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The Ladysmith Festival of Lights has been unplugged for another year, thanks to the many volunteers who came out Sunday, Jan. 18 to help take down the lights and decorations during the community work party. In left photo, Terry Boyle, Sonny Hockey and Steve Kim display some of the thousands of stringed lights taken down around Ladysmith Sunday morning, while at right, 12-year-old Ariel Veys helps lay out the freshly removed light strings for bundling. The Festival of Lights committee considers this year another very successful Festival of Lights, as they’ve reported that they believe there have been more tour buses going through town during the six weeks than they’ve seen before, and they’ve also seen considerably more visitors walking downtown with all the clear nights we’ve had. NIOMI PEARSON
WFP Ladysmith Sawmill re-opens Lindsay Chung THE CHRONICLE
Western Forest Products (WFP) employees were back at work Monday (Jan. 19), as the Ladysmith Sawmill on Ludlow Road returned to full capacity. Operations at the mill were temporarily shut down Dec. 5 due to a downturn in the Chinese market. WFP spokeswoman Amy Spencer says that between 75 and 85 people were affected by the temporary curtailment, and they are all back at work this week. Spencer says some employees came
in for regular maintenance and ship- petus to get it started up.” The products are primarily sold to ping work during the shutdown, but Spencer says they began phoning China, and Spencer says that WFP is there were times when there was no workers last week to advise them that working to be flexible and offer diverone at the mill. the mill would be re-opening on Mon- sity so that it can respond to the marThe Ladysmith Sawmill is back in day. ket. operation because it has received new “This all happened late last week, so “It’s the same with all our mills; the orders for lumber from China. as soon as we found out, we made the industry is very reliant upon what hap“The Chinese market still remains phone calls to our crew to get them pens in the global market, so they do challenging,” said Spencer. “The prod- back in for today,” Spencer said Mon- remain challenging, but we’re working ucts that come out of that mill are day morning. “It’s never in our interest on our ability to be flexible, and in this primarily for the Chinese market, but to have a mill down, so we were ex- case, we were able to produce a slightwe were able to secure a two-month cited to get it up and going as soon as ly different size to meet the needs of order file, which means we were able possible.” new customers,” she explained. to bring everyone back to work. And This mill produces what is called The WFP Saltair Sawmill on Raven it will go on, of course, beyond two commodity lumber, such as the two- Road was not affected by the shutmonths — that was just sort of the im- by-fours you find at a lumber store. down.