There’s a new sound coming from the Quebec side of the Ottawa River at Rapides des Joachims in Pontiac County these days, something local residents haven’t heard for 10 years—but it was a sound they definitely missed.

It’s the sound of the Commonwealth Plywood specialty sawmill producing lumber again.

After a decade in mothballs, but with equipment left in place and some aggressive lobbying by local politicians, the sawmill is back producing appearance-grade white and red pine lumber, currently manufacturing about 1.3 million board feet annually on a one shift basis, but with a goal of reaching nearly 2 million board feet on two shifts. But it has a capacity to produce 20 million board feet per year, which is what the mill was producing before the shutdown.

The sawmill produces three grades of 4/4, 6/4, and 8/4 green lumber in widths from 4 1/8”, 6 1/8”, 8 1/8”, 10 1/8” and 12 1/8”, in lengths from 6’ to 16’ in 2’ increments.

About 95 per cent of their log diet is white pine with the rest red pine, sourced locally on Crown land through a government allotment.

The lumber produced at the sawmill is shipped green to remanufacturers who then dry and plane it and market it primarily to big box stores for a variety of interior applications like moulding and shelving.

Jane Toller, Warden of Pontiac County, says that forestry built the county and local politicians want to ensure that the region continues to be a strong player in the industry. She said that she and others lobbying for the sawmill understood the challenges of re-opening it after so long and were very pleased with the decision by Commonwealth Plywood to follow through. In addition to jobs, the operational sawmill brings in significant tax revenue to the region.

TS Manufacturing supplied the carriage equipped with a Forano saw as the main breakdown unit at the Commonwealth Plywood sawmill (at left). Cardinal and Mudata recently supplied optimizing technology to improve production and recovery. Logs processed at the Commonwealth Plywood specialty sawmill in Pontiac County (being unloaded below by a Liebherr loader) measure between 22” and 25” in diameter and are primarily white pine.

“It’s gratifying after five years of working with Commonwealth Plywood to see our dream of growing the forestry industry in the Pontiac come true,” she says. “I believe this news will send a signal to the rest of Quebec that the Pontiac is resourceful—and that we are back in business.”

The sawmilling industry in the region has been struggling since the housing crash of 2008.

Commonwealth Plywood, with 10 production facilities in Quebec and one in the U.S. and 23 distribution centres in five Canadian provinces, invested $1 million to prepare the Rapids des Joachims specialty sawmill for production. Significant equipment software upgrades were required. Since May 2023, when the sawmill re-opened, the company has invested another $1 million, primarily in optimization technology that is already paying big dividends in production.

Commonwealth Plywood President Bill Caine Jr. attended the grand re-opening of the sawmill and said that it holds a special place in his heart because he worked there as a teenager. The decision not to sell any equipment was a conscious choice with a strong belief that the sawmill would reopen again, and that with the housing growth happening in both Canada and the U.S., the company believed that the time was right to turn the lights back on.

The Caine family purchased the sawmill in 1976, then rebuilt and modernized it after a fire in the 1980s. It was designed to produce specialty pine products right from the start.

The company tapped Jacques Lacroix from its plywood division to prepare the sawmill for production and then hired him as its general manager. He brings a wealth of wood product manufacturing experience to the operation from the hardwood plywood sector, having started with Weldwood of Canada in 1978. Lacroix also brings a lot of enthusiasm to his job and is determined to revitalize the sawmill to the point where it is producing to its potential. The process is well underway.

“We fixed every piece of equipment at the mill,” he says. “There was no lack of maintenance and we had a lot of bearings to change.”

Among his first tasks was to hire workers. Of the 17 currently employed at the sawmill, four are returnees while the rest are new to the plant. Lacroix says that he would have liked to have hired more former
employees, but over the past 10 years, most have retired. So among the challenges of the first year was the need for training from the front to the back of the mill—”including me,” Lacroix adds.

At present, he is searching for more employees, in particular skilled laborers like electricians and millwrights, to staff a second shift. Their biggest challenge attracting employees is competing with the Chalk River nuclear research facility across the river in Ontario.

Lacroix says he took on the task of general manager with realistic expectations. He knew that the first year of production was going to be extremely challenging—and it has been because the mill was sitting idle for so long.

“Every day we have surprises here,” he says. “Now our issues with the optimizers have been fixed, so that is going to take a big burden off our shoulders on the production side. I’m hoping to increase our production between 60 to 70 per cent this year with the same number of employees because of the investments we have made.”

Cants at the Commonwealth Plywood sawmill are processed through a Comact bull edger (above). Commonwealth Plywood employs manual graders (below) at the Pontiac County sawmill, dividing the lumber into three grades. About 70 per cent of production is the middle grade, with 5 percent high grade select.

While the sawmill is providing local jobs, additional jobs have also been created in their logging operations with their sub-contractors. According to Alain Trudel, Woodlands General Manager, they have hired sub-contractors to provide them with the 100,000 cubic metres allocated to them by the province of which 60,000 cubic metres is hardwood, primarily maple, oak and birch, that they transport to Commonwealth Plywood’s plant in nearby Mont Laurier. The Pontiac County sawmill is benefitting significantly in that the haul distance from the forest to the mill is only between 10 to 80 kilometres.

“That’s because the sawmill is situated right in the forest, close to our wood supply,” says Lacroix.

Commonwealth Plywood was expecting a larger wood allocation from the province and only found out after they decided to re-commission the sawmill that their annual allocation had been cut by 40 per cent until 2028. However, Lacroix says that they are still doing well with the wood supply that they have, and production continues to grow. They look for opportunities to purchase wood wherever they can from both sides of the provincial border to supplement their government allocation.

The logs are delivered to the sawmill tree length and are unloaded and decked using a Liebherr LH 30 log loader. They are bucked in the yard to between 8’ and 16’ lengths using a Serco 270 portable slasher. On average, the logs measure between 22” and 25” in diameter. A Liebherr front end loader delivers the logs to the mill infeed as needed. The sawmill currently produces lumber on a 10.5 hour shift from Monday to Thursday.

The reopening of the Commonwealth Plywood specialty sawmill at Rapides des Joachims in Quebec is providing 17 new jobs and many more in their logging operations.

Once inside the mill, the logs first encounter a Nicholson A6 ring debarker and then collect in a bin that can hold about 35 logs at a time before entering the production line. The mill has a Morbark 640 debarker as a backup unit. The primary log breakdown unit is a Forano saw on a carriage supplied by TS Manufacturing.

One of the new investments made at the sawmill was to install a new Cardinal and Mudata optimizer to work with the carriage to maximize recovery and improve production. The boards from the carriage are edged on a Comact edger which Comact has also optimized. Cants from the carriage are processed through a Comact bull edger. The existing two-line trimmer is from Piché and it has been equipped with Autolog optimization. The lumber is manually graded for appearance as industrial, #4 or select, and then placed in the Piché 60-bin sorter. Lumber from the bins is manually stacked, bundled and strapped for shipment.

About 70 per cent of production is the middle grade, 5 per cent select and the rest industrial.

Next on the company’s capital investment list is to review the bin sorter because Lacroix says that it is outdated and cannot be analyzed and fixed remotely.

Sawmill residuals are processed through a Forano chipper equipped with a Vibrotech vibrating conveyor. Chips and sawdust are shipped to the Roseburg MDF plant in Pembroke, Ontario while bark and hog is sold to a company in Ottawa.

Lacroix feels positive about the sawmill’s future because it has a good wood supply close to the mill and the company has established a good employee base. Also, they have marketing support from a large parent organization, Commonwealth Plywood, so they can focus strictly on production and quality.