A muted welcome: Vanderhoof’s sawmill was the northern municipality’s largest employer until its closure last year caused upheaval among forestry workers.

Image Credit: Photo by Andybremner2012 via Wikimedia, Creative Commons licensed

When forestry contractor Mike Egli heard the sawmill in Vanderhoof was closing, he was expecting the worst.

Egli co-owns logging contractor Dalchako Transport with his brothers. As with many local forestry companies, Dalchako’s livelihood was tied to the Plateau sawmill, Vanderhoof’s largest employer. With more than 200 workers, the sawmill was integral to the local economy. It closed at the end of December 2024.

Egli has found other contracts to keep working since December, but the mill’s closure has caused a massive upheaval.

“We lost all that work there,” he said.

Vanderhoof is the latest northern B.C. forestry town hit by a decades-long wave of mill closures.

When the sawmills closed in Vanderhoof and Fort St. John at the end of last year, hundreds of jobs were lost. The closures underscore a long downturn in logging jobs as climate change, invasive beetles and high U.S. tariffs on softwood lumber continue to push major forestry employers out of northern B.C.

Now, Vanderhoof’s forestry workers are reaching a crossroads faced by hundreds in the past decade as the province pivots to face the turmoil of U.S. tariffs.

Some workers took advantage of government programs and retired. Others are retraining to use their skills in heavy construction, mining and other local industries.

Contractors like Egli are finding what work is left in the local forestry industry.

“It’s going to be a tough couple of years here. There’s just no doubt about that,” Vanderhoof Mayor Kevin Moutray said. “But we’re a very entrepreneurial community. We will find a way out of it, and we’ll come out stronger on the other side.”

‘It was never a shock to Vanderhoof’

British Columbia has lost thousands of forestry jobs since the turn of the century.

Near Vanderhoof, invasive mountain pine beetles have ravaged the local timber supply while U.S. tariffs on softwood lumber have made it increasingly difficult for big mills to turn a profit.

So Vanderhoof Coun. Brian Frenkel said it wasn’t a surprise to hear Canfor was shuttering its own mill about 175 kilometres to the east.

“It was never a shock to Vanderhoof that this could happen one day,” he said, adding the town has been preparing to help workers manage the closure for years.

Some were able to retire with support from the B.C. government’s Bridging to Retirement program, which aimed to support forestry workers older than 55 who were affected by forestry sector challenges.

The B.C. government closed the program in February, saying in a press release it is now “fully subscribed” after supporting nearly 2,200 workers since 2019.

The program’s end highlights a provincial government’s shift in attention away from forestry workers. In 2022, the province budgeted $185 million over three years to support communities through forestry’s challenges.

As that funding term comes to an end, the province’s fiscal plan does not renew that funding.

B.C. Forests Minister Ravi Parmar said in an email he is still committed to supporting B.C. forestry workers.

He said while some of the forestry-specific support programs have reached their scheduled end, the province still plans to offer supports for forestry workers as the embattled industry faces the new threat of massive tariffs and duties.

“As we pivot to face the greatest threat to B.C.’s economy in generations, our supports are pivoting, too,” Parmar said. “As the tariff threat extends to all of B.C.’s economy, our response will include both specific programs and broad initiatives.”

He added the provincial government still runs its Employer Training Grant, which gives employers funding to offer skills training programs.

“I want B.C. forestry workers to know I have their backs,” he said.

Retraining workers for new industries

Moutray said that while it’s not clear exactly how the province will support the town, the forests minister has been working with the district.

Meanwhile, workers in Vanderhoof are looking to other industries to make a living. It’s a shift many northern B.C. workers have had to make before.

Jeff Gorham, training administrator for International Union of Operating Engineers Local 115, said the union trains about 2,000 people a year to work in skilled trades. That includes dozens of northern B.C. forestry workers affected by mill closures in the past decade.

“They’re already experienced construction workers,” he said. “It’s just retraining them for a different industry — like working on equipment that they’ve never worked before.”

He recalls the union running one such program in 2019, after the Vavenby mill in B.C.’s southern Interior shut down. The International Union of Operating Engineers retrained a dozen forestry workers in the Interior to work on Trans Mountain pipeline construction.

The program ran for four weeks and got 90 per cent of the workers employed on major infrastructure projects near their homes, according to Gorham. It was funded through provincial and federal grants.

In 2020, the International Union of Operating Engineers ran a similar program to train forestry workers to work in asphalt paving and heavy construction. It ran another program after a major paper mill closure in Powell River.

“The timing was really good for us, because we had a lot of work opportunities,” he said. “We knew the mills were shutting down in these particular areas and we had a shortage of people to put to work on these projects.”

But Gorham said the retraining program hasn’t run in a few years.

“There has to be jobs for it,” he said, adding that work on the pipeline is now mostly finished. He said the union is waiting for another major infrastructure project to need work before it reaches out to train more forestry workers.

“When further projects open up and there’s going to be huge labour demands, that’s when those opportunities arise for us to be able to run [a program],” he said.

For those who stay, no silver-bullet solutions

Not all workers are leaving the industry. Mayor Moutray said local forestry contractors are commuting 200 kilometres to Quesnel, B.C., for work, or flying into remote work camps to stay in forestry.

“They’re going out and making it happen,” he said. “But that’s a huge difference to those workers, and if you’re not used to being in camp, it’s a real big difference to being home every night.”

Back at Dalchako Transport, Egli said he’s pivoted to hauling logs to other mills in northern B.C., namely one in Prince George. He said while the forest industry is contracting, he doesn’t see it ever disappearing from northern B.C.

“The forestry industry is going to stick around,” Egli said. “These trees regrow, and if managed correctly, the forest industry can stay operating forever.”

But as workers ready themselves for mill closures, Egli said he’s had a tough time finding skilled labour. He says he’s watched workers leave Dalchako Transport to work in heavy construction.

“[The province] had this grant in place for the last couple years where they were paying people to get out of the forest industry, and I lost a couple drivers who took advantage of it,” he said. “I can’t blame them, but I’m not really a fan of the government paying my employees to quit.”

But back in Vanderhoof, Frenkel said mill workers who have been laid off are turning to mining and agriculture. He said the district’s council has been working with businesses in both sectors to help match workers with new jobs.

“We’re educating and getting that information out to as many individuals as we can so that they can say, ‘I want to live in Vanderhoof still, and I can still work in a different industry,’” he said.

Frenkel said he’s not seeing a jump in “for sale” signs in the district, and elementary school classes aren’t seeing a drop in the number of students — both indicators that people are staying in town instead of leaving to find work.

Meanwhile, Moutray said most of the former mill workers actively looking for jobs are finding them at a smaller pine mill that is still operating in the district, or in mining development and exploration.

“It’s not a silver bullet by any means, but we’ve definitely been working on that pathway from a job in a mill to a job in a mine,” he said.

“There might be a bit more pain in a couple of months, but we’re finding that people are tending to find jobs as they look for them.”

— This article was originally published by The Tyee

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