This issue of Forestnet Magazine marks the retirement of a stalwart in Canadian forestry, Derek Sidders, currently identified as Silviculture Operations Specialist, Technology Developer and Promoter with the Canadian Forest Service (CFS).

Readers of Forestnet Magazine will know him as the driving force behind our CFS The Edge articles that have appeared here for about a decade, covering various timely topics from mountain pine beetle stand rehabilitation and select harvesting to afforestation through the generation of fast-growing hybrid hardwood clone plantations and wild fire remediation through innovative forest management techniques.

Derek’s retirement this month brings to an end a much-storied career at CFS in the promotion and development of Canadian forest management technology, reforestation, afforestation and climate change adaptation.

Most recently headquartered at the Northern Forestry Centre in Edmonton, his career with the CFS spans nearly a half-century of deeply committed public service. It’s notable that several current members of the CFS leadership team actually began their careers under his tutelage, and even now, it is common for several of them to say, “I wonder what Derek would have to say on this issue?” What followed would often be a phone call to benefit from his decades of extensive field experience of what is and is not possible or feasible.

Derek was like a prairie dust devil or hummingbird, with stacks and stacks of reports and past projects in his office. While it might have appeared to a visitor as rather chaotic, he reminded those present that he knew where everything was, which ultimately became somewhat of a regret on his part in that so much was still on paper, with never enough time to digitize it all. We are all diminished because of it, because within these reports and findings are, in my opinion, some of the most important applied science programs, field trials and results that have been initiated and completed with a variety of partners over the past 50 years at CFS under his guidance.

I am pleased to say that I not only consider Derek as a fellow passenger on the express train that is advancement within the Canadian forest sector, but also someone who became a friend due to our consistent crossing of paths during my own 37 years of service to this publication.

I remember the first field tour I attended that Derek and his team organized, of various innovative and novel CFS forest research plantations throughout Western Canada. While it would be easy to tune out the commentary from the front of the bus between stops, I remember thinking that what Derek had to say was so compelling, that these tours almost became a Master Class in the art of what is possible in Canadian forestry.

While the tour was 25 years ago, I still have vivid memories of the healthy pine plantation that had been established on a CFS research site on the bald prairie near Alberta’s Cypress Hills Provincial Park or the massive poplar that had been regenerated through innovative reforestation techniques near Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba. My interest since then has never waned because regardless of where Derek’s truck was headed, you always knew that today, you were going to learn something truly remarkable of what was possible in Canadian forest management from the active research site we were about to visit.

Some of the truly genius concepts that evolved stick with me today, like the select harvesting patterns in mixed forests that he designed and implemented on field sites, where feller bunchers reach in on either side of a trail to retrieve mature hardwoods while leaving the immature white spruce in the understorey to grow and thrive in a less competitive environment.

Then there was his work in afforestation revolving around the study of fast-growing hybrid hardwood clones to see which varieties would thrive in Canada’s various bio-geoclimatic zones, resulting in plantations from Guelph, Ontario to British Columbia—and everywhere in-between. Then the idea occurred to him of planting white spruce in the understorey of these hybrid poplar plantations and the result, I think, surprised even him. Here was the ability to generate a fast-growing hybrid poplar forest in a fraction of the time of a natural forest, with the generation of a secondary commercial species in a way that actually mimicked a natural forest.

Not only did this provide the opportunity for industry to replicate this cutting edge afforestation technology to rehabilitate industrial sites or for companies to grow the size of their wood baskets, but it was also a major win for the environment through the development of fast-growing carbon sinks and forests that attracted a variety of wildlife species including birds, moose, deer and much more.

It truly would be a justly deserved outcome if some forestry organization or company would nominate him for a much-deserved honorary PhD from a Canadian university because I know no one else who has demonstrated such an unequivocal deep academic understanding, commitment and contribution to his area of study.