Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Fort Resolution (Nov 22/99) - The last logs have been milled at the sawmill in Fort Resolution.

Following the contracted milling of four million board-feet of lumber, Great Slave Forest Products is no longer in business said former manager, Dan Walton.

The mill first started as part of a government program in the late 1980s as Slave River Sawmills.

Walton was a forestry officer for 10 years and ran four other sawmills before coming to Great Slave. He says the Resolution mill was fraught with design and management problems since day one.

"This sawmill here was the worst one I've ever seen -- the whole design fights you ever step of the way," Walton said. "When I first got here, it was just a joke. You can't even imagine what a mess it was."

"It wasn't there to be efficient, let's put it that way."

According to Walton the mismanagement began with the original purchase of the mill's equipment.

"It was a federal government grant for $3.2 million and to tell you the truth, as somebody who knows this business, I don't see $3.2 million spent -- at least as where it should have been."

In 1993, the NWT Development Corporation took over the operation, running at a loss of a million dollars a year for four years. Subsidies, bad equipment, bad management and bad politics led to the mill's demise, Walton said.

"It comes down to incompetent management or political interference and there was a lot of unethical ways of doing things going on," he said.

The Dev Corp subsidized the employees at a rate of $10,000 per employee until last June, when the funding was halted.

"There was a political move made and basically, they pulled the plug," he said.

When the funding ceased, the Dev. Corp. offered the mill to the municipality, Walton said.

"The government said, 'Hey we're not going to give it up, we're just going to give it to the community."

"Well what were they giving the community, but a four million dollar loss, a bunch of old equipment and a great big mess?" Walton said.

Fort Resolution's Mayor Euan Hunter, agrees bad decisions led to the mill's closure.

"It just wasn't managed properly -- basically it comes right down to that," Hunter said.

"The Northwest Territories Development Corp. had it to manage the past five years and the plan was, during those five years, they would have a local manager trained, local people trained and after the five years were over, they would pass it off to the community," he said.

"Supposedly, it would be debt-free but that just never happened."

Mackenzie Wood Products, a milling company from Checkpoint, was contracted to come in and mill the logs left behind by the previous logging season. Hunter said the private contractor showed that a sawmill can be a viable business in Fort Resolution.

"We had a beautiful milling season, because we had such a good logging season," Hunter said. "The way this season went, they've proven that it can work."