The Pulp and Paper Industry Cluster of the St-Maurice Valley

Zacharie Magnan

Abstract

This article examines the history and evolution of the pulp and paper industry in the St-Maurice region of Quebec, from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1990s. Using historical archives, government data, and company reports, the article explores the organization of the industry, labor relations, and the impact of the industry on the region. The piece shows that the industry was an important driver of development for the province of Quebec, with the St-Maurice Valley being an excellent location to develop a pulp mill due to the abundance of a low grade essence used in the production of newspapers. The industry was organized around the subcontractor system, with big entrepreneurs buying logs from small units of peasant-lumberjack groups dispersed over a large territory. The article highlights the importance of the St-Maurice River as the main method of transportation of the wood that was destined to become paper, and the location of the paper and pulp factories downstream of the river. The article also explores the impact of the industry on labor relations and the difficulty of creating workers’ unions in a highly fragmented labor market. The article concludes by examining the collapse of the industry in the 1990s and its impact on the region.

Keywords: Pulp and paper industry, St-Maurice region, labor relations, subcontractor system, Quebec.

Introduction

The pulp and paper industry has been an important driver of development for the province of Québec along with propel interest over the province’s hydroelectric potential. In the 19th century,the pulp and paper industry was first driven by a protected trade between the British empire and its colonies that used its lumber to build ships and sustain war efforts against France during the Napoleonic wars. After Britain decided to end this special monopoly system, The province was forced to compete on the free market with other European nations such as Norway and Sweden who were also important lumber exporters in Europe. Due to these changes the province turned to the United States which was developing demand for lumber and its by-products in the second half of the 19th century.

The St-Maurice Valley was an excellent location to develop a pulp mill because of the poor quality of the wood found in the region caused by the clear cuts of the past. This lumber, however, was considered perfect to sustain the insatiable demand for paper, especially newspapers at the turn of the century.1 It was at this point that the first pulp mill was erected on the St-Maurice near Grand’mère, backed by new technology and investments from the United States. This was the beginning of a region changing industry that went on to prosper until the 21st century. In this piece, I will explore the different facets of the industry using historic data and company reports compiled by the work of numerous local historians and newspapers. The organization of the industry, labour relations and the overall evolution of the industry during the period of interest from the start of the 20th century to the 1990s. We will report our main findings in the conclusion following our analysis of the death of the industry and its impact on the region.

Methodology

The data sources I chose to write this article mostly consisted of historical archives and government data on the exploitation of the forest and the revenues it brought back to the province. Company reports from the Consolidated paper company, representing almost all mills in the St-Maurice region from 1933 give us insight into the possessions and investments made in the region. It is also important to note that these sources are quite specific only providing data for a few variables from specific years or groups of years. Thus, it was hard to find some continuity in the records given the fragmentation and the age of the data. Specific numbers for the rentability of specific pulp mills do not seem to be readily available.

On the other hand, I analyzed many scholarly articles relating to the economic development of the province of Québec at the turn of the 20th century specifically about the St-Maurice region. Many tend to focus on the macro-level of analysis of the industry only describing the larger-scale movements taken by the industry rather than explaining its mode of operation and interaction between the different levels of production. Most describe the level of production is easily the harvesting of the resources and the floating of “pitounes”2 down the rivers of the basin in direction of the pulp mills at different locations along the river. To complete my analysis I used one of the last reports from Emploi-Québec in which the office made an analysis of the current situation in the industry when it was on the verge of collapse in 2000. It will be interesting to compare the state and relevance of the economic cluster from one end of the 20th century to the other.

The factories

There is a long way to travel from the lumberjack camp to the paper that would be printed with the New York Times. The locational organization of the industrial cluster can be defined by the different rivers and lakes that were a part of the St-Maurice basin, (see Figure 1). The paper and pulp factories were dispersed downstream of the St-Maurice River, the major stream that connected all the other rivers and the main method of transportation of the wood that was destined to become paper. On nearly every river upstream, the provincial government gave away concessions that could be used by owners that met the conditions for an operating permit. The bosses of these concessions hired lumberjacks to go work all winter which was usually about 4 months where they would be paid according to their personal production after they were allocated a site by the foreman. Usually, these men were farmers, factory workers or even Indigenous peoples from the region. Any person, but predominantly men, who wished to make a good amount of money without any distractions such as Alcohol, Women etc would sign up.3 This system is what is called the subcontractor system.4 Big entrepreneurs bought logs from small units of peasant-lumberjack groups dispersed over a big territory. Most logging operations were very small in size but still accounted for a large part of the provincial production. More than 50% of the logs destined for the pulp industry came from the St-Maurice valley in 1905.5 The fragmentation of the labour permitted the big entrepreneurs to control the prices they paid the workers to a minimum creating a system that kept French-Canadian labour cheap relative to other groups, which was very common at the time. This part of the industry offered high mobility and freedom for the labourers since they were paid as per their production. It is also important to note that this disorganization made the creation of workers’ unions very difficult and the lumberjacks only started to regroup in 1930 under the Catholic cultivators union to fight for better conditions.6

Conveying the ressource

government enacted an embargo on the exportation of pulp, forcing the exportation of a finished product. The US, which was facing an enourmous rise in demand for newspapers introduced the underwood act in 1913 effectively waiving custom taxes on paper. This stimulated production like never before and the industry saw tremendous growth in the following years.8

Conclusion

3 C.-A. Fortin, “Les Travailleurs Forestiers En Mauricie Au XIXe Siècle” (thesis, Université du Québec, Trois-Rivière, 1983).

4 B. Gauthier, “La sous-traitance et l’exploitation forestière en Mauricie (1850-1875),” Material Culture Review 13 (1981).

5 G. Gaudreau, “L’exploitation des forêts publiques au Québec (1874-1905) transition et nouvel essor,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 42, no. 1 (1988): 3–26.

6 C.-A. Fortin, “Les Travailleurs Forestiers En Mauricie Au XIXe Siècle” (thesis, Université du Québec, Trois-Rivière, 1983).

7 C. Bellavance, N. Brouillette, and P. Lanthier, “Financement et industrie en Mauricie, 1900-1950,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 40, no. 1 (1986): 29–50.

As the ice melts and logs start running down the river and the ramps built to avoid the dangerous sections of the river. The wood slowly floats down to the pulp mills established at different levels, the Laurentides Pulp Co. in Grand’Mère, the Belgo in Shawinigan Falls and the Wayagamack in Trois-Rivières are examples of these different companies that established themselves at the beginning of the century. These companies bought the logs from the concession owners mentioned earlier and established their production in two parts. Since the mill needs electricity to function the mills also worked as hydroelectric plants harnessing the power from the river to power the heavy machinery inside the factories. The factories were also located close to railway stations or had owners influential enough to bring the rail directly next to their operation center. It is also less costly for the companies to transform the pulp directly inside the complex and ship a finished product out to the printing centers.7

This whole system could not have been made possible without the intervention of the Québec government. In the early 1910s, the factories were only producing pulp and were exporting it to Europe and the US to be transformed into paper. Seeing that they were missing out on a lot of revenue, the

The pulp and paper industry of the St-Maurice Valley gave way to prosperous times for the region. Over time, the employees who were just considered labourers were considered professionals and were given many benefits and rewards for working lifelong careers at the mills.9 My Grandparents were given a house where they paid a very low rent until they bought it for a reasonable price from the company at retirement. This Fordist model of industrial activity came into a drastic wake-up call in the 1980s-1990s, the markets were becoming more and more open to international competition and the Consolidated Paper company which had bought out the other mills of the region in the 1930s was thrown into crisis. The logs were still quite valuable but it was becoming more and more unprofitable to transform the pulp into paper at the same location. Environmental groups were also becoming evermore concerned with the health of the St-Maurice river from the centuries of log transportation and pushed for a ban on the activity. Ultimately, the factory assets went to the Consolidated Abitibi company which decided to close down many of the region’s mills leaving only the most profitable such as the Laurentide paper mill who was still producing high-end paper.10 In 1996 the last pitounes floated on the St-Maurice. Trucks now deliver the logs driving on the 155 road from the La Tuque area.

The rise and fall of the St-Maurice industrial cluster tells the story of the specialization of a region. The terrain, the resources and the people were perfect for the creation of a competitive pulp and paper cluster. We saw the mode of operation of both facets of production. The sub-contraction model of the extraction of the resource led to the emergence of a traditional Fordist mode of accumulation in the actual factories. It goes without saying that this would have never happened without the considerable financial infusions from rich American capital that was pivotal in the success of this cluster for almost a hundred years.

I had some challenges with the redaction of this paper, first sources are somewhat sparse especially in terms of raw economic data on the production and rentability of the pulp industry, especially in the early 1900s. The classification is also messy, and figuring out what factories were actually owned by the same companies or when they changed names made the task more tedious than anticipated. I think that future research trying to describe this particular industrial cluster would probably be pertinent since most of the literature is written by historians and an economist’s point of view could be beneficial to understand the trends in industrial activities of the St-Maurice.

9 Ibid

Annex 2. Concessions for the exploitation of the forest (1872-1874)

References

Bellavance, Claude, Normand Brouillette, and Paul Lanthier. “Financement et industrie en Mauricie, 1900-1950.” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 40, no. 1 (1986): 29-50. doi:10.7202/304423ar. Accessed March 29, 2023. https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/haf/1986-v40-n1-haf2342/304423ar. pdf?fbclid=IwAR2V_mkLsASXDO0C__RWPGeU7EquZrXxWalLCX90p-oA78G7sV_wBvMKyBU

Bourgeois, Vincent. “La capitale mondiale du papier journal.” Cap-aux-Diamants 98 (2009): 19-21. Accessed March 29, 2023. https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/ cd/2009-n98-cd1044827/6368ac/.

“Bûcherons de la Manouane.” 1962. YouTube video, 23:47. Canada: ONF. Accessed April 10, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4DJAB5kGuo&fbclid=IwAR3zdl7gUqEAy5njxxWVChkah9bNK1b2qxmXtek8QVgq1FKFQeZM5XlcKok.

Consolidated Paper Corporation Limited. “First Annual Report of Consolidated Paper Corporation Limited and its Subsidiaries.” 1933. Accessed March 29, 2023. https://digital. library.mcgill.ca/hrcorpreports/pdfs/C/Consolidated_Paper_Corporation_Ltd_1933. pdf?fbclid=IwAR06ikD_sZN-hgu9fcNqmJHbTcr0rz_iS-I57pDvXkqGatn9e4GWfVv8nck.

Fortin, Claude-André. “Les Travailleurs Forestiers En Mauricie Au XIXe Siècle.” PhD diss., Université du Québec, Trois-Rivières, 1983. Accessed March 29, 2023. https://depot-e.uqtr.ca/ id/eprint/6348/1/000325838.pdf.

Gaudreau, Guy. “L’exploitation des forêts publiques au Québec (1874-1905) : transition et nouvel essor.” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 42, no. 1 (1988): 3-26. doi:10.7202/304648ar. Accessed March 29, 2023. https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/ haf/1988-v42-n1-haf2382/304.

Gauthier, Benoit. “La sous-traitance et l’exploitation forestière en Mauricie (1850-1875).” Material Culture Review 13 (1981). Accessed March 29, 2023. https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index. php/MCR/article/view/17080.

Hallé, François. Profil de l’industrie pâtes et papiers en Mauricie François Hallé.... Trois-Rivières: Emploi-Québec Mauricie, 2002. Accessed March 29, 2023. https://collections. banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/50643

Hardy, René “L’exploitation forestière dans l’histoire du Québec et de la Mauricie”. Histoire Québec 6, no. 3 (2001) : 6–7. Accessed March 29, 2023. https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ hq/2001-v6-n3-hq1057791/11343ac/.