Prince George and the logging industry are mourning the death of one of their fiercest advocates.
MaryAnne Arcand, executive director of the Central Interior Logging Association, died Monday at the age of 59.
A trailblazer - the first woman in the province to run a resource-based industry association when named to her post in 2009 - and staunch safety champion, Arcand proudly bore the nickname "The Bulldozer."
The Prince George Chamber of Commerce named her businessperson of the year in 2012, but Arcand wasn't an overnight success.
Arcand grew up in the Chilcotin, pumping diesel in the family business - her parents Bill and Ditty Dewitt were owners of the Mega Fuels chain. Used to the gritty world of logging and trucking, Arcand was also no stranger to tragedies on the road. Her sister Tena died in a crash on a steep hill near their home in Riske Creek in the Chilcotin at the age of 17.
Arcand drove a school bus while raising a family of four children with husband George, but at the age of 39 she returned to university to pursue a degree in social work.
She was first given the nickname "The Bulldozer" in the early 1990s as she was trying to raise government funding for a camp to help troubled kids in the Chilcotin region where she grew up.
A provincial government official told her he'd heard she was like a D-8 Cat, since she didn't let obstacles stand in the way of her goals.
He gave Arcand the money, the camp was built and the name stuck.
It followed her into the next phase of her career, the one she would arguably become the most well-known for.
She joined the B.C. Forest Safety Council in 2005 and as the Forestry TruckSafe and Northern Initiatives director, Arcand hammered home the message of safety to anyone who would listen.
At that time, more than 30 truckers had been killed on northern B.C.'s back roads and highways since 1995.
Not content to rely on information coming in about the problems on the roads, Arcand travelled the Mackenzie forest road system personally after two serious logging truck crashes in 2006.
She travelled with a Lomak trucking official and said she was nearly run off the road twice. Among the issues she encountered were logging trucks not calling their kilometre-marks on the radio, trucks on the wrong side of the road and trucks running in dusty conditions with no headlights on.
She delivered her message of safety across the province, holding more than 60 sessions in 18 months, meeting with more than 6,000 workers and racking up nearly 100,000 kilometres in her own truck.
"It's great to see somebody advocating for truckers - thanks and keep pushing," said an email from a trucker after one of her presentations.
Arcand ran for city council in 2008, where she finished 11th with 5,459 votes.
"I believe in the power of partnerships, and I've completed a lot of tough jobs and projects in my business life by building alliances and creating or negotiating win-win situations. I also believe in using a mix of research, out-of-the-box thinking and due diligence (otherwise known as common sense and caution) when tackling projects and issues. I strive to find the point where I have enough information to make a decision, and then make it," Arcand wrote in response to a Citizen candidate questionnaire.
Her busy schedule with safety issues continued, but she found time to devote herself to a number of community causes, including the Rotary Club of Prince George, the Prince George Railway and Forestry Museum and the Resources Expo.
In the meantime, the number of forest fatalities dropped significantly in 2009, as the B.C. government and forest industry continued efforts to improve safety, including spending money to upgrade resource roads. There were four fatalities in 2009, 21 in 2008, 16 in 2007 and 12 in 2006 - a major improvement from the 43 recorded in 2005.
In a 2009 Christmas column in the Citizen, Bruce Strachan recognized Arcand's tireless work as having a hand in the downward trend of those statistics.
"The drop in forestry fatalities was in no small part the result of Arcand's excellent investigative reporting [for B.C. Forestry Safety Council's log hauler's newsletter, TruckSafe Rumblings] and her best-practices awareness program," Strachan wrote. "No doubt there are more than a few truckers sitting around the tree tonight who have MaryAnne Arcand and TruckSafe Rumblings to thank for their lives and livelihood."
In 2011, there were no forestry workers recorded as killed on the job in northern B.C.
"I'm pleased to see that people don't have to die just because they go to work," Arcand said.
