Workers' fight to save a paper mill in Temiscaming, Que., is now the subject of an upcoming book

In the summer of 1973, workers and local managers at a paper mill in Temiscaming, Que., about 45 minutes from North Bay, took to the streets when an American conglomerate, was about to shut down the mill.

The workers and managers took a pay cut to collectively purchase the mill from the International Paper Company, and saved the town's largest employer.

That protest made national headlines and became the subject of the 1975 National Film Board of Canada documentary, Temiscaming, Québec. 

Now, a history professor at Laurentian University is working with two of his students to write and publish a new book about Tembec, the pulp and paper company those workers formed in the early 1970s.

"It was a different company. The model that they used from the get-go was to involve everybody in the management," said Mark Kulhberg. 

"This is rare in Canada for mill workers to be part of the management team."

Tembec went on to have other operations in northern Ontario as well, in Kapuskasking, Chapleau and Smooth Rock Falls.

Kuhlberg said the Tembec story holds a "nugget of wisdom" for present-day northern Ontario.

"So many communities are dealing with the challenge of their industry shutting down in places like Temiscaming or Kapuskasing," he said.

"Kapuskasing has a mill that Tembec took over in the 1990s and it's still up and running. But other towns like Smooth Rock Falls that Tembec had a mill in, lost their mills. And what do you do in a one industry town when you lose that employer?"

Kuhlberg has recruited two of his undergraduate students – Sarah Gould and Fiona Symington – to help with the book.

"We had some financial difficulties at Laurentian and we lost our masters program," he said of the history department.

"I'm working with undergraduate students now and it's been really successful."

Symington said she didn't expect to help to research a book as an undergraduate student.

"At first, I was worried that I was maybe not experienced enough  because I wasn't in my master's. Like, this is typically something you would see graduate students doing. But through the support and encouragement of Dr. Kuhlberg and Sarah, I've realized that I am more than capable."

Gould said she wasn't familiar with Tembec when she first joined the project, but found the story enlightening.

"When the employees were able to band together and buy the mill, it turned out quite successfully. It was just interesting to me because of how well it all turned out."

"Like everyone else, I like the underdog story," she said.