Canadian Mill Towns Pay For U.S. Housing Collapse

"They're running the forestry industry as a jobs program," said Zoltan van Heyningen, spokesman for the U.S. forestry industry-backed Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports. "I'm not denying that forestry is suffering badly on both sides of the border . . . [but] if they had cut back sooner, both of us probably wouldn't be as bad off as we are now."

Forced to Leave Home

In a little white house on a Mackenzie side street, the hows and whys and who is to blame mean little to the Hrubys.

Gordon Hruby, 45, a stocky millwright, and his wife, Lillian Hruby, 41, worked at AbitibiBowater for the past six years, settling in Mackenzie "for what we thought would be the rest of our lives," Gordon Hruby said. But less than two weeks after the two lost their jobs, they and their three children had their Tupperware and board games stacked in boxes in the living room and their sport-utility vehicle and pickup truck loaded with crates and Dad's work tools as they prepared to move on.

With virtually no job opportunities left in Mackenzie, the Hrubys faced the same dilemma confronting hundreds of families in this town of moose crossings and general stores. Many of the laid-off residents have taken jobs in the booming oil sands of neighboring Alberta, where desperate energy companies are willing to fly in laborers for good-paying "four on, four off" work schedules -- meaning workers are separated from their families for a month at a time.

Another option is to leave town together. That is what the Hrubys chose to do after Gordon and Lillian both landed jobs in Alberta. "You tell me how many of those families with the man away are going to manage to stay together?" Lillian Hruby, a thin, straight-talking woman, asked rhetorically.

Together, the couple earned $150,000 a year with their mill jobs -- long among the most lucrative choices for the tradespeople of rural Canada. Along with bonuses earned in the years of soaring production during the U.S. housing boom, it was enough to splurge last year on a 17-foot fishing boat and a trailer.

Now, they are leaving both behind along with their soon-to-be locked-up home -- the market is too soft from the layoffs to put it up for sale. They said they plan to rent a smaller place in Alberta.

Mackenzie's mayor, Killam, insists that her town will bounce back, citing hopes for a new mining operation not too far away and plans to lure more tourists for snowmobiling and skiing. Once the U.S. housing market improves, AbitibiBowater officials said, the sawmills will reopen, bringing back as many as 400 jobs.

But many here remain skeptical that any of it will happen, or at least soon enough to benefit them.

"Look, I really don't want to blame anybody; most people here don't," Gordon Hruby said. "We did pretty good for awhile here, and it's just hard to see it all go so fast. But you have to think of your family first. We never wanted to leave Mackenzie, but we have no choice."

Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.