October meeting---"Paper View" (a special presentation on paper)

Twenty-two Vancouver Pen Club members were on hand at our October 20th meeting to hear an informative and very entertaining talk about paper by Tracey Pitt of Veritiv Corporation, a Fortune 500® company that is "a leading provider of packaging, print and paper, publishing, facility solutions and logistics" (from their LinkedIn page).

That's Tracey in the middle of the photo during her talk (~ Click on images to enlarge ~):

The talk began with a brief history of the making of (what we'd call) "modern paper". I was surprised to learn that many modern paper-making machines still use the principles of the Fourdrinier system (patented in 1806) which uses a moving wire mesh belt to create large paper rolls. I was also surprised by the vast variety of paper made, and the specificity of its uses by some large companies (e.g. The Gap and Tiffany & Co). We then learned about the recycling of paper (apparently Canada does quite well in that regard, achieving around a 80-86% recycling rate) and the reuse of this recycled material in papers of various grades.

Each member who attended the meeting was given a complimentary notepad from Veritiv. These "PaperPal" pads were made by Domtar, a company that is heavily (and cleverly) promoting the educational and cognitive benefits of handwriting (check out this page on their website about this topic---it's fascinating----and this one too).

(this was the image on the back of the "PaperPal" notepads we were given; image borrowed from Domtar's PaperBecause.com website----you can find an enlarged image of it on the first link above)

Tracey's talk ended with a short video about the work of Dr. David Eagleman (official website here ), an American neuroscientist and author and his study of haptics. Fascinating stuff!

In addition to her excellent audio-visual presentation, Tracey brought along samples of fine writing paper from various companies for us to try and compare (it's not pictured but my favourite was the Astrolite PC 100 paper made by Monadnock, which is made of 100% recycled material...amazing). Here's a quick shot of some Neenah paper, specifically their 70-lb "Royal Sundance" paper:

Members trying out paper samples:

A flurry of activity!

Many thanks to Tracey for taking the time to prepare and present such a fun and educational talk, as well as for the paper samples and notepads! Thanks also go out to Christopher, who put me in touch with Tracey a few weeks ago to arrange her talk with our pen club. Christopher brought in a very old German advertisement for ladies' hats that was printed on paper (I believe it's from the 1400s). My blurry photo (apologies!) of this paper treasure below: