Exhibition
Consultation activities
United Nations seminar
Tours
Closing of the consultation
The World Consultation on the Use of Wood in Housing was a conception of Jozef Swiderski of FAO'S Forest Industries and Trade Division. When the Government of Canada undertook to host the Consultation, an organizing committee was set up under the chairmanship of D.R. Redmond of the Canadian Forestry Service, Department of the Environment. The committee was made up of representatives of the sponsoring organizations and a number of Canadian government departments and agencies which were involved in the organization of the Consultation. These included the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce, the Department of External Affairs, and the Department of the Environment, as well as the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Canadian International Development Agency and the Division of Building Research of the National Research Council of Canada. The collaboration of IUFRO was provided through the coordinator of the Forest Products Division, H.O. Fleischer, with the cooperation of the staffs of the Forest Products Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture of the United States, the Forest Products Research Laboratory of the United Kingdom, and other IUFRO member organizations throughout the world.
The organizing committee was responsible for controlling expenditure on all activities of the Consultation, for extending invitations to member governments of the cosponsoring United Nations agencies and their institutions and to international bodies concerned with the subject matter, and for overseeing the preparations.
Subcommittees were established to deal with special aspects of the organization of the meeting. One of these was the programme subcommittee, set up under the chairmanship of T.S. McKnight of the Canadian Forestry Service, whose responsibility was to plan the technical programme and arrange the authorship and production of the background papers and secretariat papers. Another dealt with information and publicity under the chairmanship of E.E. Buswell of the Canadian Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce. Prior to the Consultation this subcommittee prepared preregistration booklets which were widely distributed, and an impressive media coverage was arranged. During the Consultation a press headquarters was maintained, foreign editors and feature writers were assisted, and a daily bulletin was published in three languages. News releases were given out and were widely quoted.
Canada, and the Province of British Columbia in particular, had to provide adequate local arrangements at the Consultation site, and a subcommittee was established for this under the chairmanship of P.L. Northcott of the Canadian Forestry Service. Arrangements were made to transport, accommodate and entertain the dele gates, to organize meeting facilities, and provide equipment for simultaneous translation and printed communications in the three official languages. Detailed procedures were adopted to relate, schedule and control all the essential jobs for the smooth operation of the meeting and identify the person responsible for each job.
An exhibition held during the Consultation was organized by a subcommittee under the chairmanship of E.J. White of the Canadian Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce. With the theme Meeting the world's housing needs with wood, the exhibition featured displays from New Zealand, Norway, the United States and Canada, from IUFRO, FAO, and from UNDP/FAO field projects in the Central African Republic and Congo. The services provided included a daily film programme, covering such subjects as wooden house construction with emphasis on prefabrication, mobile homes, manufacture of wooden building elements, fire tests, etc. (A list of the 14 films shown is obtainable from the Forestry Department of FAO.)
During the actual period of the Consultation, the organizing committee resolved itself into an executive committee under the chairmanship of the general secretary, L.J. Vernell of FAO, and a steering committee chaired by the general chairman, D.R. Redmond, which also included all the officers of the meeting. Each of the subcommittees maintained its identity and was responsible to the general secretary. A list of officers and secretariat is given in Appendix 2.
Related to and illustrating the technical sessions of the Consultation, a number of evening lectures were given, accompanied by the showing of slides:
N.J. Masani, Director of Forest Products Research, Dehra Dun, India, spoke on Indian experience in timber engineering in the tropics. He covered the production and use of short-length, small-dimension multispecies stock for trusses, power-line structures, and bamboo concrete design and use.
P.A. Campbell spoke on the problems and solutions involved in fostering wood use in the dry Kenyan climate for new homes and hotels, and the use of round poles for a type of post and beam construction.
The Brazilian delegation described the use of prefabricated (precut) housing for the improvement of slum areas.
E. Levin United Kingdom) dealt with construction techniques using wooden elements.
John Talbott, of Washington State University, United States, explained experimental housing construction concepts being developed at that institution.
R.F. Blomquist, of the Southeastern Forest Experimental Station, U.S. Forest Service, presented timber-frame construction techniques.
Percy Shearer, former president of the Canadian Home Manufacturers' Association, illustrated modern prefabricated house construction in Canada.
The United Nations organized an interregional seminar on the use of wood in housing, separately but concurrently with the Consultation, for 25 Fellows from countries including Brazil, Burundi, Chile, Dahomey, Fiji, Ghana, Guyana, Indonesia, Iran, Madagascar, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Sudan, Tanzania, Thailand and Togo. Director of the seminar was A. Gonzalez Gandolfi of UNCHBP, and Canada provided a codirector. United Nations staff served as secretariat. Group activities culminated in a report presented at the final plenary session of the seminar.
Six industrial tours were arranged during the Consultation, with visits to wood conversion mills, the research and testing facilities of the Council of Forest Industries of British Columbia, and sites with wooden houses under construction. A post-Consultation tour, organized by the Canadian International Development Agency, took a party of visitors from developing countries through southern British Columbia, then up the Okanagan valley through the Banff National Park to Calgary in Alberta. During the tour the visitors were shown industrial processing plants, mainly sawmills and plywood plants, the manufacture of small softwood lumber and prefabricated housing components, and new housing in developing areas.
The Consultation was closed on behalf of the Government of Canada by the Hon. Ray Williston, Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources for British Columbia.
The general chairman had previously summed up the results of the Consultation as set out in the introduction to this issue, and P.J. Vakomies, director of the Forest Industries and Trade Division of FAO'S Forestry Department, had addressed the closing plenary meeting on behalf of all the sponsoring United Nations organizations and IUFRO.
Speaking for all the participants, H.A. Bletry (France) presented a motion of thanks, gratitude and admiration to the Government of Canada for all that had been achieved through the Consultation, and this was most warmly seconded by F. Billeb (Guatemala), J.G. Kevat (Fiji) and V.G. Terekhin (U.S.S.R.).
