Save Fairy Creek: The battle over Western Canada's ancient forests

Fairy Creek protestor Shambu said it is "inevitable" old-growth logging will come to an end as the resource disappears and that government funding is needed to help the industry transition to logging and processing planted forest

Nolan Paquette started working part-time at his local sawmill more than 20 years ago while still at school, pushing a broom on the clean-up team. Now 38, Paquette drives trucks and operates machinery at the same Western Forest Products-owned mill in Duke Point, Nanaimo, the third generation of his family to work in forestry on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island. He is one of 38,000 workers in Canada's westernmost province whose job, according to the industry, depends on the logging of towering old-growth trees, such as cedars, Douglas firs and western hemlocks aged at least 250 years, and in some cases more than a thousand.