After more than 100 years in existence, the industry that helped shape this town has quietly disappeared from its maps.
The municipality's Official Community Plan erases log handling from Squamish's peninsula. The District of Squamish's present truck route map ignores some of forestry's log sorting facilities completely.Whilethere's a long-term idea to move all log handling to an area on the southeast side the Mamquam Blind Channel Site B employees at the log sort on the other side of the waterway worry they're being squeezed out of town altogether.
It's a complicated issue, industry spokesperson Eric Andersen said. The Garibaldi Forest Products' dry sort is on leased land that may not be developed for many years to come. In the meantime, land-use plans and safe truck routes for water-dependent industries need attention before municipal officials can focus on the Oceanfront, Andersen said.
The issue has left stakeholders, like Garibaldi Forest Products owner Bryan Shier, scratching their heads. Logging annually pumps an estimated $50 million into Squamish. It's one the district's largest industries, directly employing approximately 350 people in the corridor, Shier said.
Last year, 3,300 truckloads of timber were hauled down Loggers Lane to the Garibaldi Forest Products log sort just south of the Squamish Yacht Club.This month, council voted to examine the proposed Seventh Avenue connector truck route that serves Squamish Terminals, but ignores the dry sort.
It's as if a segment of Squamish is trying to hide an embarrassing secret, Shier said, above the roar of two loaders sifting through fallen logs on a site in Tree Farm Licence (TFL) 38 an area comprising the Squamish, Elaho and Ashlu drainages. It's an impulse that stems from ignorance, Shier said.
Most of the action takes place out of the view of the community, Shier said. The Squamish Forest District consists of 1 million hectares. TFL 38 is approximately 189,000 hectares. Within the TFL, 25,000 hectares are working forest, of which less than one per cent is harvested per year.Other than the log booms tied up along the Blind Channel and sporadic logging trucks rolling through town, the industry is invisible to residents.
People who don't work in the field haven't seen the change, said Lance Iverson, who logged in the 1970s and '80s. Environmental practices didn't really exist when Iverson headed out into the woods. It was the day of slashing and burning, the era that earned forestry its bad-boy reputation.
They don't even do the same kind of logging anymore, he said.
In this new age of forestry, B.C.'s environmental practices are recognized worldwide, said Jeff Fisher, president of Sqomish Forestry LP.It's sustainable, he added, with planning reaching out 250 years. In every cut, some trees remain to serve as homes for wildlife,Fisher said, pointing out a cluster of tall Douglas fir on a nearby hilltop.
Environmental measures differ depending on the site, wildlife habitats and aboriginal cultural interests, all of which must be addressed when applying for a cutting permit. Fish-bearing waterways are buffered and whatever is chopped down is replaced with seedlings within a year approximately 80 per cent of them survive. Replanting accounts for the survival rate, with the industry planting more trees than it hauls away.
The operation Shier and Fisher toured was harvesting second-growth forest, trees roughly 50 years old. From the Squamish Valley, 12 trucks hauled the wood to the dry sort on Loggers Lane. There, the timber is sorted, scaled, secured into booms and floated down Howe Sound to as many as 90 different destinations in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island.
Twenty-five to 30 per cent of the timber is shipped overseas, to places including Japan, China, Korea and the United States. That's vital in today's depressed domestic log market, Shier noted.
For close to a decade, emerging markets undercut Canada's prices, the Canadian dollar rose and the U.S. housing market collapsed. Then the 2009 global recession hit.
It was the perfect storm, Shier said.
Things are turning around. For almost a decade, only half of the Squamish Forest District's allowable cut was harvested. The local industry aims to bump that up to 100 per cent in three to five years.
This is the industry that everybody thought has gone away, Shier said.
The Official Community Plan (OCP) designates the Garibaldi Forest Products log sort as part of downtown, district director of planning Chris Bishop said. Both the OCP and the municipality's 2031 Multi-Modal Transportation Plan offer a broad overview, without getting into specifics, Bishop said.
The district's research into the Seventh Avenue connector idea will include input from various industry stakeholders. The route follows the opposite side of the valley from the log sort on Loggers Lane; however, that isn't to say Loggers Lane would be closed to truck traffic, Bishop noted.
The municipality's downtown transformation initiative puts everything on the table in terms of proposals for Cleveland Avenue and Loggers Lane, Bishop said. With redevelopment along the Blind Channel and in Squamish's heart, transportation takes a high priority, he said.
If you still have heavy trucks running right through the middle of it, it is going to prove a challenge, Bishop said.
It's complex, he noted, adding the district isn't dealing with a clean slate. There are water constraints, private land holdings and existing layout and grid patterns.
I see the challenges from both sides, really, Bishop said. From the redevelopment side it is not ideal, but from the ongoing established industry side, it's like 'OK, great, give us an option.' We have to satisfy both those issues.
Wherever the industry ends up, it doesn't belong downtown, Coun. Doug Race said. District officials fought hard to ensure the practice could be maintained at Site B, Race said. West-Barr Contracting Ltd.'s log sort is scheduled to move from the Squamish Estuary to the new site next year.
We want to make sure that it stays, but it certainly isn't a part of the oceanfront, Bishop said.
Site B comes with its own set of challenges, Andersen said. The re-entry onto Highway 99 for trucks can be dangerous, he said. Future plans call for high-rise residential buildings opposite the property, Andersen noted, adding that he's concerned potential residents would be averse to the noises associated with log handling and processing operations.
When it comes time to find a new home, Garibaldi Forest Products is unsure whether it will jump across the water to Site B. Moving costs money, Shier said.The company is faced with a big question Should it make such an investment in a cyclical industry with a community that doesn't seem to be backing it?
You don't want to forget the industry that started [this community], Shier said.
Learn more about the forestry industry in Squamish -
