BOOTH, JOHN RUDOLPHUS, industrialist; b. 5 April 1827 near Waterloo, Lower Canada, son of John Booth and Eleanor Rooney (Rowley); m. 7 Jan. 1853 Rosalinda Cooke (d. 1886) in Kingsey township, Lower Canada, and so they had five daughters and three sons; d. 8 Dec. 1925 in Ottawa.
The next oldest of this five kids of an Ulsterman along with his wife, John R. Booth came to be within the Eastern Townships. Historian William E. Greening reports that as a child he “spent their spare-time building tiny mills and bridges along the little rivulet that flowed through his father’s farm.” Whatever their very early passions, it was with a modest primary knowledge he left home as a youth. He contemplated joining the California gold rush before finding work aided by the Central Vermont Railroad, mainly as a carpenter on connection tasks. He additionally had some involvement in construction of a paper mill in Sherbrooke, Lower Canada, and a sawmill near Hull. Upon conclusion of this latter, its owner, Andrew Leamy, engaged him to handle the operation for a year. He then went a shingle mill in premises in Hull rented from Alonzo Wright*, but within months it was damaged by fire.
Around 1854 Booth and his partner had relocated across the river to Ottawa, in which J. R., as he became understood, furthered their comprehension of the lumber trade and water-power. Having rented Philip Thompson’s large sawmill on Chaudière Island, between Hull and Ottawa, which was selected in 1857 as Canada’s capital, he tendered successfully in 1859 for a contract to provide lumber and timber the brand new Parliament Buildings [see Thomas McGreevy*]. In harvesting wood for this project, he is paid with launching ponies to change oxen in skidding logs to water. (The acreage he acquired southwest of Ottawa for pasturing his horses would later become the Dominion Experimental Farm.)
The economic success of the contract, as well as a temporary relationship with American lumberman Albert W. Soper, allowed Booth in 1864 to shop for the Thompson mill together with adjoining mill-lots of Lyman Perkins. More considerable, his track record of dependable overall performance facilitated his use of additional money. In 1867, aided by the backing associated with Bank of British the united states and on the advice of their relative Robert R. Booth of Pembroke, he purchased the important pineries regarding Madawaska River previously owned by John Egan*. Following this acquisition, that he later referred to as the cornerstone of his fortune, he joined the effort to create actively works to facilitate timber drives, as a founder of this Upper Ottawa Improvement Company, formed in 1868 to build dams, slides, and piers; in 1888 he’d get to be the founding president of this Madawaska enhancement business Limited. As well as steadily broadening their milling and driving businesses, he had established docks and a lumber storage space and circulation centre in 1868 at Rouses aim, N.Y., a planing mill and package factory in 1875 in Burlington, Vt, and a sales office in 1877 in Boston. With one of these facilities he had been reported to be “the just Canadian lumberman during the time who manufactured his very own lumber inside the very own United states mill.”
During the economic downturn of 1874–76 Booth had continued to amass wood restrictions at low prices, therefore eliminating his dependence on other companies. Ultimately covering 640, 000 acres, his restrictions extended throughout the Ottawa watershed, encompassing components of the Madawaska, Bonnechere, Petawawa, Mattawa, and Montreal rivers in Ontario and the Coulonge, Black (Noire), Dumoine, and Kipawa streams in Quebec. Montreal lumber business and biographer George Arthur Grier has actually advertised that Booth, an incessant traveller throughout their domain, “knew the woodland as a sailor knows the ocean, along with his success had been mainly due to the fact that he never overestimated its potentialities.” Between 1872 and 1892 his make of lumber increased from more or less 30 million board foot to 140 million, an expansion that made his businesses the largest in the world. Booth’s output of 115 million feet in 1896 ended up being a lot more than double that any significant Ottawa area firm, including McLachlin Brothers of Arnprior [see Daniel McLachlin*] and Bronsons and Weston of Ottawa [see Henry Franklin Bronson*]; by 1900 most of the coastal mills in British Columbia [see John Hendry*] had been creating only 100 million foot yearly.
Source: www.biographi.ca