Lights permanently out at Kelowna’s Tolko mill

Lights have gone out at Tolko’s Kelowna mill for the last time.

Operations shut down permanently Jan. 8, closing a significant chapter in this city’s history.

The sawmill where Tolko currently stands was started by local resident Sharron Simpson’ grandfather, Stanley Simpson, in 1931.

Simpson said in a recent interview it was a planing mill and box factory when it began and while it changed over time, for more than three decades it sustained her family and fuelled the local economy. Her family sold it in 1965 to an American company called Crown Zellerbach. Subsequent sales were to Fletcher Challenge/Crown Forest in 1983 and Riverside Forest Products.

Tolko, which took over in 2003, is the only one of those lumber companies still in business and it also fuelled the expansion of this city.

At its height it employed more than 500 people in Kelowna, working three shifts around the clock. When its closure was announced, only one shift of around 200 remained.

Whether that loss will be made up by any single employer again remains to be seen but Simpson, who authored the book about the local lumber industry called Boards, Boxes and Bins, said recently it marks a change. This city has grown and the big industries that once fed its residents — the sawmills, packing houses and canneries — are all gone.

With changing industries come changing demographics.

“The lifetime employer — where you start a job at 15 and keep it until retirement — is gone and now you probably need a reasonable education to get a job that’s other than at the car wash, or clerking. The unskilled economy is harder to get into because there aren’t many options if you don’t have some kind of educational background.”

While the mill’s loss will be felt around the region, what it did for the community over the last century won’t soon be forgotten.

“As a result of the sawmill, Kelowna has the Simpson Covenant and much of development on Knox mountain,” she said.

“So not only did the company provide jobs for many people and steady tax income from the city, there were many other businesses — the city has benefitted beyond jobs and the tax dollars.”

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