Cascades celebrates its 60th anniversary

Cascades has celebrated its 60th anniversary.

Cascades employees kicked off the festivities this morning with a big breakfast at Bistro sans frontière, in Kingsey Falls – the city where Cascades started back in 1964. A tour of the Kingsey Falls units is also planned during the day for brothers Alain and Laurent Lemaire, the co-founders, accompanied by Mario Plourde, president and CEO of Cascades.

Celebrations to mark this event are also planned in Cascades' units throughout North America.

"This day will be an opportunity to remember our history and to shine a light on the builders who came before us and created one of the most responsible companies in the world," said Mario Plourde.

"Sixty years ago, my brothers moved to Kingsey Falls, a small village of just a few hundred inhabitants, to bring the old mill back to life. They had an idea that was daring for the time: to make cardboard from waste paper. We invested our entire lives, our family values, and our hearts into the pursuit of this larger-than-life dream. Today, I'm proud of what we've accomplished," says Alain Lemaire, co-founder and executive chairman of the Board at Cascades.

Cascades took this special opportunity to donate 116 hectares of ecologically valuable land to the Nature Conservancy of Canada. The land, a peat bog and therefore a wetland, was acquired by the Lemaire family in the early 1960s and is located in St-Sylvère, Centre-du-Québec. The land is donated to ensure its longevity and the survival of its species and ecosystems for future generations.

"Wetlands in the Centre-du-Québec region are extremely rich, in terms of both the biodiversity they harbor and the ecological services they provide to the population, notably through their capacity to store carbon and purify water. In this region, they are an important corridor for the survival and movement of wildlife. In the context of climate change, it is more important than ever to protect these environments. We would like to thank Cascades for this very generous donation of land, as well as all the partners who supported the project," said Claire Ducharme, vice president of the Nature Conservancy of Canada in Québec.

Several other projects will be launched in 2024 to commemorate Cascades' 60th anniversary.