NOTED "LUMBER KING."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19220, 8 January 1926, Page 12

NOTED "LUMBER KING."

DEATH OF JOHN BOOTH. A REMARKABLE CAREER. GREAT BUSINESS BUILT UP. fEROJI OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] VANCOUVER. Dec. IG. A remarkable career, with which the history of Canada has been closely associated for threcquarters of a century, has been closed, with the death last week of John Rudolphus Booth, Canada's lumber magnate, at the age of 99 years. The life of " J.R.," as he was familiarly known, was one rich in the romance of industry and hard work. He was the owner of the largest timber limits in the British Empire, the creator of a great fortune, and the founder of an industry which ranks among the foremost in the world. Since he left his father's farm at Waterloo Quebec, 80 years ago, and faced the world with nine dollars in his pocket, Mr. Booth's career was a dramatic, one. His father, John Booth, a native of Ireland, emigrated to Canada with his wife, a native of Scotland, and took up a farm a few years before " J. 8." was born. At the age when most children are still at school, he was putting in a man's work for his bread and butter. On the day he became of. age, he set forth into the world to seek his fortune, after tho manner of the time. With him went his young bride, Rose Cooke, daughter of a neighbouring farmer. He hired out as a carpenter, borrowing tools from employers and paying for them as he went. He drifted across the border, and took up bridge work. The contractor employing him sent him to Hull, on the Ottawa River, to build a mill, and was so impressed with the young man that he engaged him to run it for him. . During these years he got together a bit of a house in a suburb of Ottawa. He used to say that, in these days, he lay awake at night planning schemes for the future. Takes the First Plunge. In the year of the Indian Mutiny, he took his first plunge, by renting a small shingle mill at Ottawa. Three years later he bought part of the present mammoth site of the Booth mills at Chaudiere Falls. With a circular saw for his chief plant, he secured the contract for all the lumber for the Parliament Buildings, then about to be constructed. He then bought a timber limit -on tho Ottawa River, went into his first logging venture. He went into the pulp business in 1900, by which time the ramifications of his lumber business extended up and down the Ottawa and further afield. A paper mill, to develop the pulp business, was his next venture, and the triple industry has now grown to be one of the largest in the world.

Builder ol Railways. The deceased was also a builder of railways. He advanced money for the construction of the Canadian Atlantic Railway from Ottawa and New York, but the project seemed to be on the point of failure, and he finished 134 miles of the railway himself. The whole system was sold to the Grand Trunk in 1905 for 14,000.000 dollars. Mr. Booth said he lost money on wie transaction 1o get the lines on a paying basis, he developed elevators, purchasing steamships, and buying the wheat and other freight to run them. He had many accidents. Both arms and one leg were broken, and, at the age of 86, he suffered a compound fracture of the leg. Venture Into Politics.

Once he ventured into politics. In 1911, opposed to the Taft-Feilding Pact, he addressed a large gathering of his employees from a pile of lumber in the Booth yards. To these woodpile speeches of Booth's the Government attributed in no small measure their defeat in Ottawa. It is said of him that at one time, on his visit to Canada, King George V. was his guest on a crib of square timber on its journey through the lumber sluices at Ottawa, and that he tendered His Majesty a hearty shanty dinner of " pork and beans."