Powell River Company In 1908 two
American entrepreneurs, Dr. Dwight Brooks and Michael Scanlon, created a
newsprint mill at
Powell River, northwest of Vancouver. The Powell River Company turned out the first roll of newsprint manufactured in British Columbia in 1912. It soon became one of the world's largest newsprint plants and today is credited with introducing the first self-dumping log
barge to British Columbia.
Bloedel, Stewart and Welch In 1911
Julius Bloedel, a
Seattle lawyer, along with his two partners,
John Stewart and Patrick Welch, began acquiring large blocks of
Vancouver Island forests. Their
Franklin River camp soon became one of the world's largest
logging operations. Here, in the 1930s, the Canadian industry saw its first
Lidgerwood steel spar yarder and
chainsaw. In 1938, Bloedel, Stewart and Welch became the first logging company in the province to plant
seedlings in a logged-over area. Bloedel, Stewart and Welch opened a large timber mill in
Port Alberni. The company had large camps near
Menzies Bay, British Columbia,
Comox and Myrtle Point, just south of
Powell River. The company was headquartered in Vancouver. Stewart and Welch were also partners in
Foley, Welch and Stewart, who were prominent in
railway-building operations in the same period.
H. R. MacMillan Export Company The last of the three pre-merger companies was the H.R. MacMillan Export Company, which was created in 1919 by Harvey, or
H.R. MacMillan, British Columbia's first Chief Forester. MacMillan reportedly gained considerable experience in world lumbering during
World War I. With his colleague
Whitford Julian VanDusen, another forester, MacMillan incorporated a company in 1919 to sell British Columbia lumber products to foreign markets. In 1924, they established a shipping company that would become one of the world's biggest charter companies. With the creation of Seaboard Lumber by the other mill owners in British Columbia, there was a major threat to MacMillan, as Seaboard was to export all the lumber from the companies that founded it leaving MacMillan without the lumber needed to fulfill their orders. MacMillan responded by beginning to purchase mills and creating the first truly integrated forestry company in British Columbia. During
World War II, MacMillan acquired numerous small mills and timber tenures on the
south coast of British Columbia. == History of MacMillan Bloedel ==