This article is dedicated to the late Kent Virgo (1949-2004). He graduated with his Bachelor of Science in Forestry in 1971 and almost immediately began practising his profession on northern Ontario’s Clay Belt. After roughly a decade with the Ministry of Natural Resources, he was hired by Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company in Kapuskasing in 1981 (it would be acquired by Tembec in 1991) and spent the rest of his career striving to improve its forest management program. He, and Paul Krabbe, who also worked with Tembec, granted me access to the firm’s archival documents back in the mid-1990s. Paul was particularly kind in terms of facilitating my work at the mill, and the materials I reviewed served as the evidentiary basis for this article. I am so grateful to the two of them for all that they did for me. In addition, I would like to thank several experts who reviewed earlier versions of this article, namely Ken Armson, Herb Emery, Malcolm “Mac” Squires and Bill Thornton. Julie Latimer, museum curator extraordinaire in Kapuskasing, and Kevin Delguidice, Planning Superintendent with RYAM, which currently owns the mill in Kapuskasing, were most obliging in helping me obtain the images that accompany this article. Finally, over the years the staff at the Archives of Ontario, University of Toronto Archives, the Iroquois Falls Archives of the former Abitibi-Consolidated Inc., and the late Marc Dube at the former St Marys Paper mill in Sault Ste Marie, provided invaluable assistance by facilitating my research.