Collection search - Quebec and Ontario Paper Company fonds [multiple media]
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Quebec and Ontario Paper Company fonds [multiple media]
Hierarchical level:FondsContext of this record:Fonds includes:13 lower level description(s)View lower level description(s) -
Finding aid Moving images and sound recordings (Electronic) Read the database MINISIS for item level descriptions: ISN 349439-349441, 349445-349448, 349450-349453, 349455, 349458-349461, 349464-349465,349467. (90: Open)Textual records (Electronic) MSS2528 (90: Open)Cartographic records, technical and architectural drawings (Electronic) All of these records are described at the item level in Microsoft Excel and in a database produced with Microsoft Access. This finding aid could also be available in PDF format. (90: Open)Photographs: prints and negatives (Electronic) All photographs are described by containers and the list is available in Minisis. (90: Open)Microfilm reels (Electronic) A general description of each microfilm reel is available in Word format. MSS2528 (90: Open)Technical drawings (Electronic) (99: Closed pending processing) -
Record information Quebec and Ontario Paper Company fonds [multiple media]
Date:1912-1996.Reference:R6120-0-6-EType of material:Moving images, Sound recordings, Architectural and technical drawings, Photographs, Textual material, Art, Maps and cartographic materialFound in:Archives / Collections and FondsItem ID number:181988Date(s):1912-1996.Place of creation:CanadaExtent:85.3 m of textual records.
ca. 3009 architectural drawings.
ca. 1645 cartographic records.
ca. 30,050 photographs : ca. 18,000 prints, 12,000 negatives and 50 transparencies and slides.
19 film reels (3 h, 48 min, 45 s).
3 videocassettes (1 h).
2 audio discs (5 min).
478 microfilm reels : 332 originals and 146 reference copies.
1 object.
3 drawings.
3 paintings.
ca. 19661 technical drawings.Language of material:EnglishScope and content:The fonds comprises records of the Quebec and Ontario Paper Company that document vital economic activity in Canada for almost a century. More than the historical record of a pulp and paper company, it holds valuable information for economic historians studying foreign investment and provides a case study of business-government relations. Researchers will find basic information on the state of the virgin boreal forests of the Lower North Shore in the reports of the timber cruises done on the company's limits. The engineering and maintenance records when combined with the photographs offer an unparalleled view of the development of the pulp and paper industry. Lastly, for urban planners the collection affords a detailed thirty year history of the planning, construction and managing of a company town. The records combine the economics of Canadian resource exploitation with Col. Robert R. McCormick's ideal of mid-western, small-town America. The Chicago Tribune's development of the Baie Comeau mill and town site had profound ramifications for Canadian political and economic evolution. More than just another resource extraction site on the Canadian Shield, Baie Comeau was built and run as a model "American" town whose ultimate significance lay in the fact it became the boyhood home of a future Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney.
The records in the fonds provide a history of the planning, construction and management of company towns, Thorold in Ontario and Baie Comeau in Quebec, 1930-1960, by Arthur Schmon who built and managed the company for Colonel McCormick. The fonds is arranged in eleven series and consists of records generated in the course of the daily business and activities of the company. They are as follows: 1. Records related to the early development of the company; 2. Industrial Relations Files; 3. Legal and Property Files; 4. Controller's Office Files; 5. Mining Records Files; 6. Engineering Records Files; 7. Marine Records Files; 8. Financial Records Files; 9. Research Records Files; 10. Corporate Management and Reports Files; and, 11. Public Relations Files.
The fonds also comprises 333 microfilm reels dated from 1927 to 1978 (and 112 duplicate reels), from the company's Engineering Department. All correspondence prior to 1959 has been microfilmed expecting plans, blue prints and bound reports. Some originals of these records have not survived. Read the series entitled "Engineering Records Files" for more information. Also, a detailed description of each reel is available in the finding aid 2528.
The fonds comprises the photographs of the Quebec and Ontario Paper Company, which record in detail the company's activities, from the original timber cruises to shipping the finished newsprint to Chicago and New York. The industrial photography taken inside the mills at Thorold and Baie Comeau is remarkable, providing fifty years coverage of the company's paper production. However, the most important images are those of the construction and subsequent development of Baie Comeau. They literally begin with aerial photographs of the rocks and trees followed by images of building the wharf to landing the equipment to build the town. These are followed by prints and negatives of the actual construction and finally the photographs of the completed town. Then every major new building and housing development through 1960 is recorded. This is the complete photographic record of the construction and life of a not quite typical Canadian company town.
The majority of photographs were taken by Canadian professional photographers including: W.E. Shore, Business and Industrial, Editorial Associates Limited, John Pope, Jean-Jacques Lavoie, George Hunter, Malak, Gilbert A Milne, Herbert Nott, Photo artistique Enr. and Photo Baie Comeau. Among the American professional studios commissioned the Company was Kaufmann and Fabry Co. Commercial Photographers of Chicago. However the most significant group of photos were taken by Paul Provencher, the Ontario Paper Company's Chief Forester. Paul Provencher was also an explorer, an artist, a writer and a filmmaker. He produced films on people of Quebec North Shore to document their style of life and their activities and he published many books related to his work (list in chronological order):
"I Live in the Woods", Frédéricton, Brunswick Press, 1953, 188 p.
"Vivre en forêt", Montréal, Éditions de l'Homme, 1973, 223 p.
"Provencher, le dernier des coureurs de bois" (en collab. avec Gilbert La Rocque), Montréal, Éditions de l'Homme, 1974, 287 p.
You can also read his biography written by Pierre
Frenette entitled «Paul Provencher dans les forêts du Nord», Histoire Québec, vol. 15, no 2, 2009, p. 29-33.
Researchers could also read many websites dedicated on the career of Paul Provencher in particular the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec Website, the Fonds Paul Provencher preserved at the Société historique de la Côte-Nord (PN/1/1,36) and many photographs in the archives of magazines "Forêt Québécoise", "Le Poste d'Observation" and "Chasse et Pêche".
The fonds comprises a large amount of architectural drawings and maps relating to all aspects of the planning, construction, operations and maintenance of the papers mills and other facilities of the Quebec and Ontario Paper Company, its predecessors and its subsidiaries. They are an essential component of the fonds. They document every aspect of the company's operations over eight decades. This includes all technical aspects used to develop the machines for the production of pulp and paper. The production of both pulp and paper in a same complex site was new for that time and required innovative engineering and manufacturing processes. These records provide useful information to study this industrial evolution and give an overview of the use and the management of the company's vast forest holdings. These records are directly linked to textual records and we decided to describe them within the existing textual series.
Audiovisual material consists mostly of films and videos which relate the history of the company and were used to chronicle its development. These records are described in more detailed in the Public Relations Files Series.Provenance:Additional name(s):Biography/Administrative history:Quebec and Ontario Paper Company : The Quebec and Ontario Paper Company was a mid-sized pulp and paper manufacturer, 1912-1995, founded by Colonel Robert R. McCormick's (1880-1955). As the long-time editor of The Chicago Tribune, McCormick was an influential American opinion-maker who held and promoted an idealized view of a mid-western, small-town America, isolationist and Republican in his politics. Though there were larger and more economically significant paper makers, none have had the long run impact of the Quebec and Ontario Paper Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Chicago Tribune Company. The paper company became celebrated for building the town of Baie Comeau in Quebec between 1936 and 1938. While numerous other paper mill towns had been built in Canada during the 1920s, Baie Comeau was not only built during the Great Depression, the construction of that town was acclaimed in a massive propaganda effort by The Chicago Tribune, which at the time had the largest circulation of any American newspaper.
The history of the Quebec and Ontario Paper Company is relatively straightforward and began with McCormick. After becoming president of The Tribune Company in 1911, he began a search of possible sites to build a paper mill in Canada. To be successful, a mill required ready access to a supply of pulpwood and electric power at inexpensive rates. After a tour of promising sites in northern Ontario, McCormick decided on Thorold on the Welland Canal. The key element in the decision was Thorold's proximity to Niagara Falls with its readily available cheap electricity. A subsidiary, styled the Ontario Paper Company, was established in 1912. Construction was begun immediately on a mill. After being rebuffed in an application for timber rights in Ontario, the company turned its attention to the Lower North Shore of the St. Lawrence River. In 1915 it acquired its first timber limits on Rivière-aux-Rochers. After service with the American Army in France during the First World War, McCormick returned to the United States determined to a secure supply of paper for his newspaper. Among those he recruited to help manage his Canadian venture was a former military subordinate, Arthur Schmon, (1895-1964). Arthur Schmon, who became the Colonel's "Canadian" protégé, was eventually made president of the Ontario Paper Company. Further timber limits were secured at Franquelin (1920) and more particularly 2,000 square miles of cutting rights on the Manicouagan River (1923). The Manicouagan limits came with the condition the Quebec and Ontario Paper Company build a paper mill in the vicinity before 1930. The start of the Great Depression forced the postponement of any new developments until 1936 when construction began on the mill and a new town, Baie Comeau. The mill was opened with much fanfare in 1938. In the same year the Quebec North Shore Paper Company was formed as a subsidiary of Ontario Paper to take over the running of the latter's Quebec properties.
Both the Thorold and Baie Comeau mills grew and prospered under Schmon's direct supervision. The mills were known for their technical efficiency and enlightened labour policies. After the end of the Second World War, Arthur Schmon gradually took on more of a leadership role from the domineering McCormick. And after the Colonel's death in 1955, Schmon was allowed to run the Quebec and Ontario Paper Company unhindered by The Tribune Co.'s board of directors. A year before his death in 1964, Schmon passed the control of the company to his son Robert Schmon. The younger Schmon was responsible for replacing the old Thorold mill in 1980 with a modern facility which used recycled paper instead of pulpwood as the main ingredient for the newsprint in produced. In 1987 the Ontario Paper Company was renamed the Quebec and Ontario Paper Company. The Tribune Company remained owner of the mills until 1993 when the successor to Quebec and Ontario Paper Company became a publicly trade firm with the name QUNO Inc. The QUNO was taken over by Donahue Inc. in 1995. In 2000 Donahue was acquired by Abitibi Consolidated. In 2007 Abitibi-Consolidated and Bowater announced their association under the name of AbitibiBowater. In 2011 the company AbitibiBowater changed its name and became Resolute Forest Products or Produits forestiers Résolu. Resolute was acquired by the Paper Excellence Group in 2023 through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Domtar Corp. (acquired 2021), and in 2024 it was announced that the three would be integrated to operate as Domtar.Additional information:General note:Abreviations:
OPCo is used to refer to Ontario Paper Company;
QNS or QNSP are used to refer to Quebec North Shore Paper Company;
Q&O is used to refer to Quebec and Ontario Transportation Company;
QUNO is an acronym and was used by the Company for a brief time (1994-1996?) for its listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
The Chicago Tribune, the newspaper's parent company, The Tribune Company eventually controlled three newspapers: "The Chicago Tribune", the "New York Daily News" (1919), the "Washington Times-Herald" (1949), and a weekly magazine "Liberty" (1924).
For more information about the history of the company, read the following publication: "The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick" written by Richard Norton Smith, Boston, 1997; for a pictoral history of the QUNO's vessels read "Pulp & Paper Fleet: A history of the Quebec and Ontario Transportation Copany" written by Al Sykes and Skip Gillham, St. Catharines, ON, 1988; the photographer Paul Provencher became a noted author and woodsman, read "Provencher Last of the Coureurs de Bois" written by Paul Provencher in collaboration with Gilbert LaRoque, Don Mills, ON, 1976 and translated by A.D. Martin-Sperry.Original extent note:64 items of textual records are related to architectural, technical drawings and cartographic records.Link to related resource:Fonds Paul Provencher and fonds QNS preserved at the Société historique de la Côte-Nord. Researchers could also find connexe information in the magazines entitled: "Forêt Québécoise", le Poste d'Observation and "Chasse et Pêche".Subject heading:Source:PrivateOther accession no.:2003-0133 VSA -
Ordering and viewing options Conditions of access:Access restriction documentMoving images (film)[Consultation Open]Moving images (video)[Consultation Open]Sound recordings[Consultation Open]Architectural: technical drawings[Consultation Open]Volume [R6120][Consultation Open]1--1147;[Consultation Open]1155--1156;[Consultation Open]1164--1461;[Consultation Open]1463--1961;[Consultation Open]1963--1984;[Consultation Open]1986--1988;[Consultation Open]1997--2000;[Consultation Open]2002;[Consultation Open]2004--2036;[Consultation Open]2045--2116;[Consultation Open]2119--2224;[Consultation Open]2226--2229;[Consultation Open]2235--2249;[Consultation Open]2252--2255;[Consultation Open]2258--2262;[Consultation Open]2264--2265;[Consultation Open]2267;[Consultation Open]2269--2270;[Consultation Open]2272--2276;[Consultation Open]2278--2281;[Consultation Open]2283--2292;[Consultation Open]2297;[Consultation Open]2299--2303;[Consultation Open]2314;[Consultation Open]2318--2321;[Consultation Open]2326;[Consultation Open]2336;[Consultation Open]2338;[Consultation Open]2341--2343;[Consultation Open]2347;[Consultation Open]2350;[Consultation Open]2354;[Consultation Open]2356--2362;[Consultation Open]2364;[Consultation Open]2367;[Consultation Open]2370--2381;[Consultation Open]2384--2390;[Consultation Open]2393--4130;[Consultation Open]Graphic (photo)[Consultation Open]Volume [R6120][Consultation Open]25177--25287;[Consultation Open]25848--25850;[Consultation Open]Textual records[Consultation Restrictions vary]Volume [R6120][Consultation Open]1--4;[Consultation Open]2230;[Consultation Open]2239;[Consultation Open]2259;[Consultation Open]25342--25361;[Consultation Open]25363--25415;[Consultation Open]25417--25430;[Consultation Open]25432--25437;[Consultation Open]25440--25451;[Consultation Open]25480;[Consultation Open]25510--25516;[Consultation Open]25518--25519;[Consultation Open]25529--25812;[Consultation Open]25814--25820;[Consultation Open]25822--25835;[Consultation Open]25838;[Consultation Open]25840--25841;[Consultation Open]25843;[Consultation Open]25845;[Consultation Open]Volume [R6120][Consultation Restricted]25362;[Consultation Restricted]25431;[Consultation Restricted]25438--25439;[Consultation Restricted]25517;[Consultation Restricted]Graphic (art)[Consultation Open]Item no. assigned by LAC [R6120] 25268[Consultation Open]Textual records: microform[Consultation Closed pending processing]Cartographic material[Consultation Open]Volume [R6120][Consultation Open]2187--2189;[Consultation Open]2191--2204;[Consultation Open]2206--2236;[Consultation Open]2239;[Consultation Open]2241--2243;[Consultation Open]2246--2252;[Consultation Open]2256--2262;[Consultation Open]2264--2266;[Consultation Open]2269--2270;[Consultation Open]2272--2275;[Consultation Open]2277;[Consultation Open]2279--2284;[Consultation Open]2287;[Consultation Open]2300;[Consultation Open]2304--2362;[Consultation Open]2391--2392;[Consultation Open]You can order materials in advance to be ready for you when you visit. You will need a user card to do this.
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