All Posts: Green Dream Internship Program

"I'd rather drag a firehose through hell than write an email."

For the first few weeks at Tolko, my three coworkers and I spent our days meeting everyone in the Woodlands division, organizing equipment and going through various field and online training.

Welcome to my first blog, I’d like to use the first blog as an opportunity to introduce myself, where I come from and some other fun things.

My name is Samantha and I thought a great way to start off my role as a Green Dream Intern for the Forest Products Association of Canada was to give a quick introduction to myself and how I ended up working with Al-Pac as a summer student.

My summer position and my educational background is all STEM heavy and technical, so I figured a good first entry would be a brief explanation of how the process at the mill works so we can better understand how I fit into it.

Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) is pleased to announce the winners of its 2022 Green Dream Internship Program.

This summer, I had the privilege of working in Human Resources. Coming home from university, I couldn’t wait to start and was curious as to what my responsibilities would be. I assumed that my job would consist of setting up interviews and conflict resolution. And while that might be some of what I experienced; it was just a small fraction of what I actually did. The majority of the Summer I spent working on two main projects. The first one was revamping our mill’s internal website, TNet. I spent time fiddling around with the site, looking for ways to make it more efficient to navigate. I am proud to say that the site now looks awesome!

Final blog photos of my trip to the Yukon!

That's why I knew I was going to stay in Lac-Saint-Jean. In Saint-Thomas, the plant is beautiful and the atmosphere is very pleasant. It's very easy to work with the people here, they are dynamic and want things to work. I am very happy in my region and I want to continue to develop here, in my region.

The diversity present in nature has also helped me be more okay with myself. Nature shows me that diversity is a natural part of life and doesn’t make me any less.

The forest sector is very important to the successful economy in many small towns like Whitecourt. Having an industry like this here has provided us with countless opportunities and helped us become the town we are today. Many of the infrastructure put in place may not have been possible without the support of these large corporations.

I really can’t believe how fast the summer has flown by. With that in mind, I am sad to say that this will probably be the last blog post of my “Green Dream” summer; and what a summer it was! From tree plant to site-prep and everything in between, I am really lucky to have worked with some great people, learned some valuable lessons, stayed COVID-safe, and had a great time!