WFCA's John Betts Announces Upcoming Retirement

 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

A Short Sermon on the Mechanics and Benefits of Better Training

 

One unit of mechanical horsepower is equal to lifting 550 lbs (250 kg) one foot (30 cm) in one second. A horse is capable of around 15 horsepower at peak capacity. An average human might be capable of producing 1.2 horsepower as a peak: extraordinary humans—like some tree planting forestry workers—might be two to three times that, says WFCA