As you cross the Ottawa river into Témiscaming, Quebec, the paper mill takes up much of the horizon.
The city itself was constructed over a century in the past, around the mill and the area’s forests crammed with pine, birch, spruce and fir. Now, the major employer and financial anchor sits idle after commerce talks broke down between Canada and the US and President Donald Trump imposed more tariffs on the nation.
Most of the mill‘s 360 staff are out of work, stored afloat for the second with partial pay from authorities tariff-relief.
For some, like Nadine Suley, the shuttering of the mill could mark not just a lost livelihood, but a lost manner of life.
She is not “a city girl”, and is heading out moose searching later to take benefit of the short season, like much of the city. She quips they’ll all need the free meat supplied by the animals this yr.
“It’s not just a job. It’s our home,” Suley says, including that the US tariffs on her city really feel like “a personal attack”.
In early October, American proprietor RYAM went forward with an “economic shutdown” of the mill for “an indefinite period”.
Property values in Témiscaming fell virtually in a single day, and “For Sale” indicators dot the yards of modest middle-class properties that make up most of the city.
There are fears that important service people – from grocery store clerks to the medical doctors at the small native hospital – could also be on their manner out.
“If the mill goes down, it’ll turn into a ghost town,” says Ronnie Raymond, who like many in the city comes from a household of mill staff.
“There’ll be nothing, nothing left. There’s no work for anybody, really. It’s scary.”
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