John Rudolphus Booth

John Rudolphus Booth
Born	(1827-04-05)April 5, 1827 Waterloo, Lower Canada
Died	December 8, 1925(1925-12-08) (aged 98) Ottawa, Ontario
Resting place	Beechwood Cemetery, Ottawa
Occupation	Lumber king and railway baron
Religion	Presbyterian
Spouse(s)	Rosalinda Cooke

John Rudolphus Booth (April 5, 1827 – December 8, 1925) was a Canadian lumber king and railway baron. He controlled logging rights for large tracts of forest land in central Ontario, and built a railway (the Canada Atlantic Railway from Ottawa through to Georgian Bay) to extract his logs; and from Ottawa through to Vermont to export lumber and grain to the United States and Europe.

Early life

J. R. Booth was born on a farm at Lowes near Waterloo (Shefford County) in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. His parents, John and Eleanor Rowley Booth, Irish immigrants, had a number of children (variously reported as 5, 6 and 8). J. R. Booth left the family farm at the age of 21 and got a job as a carpenter with the Central Vermont Railroad.^[1]

In 1852 he married Rosalinda Cooke and moved to the Ottawa valley. His first business venture was a machine shop in Hull, Quebec which later burned down. He then opened a successful shingle factory. Later he accumulated enough money to lease (then buy) a small sawmill near the Chaudière Falls. He established his own lumber company and won the contract to supply wood for the Parliament buildings at the new Canadian capital in Ottawa, Ontario, selected by Queen Victoria in 1858.^[2]

Building a lumber and railway empire

Lumber

Harvesting timber from the upper Ottawa River and its tributaries, Booth expanded his timber limits into the Lake Nipissing region in 1881. In order to reach his Ottawa mills, Booth constructed the Nosbonsing & Nipissing Railway (length 5.5 miles (8.9 km)) to carry sawlogs over the portage from Lake Nipissing to the headwaters of the Mattawa.

In 1867, he purchased, at a very reasonable price, the timber rights of John Egan's 250 square miles (650 km²) of pine on the Madawaska River in what is now Algonquin Park. For the next 50 years Booth harvested this land as well as other extensive tracts in northern and central Ontario. He often went there in his own private railway car, working beside his men during the day and on business affairs most of the night, seldom sleeping for more than a few hours.^[2]

Booth's vision and boldness were qualities that made him a success. During the latter half of the 19th Century, he amassed timber rights approaching 7,000 square miles (18,000 km²) in Central and Northern Ontario.^[2] In 1892, Booth's Ottawa mill produced 140 million board feet (about 25,000 cubic feet (710 m³)) of lumber, more than any other mill in the world. He expanded into the United States through the establishment of docks and a distribution centre at Rouses Point, New York, a planing mill and box factory at Burlington, Vermont, and a sales office in Boston. Fire was a constant threat to his mills, and they burnt down in 1893, 1886, 1900 and 1903. (Much of Booth's personal and business records were lost at these times.) Half of the mills' output was shipped to England; the rest to the United States and throughout Canada.^[3] White pine from Booth's lumber yards was used to build the decks on the ocean liners of the Cunard Line. In 1905, he constructed a new plant and entered the pulp and paper business, thus being able to use softwood that he had been previously forced to sell.

Railways

In 1879 he was instrumental in establishing the Canada Atlantic Railway^[4] to carry his logs from Central Ontario to Ottawa, and his lumber from Ottawa to the United States. It came into operation in 1882, connecting Ottawa to the United States via the Central Vermont Railway. In 1890, a railway bridge was completed across the St. Lawrence River at Coteau Landing, thus eliminating the necessity of transshipping cargo by barge.^[5] In 1899, his Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway, running from Depot Harbour on Georgian Bay through southern Algonquin Park to Ottawa, was amalgamated with the CAR by deed of amalgamation.^[6] During the late 19th century, Booth ruled the largest railway empire built in North America by any one man. In 1904, he sold the CAR for $14 million to the Grand Trunk Railway, and was a director of Grand Trunk until it later became part of the Canadian National Railways.^[7]

Booth also operated grain elevators at Depot Harbour, Coteau, Duluth and Milwaukee,and steamships on the Great Lakes, and formed the Canada Atlantic Transit Company, which operated five large lake freighters on the Upper Great Lakes. He also helped to create the Canada Cement Company (now part of Lafarge).^[8]

Later years

J. R. Booth continued to run his business empire well into his nineties. Only in 1921 did he convert it from a sole proprietorship into a corporation (known as J.R. Booth Limited).^[9] He died in 1925 at the age of 98 after being ill for several months and was survived by his sons Jackson, John Frederick, daughter Helen Gertrude Fleck and several grandchildren and great grandchildren.

In 1943, J.R. Booth Limited, with the exception of its lumber division, was sold to W. Garfield Weston.^[10] The Booth Ottawa lumber mill was sold to the E. B. Eddy Company in 1946.

Other influences

Britannia Bay Boating Club, 1896

Booth's impact was significant on Ottawa:

• The right of way used by the Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway within Ottawa is now used as the Queensway.
• Booth Street in Ottawa, which connects to Hull, Quebec via the Chaudière Bridge, was named in his honour.
• J.R. Booth leased a property on Lac Deschênes to the Britannia Bay Boating Club. Designed by Edgar Lewis Horwood, the clubhouse was opened in 1896.
• J.R. Booth donated the land on the southwest corner of Richmond Road and Britannia Road for the Britannia Heights Methodist Church, which had been meeting in homes since 1869. The Britannia Heights Methodist Church formed in 1873. ^[11]
• The acreage he acquired for pasturing the horses for his mills would later become the Dominion Experimental Farm.
• Booth also had a summer home in Kingsmere, Quebec, on the north shore of Kingsmere Lake.^[12]

In Algonquin Provincial Park, Booth Lake^[13] is named after him.

In 1892, Booth rented a cottage at Saranac Lake, New York, where his daughter would cure for several years. Booth brought a pair of skis with him, thus introducing the sport of skiing to the area.^[14]

Death, descendants and legacy

Booth died in December 1925. On his passing, Michael Grattan O'Leary of the Ottawa Journal noted that what people should remember about him was that he was:

Also at that time, William Lyon Mackenzie King observed:

Booth's fortune was a subject of much speculative commentary during the latter years of his life, with estimates ranging up to $100 million. At his death his estate was officially valued at almost $7.7 million; the property was later re-evaluated upwards to $23 million.^[16] Although succession duties of $4.28 million were paid in 1927,^[17] in 1937 Ontario Premier Mitchell Hepburn subsequently claimed more and had the Legislative Assembly of Ontario pass the necessary legislation to overcome the legal obstacles.^[18] J.R's heirs eventually paid another $3 million in 1939.^[19]

His son John Frederick Booth, who lived in Canada, married and had a daughter Lois Frances Booth (born Ottawa, Ontario, 2 August 1897; died Copenhagen, 26 February 1941), who was married in Ottawa, Ontario, on 11 February 1924 to Count Erik of Rosenborg, whom she divorced in 1937; they had two children. At the time of the marriage, it was rumoured that Booth contributed half of her $4-million dowry. J.R. issued a formal denial. ^[20] She later remarried Thorkild Juelsberg, without issue.

Siblings and descendants

See also

• Booth House
• Fleck/Paterson House

References

Further reading

• "J.R. Booth's Remarkable Career" XX (23). Pulp and Paper Magazine of Canada. 8 June 1922. pp. 475–477. 
• C.F. Coons (1978). The John R. Booth story. Toronto: Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. OL 18631101M. 
• Allan Bell (1991). A way to the West. Barrie: Privately published. ISBN 0-9694914-0-9. 
• John Ross Trinnell (1998). J. R. Booth, The Life and Times of an Ottawa Lumber King. Ottawa: TreeHouse Publishing. ISBN 0-9683558-1-1. 
• Jamie Bendickson (2011). "John Rudolphus Booth". In J. Andrew Ross; Andrew D. Smith. Canada's Entrepreneurs: From The Fur Trade to the 1929 Stock Market Crash. Toronto: University of Toronto/Université Laval. pp. 328–335. ISBN 978-1-4426-4478-6. 

External links

• Jamie Benidickson (2005). "Booth, John Rudolphus". In Cook, Ramsay; Bélanger, Réal. Dictionary of Canadian Biography. 2005(1921–1930) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. 
• "John Rudolphus Booth, Lumber King and Entrepreneur". Trinity Western University. 
• "John R. Booth". Canadian Railway Hall of Fame.