365,000 cubic meters of wood annually.

. a2 a =a

Posing for a picture at the Camp 80 shop are Local 1-2995 members. The camp has 27 employees who harvest over

Spruce Falls Camp 80 logging operation a
stronghold for union in northern Ontario

Normally in northeastern Ontario
the log hauling season stretches be-
tween December and April when
spring break up comes around. In the
winter months, logging trucks run 24
hours a day and they try to get out as
much wood as possible before the log-
ging roads thaw out.

In most of northern Ontario that
hauling season is very short whereas
the companies can still fall the wood
year round. Such in the case for bush-
workers near Kapuskasing Ontario,
where Local 1-2995 members working
for Spruce Falls Inc. are employed in
two logging operations. Those opera-
tions are known as Camp 80 and
Camp 86.

In June the Lwmberworker visited
the Camp 80 operation which was sit-

“We have successfully

kept the ‘jobbers’ out

of Spruce Falls for all
of these years...”

Andre Tourigny

uated at about a 40 minute drive west
of Kapuskasing. The operation today
has 27 employees who harvest over
365,000 cubic meters of wood annual-

Gone are the days of the manual
falling and cable skidder and in are
feller bunchers and grapple skidders.
There are 7 feller bunchers on the lim-
its and three grapple skidders. The
company also uses 4 delimbers and 2
log forwarding machines.

The harvesting goes on, far away
from gravel roads, sometimes up to
two miles away. There is some haul-
ing in spring, summer and fall months,
but only if the ground is not too boggy
and if the wood is fairly close to the
gravel road.

Most of the wood harvested is black
Spruce which is used for either
Sawlogs or pulp. The 4” and under
a. Tap the Spruce Fels nes Pulp mill

uskasing and the larger diame-
wood is sold to sawmills in the
a such as the Lecours mill in
st and the Mallette United mill in
Lecours also sends it loggers

the Spruce Falls limits to harvest
for its poplar plywood mill in
Although all of from the limits

now goes to Lecours, Spruce Falls is
now considering putting in equipment
to use poplar for pulp production in
the future.

On a good 8 hour shift the feller
bunchers can harvest between 1200-
1500 stems: Depending on the diame-
ter of the wood, the machines can
snip up to 12 logs at a time before
swinging around to put them into
piles.

The logs are then delimbed in
preparation for winter hauling.

Although the trucks are driven by
owner/operators, the union has seen
to it that all of the hauling is done by
union members.

Andre Tourigny, an Executive
Board member with Local 1-2995 and
former cable skidder operator, says
that both Spruce Falls logging opera-
tion are strongholds for the union.

Brother Tourigny, who has worked
at the operation for 42 years since the
age of 15, now works as a watchman
at Camp 80.

“We have successfully kept the ‘job-
bers’ (non-union operators) out of
Spruce Falls for all of these years and
the union is still very strong today,”
says Tourigny. “All of the logging
equipment is still owned by the com-
pany and we want to keep it that way.
We don’t want non-union workers
coming in here.”

Many of the truckers who get laid
off are offered jobs tree planting, usu-
ally between April and June. Although
some of the planting is contracted
out, the I.W.A. members get the first
shot at working during the planting
season.

“The hauling season is so short that
the members with less seniority like
to get out there during the planting
season,” says Brother Tourigny.
“These days there are not many jobs
opportunities in the area and the guys
like to make the most out of the work
year when they can.”

The planters work for an hourly
base rate of $17.92 using planting
“guns” which can place up to 1,600
seedlings in the ground on an 8 hour
shift when the going is good.

Brother Tourigny remembers the
old days when harvest was done by
hand and they used horses to haul the
wood to roadside. Then trucks or
small tractors would haul bob sleighs
of logs to the rivers in 8 foot or 16 foot
lengths. They would be place on
frozen rivers in the winter and when
the spring breakup came would be
driven to the mill in Kapuskasing.

Forty years ago there were camps
with 100-125 bushworkers, says
Tourigny. Then when chain saws ar-
rived on the scene there were 5-6
camps operating all year around with
30-40 men working in each one.

In the 1970's the company started to
haul tree length wood to the mill by
truck. There was a greater emphasis
on wood recovery.

Today the workers take everything

down to a four inch top. Logs with di-
ameters of less that 6” at the butt, go
for pulp and the rest (about 60%) goes
for saw logs.

The delimbing process leaves all of
the limbs and cones in a pile. When
the Lumberworker visited Camp 80,
the company was in its seventh month
of experimenting with a feller bunch-
er that cuts, delimbs, and trims the
logs to length. Instead of leaving all of
the limbs and cones in a pile, the ex-
perimental machine leaves it near
where the tree was cut.

“It’s a lot slower than the other
feller bunchers but it leaves the bio-
mass spread out in the woods,” says
Local Financial Secretary Roland Lau-

There are not many
jobs in the region,
which makes
job security even
more important

rin, himself a bushworker by experi-
ence. “We think that it is much better
for the environment and we don’t
wind up burning piles of wood waste
in the end.”

Ray Chartrand, the Caterpillar feller
buncher operator says that the ma-
chine is more environmentally sensi-
tive. He says is makes a brush mat
which save the ground more from dis-
turbances from skidders.

“Tt’s got it’s good points and bad
points,” says Brother Chartrand. “So
far we have learned a couple of things
by using it.”

So far Spruce Falls has not intro-
duced roadside chippers but that
could change in the future says Broth-
er Laurin. With roadside chippers
there will be even greater recovery,
but there will also be an impact on

jobs as some delimber machines be-
come obsolete.

¢ The company is trying out a new feller buncher machine which also delimbs
and cut logs to preferred lengths.

LUMBERWORKER/AUGUST, 1995/9