Lumber industry leader and innovator John Brink built the largest secondary lumber manufacturing company in North America and helped diversify the country’s lumber markets.

Brink came to Canada from the Netherlands in 1965 with few resources and a dream of building a sawmill. A decade later, he started Brink Forest Products in Prince George, a lumber remanufacturing plant. As fibre became scarce, he pioneered finger-jointing in Canada, a process of gluing shorter pieces of lumber, which were considered waste products, together.

Unwilling to use glue that was potentially toxic, Brink created an environmentally conscious adhesive. Thirty years later this glue survived a regulatory challenge and finger-jointing and lamination were solidified as an industry in North America.

In the 1980s, Brink went to B.C. Supreme Court and successfully argued that lumber grading rules were not being applied fairly across North America. The fight came at a cost, as some of his raw material suppliers cancelled supply contracts in light of the litigation. In the end, the court decision leveled the playing field across the continent.

Brink is the longest serving director on the B.C. Council of Forest Industries. He has been involved in all five of Canada’s softwood lumber disputes with the United States, representing the secondary re-manufacturing industry. In 2001, he was the founding president of the B.C. Council of Value Added Wood Processors, an organization that represented eight associations and up to 800 members.

Brink and the College of New Caledonia jointly purchased a building for a trades and technology program that, in 2002, officially opened as the John A. Brink Trades and Technology Centre.

In 2019, John received an Honorary Doctorate of Law Degree from the University of Northern British Columbia in recognition of his past 50+ years of commerce, philanthropy and community involvement.