Rory Maitland: partnership builder
R
ory Maitland steps around his sawmill like a death-defying mountain goat. As sharp metal whirls, shingles fly and logs roll, he points and chats excitedly as we stroll. This is the world he and his business partner Howie McKamey created over the last 35 years: Goat Lake Forest Products, near Lang Bay. Maitland’s father was a mechanical engineer in the welding supply business, his mother a homemaker. So the forest industry isn’t exactly in his blood – though wood is. “I love wood, and I’ve always loved wood,” he said, as the spring sunshine spread the smell of cedar over his mill. “My dad used to build boats. That was my introduction to wood. I used to hang around and watch him build.” As a 22-year-old heavy equipment operator, Maitland moved to Powell River without a job – just because he loved the region. His family, he explained, owned a cabin here since the turn of the 20th century, and he and his brothers vacationed here as children. Andy Byrne Trucking gave him his first job here, until he and McKamey won their first cedar salvage contract in 1979. The pair swiftly started a company, salvaging cedar blocks and logs from the forest floors, and selling it to mills and brokers around Mission, BC. By the mid 1980s, they’d invested in their own machines.
The company still salvages wood from local forests, as it has been doing for 35 years, but the expanding collection of machinery and staff helped turn it into shakes, shingles, beams, and planks.
“It’s pretty hard to beat wood for a lot of things. With cedar, we compete with so many man-made products. But they’re all trying to be the real thing – cedar.” “Shake and shingle manufacturing has the highest job spin-off rate per cubic metre of the whole industry,” he said. “So it’s a good business for Powell River.” In addition to the cedar mill, the duo own partnerships in Pilldola, Lois Lumber, Southview, and Tla’amin Lake Contracting (see story on Page 17). When he’s not working, Maitland mountain-bikes in local forests. But he’s on deadline for a more immediate hobby. He and his three brothers are each building a wooden sailboat off the same plans – a 10’ trimaran they call “The Seaclipper 10.” On August 1, they’ll meet here in Powell River – one arriving from Calgary, one from Vancouver, and he and his brother and co-worker Bill Maitland – for a regatta. FF FERNS & FALLERS • PAGE 19