Sixty years on the margin:The evolution of ontario's tree planting industry and labour force: 1945-2007

Labour/ Le Travail

Volumn , Issue 63, 2009, Pages 47-78

  Sweeney, Brendan ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 68849108707     PISSN: 07003862     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (169)

1. Brendan Sweeney and John Holmes, "Work and Life in the Clearcut: Communities of Practice in the Northern Ontario Tree Planting Industry," The Canadian Geographer, 52 (Summer 2008), 204-221
2. Geoff Mann, "The State, Race, and 'Wage Slavery' in the Forest Sector of the Pacific Northwest," Journal of Peasant Studies, 29 (2001), 61-88
3. Vanessa Casanova and Josh McDaniel, '"No Sobra y no Falta': Recruitment Networks and Guest Workers in Southeastern U.S. Forest Industries," Urban Anthropology, 34 (2005), 45-84
4. Josh McDaniel and Vanessa Casanova, "Forest Management Contractors and the H-2B Guestworker Program in the Southeastern United States: an Assessment of Contractors and their Crews," Journal of Forestry, 103 (April/May 2005), 114-119
5. Josh McDaniel and Vanessa Casanova, "Pines in Lines: Tree Planting, H2B Guest Workers, and Rural Poverty in Alabama," Southern Rural Sociology, 19 (2003), 73-96
6. Beverly Brown, "The Multi-Ethnic, Nontimber Forest Workforce in the Pacific Northwest: Reconceiving the Players in Forest Management," in Deborah Salazar and Donald Alper, eds., Sustaining the Forests of the Pacific Coast: Forging Truces in the War of the Woods (Vancouver 2000)
7. Beverly Brown, Andrea Leal-Martino, Kirsten McIlveen, and Ananda Lee Tan, Contract Forest Laborers in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Land Tenure, Labor, Trade, and Community Forestry: the Context for Restoration Forest Work in the nafta Region (Portland 2004)
8. John Bodner, "Slash Romance; an Ethnography and Occupational Folklife Study of an Ontario Treeplanting Camp," MA Thesis, Memorial University, 1998
9. Cassandra Moseley and Yolanda Reyes, "Comparing Job Quality in Logging and Forestry Service in Oregon," Journal of Forestry, 105 (September 2007), 293-300
10. Brinda Sarathy, "The Latinization of Forest Management Work in Southern Oregon: A Case from the Rogue Valley," Journal of Forestry, 105 (October/November 2006), 359-365.
11. Ken Armson, Ontario's Forests: an Historical Perspective (Toronto 2001)
12. Ken Armson, W. Ross Grinnell and Fred Robinson "History of Reforestation in Ontario," in Robert Wagner and Stephen Colombo, eds., Regenerating the Canadian Forest: Principles and Practice for Ontario (Toronto 2001), 3-22
13. Ben Cashore, George Hoberg, Michael Howlett, Jeremy Rainer, and Jeremy Wilson, In Search of Sustainability: Forest Policy in British Columbia in the 1990s (Vancouver 2001)
14. Daniel McKenney, Kathy Campbell, G. Dave Puttock, and Greg Lawrence, "Evolving Economics of Ontario Forestry," in Robert Wagner and Stephen Colombo, éds., Regenerating the Canadian Forest: Principles and Practice for Ontario (Toronto 2001), 23-33
15. Peter Duinker, Anne Harris, Geoff Munro, and Mike Innes, "Policy on Forest Regeneration in Ontario: Recent Trends and Future Prospects," in Robert Wagner and Stephen Colombo, eds., Regenerating the Canadian Forest: Principles and Practice for Ontario (Toronto 2001), 43-59
16. W. Scott Prudham, Knock on Wood: Nature as a Commodity in Douglas-Fir Country (New York 2005).
17. This paper has its origins in my MA research in the Department of Geography at Queen's University. In addition to the review of secondary sources, parts of this paper are based on interviews with 51 tree planters, crew bosses, supervisors, and contractors in May and June 2004, June 2007, as well as email surveys of eleven Ontario tree planting contractors in December 2004 and April 2007. Interviews are cited anonymously and designated with an alphabetical letter and date. Survey results are cited similarly.
18. Thomas Dunk, It's a Working Man's Town: Male Working Class Culture. Second Edition. (Montreal and Kingston 2003), 62; Brown, "The Multi-Ethnic, Nontimber Forest Workforce in the Pacific Northwest," 149.
19. Jaquelyn Collinson, "Just 'Non-Academics'"?: Research Administrators and Contested Occupational Identity," Work, Employment, and Society, 20 (June 2006), 267-286; Brendan Sweeney, "Producing Liminal Space: Gender, Age, and Class in Northern Ontario's Tree Planting Industry," Gender, Place, and Culture, forthcoming.
20. Casanova and McDaniel, "No Sobray no Falta," 47.
21. Jamie Peck, Work-Place: the Social Regulation of Labour Markets (New York and London 1996), 46-82.
22. John Bodner, "Slash Romance," 44-5.
23. McKenney, Campbell, Puttock, and Lawrence, "Evolving Economics of Ontario Forestry," 27.
24. The Faculty of Forestry was established at the University of Toronto in 1907, the first of its kind in Canada. Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 6.
25. Ian Radforth, Logging, Mechanization, and Ontario's Forest Environment: an Historical Overview (Toronto 1992), 47.
26. Radforth, Logging, Mechanization, and Ontario's Forest Environment, 35.
27. Duinker, Harris, Munro, and Innes, "Policy on Forest Regeneration in Ontario," 45.
28. Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 7-8.
29. Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 8.
30. The Department of Lands and Forests was a branch of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources from 1920-1972. Previous to 1920 it had been known as the Department of Lands, Mines, and Forests (1906-1920); the Crown Lands Department (1827-1905); and the Office of the Surveyor General (1792-1827). In 1941 administrative responsibility for timber, reforestation, and silviculture were separated. See Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 9.
31. Ian Radforth, Bushworkers and Bosses: Logging in Northern Ontario (Toronto 1987), 19.
32. Richard Rajala, "The Forest Industry in Eastern Canada: an Overview," in C.R. Silversides, Broadaxe to Flying Shear: the Mechanization of Forest Harvesting East of the Rockies (Ottawa 1997), 123.
33. Richard Rajala, Feds, Forests, and Fire: a Century of Canadian Forestry Innovation (Ottawa 2005), 73-74
34. Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 10.
35. Jamie Swift, Cut and Run: the Assault on Canada's Forests (Toronto 1983), 270.
36. R.S. Lambert, Renewing Nature's Wealth (Toronto 1967), 397.
37. Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 10.
38. Rajala, Feds, Forests, and Fire, 74.
39. Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 10.
40. Armson, Ontario's Forests, 155.
41. Ian Radforth, "Woodsworkers and the Mechanization of the Pulpwood Logging Force in Northern Ontario, 1950-1970," in David Bercuson and David Bright. eds., Canadian Labour History (Toronto 1994), 323.
42. Rajala, "The Forest Industry in Eastern Canada," 123.
43. Radforth, Bushworkers and Bosses, 28.
44. Armson, Ontario's Forests, 156.
45. Rajala, "The Forest Industry in Eastern Canada," 144.
46. Rajala, "The Forest Industry in Eastern Canada," 144.
47. Rajala, Feds, Forests, and Fire, 76.
48. Vic Satzewich, Racism and the Incorporation of Foreign Labour: Farm Labour Migration to Canada since 194S (New York and London 1991).
49. Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 10-11.
50. The Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company (majority-owned by Kimberly-Clark, Kapuskasing), Dryden Paper Company (Dryden), and the Great Lakes Paper Company (Lakehead region) took on what were then the most ambitious planting programmes. These programmes were carried out on a combination of private and Crown lands. For a full review see Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 11; Bodner, "Slash Romance," 56.
51. Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 11.
52. Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 13.
53. Fees paid by forest products firms in return for the exclusive license to harvest Ontario's Crown forests.
54. Ken Armson, Forest Management in Ontario (Toronto 1976), 2.
55. "Ontario: Closer to Industry," Canadian Forest Industries, 85 (January 1965), 31.
56. Armson, Ontario's Forests, 162.
57. Armson, Ontario's Forests, 163.
58. Armson, Grinell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 14.
59. Ontario, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Forest Production Policy Options for Ontario (Toronto 1972), 4.
60. Bodner, "Slash Romance," 38.
61. Rajala, Feds, Forests, and Fire, 73.
62. Bodner, "Slash Romance," 38.
63. Dunk, It's a Working Man's Town, 62.
64. In many communities with a high dependence on extractive and/or resource-based communities, the proportion of service jobs is actually higher than the proportion of extraction or processing jobs. However, the perception of these communities as "timber" or "mining" towns persists. For further discussion see Dunk, It's a Working Man's Town, 45-62.
65. Dunk, It's a Working Man's Town, 62.
66. Dunk, It's a Working Man's Town, 63; Berit Brandth and Marit Haugen, "Text, Body, and Tools: Changing Mediations of Rural Masculinity," Men and Masculinities, 8 (October 2005), 148-163.
67. Sarathy, "The Latinization of Forest Management Work in Southern Oregon," 360.
68. Brendan Sweeney, "Producing Liminal Space: Gender, Age, and Class in Northern Ontario's Tree Planting Industry", Gender, Place, and Culture (forthcoming).
69. Armson, Forest Management in Ontario.
70. Duinker, Harris, Munro, and Innes, "Policy on Forest Regeneration in Ontario," 47.
71. Armson, Ontario's Forests, 167.
72. Silvicultural expenses, such as tree planting, thinning, and herbicide application, historically, cost slightly less than the amount of revenues received from stumpage. When stumpage fees are calculated, they are done in a fashion that reflects current silvicultural costs.
73. Peter Morley, "Ontario's fmas: A Positive Step," Silviculture: Journal of the New Forest, 1 (1986), 12-13.
74. Duinker, Harris, Munro, and Innes, "Policy on Forest Regeneration in Ontario," 43-44.
75. K.L. Campbell, Selected Forestry Statistics (omnr Great Lakes Forestry Centre 1990), 95.
76. Armson, Ontario's Forests, 167.
77. Armson, Ontario's Forests, 168.
78. Armson, Ontario's Forests, 168.
79. Gord Oldford, "Silvicultural Contracting: Ontario's Shift to the Private Sector," Canadian Forest Industries, 107 (August 1987), 454-6.
80. The cofrda existed from 1984 to 1990, and was responsible for the production of 166 million seedlings and the regeneration of 110,000 hectares of not sufficiently restocked lands. See. Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 19.
81. Bodner, "Slash Romance," 76-77.
82. Interview A, May 2004.
83. Brinkman is the founder of one of Canada's largest tree planting companies, Brinkman Reforestation. He is quoted in Douglas Cowell, "Trees for Tomorrow," Silviculture: Journal of the New Forest, 2 (1988), 14.
84. Delia Roberts, "In-season Physiological and Biochemical Status of Reforestation Workers," Journal of Occupational Environmental Medicine, 44 (June 2002), 559-67.
85. For a full review, see Sweeney and Holmes, "Work and Life in the Clearcut."
86. Ontario, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Environmental Assessment Act (Toronto 1994), 223.
87. Ontario, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Environmental Assessment Act, 223.
88. Sweeney, "Producing Liminal Space," forthcoming.
89. David Curtis, "A Legal View: Successor Rights and Subcontracting of Forest Work," Silviculture: Journal of the New Forest, 4 (1989), 30.
90. th Annual Meeting Preprint Book, (1987), E1-4.
91. Richard Chaykowski and Brian Lewis, Compensation Practices and Outcomes in Canada and the United States (Kingston 1995), 19.
92. Stephen Fontaine, "Labour Costs Encourage the use of Mechanized Tree Planters," Canadian Forest Industries, 100 (April 1980), 34-36
93. Peter Morley, "Mechanizing Silviculture at Sault Ste. Marie," Canadian Forest Industries, 102 (May 1982), 35-36.
94. Geoff Mann, Our Daily Bread: Wages, Workers, and the Political Economy of the American West (Chapel Hill 2007), 45.
95. Curtis, "A Legal View," 30.
96. Curtis, "A Legal View," 30.
97. See Radforth, Bushworkers and Bosses, 77; Matthew Carroll, Community and the Northwestern Logger: Continuities and Change in the Era of the Spotted Owl (Boulder 1995), 70-72
98. Andrew Neufeld and Andrew Parnaby, The iwa in Canada: The Life and Times of an Industrial Union (Vancouver 2000), 190-193.
99. Radforth, Bushworkers and Bosses, 77.
100. Goodwin is quoted in Neufeld and Parnaby, The iwa in Canada, 193.
101. The reluctance of fallers to accept day rates, despite the willingness of other loggers and sawmill workers to return to work, resulted in a prolonged strike in British Columbia in 1972. In Ontario and the Pacific Northwest, similar union regulations concerning piece-wages led to rifts between fallers and sawmill workers, and as a consequence, resulted in some fallers becoming private contractors. See Neufeld and Parnaby, The iwa in Canada, 192-93; Carroll, Community and the Northwestern Logger, 71.
102. Now part of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada.
103. The iwa existed as the Industrial Woodworkers of America until 1987 when the Canadian locals ceased their affiliation with the US-based parent union. The Lumber and Sawmill Worker's Union was a branch of the US-based United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, and was the primary organization representing loggers and sawmill workers in Ontario until they merged with the iwa in 1987. For a full review see Neufeld and Parnaby, The iwa in Canada, 255.
104. Canadian Paperworkers Union, Forest Policy (Toronto 1986), 5.
105. International Woodworkers of America, iwa Guide to Forest Policy (Vancouver 1985), 105.
106. Interview B, June 2007.
107. Interview A, May 2004.
108. Camp costs are fees charged to tree planters by contractors for the costs of food and supplies in bush camps. Today, camps costs generally range between $20 and $25 a day. Camp costs on unionized contracts were far less, and were generally the same as the room and board charged to company bush workers. For example, tree planters working on land governed by iwa Local 2693's collective agreement (near Thunder Bay) were charged only $1.75 for camp costs. Tree planters working in the Spanish Forest fma for E.B. Eddy (and later Domtar) were gov- erned by the collective agreement negotiated by iwa Local 1-2995 paid only $10 a day, as it was stipulated that the employer would cover 70 per cent of their room and board. See Industrial Wood and Allied Workers of Canada, "Union has set the pace for MB Tree Planters for more than 20 Years," Lumber Worker, 58 (March 1993), 10; Industrial Wood and Allied Workers of Canada, "Northern Ontario Local Finds Solutions to Camp Shutdowns," Lumber Worker, 65 (December 2000), 38.
109. Industrial Wood and Allied Workers of Canada, "Union has set the pace for MB Tree Planters for more than 20 Years," 10.
110. Industrial Wood and Allied Workers of Canada, "Northern Ontario Local Finds Solutions to Camp Shutdowns," 38.
111. United Steelworkers of America, "Woods Crews still out in Northern Ontario," Allied Worker, 71 (June 2006), 12.
112. Interview C, June 2007.
113. Interview B, June 2007.
114. Interview D, June 2007.
115. Grant Brodeur, Public Address in: Hansard Province of Ontario Legislature, 31 August 1994, (4 September 2008).
116. "Silviculture News," Silviculture: Journal of the New Forest, 1 (1986), 6.
117. Marylin Mustard, "The Evolution of the Tree Planting Programme in Ontario," MSc Thesis, Lakehead University, 1990, 77.
118. Prudham, Knock on Wood, 45.
119. Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 19.
120. Armson, Ontario's Forests, 180.
121. Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, "Table 6.1: Silvicultural Statistics by Province/Territory, 1975-2006," (9 August 2008).
122. Brodeur, "Public Address."
123. Armson, Grinnell, and Robinson, "History of Reforestation in Ontario," 20.
124. Interview E, May 2004.
125. Interview F, June 2004.
126. Interview G, June 2004.
127. Interview H, May 2004.
128. Interview I, May 2004.
129. Interview J, June 2004.
130. The supervisor is the most senior position in a tree planting camp. A supervisor's duties include operations management, scheduling, budgeting, and client relations.
131. Interview K, May 2004.
132. Maureen Reed, "Marginality and Gender at Work in Forestry Communities in British Columbia, Canada," Journal of Rural Studies, 19 (2003), 378.
133. Interview E, May 2004.
134. Interview H, May 2004.
135. Sweeney and Holmes, "Work and Life in the Clearcut," 206.
136. Bodner, "Slash Romance," 82.
137. Elizabeth May, At the Cutting Edge: The Crisis in Canada's Forests (Toronto 1998), 135.
138. Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, "Table 6.1."
139. Survey results, Contractor A, December 2004.
140. Survey results, Contractor B, December 2004.
141. Survey results, Contractor B, December 2004.
142. Survey results, Contractor C, December 2004.
143. Dave Wilson, "Loss of Workforce Experience Results in Shrinking Capacity and Increased Costs," Canadian Silviculture, 7 (Summer 2006), 4.
144. Jordan Tesluk, "Health and Safety in the Tree Planting Workforce," MA Thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2006, 78-80.
145. Wilson, "Loss of Workforce Experience Results in Shrinking Capacity and Increased Costs," 4.
146. It is estimated that between 10 and 15 per cent of tree planters in. British Columbia are recent immigrants: Brown, Leal-Martino, Mcllveen, and Tan, Contract Forest Laborers in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, 20.
147. Survey results, Contractor D, April 2007.
148. Prudham, Knock on Wood, 88-9; Casanova and McDaniel, 'No Sobray no Falta,' 48.
149. Prudham, Knock on Wood, 89; Casanova and McDaniel, 'No Sobra y no Falta,' 48.
150. Prudham, Knock on Wood, 89.
151. Casanova and McDaniel, 'No Sobra y no Falta,' 71-72.
152. Casanova and McDaniel, 'No Sobra y no Falta,' 72.
153. For reviews of seasonal farm workers in Canada see: Satzewich, Racism and the Incorporation of Foreign Labour; Tanya Basok, Tortillas and Tomatoes: Transmigrant Mexican Harvesters in Canada (Kingston and Montreal 2002)
154. John Butovsky and Murray Smith, "Beyond Social Unionism: Farmworkers in Ontario and some Lessons from Labour History," Labour/Le Travail, 59 (Spring 2007), 69-98.
155. Butovsky and Smith, "Beyond Social Unionism," 76.
156. Basok, Tortillas and Tomatoes, 10-12.
157. Satzewich, Racism and the Incorporation of Foreign Labour, 42.
158. Basok, Tortillas and Tomatoes, 17.
159. Basok, Tortillas and Tomatoes, 114.
160. In the author's experience, take-home pay after the first season tree planting was approximately $4,000, whereas subsequent seasons ranged between $8,000 and $10,000.
161. Steven High and David Lewis, Corporate Wasteland: The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization (Ithaca 2007), 52.
162. Basok, Tortillas and Tomatoes, 123; Sweeney, "Producing Liminal Space", forthcoming.
163. Basok, Tortillas and Tomatoes, 125.
164. Wayne Hanley, UFCW Report on the Status of Migrant Farm Workers in Canada, 2006-2007 (Toronto 2007), 5.
165. Ann Weston and Luigi Scarpa de Masellis, Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program as a Model of Best Practices in Migrant Worker Participation in the Benefits of Economic Globalization Project (Ottawa 2004), 6.
166. While Ontario is generally the focus of research on agricultural guest workers in Canada, Valarezo shifts the focus to Quebec, where she examines Guatemalan workers recruited through the fwp. See Giselle Valarezo, "Out of Necessity and Into the Fields: Migrant Farmworkers in St. Remi, Quebec," MA Thesis, Queen's University, 2007.
167. Brendan Sweeney and Giselle Valarezo, "Tree Planters and Farmworkers in Canada and the United States: A Shift from Domestic to Migrant Workers?" Conference Paper, Annual Meetings of the Canadian Association of Geographers, Saskatoon, June 2007.
168. Survey results, Contractor E, April 2007.
169. Satzewich, Racism and the Incorporation of Foreign Labour, 110.