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The
Plywood Industry in BC The manner in which plywood production developed in BC had never before been studied when I selected it for my PhD thesis. When I searched through forgotten company archives, I discovered that, while the plywood industry is only a small part of the forest industry, it has played a crucial role in the growth and financial success of several of BC's biggest forest companies. Its history is one plagued with difficulties and instability, first growing into a large and prosperous coastal industry which then declined to near extinction while plywood plants in the Interior expanded their production - within the short span of 87 years. I also uncovered an interesting story of how manufacturers aggressively transformed Canadians into the largest per-capita consumers of plywood in the world. Plywood is produced by peeling a log into thin sheets of veneer which are clipped to size, dried, and glued in three, five or seven layers to form a panel that usually measures 1.2 m x 2.4 m (4 ft x 8 ft). British Columbia's first plywood plant went into production in 1913 at Fraser Mills (Coquitlam), just eight years after the first West Coast softwood plywood plant went into production at Portland, Oregon. Before WW II, plywood was manufactured using animal and casein glues and therefore was not waterproof. The Canadian Western Lumber Company plant produced and used this non-waterproof plywood, made from Douglas-fir veneer, for the faces and inset panels of doors. Three years later, BC's next plant opened in New Westminster, the Laminated Materials Company. It was followed in 1928 by the B.C. Veneer Works at Nelson. These last two plants specialized in the production of hardwood plywood, using cottonwood to face their panels which were then used mainly to manufacture crates, boxes, and furniture. The Royal BC Museum recently added to its collection a Hoosier (portable kitchen cabinet) from Princeton, made in Vancouver about 1916 and backed with cottonwood plywood from the Laminated Materials Company plant. Similar plywood was also used as interior paneling for home improvements - many homes in Nelson were decorated with cottonwood paneling from the Nelson plant, especially during the 1930s. Times were difficult, however, and the Laminated Materials Company went bankrupt in 1931. It used several tactics to stay in business, producing imported mahogany panels and buying cottonwood logs from as far away as the Skeena River. The mahogany panels, however, did not sell as well as was hoped, and many of the heavy cottonwood logs sank while being towed from Prince Rupert. B.C. Veneer Works survived somewhat longer, until 1945, when it announced it could no longer secure an adequate supply of cottonwood logs and closed. The future of British Columbia's plywood industry, however, would not be in cottonwood but in Douglas-fir plywood, the kind Canadian Western was manufacturing at Fraser Mills. In 1935, the H.R. MacMillan Export Company (MacMillan Bloedel) opened BC's second softwood plywood plant in Vancouver. The industry boomed. The multilayered panels were now glued with a phenol resin which produced a new, waterproof product. It filled an essential need - the construction of aircraft and ships and housing during World War II. Plants such as Pacific Veneer in New Westminster, for example, produced a special plywood- three-ply birch using glue-coated rice paper to bind the layers together - for use in fuselages and wings. After the war, more plywood plants opened including Western Plywood's Kent Avenue plant in Vancouver (1945-1995) and British Columbia Forest Products' Victoria plant (1952-1983). Throughout the war, the H.R. MacMillan Export Company had been touting the advantages of plywood, an advertising campaign it stepped up to develop the domestic market at war's end. The industry was determined to create a demand for sanded, Douglas-fir plywood across Canada. Plywood manufacturers, in cooperation with the Plywood Manufacturers Association of B.C., began promoting it as a substitute for lumber in several building applications, especially as roof, floor and wall sheathing and for use in concrete form work. They induced government regulators and building inspectors to include plywood in building codes, presented lectures, provided information, undertook testing and pointed out plywood's good qualities. They focused on convincing builders, engineers and architects to use plywood instead of lumber. Plywood was advertised in magazines. Building plans were distributed and exhibits created for trades shows. The manufacturers did not completely neglect homeowners, and specialty panels such as Etch Wood or V-Groove were were advertised to attract them. Plans for kitchen cupboards, book shelves, beds and all kinds of household improvements were prepared and distributed. Plywood was also promoted as the ideal product for building sailing crafts such as small Sabot-class pleasure boats. Lead by MacMillan Bloedel, the industry created a complete distribution and sales network across Canada. Warehouses were built; salespeople were hired. By 1960, the four largest manufacturers were operating 44 company-owned warehouses scattered across the country and employing about 150 salespeople. Theirs was no simple task - potential customers had to be convinced to give up lumber and use plywood. Competition for market share among manufacturers was bitter during the 1950s and 1960s. During the early, hectic days of the 1950s, sales would dramatically move up and down as each company jockeyed for position. Western Plywood's (Weldwood's) Sales Manager noted, for example, "the undercurrent of chiselling and intrigue has been more than a little fascinating." Sometimes strange and dramatic exhortions were made, such as when MacMillan Bloedel told its sales force to get the Kitimat contracts or heads would roll. It was a time of unpredictability. Sometimes customers were "screaming for more plywood," but six months later the warehouses would be filled to overflowing, with few sales in sight. Despite the chaos of the market, the 1950s and 1960s were the prosperous years for plywood production in BC. And it was the large profits from plywood that helped finance new investments by the forest companies - in timber and pulp-and-paper production. The forest industry as a whole, however, was undergoing dramatic changes - changes that would result in a very different plywood industry. In Part II, I will examine these changes and bring the story to British Columbia's plywood industry up to the present day. Bob Griffin is a History Curator at the RBCM.
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