Pre-Conference & Post-Conference Tours
Pre-Conference Tours
Provide your own transportation to these sites; visit one or all.
Tour of the University of British Columbia's (UBC) Forestry and Wood Science Schools, Centre for Advanced Wood Processing (CAWP) and Forintek, Vancouver (city), 10 AM - 3 PM, Wednesday, April 19. No fee; pre-registration required.
The Centre for Advanced Wood Processing is Canada’s national center of excellence for education and research related to wood products processing and advanced wood products manufacturing. Website: www.cawp.ubc.ca.
Forintek is Canada’s Forest Products Research laboratory, like the U.S. Forest Products lab in Madison, WI. They study all aspects of wood processing from sawmill to finished product. Les Jozsa will guide you through the Pilot Plants, where you’ll see how products as diverse as portable sawmills and engineered lumber assemblies are tested and evaluated. Website: www.forintek.ca.
This tour is especially appropriate for those attending the Engineering Pre-Conference Workshop or for folks who want to come to the Conference early and experience the city of Vancouver. You can catch a late ferry over to Vancouver Island after the tour. Tour participants find their own transportation to UBC and meet there; directions will be sent with your confirmation. While there is no fee for the tour, pre-registration is required.
Cathedral Grove Self-Guided Tour
30 min. northwest of Tigh-Na-Mara; no fee; no pre-registration required.
MacMillan Provincial Park on Vancouver Island is famous for Cathedral Grove, one of the most accessible stands of giant Douglas-fir trees in British Columbia. A stroll on the network of trails meandering through the towering ancient Douglas-firs, some of which are more than 800 years old, can be quite an inspirational experience.
Loop trails on either side of the highway lead awe-struck visitors through the mighty forest stands. The south loop showcases the largest Douglas-fir trees, with the biggest one measuring over 9 meters in circumference. For more information, see: www.britishcolumbia.com/ParksAndTrails/Parks/details/?ID=286. (photo credit: Will Beemer)
While you can visit Cathedral Grove anytime during the Conference for a self-guided tour, you can go Thursday morning and then head up to TF Sawmill.
Sawmill Tour
TF Sawmill Inc., Cumberland, BC
1 PM, Thursday, 45 min. north of Tigh-Na-Mara; no fee; pre-registration required.
Alf Butterfield and Dali Lin, a third generation temple sawyer, invite you to tour TF Sawmill, a newly constructed temple mill (the only one in North America).
TF stands for “Tah Feng” (meaning abundant harvest and well-being) and is the fifth sawmill built by Dali. The 80,000 sf plant is designed to cut temple and timber-frame packages from Douglas fir, Yellow cedar, Red cedar and Sitka spruce. Additionally, TF's skilled and versatile workforce produces 70' timbers, curved pieces from curved logs, boards numbered from the cant, fine-grained CVG and other lumber to satisfy the most demanding specifications.
Learn what distinguishes Asian milling methods, why Dali “cuts from the heart” and how soft dogs and log turners are employed. Ask questions and take pictures. Download their brochure at www.TFSawmill.com to see more.
Although there is no fee, pre-registration is required for the TF Sawmill tour. A map and directions will be sent with your confirmation. Refreshments (light lunch) provided courtesy of TF Sawmill.
Post-Conference Tours: Wildwood or O.U.R EcoVillage
After the Conference officially ends on Sunday, April 23, you have the opportunity to visit two more sites on your way down island to Nanaimo, Victoria, or the ferries.
Merve Wilkinson’s Wildwood
1:30 PM Sunday; $20 for a 3 hour tour; pre-registration required. Located about 45 min. south of Tigh-Na-Mara, near Nanaimo.
Wildwood is the oldest ecoforest on the west coast of North America. Merve Wilkinson founded Wildwood in 1938, and began harvesting timber in 1945. He intentionally harvested less than the rate of growth so that the volume of wood in the stand has not fluctuated greatly and so that the forest is in production at all times.
Merve’s practices of maintaining continuous forest cover, leaving snags for wildlife habitat, and leaving large woody debris to enrich the forest floor, illustrate the high value Merve places on ecosystem function. His logging program, dictated by the productivity limits of the forest over the long term, maintains ecological and economic values for future generations. Wildwood shows that one or two people, with patience and insight, can truly make a difference in the world by showing a way that others can follow.
Wildwood offers great opportunities for biodiversity protection, education, interpretation and community building and it has the potential to reach out to a diverse audience. People come to visit Wildwood from every part of the world, to learn from it, to see it for themselves, and just to enjoy its beauty and tranquility.
Now Wildwood is widely recognized as a model for ecoforestry. The tour will focus on a combination of forest ecology, Merve’s stewardship practices and the lessons learnt over the last 65 years of forest stewardship. The forest is currently being managed by The Land Coservancy and the Ecoforestry
Institute (both non profit organizations) as an educational and research site.
The Land Conservancy’s website is www.conservancy.bc.ca. The link to Wildwood is under the Places to Visit section.
Wildwood provides a powerful inspiration for the development of a sustainable land use ethic, one that sees the human economy as a subset of the natural economy.
O.U.R.Ecovillage
2 PM Sunday; $15 for a 2-hour tour; pre-registration required. Located about 90 min. south of Tigh-Na-Mara, near Mill Bay and the Swartz Bay ferry.
For those interested in natural building, the O.U.R. EcoVillage is a sustainable learning center and demonstration site that practices permaculture, earthen and other ecological building techniques in a supportive community environment.
Elke Cole from Cobworks teaches workshops here and is a presenter at our Conference. Visit their website at www.ourecovillage.org. There is also a B&B and camping available.
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