I was born and raised in Saskatchewan and I now live in Port McNeill, B.C. I decided the West Coast was for me one summer after visiting a friend of mine who had moved to Nanaimo with his family. I moved west in 1979, took a basic logging course at Malaspina College in Nanaimo and ended up working in a logging camp called Kokish, on northern Vancouver Island. I've been working here ever since and now have 23 years on the job, 15 of them working on the road crew.

Logging has always been a cyclical industry and there have always been layoffs. But over the last few years the industry's future has looked darker and darker.

About three years ago, our whole camp was called into a meeting. We were told that we were being laid off and there was no call-back date in the near future. In fact, things were so bad that if we could find work and needed machinery the company would lease theirs to us. One of our divisions down Island needed a road builder so I agreed to move down to keep working. I hadn't been working for more than two days when I got a call that we were starting back the next Monday.

What had happened was that the company had discovered a way of cheating the government and people of B.C. out of stumpage, the fee the company pays the government for the logs it removes. It was a method called "grade setting." It's a little complicated, but by making the logs in your setting appear of poorer quality than they really are, you drop the amount of stumpage you pay. We got good at it and the company made millions, but the government eventually caught on and closed the door on our little game. It gave us three years' work but the down-side was we targeted the last few areas of high quality wood in order to maximize our profit.

2001 was a difficult year. We were logging and building roads, but falling prices, especially for hemlock, meant making a buck became tougher and tougher. Then came the inevitable: layoff notices for everybody. Again there was no call-back date. The scary part of this layoff is that the head planner, who makes the decisions of where and what we log in the future, can't find an area in our claim where, in the current economic climate, we can actually make some money.

Our problems are many: 1) The price for our products, especially hemlock, has bottomed out and over the last few years we've logged most of our higher-value wood - red and yellow cedar and fir. 2) Demand for our product is down mainly because the Japanese markets are in the tank – cheap European and Russian products are filling what little demand there is. 3) Because of the softwood dispute with the Americans there isn't a lot of wood moving south, thus keeping prices down.

Our logging costs are high. We're moving further up the mountain so our road-building costs are up and the logging is tougher. Over the last few years the environmentalists have put pressure on the government to be more environmentally friendly, which isn't necessarily bad, but it is more expensive. I'm not sure if every wood producer in the world plays by the same rules.

In the logging industry, on the coast anyway, there's a fight with some of the major companies to keep the manufacturing of logs in B.C. Our logs are our jobs. These companies, mostly owned by Americans, would rather create jobs in the U.S. It's an odd situation. Some American states won't allow their logs to be exported, but that's what they want to do here. It bothers me to see the life sucked out of these communities because there's a chance to make a bigger buck elsewhere.

The pressures facing our camp are not unique. The logging industry is the main employer on the North Island and all the companies have had down-time. One company had barely six months of work last year. The average was between eight and 10 months. My wife Cindy is a waitress in town and she's definitely noticed a slowdown at her restaurant. The local retail stores have all said that spending is down big-time and any of the companies that supply the logging sector have also been forced to downsize.

Cindy and I are not in too bad shape because we don't have any kids. My EI cheques are being used to cover the mortgage and car payments, and Cindy's wage keeps food on the table, but I can't imagine the pressure on some of the guys with several mouths to feed plus all the extra expenses that go along with having kids. I know that some have found jobs in camps and others have left the area altogether, going to northern B.C. or Alberta.

If there's no future in this camp, it wouldn't be welcome news, but at least a guy could get on with his life. We've heard nothing but rumours since January when upper management came in and fired our local management team, giving most of them one day notice. There are now 95 workers in camp hoping for good news. Some of our guys have been off five months. If we knew what was going to happen then we could make plans, but this is tough. You can look for work in the industry locally, but that's difficult because some companies don't look seriously at hiring you when they know that as soon as your camp goes back, you'll quit. Another option is to leave the industry and get retraining, but it would probably mean you'd have to move to the city, and for many of us that isn't an option.

The hardest part of the deal is to keep your sanity and not worry yourself to death. I find the easiest way to do this is to stay busy. A few years ago Cindy and I moved an older home on five acres of land and have been renovating and adding on ever since. There's always something that needs to be done and there's always the task of replenishing the firewood. I'm also a ski patroller at Mt. Cain, our local ski hill. I find when I'm on the mountaintops it's hard to have my mind on anything other than the moment. Hockey's a big part of my life as well. I play two or three times a week. Cindy and I have taken up yoga and find the calming effect of the workouts is exactly what we need in these tough times.

My gut feeling says we'll be back. And that would be great because it's a job that paid very well. More importantly, I enjoyed getting up in the morning every working day.