The Rural Voice, 2005-10, Page 23THE FINISHING
TOUCH
Adding value to their raw forest products has been
the keg to growth for Bernie McGlgnn Lumber
in tough times when some competitors
have left the business
Story and photos by Keith Roulston
Dennis McGlynn (above) loves wood and loves to show off the products
made from wood milled at Bernie McGlynn Lumber including these stair case
units. Below, cut lumber awaits drying and processing.
18 THE RURAL VOICE
Benvie McGlynn Lumber Ltd. is
living proof of the success that
can come by adding value to
your product. Since deciding, five
years ago, to take wood products
further down the line to the
consumer, instead of selling green
lumber, the operation has grown
from seven employees to 35.
Until that decision, the McGlynn
family operated a sawmill near
Wingham that their father Jerry had
built in 1960. In a sense that sawmill,
too, was a case of adding value. Jerry
and his brother had been sawing and
skidding logs for the Malcolm
Furniture factory in Listowel
previously.
Jerry and his wife Mary raised
nine sons and a daughter on the
Turnberry Township farm. "We were
born with sawdust on the brain,"
jokes Dennis, one of five members of
the family (Bernie, Dennis, Marty,
Bill and Jeremy with another brother
Kelly splitting his time between
working for them in Ontario and
working in forestry in western
Canada) working at the Mildmay
plant that is now the centre of
operations. "As kids we had a
sawdust pile instead of a sand pile."
From an early age the bdys were
involved helping their father. They
earned money in summer cutting
1,500 to 2,000 cords of slabs a year
to sell for firewood. After school.
they helped load trucks, in the days
before forklifts.
When Bernie took over in the
early 1980s he gradually turned his
father's custom sawmill, which did
many things like cutting timbers for
barns, into a commercial mill
providing lumber for the furniture
industry such as Krug Bros. in
Chesley and Bogden and Gross in
Walkerton. But the furniture industry
has been vastly reduced and other
prominent customers like Sellinger's
in Goderich which brought a lot of
hardwood for pool cues and bowling
alleys also went out of business.
Some long-time sawmill operations
have closed as a result.
"The lumber industry is in a tough
spot right now," Dennis says. "The
oak market in the U.S. is in way off.
We keep getting combatted by cheap
imports. That's why we constantly
have to be making ourselves more
efficient. They're bringing more and