BC logging town finds hope in housing startup retraining program

Tim George spent two decades working at various mills in Port Alberni before the industry collapsed on him. When the Errington sawmill went bankrupt in 2019 and laid off 50 workers, George found himself adrift in a town where forestry and seafood processing had long been the only options.

For years, he jumped between jobs — a local recycling company, sporadic work at a mill near Whisky Creek about 45 minutes from home. He was living paycheque to paycheque, uncertain about next month's work.

Last year, George saw a job posting for IGV Housing, a Port Alberni-based startup that partnered with a local college to retrain displaced forestry workers for manufacturing. "Having some financial relief, with a regular Monday-to-Friday job that doesn't look like it's going away any time soon, has been really important to me," George said. The steady work close to home meant he could help his wife support their four kids.

George is one of two dozen displaced forestry workers to find work through the program following a short retraining course. For Port Alberni, the initiative has made a meaningful difference. But the scale of the crisis far exceeds what any single startup can address.

Canada has lost more than 10,000 forestry jobs since 2001, not counting the supporting service, hospitality, and other jobs lost in towns dependent on the industry. Port Alberni has been hit especially hard. The city, located 62 kilometres west of Nanaimo at the head of the Alberni Inlet, has a long history as Vancouver Island's forestry hub. When Western Forest Products closed its local sawmill in 2022, more than 100 workers were laid off. Another 75 people lost jobs when Coulson sawmill curtailed operations in 2024.

George knows people who took minimum wage jobs or flew out of town to work on oil rigs. "I was worried," he said. "There's not a lot of jobs in Port Alberni, and there's not a lot of places to work."

IGV Housing's manufacturing plant arrived as a welcome addition to the city. The startup bid for the former wood remanufacturing site owned by San Group Inc., the company that owned the Coulson sawmill before going bankrupt. Port Alberni Mayor Sharie Minions called it a meaningful step.

But Arnold Bercov, a former Harmac pulp mill worker and former president of the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of Canada, said the startup is great news for about two dozen workers but doesn't make up for thousands of losses across B.C. "Losing your job is heartbreaking," he said. "So these guys getting a job is a great thing, but with the amount of timber we have and the opportunities we have, there's so much more opportunity to move this industry forward and employ people."