As a third generation logger, the new President of the Truck Loggers' Association, knows how to get the wood out and make a dollar or two doing it. But, as those who work with Thomas Olsen attest, he doesn't uses a "business-as-usual" approach to meet the bottom line. A risk-taker, an entrepreneur with an eye for new ways of doing things, Tom is inspiring change inside and outside the industry. At a time when the industry faces the biggest challenges in its history, many are looking to his creative, "outside-the-box" leadership to help create a new way of doing business on the coast.
Tom grew up in the Cowichan Valley, the heart of the some of the Island's richest timberlands. His father owned and operated I & J Logging, and at the age of 14 Thomas was working summers in his dad's logging camps up coast. After high school he was working full time, but he'd begun to feel the itch to do something new in his off-time. This was temporarily satisfied when he bought an old wooden tug for $7000 from John (Red) Davis, a retired logger living on Stuart Island. "I had a lot of fun with the tug," Tom remembers, and the live-aboard was primarily a recreational vehicle. But some much-needed (and expensive, at over ten times the original cost of the boat) repairs got him "very focused about finding work for the boat." Working in off-hours, and with the help of friends, he spent the next three years "yarding booms for Weldwood in the 'jungles' north of Kelsey Bay, and it just grew from there."
The little tugboat business that Tom started when he was 20 is now West Coast Tug & Barge. It remains one of the active concerns of the Olsen Group, a cluster of family based businesses run by Tom and his brother Keith. Various road construction and logging companies make up the other part of the Group's coastal operations, which extend from Campbell River north into the Terrace and Prince Rupert region. Included in this is a partnership with Probyn Log in Triumph Timber. Cumulatively, the Olsen Group has the capacity to cut over 280 cubic metres annually, though the company hasn't "turned a wheel" of its logging operations since Spring of 2008.
This is a far cry from where Tom and Keith found themselves in the late '70s and through the 1980s, the time of their rapid growth and expansion. They'd gone into King Island with I&J Logging as wage earners. The abundance of mid-coast work prompted the pair to buy trucks and machinery and expand into contact road building and log hauling. By now they were working for Domans, Crown Zellerbach, as well as I&J. A steel tug allowed Tom's tugboat operations to grow into a 24/7 operation.
This heyday came to a close in the early '90s, and the Olsens responded by making a number of changes. One of them included selling interest in a forest license on Haida Gwaii and moving into market logging across Hecate Straight in the Kitimat region. Tom's success in the tugboat business was built around working marginal, higher-risk areas. "There was more flexibility," he says, "and more rate to be gained." The Great Bear Rainforest region proved to be another opportunity to use this approach.
The Olsens had been logging for West Fraser in the region since 1992. Operations were slowing down in the region, however, and Tom could see that West Fraser's coastal logging portfolio was a low priority for them. In 1998, in an effort to keep market logging for West Fraser active, he engaged the TLA leadership in a successful effort to lobby for government action. One of the outcomes of the experience is Tom's current involvement with the TLA.
"Coming out of that market logging activity was my first real contact with the TLA," he says. "I'd gone to the conventions, but I'd never really understood the political lobby, or why it is so important. As contractors, we just would not have had the leverage we had without being able to bring government into the discussion. That led me to put my hand up for a directorship in '99 and I've been on the Board ever since."
In 1999 Tom accompanied West Fraser management to a meeting with the Gitga'at Nation in Hartley Bay and the visit had a profound impact on him. "I went to support West Fraser's view that they needed cutting permits, and the Git ga'at should support this. It was my first real experience of these communities, of the promises that had been made and not kept. I didn't know what I could do about it, but I was very uncomfortable with what was going on there."
In Hartley Bay Tom met Art Sterritt, negotiator for the Gitga'at. For Art it was a memorable event and a refreshing introduction to a new way of doing business with the forest industry. "When Tom subsequently bought the West Fraser license, which was in Gitga'at territory, he came to us and said he wanted to work with us. We told him, 'That's great, but there's certain conditions on how we see things working in Gitga'at territory.' And Tom basically agreed with these principles."
Willingness to work with Gitga'at principles has had positive consequences for the Olsen Group, the Gitga'at, and —potentially — the entire coastal forest industry. To some extent, it ushered in a "sustainable" forest industry business model that includes social/cultural, employment, as well as ecological factors. Art credits Tom's openness to working with Gitga'at as the avenue through which Triumph Timber developed eco-system sensitivities that anticipated and were ahead of government's Eco-system Based Mangement policies. An audit by the province's independent Forest Practices Board in 2007 cited Olsen's Triumph Timber for it's innovative logging practices, saying that Triumph had "gone beyond" what regulations call for.
"Tom was interested in things like 'culture' and 'sustainability' before it became policy or legislation," Art says. "His objectives were the same as ours: employment, revenue generation, and sustainable industry. Based on these common objectives, it wasn't very hard to strike up a relationship." He lauds the independent logging sector for the important role its playing, helping First Nations communities build capacity in the forest industry. But he clearly sees Tom Olsen on the point, taking the initial risks, and setting the tone for how loggers and First Nations are beginning to collaborate to mutual benefit.
Working with First Nations is relatively new territory for the industry, says Don Bendickson, past-president of the TLA. He sees it as important for several reasons, one of which is "getting some security of access the land base," an issue the industry has been struggling with for decades. His view is seconded by Paul McWilliams, Vice President of Triumph Timber. "Tom's a visionary, particularly with regard to working with First Nations." The respect he's shown in his dealings with First Nations has opened up a number of opportunities for the Olsen Group and has fostered positive relationships. As a token of their appreciation for the man, the hereditary chief of the Gitga'at at Hartley Bay honoured Tom with a Tsimshian name: Wii Am Gan or "Great Cedar."
On a practical level, Tom's approach has sometimes caught his family unawares. "For us it's been a little surprising at times," his son Lukas admits. "He's taken risks, but he's proven that there are diverse opportunities in the industry. If we always do things the same way, we'll get the same results. He's focused on trying something different, to get different results."
Like his father, Lukas started working summers for the family business when he was 14. Now almost 29, he's General Manager of West Coast Tug & Barge Ltd, and appreciative of his father's ability to respond to and create change. He sees his father's decisions of recent years as instrumental in keeping the family business thriving. Stepping back from heavy investment in logging, getting involved in a successful oil and gas start-up in Alberta, and engaging in collaborations and consultations with First Nations have all been practical as well as visionary responses to challenges and opportunities facing the business.
There are those who find these kinds of shifts unsettling, Tom admits. Most, however, respond like Art Sterritt and Lukas Olsen: they find it refreshing, inspiring, and indicative of the kinds of shifts needed if the coastal forest industry is to survive. "He's doing what's smart to do," says Art. "There isn't someone holding a club over his head, telling him what to do. He's doing it because it's the intelligent thing to do."
Don Bendickson has known Thomas Olsen since at least the early '80s, when BenWest was logging on roads built by the Olsen brothers in the mid-coast region. He's watched Tom in the industry, within the TLA, and as an industry representative on the recent industry Round Table process. "Tom knows how to bring critical points out in discussion, how to do the analysis, and how to bring cohesiveness to often fractious industry meetings." He's also built considerable experience and reputation in working with the many levels of government, with First Nations, and with the corporate sector in the industry. "Among the many challenges facing the TLA," Don says, "is the need to get the attention of government. Tom's experience will be very useful in this context."
Paul McWilliams identifies two key qualities that Tom brings to the TLA presidency. "One is that he's collaborative and inclusive, always looking for what others at the table need to be part of the solution. Secondly, his creativity. New approaches needed, new ways to move forward. Tom's the guy to have onside to help figure these out."
"Outside-the-box" is a term often associated with Thomas Olsen's ways of doing business. But for Art Sterritt, Tom doesn't just think and operate outside-the-box, "he was born outside-the-box." He suggests that the heart of Tom's approach may lie in a business model rooted in family. Some of this is apparent when Tom talks about the family he's created with wife Louise, about the future he sees for his two sons, Lukas and Layne (already active in the industry), and his daughter Levon, who is still in high school. At a time when the whole world, including the coastal forest industry, is being rocked by an emphasis on short term profit taking, a long-term, family-generational approach is a welcome alternative. Short term thinking can't sustain family, doesn't jibe with the long histories and memories of First Nations communities, or the time it takes for a forest to grow to maturity. Tom Olsen's flexibility and creativity may be useful in the short haul; they will be critical for the long haul facing coastal communities and the coastal industry that has provided a lion's share of the wealth of this province.
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A version of this article appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Truck Logger Magazine.
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