The Coopérative de solidarité de Pikogan, founded in 2009, is worker-owned cooperative in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, in the northwest of Quebec. The cooperative has around 90 workers and is affiliated with the Abitibiwinni First Nation, which has a population of around 1,000.
The cooperative’s origin is intertwined with other cooperatives and community ownership efforts. In the 1970s a union-led effort to save a shuttered paper mill launched Tembec, a partnership of workers, government, and entrepreneurs. In 2003 Tembec asked two forestry cooperatives – the Coopérative forestière du Nord-Ouest (CFNO) and the Coopérative de travailleurs sylvicoles Abifor – to form a partnership to provide them with timber. Two years later the Abitibiwinni First Nation joined the partnership, and when CFNO pulled out in 2009 the Coopérative de solidarité de Pikogan was formed by the tribe to replace them.
Changes in the industry continued. CNFO closed in 2014. In 2017 The Tembec mill was acquired by a U.S. company and then shut down. The Coopérative de solidarité de Pikogan has since diversified from timber and began to provide labor to a drilling company and lithium mining complex.
From the cooperative
Studies
Articles
- ICI – Une nouvelle entreprise de forage voit le jour à Pikogan (2024)
- Cision – Rouillier Drilling Is Strengthening Its Commitment To Indigenous Communities With The Creation Of A New Company: Forage Anicinape (2023)
- Sayona – Plantation De Milliers D’arbres En Abitibi-Témiscamingue Sayona Se Met En Action Pour L’environnement Et Les Générations Futures (2023)
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