Canadian Mill Towns Pay For U.S. Housing Collapse

[rayofreason]

Source: Washington Post

MACKENZIE, B.C. -- For a time, the snow-dusted forests ringing this picturesque mill town might as well have been made of gold.

Eager U.S. construction companies scooped up Canadian lumber in record volume during the great American housing boom of the middle of the decade. As prices spiked, sawmills cashed in, spending millions to increase production. They upgraded factories and enticed laborers with salaries upward of $80,000 a year, adding third shifts to pump out wood for McMansions in Miami and instant subdivisions in Phoenix, 24 hours a day.

The lumber bubble brought to this sleepy town of 4,500 people about 600 miles north of Vancouver a rush of wealth, still easily visible in the freshly minted Ski-Doo snowmobiles and $60,000 pickup trucks, now idle in driveways. "Everybody went out and bought new toys," said Mackenzie's no-nonsense mayor, Stephanie Killam. "Nobody thought it would ever end. They were wrong."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/31/AR2008013103946.html?wpisrc=_rssprint

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No man is an island. Like it or not.

[thunder rising]

1. And the fools are not spending now? Just when the country really needs them too? What wimps!

[bbinacan]

2. That's why they're called

boom towns. Because after the boom comes the bust. See CA gold rush.

[Lisa]

3. true. And it's not as if they're lacking in examples ...

Drive anywhere in Canada, and the country is strewn with the remains of boom-bust towns. Heck -- some of them, like Barkerville or Lunenburg, are national historic sites. Most of our nation's early history concerns resource towns and what happens when communities come to rely on commodity production. The stuff they're producing runs out (lumber, fish, minerals) -- or the market slumps and prices crash. As you said, bbinacan -- gold rush.

Lately I've been hearing from people who live up in the tar sands region. Even the places having a boom are also coping with a lot of social problems ... homelessness, overspending, crime.

As a Canadian, it really bothers me when people with a get-rich-quick mentality (and this can extend from the "working face" of a mine, right up to the CEOs at the top of the pyramid) insist that this country doesn't need economic diversification, government investment and training programmes, long-range strategic planning, an educational system that aspires to something other than churning out obedient workers for the big corporations, etc.

[HereSince1628]

4. Lesson? Don't put all yer saw logs in one basket. And remember...

to keep yer stick on the ice!

[ConcernedCanuk]

7. Ahhh - memories

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http://www.redgreen.com/index.cfm?app=cart&a=menu

[CHIMO]

5. Hewers of Wood

If you look back into history one will find that Canada was blessed/cursed with much resources. So when the cycles moves one way the country moves the same way.

Now after the hollowing out there isn't much left but a reorganization of the North American continent.

So we must wait until everything gets shaken out.

[Amonester]

6. Cool. This planet needs more trees, not less.

Save a tree.

[ursi]

8. the bubble has busted out all over