Departing A Forest Sustainability Career This Spring
John Betts, long-standing Executive Director, WFCA, announced his retirement during the afternoon of day one, 2026 WFCA Annual Meeting, Jan 28, 2026, effective this coming spring. John Betts retires after a long and fruitful tenure dedicated to the association of businesses that keep Canadian forests in all their splendor.
All aspects of trees are covered by WFCA members, businesses, faculties, government departments and ministries, and human resource agencies. John knit this sector together for a long time. He knew the reforestation industry from a lifetime perspective. It was my pleasure to conduct media business with the WFCA over the years, in print, and technology.
I learned a huge amount about the business of reforestation in Canada from John Betts. I was always reading the quarterly bulletins. I covered the reforestation business journalistically for a couple of decades with the assistance of John Betts. Absorbing his perplexing puns, and the remarkable accounting of people making Canadian forests sustainable was educational for years.
Congratulations, John, for hosting another Annual Meeting, capping the career and putting your personal stamp on western Canadian reforestation from the rainforests to the boreal!
Mack McColl, Editor, McColl Magazine
