned the land, had voluntarily put it into a tree farm licence and would have more flexibility to build a profitable business if it were removed.
Western, the successor to the former Doman Forest Products, which ran into financial woes and was forced to restructure, has since said it is not a real estate developer and that any changes to land use will be slow in coming.
Mr. MacMillan has a realist's take on market pressures and the Island's evolving economy. There's a perennial tug of war over development in rural areas, especially ones as wild and scenic as the woods and waters around Sooke, he says.
"There will be public pressure to make it happen. And there will just as big a corresponding push back from people who are already here and don't want it to happen at all."
On the other side of the Island, people on picket lines near Ladysmith, Duncan and Nanaimo are talking about more conventional issues raised by the decline in the industry - constant pressure to improve productivity at the expense of their home lives and safety precautions on work sites.
Workers at remote logging sites have it worst, says Bill Bennett, 55, a long-time employee at Western's Duke Point Sawmill division near Nanaimo. They have to drive long distances to their jobs, work 10 or 12 hours in challenging, dangerous conditions and then drive home, often to grab a few hours' sleep before doing it all over again, he says.
"I'm just here trying to back the other guys," Mr. Bennett says.
Safety has become a hot topic in this strike. The union and workers claim longer shifts have put workers at risk and are devastating employees' home lives.
The industry disputes those claims, saying safety is a top priority and that employers need to have flexibility in assigning shifts to boost productivity.
On the picket lines, workers are bitter about an arbitrated settlement that came into effect in 2004 and gave employers more leeway to change shifts and alter hours. The settlement followed a three-week strike in late 2003 that ended when the provincial government intervened.
This year's talks between the union and employers were going on at four different tables and broke down over shift scheduling, contracting out and severance pay.
Workers are also angry over unprocessed, or raw, logs being cut in B.C. and sold on the open market for processing in the United States or elsewhere.
"It seems like a no-brainer to protect a natural resource that belongs to us and our communities," says Darlene Mancell, a Duncan resident who's worked for 30 years at the Cowichan sawmill near Duncan and says the provincial and federal governments should do more to support resource towns and value-added processing.
"The high-grade logs leave the province and we get what's left."
Comparing sectors
CANADA
It was a difficult year for Canadian forest, paper and packaging companies, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. A strong dollar, declining North American housing market, rising costs and the mountain beetle infestation are reshaping the industry and putting downward pressure on margins.
PRODUCTION, COMP. to 2005
Lumber: -2.5%
Paper: 8%
Containerboard: 4%
TOP 12 PRODUCERS
Sales: $25.9-billion
Profit: $890-million
Return on capital: 2%
LATIN AMERICA
An abundant supply of fibre and short harvest cycles contributed to rapid growth in the region, as investments in new production facilities, technology and silviculture begin to pay off. The pulp sector is set for huge expansion, and is expected to dominate the world's hardwood market pulp production within the next few years.
TOP 9 PRODUCERS
Sales: $14.4-billion
Profit: $2.4-billion
Return on capital: 8.7%
48