Brian Butler

At a rally next to the shuttered Somass Mill in Port Alberni Thursday, local politicians and union management drew rounds of applause, asking Western Forest Products to reinvest or sell the plant. The news was not strictly about the mill’s closure and job losses, though. A crowd of about 100 people, mostly millworkers, also heard from a forest company interested in purchasing and reopening the mill, which has been closed for almost a year. WFP announced in August that it has “indefinitely” curtailed the sawmill operation —representing the potential long-term loss of about 100 union jobs — though it has yet to make the closure a permanent one. “This rally is really about the jobs in the valley, the lack of investment, the lack of interest on the part of Western Forest Products in anything to do with Alberni Valley,” said Norm MacLeod, business agent with Local 1-1937, at the Tyee Landing gathering.