Introduction

Pacific Regeneration Technologies Inc. (PRT) was founded in 1988, in response to a privatization initiative by the government of British Columbia. Today, PRT is Canada's largest forest nursery company, with seven nurseries in British Columbia, one in Alberta, one in Saskatchewan, and one soon to be built in Dryden, Ontario. Together, the nurseries have a production capacity of over 100 million top-quality seedlings a year. This book has been created to commemorate the tenth anniversary of PRT and to celebrate the hard work and dedication that have gone into making the company a success.

In 1987, the B.C. government announced its intention to privatize nine of the provincial forest nursery operations. This announcement gave Charlie Johnson the idea of purchasing some of those nurseries. For Charlie, this idea came out of necessity. As director of the Ministry of Forests Silviculture Branch, he had watched the B.C. forest nursery program become a world leader in its field and he feared that it would lose this position if the nurseries were sold separately, one by one. His other concern was for the nursery employees and what effect the sale of the nurseries would have on their jobs. Gradually, his idea evolved into a vision of buying those nurseries and, with the help of a few associates and the nursery employees, building them into a successful reforestation company.

Image of bareroot field in Campbell River.

Nursery staff lifting bareroot seedlings at Red Rock, Prince George, in 1968.

Red Rock Nursery bareroot lift of white spruce.

[Bastion to Bay Home] [Introduction] [1987-1988] [The first few years] [Milestones] [PRT Income Trust] [PRT Today] [The Future] [ImPrints] [The Harrop Ghost] [The Heart of Saskatchewan] [In Memory] [PRT Home]