Canadian Pulp & Paper Industry

Steps to making paper out of pulp:  1.  Harvest the trees.  2.  Cut into logs and take to the mill.  3.  Machinery turns the wood chips into pulp.  4.  Pulp is mixed with water and poured onto a long machine.  5.  The fibres bond to one another at the dry end of the machine.  6.  Researchers perform tests at each stage.  (Photo & Steps courtesy 

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/pulp-and-paper-industry/).

Egyptians made paper from papyrus, which serves as the root of the word.  Europeans used animal skins to make paper. The modern process of turning pulp into paper was first used by the Chinese.  By the 19th Century, with rising literacy rates and the proliferation of newspapers, a demand was created for a cheaper paper supply -- wood.  German paper makers developped machines to break down pulp to make paper.

The demand for paper in Canada grew as the population did.  First, Canadians imported it from the United States.  Later, the Canadian pulp and paper industry formed, based mainly in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia.  Argenteuil paper factory, near present day Montreal, provided the newsprint for the Montreal Gazette.  Later the Canadian factories also provided book paper, printing paper, wallpaper and wrapping paper.

As the frontier moved westward, British Columbia also developped a pulp and paper industry.  In the meantime, the United States lifted its tariff on newsprint just before World War I and Canada "emerged as the world's preeminent newspaper maker".  While production sat at 65,000 tons in 1900, it grew by 65 times that within three decades.

In the mid-1920's the nature of the pulp and paper industry started to change:  once controlled by multiple family-owned enterprises it became dominated by a few "behemoths", requiring huge financial backing from the United States.  By the Great Depression, most of the Ontario mills and some of the Quebec mills declared bankruptcy.

With the advent of the Second World War, the pulp and paper industry made a come back, ushering in three and a half decades of prosperity in Canada.  Whereas production sat at 4.3 million tons in 1939, it quintupled by 1972, sitting at 23 million tons, almost a quarter of the world's capacity.

However, by 2000, with the rise of the Internet, came the fall of the newspaper industry.  Canadian paper mills lost the American market; at one point, a paper mill was closing every week.  Even so, today the pulp and paper industry remains at important part of Canada's economy.

Canadian stamp circa 1960 courtesy http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/pulp-and-paper-canada.html

The Maharaja's of Eaton's

Maharaja:  a Hindu prince or king in India ranking above a raja. 

Timothy Eaton, eager to fill the pages of his catalogue, sent buyers overseas to purchase the highest quality goods:  fine china from England, tweed suits from Scotland, rugs from the Orient, crystal from Czechoslovakia, high fashion from France.  As early as 1893, Timothy opened a foreign buying office in London, England.  Five years later, he opened one in Paris, France.  Offices were added in Manchester and New York in 1911; in Zurich, Switzerland in 1912; in Belfast and Leicester in 1913; and in Yokohama (1918) and Kobe (1919).

While most of the trips were a success, disaster struck when some buyers purchased tickets to the Titanic; a buyer named Mr. Graham went down with the ship (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2011/09/unused-ticket-to-titanic.html).  The First World War interrupted Eaton's buying sprees in Germany.  Three buyers drowned when the Lusitania was torpedoed in 1916.  An Eaton's buyer was killed in the Tokyo earthquake of 1923.  However, most buyers came home to Canada safely.  Their purchases helped make the Eaton's name synonymous with quality.

Everything From Oriental Rugs to Prefabricated Houses

"This catalogue is destined to grow wherever the maple leaf grows, throughout the vast Dominion.  We have the facilities for filling mail orders satisfactorily, no matter how far the letters have to come and the goods have to go." (Timothy Eaton, 1887)

When the Eaton's catalogue first came off the press in 1884, it was a mere 32 pages.  By the 1920's, the catalogue had grown to 500 pages.  In 1890, there were more than 100 clerks filling catalogue orders.  By 1896, Eaton's was sending out 135,000 parcels by post and 74,000 by express.  By 1903, the mail order operation was so large that it had to move to a separate building in Toronto.  Here are some of the products featured in the Eaton's catalogue over its 90 year history:

• clothing
• farm implements
• silverware
• china
• prefabricated houses
• jewelry
• patterns
• toys
• dolls
• books
• windmills
• lamps
• hats
• Oriental rugs
• records
• crystal
• train sets
• appliances
• luggage
• sporting goods
• fishing accessories
• hair permanent machines
• accordions
• pianos
• guitars
• phonographs
• vacuums
• mattresses
• medicines
• stationery
• cameras
• seeds
• bulbs
• baby carriages
• women's furs
• linens
• drapes
• blacksmith's tools
• candy
• priest's cassocks
• Klondike miner's clothing

Prefabricated Houses in Eaton's Catalogue circa 1913 courtesy http://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/cpm/catalog/cat2104e.shtml#1222116.

Jean Fritz: When I Discovered Libraries, It Was Like Having Christmas Everyday

"I never felt truly American.  When I finally got to America, I wanted to put down roots, and did it through history." (Jean Fritz)

Jean Fritz was born in 1915 to American missionaries in China.  An only child, she felt isolated, but books helped her conquer her solitude.  At age five, Jean declared that she would become a writer when she grew up.  She attended a British school until Grade 8 when her family fled China, aboard the President Taft, due to anti-Western rioting.

In the United States for the first time, Jean explained:  "I never felt truly American.  When I finally got to America, I wanted to put down roots, and did it through history."  Jean, wanting to find out more, performed the childhood rite of passage by signing up for a library card.  "When I discovered libraries, it was like having Christmas everyday."  Every book was like a gift, especially treasures like The Secret Garden and Just So Stories.

Jean attended university, and after a short career in teaching, moved to Dobb's Ferry, New York where she volunteered in the public library.  She helped set up a new children's department; her work there would inspire her later children's books.

After dabbling in poetry in high school and university, Jean tried her hand at short stories, some of which were published in Humpty Dumpty in the 1950's.  Her first book, Fish Head, published in 1954, featured a stowaway cat on a fishing boat.  Her first historical novel, The Cabin Faced West, was published in 1958.  Jean went on to publish a series of historical books for children including What's the Big Idea, Franklin?, Who's That Stepping on Plymouth Rock?, and You Want Women to Vote Lizzie Stanton?  Jean won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for her "substantial and lasting contribution to children's literature".

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