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If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, it doesn’t much matter if it makes a sound, except to philosophers. But if a sawmill closes in a remote British Columbia town, where the internet is patchy, the impact is all too real even if no one outside hears about it.

That’s about what retired forester Jerry Canuel was thinking to himself in September when an annual logging show rolled into his hometown, Merritt, B.C., also known as Canada’s country music capital, where a once thriving forestry sector has been slowly disappearing.

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At the show, axes were thrown, logs were sawed and Canuel bumped into so many out-of-work loggers and millworkers that it spurred an epiphany for him and some friends: If they all descended on Vancouver, about three hours southwest of Merritt, it might bring some attention to the troubled state of the province’s forestry sector.

There’s just nothing being said and a lot of people don’t know the significance of what’s going on in the Interior retired forester Jerry Canuel

“There’s so much silence,” said Canuel, who remains an adviser to Aspen Planers Ltd., which operates the lone sawmill in Merritt. “There’s just nothing being said and a lot of people don’t know the significance of what’s going on in the Interior.”