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More than 60 companies make paper and wood pulp (fibres either separated by mechanical or chemical means, the basic ingredient of paper). The major companies in Canada include Abitibi-Price Inc., Fletcher Challenge Finance Canada Inc., Canadian Forest Products Ltd, Canadian Pacific Forest Products Ltd, Stone-Consolidated Inc., Domtar Pulp and Paper Products, and MacMillan Bloedel Ltd.

One of Canada's major manufacturing industries, it employs some 85 000 people in about 145 pulp and paper mills. There are mills in every province except Prince Edward Island.

The pulp and paper industry is the major component of the Canadian forest industry.

Over $14 billion worth of pulp, paper, and board was made every year in Canada in the mid- to late 1980s, of which about $11 billion worth was sold to more than 80 countries. Over one-third of production is in the form of newsprint, the paper on which newspapers are printed. Canada supplies more than one-third of the world's newsprint, more than any other nation. Canadian pulp and paper companies supply well over half of all the paper used by newspapers in the United States, Canada's biggest customer for pulp and paper.

Wood pulp is the other major product of Canada's pulp and paper mills. Like newsprint, most of the pulp made in Canada is exported. This pulp is converted into paper, textiles, and other goods such as photographic film, sponges, and fillers for pharmaceuticals. The industry also produces tissue paper, bathroom tissue, printing, writing, wrapping, building paper, and so on.

Two businessmen from New England built the first paper mill in Canada in 1805, at St Andrews, Que. This mill made paper from rags, which were growing scarce while the demand for paper was increasing. In the mid-19th century, however, inventors in Europe found a way to make paper from wood.

Canada has an abundance of black spruce. This tree had been of little commercial value for it is too small to be sawed into lumber. But, as it turned out, its dense, long-fibred wood is excellent for making paper.

The first mill in Canada to make paper from wood began production in 1864 at Windsor Mills, near Sherbrooke, Canada East [Quebec]. Others soon followed, first in eastern Canada, then, in 1909, in British Columbia.

The market for paper kept growing as more and more people learned to read and bought newspapers, and as more and more consumer products were wrapped and packed in paper. Investors poured money into big pulp and paper mills. Most of these mills were located in those parts of the northern forest where there were rivers which could be dammed to provide hydroelectricity to power the mills. The pulp and paper industry stimulated the building of railways and highways and supported communities and regions far from Canada's big cities.

By the end of World War I, Canada was the world's largest exporter of pulp and paper. Canadian mills specialized in producing newsprint. Their output increased during World War II and after.

The Canadian pulp and paper industry is moving towards producing other special grades of paper.

Most Canadian pulp and paper mills were built during the first half of this century – a time of general indifference to environmental questions. Since that time, the needs of a more crowded, complex, and affluent society, and new information about the impact of pulp and paper operations on the environment have raised concerns on the industry's impact. Today, the pulp and paper industry, which was one of the major polluters in Canada, is upgrading its old mills to meet today's environmental standards. New mills are also increasingly technologically advanced to reduce their impact on the environment.

Making pulp and paper means harvesting an enormous number of trees. To make the paper on which the New York Times is printed, four million softwood trees are cut down every year. Since some parts of Canada are growing short of wood, pulp and paper mills are trying to use wood efficiently. In British Columbia especially, pulp is made from waste wood chips left over in producing lumber.

They are also recycling more. About 6% of the total fibre needs of Canadian pulp and paper mills are in the forms of recycled fibres or waste paper.

Related Articles: FOREST ; FOREST INDUSTRY .

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Suggested Reading: Paulette Bourgeois, The Amazing Paper Book (1989); David Crampton, Managing the Forest (1985); Donald MacKay, The Lumberjacks (1978) and Heritage Lost: The Crisis in Canada's Forests (1985).