Pulp and paper industry

During the 20th century, the pulp and paper industry came to be established in every province in Canada but Prince Edward Island. While it started from humble beginnings—it was a tangential part of the country's economic and social fabric in the early 1900s—within short order it grew to be Canada's most important modern staples industry.

Before Confederation the technology used in manufacturing paper dictated that it was generally a small-scale enterprise. Paper was produced using large amounts of power to grind up rags. Consequently, most paper plants were located along major waterways, which could be tapped with waterwheels for their hydraulic energy, and near urban centres, from which sufficient supplies of rags could be obtained and where paper was sold. Output was small and paper a relatively costly product.


Beginning in the mid-19th century, paper production underwent a major transformation. New technology permitted paper makers to process wood, which was relatively abundant, instead of rags, and generate far greater quantities of energy from waterways. These developments precipitated a dramatic rise in the productive capacity of paper mills and caused a steep decline in paper prices. This was particularly true for newsprint in North America: its price fell from roughly $300 per ton in 1867 to $36 per ton 30 years later.

As the 20th century dawned, many parts of Canada were ideally suited to producing vast volumes of inexpensive newsprint. Black spruce, the best species for making newsprint, is predominant in the boreal forest region, a broad band of woodland that comprises most of the forested area of Canada east of the Rockies. British Columbia's forests supported large quantities of hemlock, the western species of choice for pulp and paper. These regions are also punctuated by numerous large rivers, which could be tapped to provide the sizable quantities of energy needed to grind timber into pulp and paper. The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the mid-1880s, and two new transcontinentals in the early 1900s, rendered many of these timber and water-power resources (particularly those in northern Ontario and Quebec) accessible to mill developers. The railways also provided a means by which paper makers could ship their product to market.

Because Canada's capacity to manufacture pulp and paper was immense compared to domestic demand, from very early on the industry was highly dependent upon export markets, principally the United States. Consequently, American tariff policy played a significant role in shaping the development of Canada's industry. For example, Canadian newsprint production was growing at a healthy rate in the early 1900s despite a hefty duty imposed by the United States on this type of paper; however, the elimination of this tariff in 1913 triggered a dramatic expansion of the dominion's newsprint industry. By the mid-1920s Canadian mills were supplying more than half the American demand, and this percentage continued to rise. At the same time, the United States maintained prohibitive duties on other pulp and paper products. This fettered the diversification of the Canadian industry into such things as kraft papers (used for cardboard and packaging) and fine papers. For most of the 20th century the industry has been overwhelmingly dominated by newsprint production, and the country has been by far and away the world's largest supplier.

Changing technology had spurred the establishment and remarkable growth of the industry, and this same force had a dramatic influence on the lives of the workers involved. Pulp and paper mills consumed immense quantities of trees and initially required thousands of employees to harvest and deliver this wood from the forest to the mills. At the turn of the 20th century, logging was a seasonal, labour-intensive, and highly dangerous activity, and the rhythmic life of the ‘lumberjack’ was romanticized in Canadian folklore. The fall was the time for advance parties to erect the rudimentary bush camps in which the gangs of cutters would be housed and to cut the trails along which the wood would be hauled. Winter was the season during which the cutters would migrate to the ‘bush’ to harvest the timber. They took the trees down with hand saws, and teams of horses would draw the wood to water's edge, where it would be piled awaiting the spring thaw. When the ice and snow melted, the timber would be skilfully river-driven or boomed to the mill pond to be processed, a method of delivery that often took more than one season to complete. By mid-century, working conditions had changed radically. An acute labour shortage and the often irresistible attraction of urban life in post–Second World War Canada compelled companies to improve both the quality of life for bush workers and their productivity. Harvesting wood became a year-round activity carried out by cutters who either commuted to the bush from town or lived in comfortable, semi-permanent bush camps equipped with modern conveniences. In most instances, the process of cutting timber was mechanized: tractors or ‘skidders’ replaced horses, chain saws and giant mechanical ‘feller-bunchers’ replaced hand saws, and trucks, not waterways, transported logs to mills. While bush workers still required a high degree of skill to carry out their tasks, most were now operating machinery instead of carrying out physical labour.

Changes in the pulp and paper mills were far less dramatic. Only gradually did increasing mechanization reduce the number of hands required on production lines. In the early 1900s paper plants employed several thousand workers to handle supplies and the finished product and to carry out the maintenance work that large-scale industrial enterprises required. By the eve of the 21st century, thousands of mill jobs had been eliminated through the introduction of computer-automated production and maintenance.

Although the pulp and paper industry remains a central cog in Canada's economy and a major contributor to the country's balance of trade, it has maintained this status only by overcoming a string of challenges, many of which it continues to confront. Concerns about diminishing fibre supplies compelled many producers to develop means of maximizing their utilization of traditional, and processing non-traditional, pulpwood species, and led them to introduce forest-management programs. Most producers became integrated with sawmills, whereby they processed the waste slabs and chips from lumber manufacturers. Since at least the late 1960s, the industry has also dealt with increasing public criticism of the manner in which it manages both its primary raw material (wood) and the by-products of its manufacturing processes (air and water pollution). In response to this pressure from the environmental movement, the industry dramatically improved its practices in these areas. Canada's pulp and paper makers continue to confront intense competition from established producers in places like the southern United States and Scandinavia, and from new rivals in Latin America and the Far East. More recently, First Nations have been asking for greater influence over the management of many timber limits, which they view as their traditional areas of land use. This has forced the industry to recognize Aboriginal rights in this regard and to negotiate agreements under which the mills would continue to enjoy cutting privileges.

While many predicted that the advent of the computer age would lead to the ‘paperless society’, quite the opposite has occurred. Paper seems to be in greater demand than ever, a trend that augurs well for the future of Canada's pulp and paper industry.