ESPANOLA—Three years after the machinery fell to silence at Espanola’s pulp and paper mill, the province is putting $5.1 million behind an effort to determine whether it can be brought back to life. …For Espanola and communities across the North Shore and Manitoulin, the stakes are considerable. …The province says a successful restart could restore 400 direct and 2,000 indirect jobs. Those jobs, however, do not exist yet. The current investment pays for the work needed to determine what reopening the mill would actually cost and what a modernized operation would look like. …What is being contemplated is no simple return to the past. Bioveld proposes restarting production at approximately 800 air-dried metric tonnes of pulp per day, alongside about 180 tonnes of specialty paper for medical and food applications. That would form the foundation of what the company calls “Pulp+”—an integrated forest bioproducts hub producing pulp alongside biocarbon, renewable fuels and clean power.