The last day in Athabasca

The last day of the conference was upon us and we were all tired, hungover and sad. Our trip was near it's end and we all didn't want to head back to work. 

The morning greeting us with frantic packing, a scrumptious smoothie made my Cheryl Balay and the farewell speeches of all district 5370s youth exchange students. Hearing their speeches reminded me of how big an experience we on the GSE team have had. From biking  in Camrose to quading at Barrhead, seeing the stompede in grande Prairie, going to the Harley davidson mechanic college is fairview, singing and dancing at grande cache, relaxing amongst the mountains at jasper, moving rocks at Drayton valley, bbqing on the beautiful lake at spruce grove, riding helicopters in whitecourt and finally attending the conference in Athabasca. What a whirlwind tour it has been. 

There have been so many laughs on this tour that I know going home I have found friends not only in the GSE team but also throughout Alberta. 

Next stop is Edmonton and then onto Sydney. .

Speeches, the governors ball and all things musical

With the conference up and running we were on our feet no earlier than 10am. Meeting up with the Canadian GSE team the night before meant that we may have had a social night catching up and talking everything GSE. 

So with the team up to the conference at 10am we went to watch a couple of speakers and then head to lunch. What a feast that was! The food and atmosphere at the conference was a replication to that in Coonabarabran. After lunch some of the team left to reorganise ourselves and return for an all important speech, the Canadian GSE teams presentation on their experiences in Australia and what they learnt. Unfortunately Mark and myself could not attend this presentation as we were lucky enough to meet Cal Dakin who works for the Alberta Pacific Forest Industries pulp mill. This mill is the largest in the province, employing more than 500 staff and cutting 8 million cubic metres a year of deciduous and some coniferous trees.  

Holy crap!!! 

Cal went on to describe APFs forest management area which was huge! On average APF have 350 trucks coming into the log yard per day 365 days a year. Can you even comprehend the amount of trees there are in that log yard??? Whoa it's big! Cal also mentioned that on a busy day in winter they can traffic on average 450 trucks per day most with a tonnage of 50 - 70 tonne. I can't speak for Mark here but those figures blew my mind. We also leant about the new technique APF were undertaking in how they planned out their lots and also how they have gone from having a 20 year plan to 30yrs. By the time we had to go we had been speaking to Cal for around 1.5hrs and could not thank Cindy enough for organising this informal meeting. 

Once Cal left the team had to say goodbye to the Canadian GSE team as most of them were heading home. It was a sad moment but the girls and I were keen to get ready for the evenings festivities. The DG's ball!!

It took a little while but the girls and I were having a celebratory beer whilst we got ready. Woo hoo.... The guys looked very handsome in their suits with a bright red Canada tie and the girls put on our dresses. Emma was looking very fine in a knit dress with a beautiful pearl necklace, Kylie wore an amazing black dress with knockout heels and I tagged along in a red dress with some shoes that Emma, Kylie and Holly Astill helped me purchase in Whitecourt's walmart! Bargain!!! All night the team were being complimented in our dress and I must say we were one of the hottest tables of the night. 

Kylie got on stage with Robert from the Athabasca club to help "improve" (as told by Robert) his skit. As 2nd place winner of Rotary's Got Talent he needed to perform once more. It was hilarious! Kylie had to sing every sentence she wanted to say whilst Robert performed a magic trick of placing knives through her neck. 

After the official speeches and some thank you's the team were on the dance floor rocking it with some of district 5370s finest rotarians. I know for a fact I had to change out of my silver heels and get some flats on because I had blisters forming but that wasn't going to stop me dancing! We dance, we sung and then we cried at 1:30am when we had to say goodbye to some of the host families we had on our stay. 

So home again, late night again but we will forever rock on in Athabasca!

We are at the District Conference in Athabasca

Well we have arrived in Athabasca and as usual the red carpet has been rolled out and we couldn't help but walk right in on it! After a Buffalo tour on the way over from Whitecourt (which was awesome thanks Neil) and an opportunity to restock the teams buffalo jerky supply we arrived at the conference in time to register and grab some dinner, more drinks and some last minute work on our presentation!

The following Day (Friday) was our big day where we got to do our presentation to the conference. The team pulled together beautifully and put together a really good presentation which was very well recieved. We threw in some good humour, spoke about ourselves and our GSE experience and even got some laughs at the expence of the Canadians. Lucky their sense of humour is as good as ours. For sure the highlight of the day was the Rotary's Got Talent Quest which was held after supper. Of course our awesome GSE team had to be involved and Tim and Kylie did an acoustic performance of Greendays "time of your life". Kylie even wrote a verse about the GSE which brought a tear to the eye of more than one of us. Unfortunately we didn't win but we managed to raise some serious $$ for the Slave Lake fire recovery effort. We had such a fun day and really enjoyed bumping into all the friends we have made along the way. Very sad we are going to have to say good bye and it is all going to end soon. :-(

Mark's Day in the Mud at Whitecourt

My vocational day in Whitecourt was once again an absolute "cracker' and was very well organised and relevant thanks to the Whitecourt club. I met a Silviculture Forester (David Hughes) at The Alberta Newsprint Company (ANC) and we quickly made excuses to jump in the truck and go for a drive. Our first stop was to an active harvesting site where I got to learn about how ANC runs it's harvesting operations especially in terms of sequencing of events.

Harvested block -logs have been snug to proposed cut road locations where they will be processed and loaded onto trucks

Lodgepole, Aspen and Poplar Forest in its virgin state

We discussed block layout, snigging patterns and road construction. We also kicked a bit of dirt about and discussed appropriate site preparation techniques ahead of replanting. ANC replants nearly all of its harvested land and spends considerable time and effort in preparing the site to ensure proper establishment of appropriate species. Next stop was to an active site preparation operation on a site harvested previously. I got to see a skidder in action which was line cultivating ahead of planting. I had never seen a skidder fitted with any sort of cultivation equipment before so this was interesting. Here we had a chat about soil conservation techniques and planting techniques and also found some good quality mud! After another lengthy drive through the bush talking about forestry and occasionally fishing we arrived at a pine improvement orchard which came very close to being burnt out in recent fires. Shame those bloody mozzies didn't get burnt out as they were fierce here. We also found a good quality patch of greazy mud and I was surprised at how poorly these oversized 4x4 utes handle the mud!. I had a great day and we drove all day and saw nothing but forests which was kinda nice

Slow Growers. 30 something year old planted Lodge Pole Pine

A day of Forestry for the Team

Day 3 in Whitecourt was once again an absolute blast thanks to the great bunch of rotarians at Whitecourt and Katrina from the chamber of commerce. Our day commenced at the Miller Western Pulp Mill and Saw Mill. Once again we were blown away by a massive pile of logs in the millyard, stored there for the spring close down of harvest operations. The Pulp mill was a first for all of us anywhere and we learnt about the process of converting a log into pulp. Pulp is then exported all over Canada and the US to various paper manufacturers. The Miller Western sawmill, on the same site was a real eye opener for me. This mill was seriously high tech and automated and was geared up to produce lumber from what I would call small sawlogs. Some of the logs I saw coming into mill would struggle to make grade for our chip specifications let alone sawlog! The maximum diameter for sawlogs taken into the mill is about 50mm and the minimum is an astounding 10cm and from what I saw they didn't need to be particularly straight. Internal defect is not nearly the issue it is back home so that makes life a a little more simple here. This mill chews it's way through 600-800 thousand cubic m of timber per year and there are 3 processing lines running simultaneously. "Large", medium and small logs are seperated and split across through these lines seperately to maximise efficiency.

Logs being loaded onto the conveyer belt form the stack via and overhead crane

Logs on their way into the scanner after being debarked

Lunchtime came and we were whisked off to the roadhouse for the local rotary meeting where we were treated to a delicous Ukranian feast followed by our presentation to the club and a banner exchange.

Next was a visit to the Alberta Newsprint Company where we were given a "customised" tour of the processing plant. It was certainly the first pulp and paper mill we all had seen including us forestry folks so it was really interesting. The mill produces newsprint for domestic markets and American markets. Fibre is sourced from local mill waste and ANC's woodlands operations. What surprised me was the speed the whole plant operates at. Rolls run at at 1600m / minute and the plant runs continuously at this speed. That's a whole lot of paper being produced in this small town and this plant is no doubt a very important economic asset to the town. It is also very important to the local timber industry as waste/ residue material can be utilised close to where it is grown-Something we sure need in NSW. The team really enjoyed the tours for the day and for Kate and I it was a bonus vocational day. Big thanks again to Katrina from the local chamber office and rotarians Holly, Nevis and Gwen for taking us around

Tim's Vocational Day in Whitecourt

I met with Joe a local house builder with 34 years experience and toured a few of his local projects.

I had lunch at Pat Hardy Elementary School with Jim (my host), they had a healthy eating program session so I enjoyed a healthy lunch with the kids. The glee club were also practicing, which was great to see.

I spent the afternoon with Randy from Home Hardware including tour of a new building they are constructing, which is being completely constructed from ICF (styrofoam core filled with concrete).

I also had a quick tour of the truss workshop which Home Hardware also own. They have a laser guided truss assembly table with a roller which presses the gang nails together.

Tim's Vocational Day in Spruce Grove

I spent the day with Spruce Grove Rotarian Jeremy who is one of the Owners of United Constructions. I was able to witness the closing of a tender worth $1.4 million for a new pool facility at Mayerthorpe.

It was comforting to know they have the same issues with subcontractor pricing. It is normal for subcontractors to submit pricing a few hours before tenders are due.

The tender had to be submitted hard copy which is very common in Canada. It is also not unusual to have 15 tenderers on Government projects.

Tim's Vocational Day in Drayton Valley

In the morning I had a tour of the local Home Hardware shop with my host Bob Kelly, who was also the owner and manager.

Terry Drader & Bob gave me a tour of various residential construction sites and also a new accountants office.

Terry took me for a quick tour of the Unger saw mill. They are a smaller operation which specialize in the bigger logs.

After lunch I team up with Brendan, Bob and Terry and had a tour of the new local council building. The original builder got about halfway through the project and went broke, so a new builder was engaged on a do and charge basis.

Day 2 at Whitecourt

WOOO What a bloody awesome day!!!!! The morning started out being a little foggy and looking like a crap day but at 9am we were heading out to an Elk Farm. As soon as we arrived we were greeted by Diane who was a lovely lady.

Diane first took us into the young bucks pen where she placed some feed in their troughs and the elk came within 3 metres of us! Holy hell they are massive!!! Unfortunately my photos do not do any justice but they were lovely looking creatures.

After the bucks pen we were treated to seeing the cows and their baby calves. They were so small yet so curious! The whole mob came near us at one stage, I can tell you I was getting really nervous about the whole affair that's for sure.

Lastly we got to meet Cruise. Cruise is a 14 year old buck that was bottle fed therefore now not afraid of humans. You couldn't imagine we would top off our trip to the Elk farm but Diane did it in style. We all went up to Cruise and was patting him, feeling his antlers (which were really weird as they pulsated) and giving him a good scratch behind the ear. I think it ended up Kylie wanted to take Cruise home to Australia and Emma was going to help her smuggle him out. Very cute!

Next stop was lunch at my hosts house Holly Astill, she's an amazing cook and we were all very well fed. Thank you to Debbie, Nevis and Holly for sorting lunch.

The next stop of the day was the Forest Interpretive Centre. This centre holds a museum which showcases the difference in forestry over the years and what products are currently made out of the Canadian Forest. We also had the priviledge of touring some old homes and trappers cabins that have either been restored or replicated.

After some quick supper with our hosts and the watching of the ice hockey game (Boston Won 4-1, bloody ridiculous really) we were given an extra special treat.
Ken Prufer (Kylie's host dad) took us up for a ride in his helicopter for 10 minutes travelling over whitecourt and it's surrounds. Now I think I was the only one who hadn't been up in a chopper before, I can safely say that I LOVED IT!!!!! It was an amazing experience and we have been treated to so many things whilst on this trip that you do feel like royalty.

Thank you Whitecourt for your great day! Hopefully tomorrow's vocational visit will be just as interesting!

For photos please stay tuned

BG's vocational days - Fairview, Grande Cache, Drayton Valley and Spruce Grove

I have visited a number of water treatment and wastewater treatment plants at these towns and the main thing that has struck me is that apart from the cold climate in Alberta and the varying water quality during snow melt, many of the issues faced by operators and engineers in Alberta are very similar to those at home in Australia.

At Fairview, it was easy to see the challenges of commissioning upgrades to an operational water treatment plant whilst continuing to meet Alberta Environment requirements. In Grande Cache, the views were so good, even the wastewater plant had a scenic view!

In Drayton Valley I saw some upgrades being undertaken to the wastewater plant to commence reusing the treated effluent for use in the mining industry for fraccing.

During my stay in Spruce Grove, my host Neil Hollands from Alberta Environment took me in to Edmonton's utility EPCOR, where I inspected their water plant and wastewater plants, as well as met with their engineers and managers in regards to capital works programming, environmental management systems and watershed management. In particular, the wastewater plant was very advanced, having biological nutrient removal, submerged membrane filtration for recycling, and a lab scale BNR plant for testing new advanced treatment methods. All this was being done whilst being connected to a combined storm water/sewer network. My only regret from my Edmonton trip was that I wasn't allowed to take photos!

Sunday June 12 - Farewell Spruce Grove - hello Whitecourt

We left Spruce Grove mid morning on Sunday for the drive to Whitecourt. After settling in with our hosts, we spent the afternoon jetboating on the Athabasca River. We all had a turn at driving - what a rush.




















Soon after we met up for a welcome barbecue at the Prufer's house with some great food - all Greek recipes.

Friday/Saturday 10 & 11 June - Spruce Grove

On the Friday evening after our vocational day we drove out to Victor and Lynn's home in Stony Plain for a barbecue and watched a beautiful sunset over the lake. We then had the biggest auction of Aussie wines to date - raising a whopping $2,000 for the victims of the Slave Lake fires. This took our total to $5440 so far!!















On Saturday we assembled for a tour of the Leduc #1 Energy Discovery Centre in Devon, which showcased Alberta's history of oil drilling.

In the evening some of us met at Jim and Jeanette's house for a barbecue, with some nice salmon on the menu.

Farewell Drayton Valley - Thursday 9 June - Hello Spruce Grove

On our last morning in Drayton Valley we met with Julie Mulligan and she shared her experiences with her kidnapping whilst on Group Study Exchange last year in Nigeria. We were in awe of Julie's strength and her ability to turn her ordeal into something positive.

We then spoke at the lunch time meeting of the Rotary Club of Drayton Valley, including auctioning off some more Australian wine to raise money to go towards the victim of the fires at Slave Lake.

Then our hosts drove us to Spruce Grove for the next stop on our journey, and spoke to a special evening gathering of the Rotary Clubs of Spruce Grove, Parkland after Dark and Stony Plain.

Drayton Valley - Wednesday 8 June - the tour

We had a big day taking a tour of the Town of Drayton Valley, beginning with the Omniplex and then the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, where Kylie was arrested by a Mountie. We still don't know what she did wrong.

We also went on a bush walk created by Rotary, a tour of the Rotary library, saw jet cars that were used at the Drayton Valley drag races and then visited the local Fire Hall, where Kylie again stood out from the crowd by climbing to the top of the ladder truck.

We also inspected the local Bio Mile sustainable house, and the local recycling facility and landfill.

We wrapped up a busy day with a barbecue at Bob's house to celebrate the birthday's of Drayton locals Mary and John, and some of the Aussies put their musical talents to the test around the fire pit later in the evening.

Drayton Valley - Monday 6 June

On our first full day in Drayton Valley we went to work with the local Rotarians on landscaping a new park feature with which was funded by TD Bank and the Town of Drayton. We met with the Mayor of the Town of Drayton Valley at lunch in the Town offices.















We went over to Mary and Terry's house for a well earned beer, while Tim and Kylie tried out Terry's skidsteer loader.














After cleaning up, we went to Colin and Michelle's house for a barbecue, and watched the ice hockey on TV. The Canucks really got towelled up in Game 3.

Mark and Kate's Day in the Trees at Drayton Valley

Drayton Valley is no doubt a working town and a big part of this work revolves around the forest industry. Could be something to do with the fact that Drayton Valley was only settled in 1957 and much of its forest remains in tact under government holding or Forest Management Areas. Weyerhauser has a large saw mill in town and Sustainable Resource Development (govt. forestry agency) also has an office in town so this coupled with being hosted by a consulting forester makes for some good vocational opportunities for Kate and I. Our day started off with a meeting with a couple of government foresters at the Sustainable Resource Development office in town. Vince and Dave gave us a great insight into how Alberta's forests are managed and detailed the system the government uses to approve, mentor, monitor and regulate forest management. Basically the government sets the regulations, approves operational plans prepared by the companies and monitors harvesting and re-establishment operations. Interestingly the government doesn't have very large fines for non-compliance instead has a method of naming and shaming companies who don't comply with legislation. Apparently this is quite effective. Consultation is a big issue here as there are many forest users including hunters, 4wd/ ATV users, oil and gas companies and aboriginal traditional land use.

Our next visit was to the Weyerhauser mill where we met a couple of foresters employed by the mill. We had the afternoon with Bill and Jeff who gave us a good insight into the planning process they follow and how they go about demonstrating to government that they are managing the provences forests appropriately. A trip to the bushes to see some recent harvesting and site preparation operations was very nice and Kate even figured out what a beaver dam looks like!












Harvested Spruce and Aspen forest 3 years after harvest, site prep and planting.


We also saw some mechanical log segregation at a log yard and I got to check out some prefrabricated steel bridge spans which are used on some of the temporary roads. When we got back to town Col allowed us to see some pretty neat forestry machinery at a contractors yard some of which I had never seen before. Amazing what equipment can be justified when you have a large resource base so close to processing facilities.



One of the larger harvest and haul contractors around has most of their machinery in the yard due to shutdown of harvest. Skidders, delimbers, feller bunchers, and processors can be seen. Awesome!

Self loading log truck capable of carrying 45 tonnes payload!

Jasper tramway, Edson and our arrival at Drayton Valley

After a slightly lazy morning, we caught a bus up to the Jasper tramway, and then up to Whistler's Mountain. Some of the more adventurous (Tim, Mark, Kel and Em) hiked the 1.2km to the very top of the mountain from the tramway for even more spectacular views and some snow.

Unfortunately we lost track of the time and kept our drivers from the Rotary Club of Edson waiting. Sorry guys. Thanks to some quick packing and moving from Kate, we got into travel mode as quickly as we could and had a brilliant supper at Edson - pig on a spit!

Our hosts from Drayton Valley then took over and helped us settle in.

Jasper Trip

We arrived in Jasper on friday night & were welcomed with a BBQ with the local rotarians which included quality Alberta beef and quality Canadian beer & wine. A few of the club members recommended we go on the boat crusie on Lake Maligne, which had only opened a few days earlier after a very long winter. Emma, Mark, Kel & myself (Tim) braved the cold and boarded the 1:00pm cruise to Spirit Island. Lake Maligne is completely fed by the surrounding glaciers & has a current water temperature of 3 degrees, obviously we didn't pack our swimmers for this trip. The Lake has some of the most stunning scenery in Canada & we were all glad we took the trip. A big thanks to Bryan for taking the time out of his day to transfer us to the lake & for patiently waiting for us.

After our lake cruise we were dropped at the Maligne Canyon walking track. The canyon consists of huge limestone walls up to 50 metres deep in some spots with a deafening roar of white water. There was still some solid ice present in some parts of the canyon. We hiked for about an hour stopping a regular intervals to take many photos. Hopefully the photos below do it some justice.

Wildlife Bonanza

Today we were treated to some of the best wildlife viewing during the transfer from Jasper to Drayton Valley including moose, elk, goats, bighorn sheep & dear.

Grande Cache

We arrived in the town of Grande Cache on Thursday afternoon. Grande Cache is a beautiful mountain village of approximately 4000 surrounded by huge mountains & stunning lakes. The local Rotary club really looked after us & treated us to a really great time.

On wednesday morning we were given a tour of the local tourist information centre which also included a talk from local park ranger Mike on the local wildlife. We were able to play with bear claws, moose antlers & bighorn sheep horns. In the afternoon we walked to the sulphur gates which is the meeting point of the sulphur & the smoky river.

In the evening we were treated to banik & moose stew with representatives of the local first nations people including traditional druming & chanting.

On thursday afternoon a few of us decided to go white water rafting in the 3 degree waters of the sulphur river. We were outfitted in full wetsuits & jackets (which we definately needed). Mark, Kylie & myself (Tim) were stupid enough to take the optional swim in the river, needless to say my feet were numb for several hours afterwards. That evening we had a BBQ at the local firemans pit which included our group presentations & a few musical interludes.

Grande Prairie Vocational Visit

I headed out with Kel and Luke Nagge to a bison farm (they call them buffalo over here). The cows and calves were being fed. The cows are beautiful big animals and the calves are beautiful! As the calves are quite young the cows are protective so I hopped ainto the tractor with the manager to feed a couple of round bales. Bison are such old looking creatures, all of them have a beard that runs from under their chin to under their brisket and they seem so knowledgeable. Luke and Kel thought I was being romantic but I thought they were amazing.

Lunch was a quick stop at Denny's - but both Kel and I stayed away from the maple flavoured sundae with bacon topping - yes BACON AND ICE CREAM!

I then headed to the new Viterra Grain Handling facility. It is only a year old and is a major point for grain distribution from the cropping areas in the north. It is a $24 million dollar facility - Stay tuned, more updates coming soon!

Barrhead Vocational Visits

As I was staying with Shane O'Neill who is the manager for the Toronto Dominion Bank, I headed into the office earlier than the rest of the crew to begin our vocational day. Shane ran through a couple of loan files with me, and aside from all the jargon, the analysis of the loan file is basically the same as at home. Again the approval rests with an out of office team, but the fundamentals are the same.

From there we headed to a near by feedlot run by the Schimdt family. They currently have approximately 14,000 on a mainly barley based ration. Surprisingly the stock still gain around 1.25kg per day even through a minus 30 degree winter with feet of snow. We thought our cattle were hardy! The cattle are bought from the store markets and from as high up as Fairview and High Level.

We then headed to Jim and Gina's farm nearby, where they also run a feedlot. The majority of their stock are sourced from their own breeding herd. A similar ration is feed that consists mainly of barley. Gina cooked us a wonderful of lunch which included pyrogies - similar to a large cheese filled potato gnocchi and is a must to cook at home!

The bull whisperer

Well I'm not so sure how to even begin this blog entry as I had a rather interesting vocational day at Fairview. My day started off by meeting Rob and the staff at Fairview vet clinic. Rob soon revealed I was to accompany him and his vet nurse shanty to a farm out of town to fertility test 35 bulls. Having some stock mgt experience I had a fair idea what I was in for. I won't go into the x-rated details but lets just say I spent my morning arousing some rather recalcitrant bulls aged 2-4 yrs old. If I do say so myself I did a splendid job as we got what we needed from all of the bulls and obtained the results the owner was after. I now have a renewed respect for vets as Rob worked hard dealing with difficult beasts, their excrement and the occasional interrogation from the Swiss stock owners about his technique of measuring bulls testicals! After sorting that one out we returned back to the clinic to meet up with Em and witness a quick amputation plus a C - section delivery of a calf. All of the staff at the clinic are amazing in that they plough through such volumes of difficult and unpleasant tasks without a single hiccup or complaint. I did not ask if there were any jobs going at the clinic as I have reminded myself why I am a plant man! Em and I then made a quick Visit to a 4000ac farm where owner ken crops wheat, barley and peas. Here we had a interesting discussion on the use of gm crops, irrigation and market mechanisms in place in Canada. All in all I had a great day and experienced some stuff that may not necessarily be my direct line work but was of great interest anyhow. What really topped the day off was the moose we saw on the way home. The 1st sighting for the team I believe so 1 for me and em - 0 for the rest of you

A lovely outing to Peace River

Tonight Kylie, Brendan and I were treated to a lovely trip out to Peace River from Ken and Linda Landry (Kylie and my hosts). On the way to Peace River Ken and Linda took us for a bit of a scenic trip out to the Duncan First Nation reservation, over a ferry to  tangent park then back over to Peace River for dinner at River Rock.  

Our dinner was absolutely fan-bloody-tactic! on the way back home we were treated to a lovely song from Kylie who's singing voice is beautiful.

Thank you for the lovely time Ken and Linda, we had a blast.

A day at Zavisha's sawmill

Today I had the privilege of going to Zavisha's sawmill in Hines creek.  It was amazing to see that what the local folk would call a "small" mill being the bigger than the large sawmill back home at Herons Creek. 

I was shown around the mill by Ashley Zavisha who told me they store around 80,000m3 of lumber but actually cut about 110,000m3 per year. The lumber they typically cut is white spruce, lodgepole pine and some black spruce. Sadly one of the problems facing the mill industry is of course the market but also pine beetle attack. Pine beetle as Mark wrote earlier is a real problem facing the Alberta forestry industry.

Anyway back to the mill, I was shown around the small log mill where they primarily cut decking boards, there is another part of the mill which cuts larger logs that cater for scaffolding and house frames. The most common cut in the larger area is 8 by 8. After being shown around the mill I was then taken or to meet one of Zavisha's contracted foresters named Rudy. 

Rudy took myself and Ashley out to see some areas that they planted 18 months ago which looked a lot like eucalyptus that is 3 months old. I also was shown the affect of pine beetle in the region and was told about the measures forestry companies are taking to slow down the spread. 

For lunch I was taken to Rudy's house where his wife, Lulu cooked a nice chicken and corn soup followed by a chocolate muffin. It was soooo yummy!

So thank you to Ashley, Rudy and the crew at Zavisha's mill for a great day out and I'm sure there is plenty of ideas that I'll take back to Australia. 

Golf and Boatriding at Dunvegan

It was fun in the sun in Fairview today! The amateur golfers (Emma, Brendan and Kylie) started the day at the golf course. Let’s just say there were many laughs had by all and yes it was all at our expense. It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed the beautiful scenery outdoors.








We then all spent the afternoon at Dunvegan. Murray took us all for boat rides along the river which was absolutely gorgeous! Kate and Kylie met Tracker (the cutest puppy you will ever see) and we all did tours of the provincial park. We then had supper (dinner) with all of the Fairview Rotarians which was great.





PS: No ladies & gentlemen this is not David Hassellhoff, it is in fact the golden locks of one Kelvin Walls swaying in the cool Canadian breeze!

Merci bien (thanks a lot) St Gerard Catholic School!

I had the most wonderful vocational visit to the St Gerard Catholic School (in Grand Prairie), which is actually a French immersion school here in Canada. It was an absolute pleasure and privilege to spend the day with Joanne in her classroom. I was able to speak with her and the students about Canada and Australia, including the similarities and differences in our schooling systems, as well as our everyday lives. The students at the school were really fantastic and a little impressed, I must say, with my Aussie accent :-)

I was also able to find out about several exciting programs run in the school and a variety of resources and teaching ideas that I am very much looking forward to introducing/applying when I return home to Australia. Let’s just say that I wrote down a LOT of notes today and have a LOT of great ideas rattling around in my head!
I wanted to take the opportunity to say a BIG thank you to Joanne and let you all know that I believe her to be an absolutely incredible educator. She is an inspiration to other teachers and a real credit to the profession…if only we could duplicate her! I am truly looking forward to keeping in touch. Thank you also to Luke for organizing the visit…you couldn’t have picked a better teacher to match me up with :-)
Cheers…or should I say, Merci Beaucoup! (thank you very much) :-)

Tim's Vocational Day in Grande Prairie

I Met with Doug Westwood from HWD Construction and had a tour of their various construction sites in Grande Prairie including a new KFC, an office addition and an optometrist refurbishment. One common theme amongst commercial buildings is the extensive roof framing, outside trusses in particular need additional support due to snow loading from adjacent buildings. It was interesting to see the plans with dimensions in feet and inches as even though Canada is metric the building industry is all imperial.

In the afternoon I met with Rob Adair from Horizon North. HN do complete prefabricated buildings for the oil patches including accommodation and service buildings. They manufacture approximately 400,000 square feet of buildings every year and employ over 200 people on the floor including electricians, plumbers and carpenters. The buildings are fabricated in the factory in small sections and shipped to site for immediate installation. The final product resembles a high standard motel room rather than a basic site shed.

Kate and Marks second vocational day

Kate and Mark's vocational day at Grande Prairie kicked off with a tour of a local tree nursery which grows seedlings for local forestry companies. The nursery is called Pacific Regeneration Technologies and is located at beaver lodge. Our enthusiastic tour leader Max quickly demonstrated that while the nursery was not the largest around (10 million seedlings per year) it was still quite high tech. White spruce and lodgepole pine are the main species grown and there are some very interesting techniques used here.

The greenhouses can be blacked out to shorten daylight hours to mimick fall / winter conditions to prepare seedlings for planting or alter growth patterns. Greenhouses are all fully insulated and heated as temps can drop to -40 C around sowing time in January. As strange as it sounds they also can freeze seedlings to -2 to carry over to next season which is pretty handy. Our next stop was the Ainsworth OSB Plant which was nothing less than a humbling experience for us. This plant is of a scale like nothing we had ever seen. The first thing to make our jaw drop was the log yard. I have never seen what 450000 cubic m of wood looks like in one spot and let me tell you it is mountainous!

This plant is a thirsty monster consuming 900000 cubic m of aspen and poplar per year sourced mostly from adjacent provincial forests. The plant produces orientated strand board (osb) which is sold to domestic and export markets as far away as China and Japan. This plant has been able to survive the US housing market collapse by value adding their products eg insulated OSB and OSB I-beams. After touring the plant and learning about the manufacturing process we were able to spend some time with one of Ainsworths planning foresters to chat about GIS and LIDAR which was Kate's gig but I still got a lot out of it. It appears these guys are at about the same stage as we are with this technology so it was good to swap stories.

Next stop was a quick tour of some adjacent forests and operations. Unfortunately spring is a quiet time for harvest due to the winter melt off so we didn't see any harvesting but we got to see some nice forest and have some tree talk. The forests here are very enviable and the fact that there is 38million has of productive forest in Alberta and much of this is virgin made our mouths water. Typical harvests produce 240 m3 of product per ha from a 110 yr old stand. Harvesting and haulage is by contractors supervised by foresters. Harvest scheduling is focussed on oldest stands first to limit senescence and it appears they cannot harvest it quick enough! Poor buggers. Silviculture is aimed at replicating fire regeneration events. Stands are slow growing, regenerate readily and stands are turned over at about 100 years. Interestingly product certification and forest stewardship programs are seen as important tools in building community trust and acceptance. Our last stop was to one of Ainsworth's tree improvement orchards where they have already achieved a 700% genetic gain and there is heaps of suitable cleared land at cheap prices so planation potential is quite exciting. Of course log trucks are bigger over here. They gross out at 56 tonne here and from what I have seen often carry logs full length. Hopefully i can get a photo of one soon