Thankfully those in charge of the former Cascades mill kept their earplugs in and their noses firmly planted to the grindstone.

Last week the mill opened its doors to curious media and political types, with nary an “I told you so” response from anyone – just a beaming sense of pride at a job well done.

The mill, closed more than two years ago by its former owners, on Friday rolled its first test of saleable coated paper off paper machine No. 8, the start of what will hopefully mean the permanent return of as many as 325 jobs to Thunder Bay.

This is extraordinary good news for the city, and an encouraging sign for a beleagured forest industry that has seen little news worth bragging about in recent years, as thousands of workers were tossed to the unemployment heap when the market for their product crashed and burned.

That a group of local investors could get together and resurrect this phoenix from the embers of destruction shows other communities it can be done, and hopefully leads to similar success stories throughout Northwestern Ontario.

That it had to come to this is a little more discouraging. While the province has had an ongoing presence in the Thunder Bay Fine Papers process, the federal government has been all but silent on the matter, and AWOL when it came to funding assistance. It’s time the Stephen Harper government took a leading role and a stance on forestry, before a comeback is out of the question.